, and were applied without
scruple by the foremost men of the age, Albuquerque and Cortez.
Frederic turned for aid to the Sultan, and this felonious act was
put forward as the justification of his aggressors. The Pope
sanctioned the Treaty of Partition, and as the Crown of Naples
was technically in his gift, he deprived the king on the ground
stated by the allies. The exquisite significance of the plea was
that the Pope himself had invited Turkish intervention in Italy,
and now declared it a cause of forfeiture. In 1501 French and
Spaniards occupied their allotted portions, and then quarrelled
over the distribution of the spoil. For a time Gonsalvo, "the
great Captain," was driven to bay at Barletta on the Adriatic;
but at the end of 1503 he won a decisive victory, and the
defeated French, under Bayard, withdrew from the Garigliano to
the Po. Naples remained a dependency of Spain, for all purposes,
in modern history.

In the midst of foreign armies, and of new combinations disturbing the
established balance of Italian Powers, the lesser potentates were
exposed to destruction; and there were forces about sufficient, under
capable guidance, to remodel the chaotic centre of Italy, where no
strong government had ever been constituted. Caesar Borgia recognised
the opportunity as soon as the French were at Milan; the Pope was
growing old and was clay in his terrible hands. His sister just then
became Duchess of Ferrara, on the border of the defenceless region
which he coveted; and the dominions of the King of France, his patron
and ally, extended to the Adda and the Po. Never had such advantages
been united in such a man. For Caesar's talents were of the imperial
kind. He was fearless of difficulties, of dangers, and of
consequences; and having no preference for right or wrong, he weighed
with an equal and dispassionate mind whether it was better to spare a
man or to cut his throat. As he did not attempt more than he could
perform, his rapid success awakened aspirations for a possible future.
He was odious to Venice, but a Venetian, who watched his meteoric
course, wonders, in his secret diary, whether this unerring schemer
was to be the appointed deliverer. He was a terror to Florence, yet
the Florentine secretary, to whom he confided his thoughts in certain
critical hours, wrote of him as men have written of Napoleon, and
erected a monument to his memory that has secretly fascinated half the
politicians in the