bassador extraordinary
to the Venetian Republic, and now announced that the enemy had forty
thousand men under arms and were preparing for battle. This news
produced no other effect an the king and the gentlemen of his army than
to excite their amusement beyond measure; for they had conceived such
a contempt for their enemy by their easy conquest, that they could not
believe that any army, however numerous, would venture to oppose their
passage.

Charles, however, was forced to give way in the face of facts, when he
heard at San Teranza that his vanguard, commanded by Marechal de Gie,
and composed of six hundred lances and fifteen hundred Swiss, when it
arrived at Fornova had come face to face with the confederates, who had
encamped at Guiarole. The marechal had ordered an instant halt, and
he too had pitched his tents, utilising for his defence the natural
advantages of the hilly ground. When these first measures had been
taken, he sent out, first, a herald to the enemy's camp to ask
from Francesco di Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, generalissimo of the
confederate troops, a passage for his king's army and provisions at a
reasonable price; and secondly, he despatched a courier to Charles VIII,
pressing him to hurry on his march with the artillery and rearguard.
The confederates had given an evasive answer, for they were pondering
whether they ought to jeopardise the whole Italian force in a single
combat, and, putting all to the hazard, attempt to annihilate the King
of France and his army together, so overwhelming the conqueror in the
ruins of his ambition. The messenger found Charles busy superintending
the passage of the last of his cannon over the mountain of Pontremoli.
This was no easy matter, seeing that there was no sort of track, and
the guns had to be lifted up and lowered by main farce, and each piece
needed the arms of as many as two hundred men. At last, when all
the artillery had arrived without accident on the other side of the
Apennines, Charles started in hot haste for Fornovd, where he arrived
with all his following on the morning of the next day.

From the top of the mountain where the Marechai de Gie had pitched his
tents, the king beheld both his own camp and the enemy's. Both were on
the right bank of the Taro, and were at either end of a semicircular
chain of hills resembling an amphitheatre; and the space between the two
camps, a vast basin filled during the winter floods by the torrent
which now