iceless
stuffs; magnificent clothes had been made for him, embroidered with
precious stones which he had selected from the family treasures. All
his jewels, perhaps the richest in Italy, were distributed about the
liveries of his pages, and one of them, his favourite, was to wear
a collar of pearls valued by itself at 100,000 ducats, or almost, a
million of our francs. In his party the Bishop of Arezzo, Gentile,
who had once been Lorenzo dei Medici's tutor, was elected as second
ambassador, and it was his duty to speak. Now Gentile, who had prepared
his speech, counted on his eloquence to charm the ear quite as much
as Piero counted on his riches to dazzle the eye. But the eloquence
of Gentile would be lost completely if nobody was to speak but the
ambassador of the King of Naples; and the magnificence of Piero dei
Medici would never be noticed at all if he went to Rome mixed up with
all the other ambassadors. These two important interests, compromised by
the Duke of Milan's proposition, changed the whole face of Italy.

Ludovico Sforza had already made sure of Ferdinand's promise to conform
to the plan he had invented, when the old king, at the solicitation of
Piero, suddenly drew back. Sforza found out how this change had come
about, and learned that it was Piero's influence that had overmastered
his own. He could not disentangle the real motives that had promised the
change, and imagined there was some secret league against himself: he
attributed the changed political programme to the death of Lorenzo dei
Medici. But whatever its cause might be, it was evidently prejudicial
to his own interests: Florence, Milan's old ally, was abandoning her
for Naples. He resolved to throw a counter weight into the scales; so,
betraying to Alexander the policy of Piero and Ferdinand, he proposed to
form a defensive and offensive alliance with him and admit the republic
of Venice; Duke Hercules III of Ferrara was also to be summoned to
pronounce for one or other of the two leagues. Alexander VI, wounded
by Ferdinand's treatment of himself, accepted Ludovico Sforza's
proposition, and an Act of Confederation was signed on the 22nd of
April, 1493, by which the new allies pledged themselves to set on foot
for the maintenance of the public peace an army of 20,000 horse and
6,000 infantry.

Ferdinand was frightened when he beheld the formation of this league;
but he thought he could neutralise its effects by depriving Ludovico
Sforza of