n
leggings, wielding a long goad. The patient creatures stem the water,
which rises to the peasant's thighs and ripples round the creaking
wheels. Swaying to and fro, as the shingles shift upon the river-bed,
they make their way across; and now they have emerged upon the stones;
and now we lose them in a flood of sunlight.

It was by this pass that Charles VIII. in 1495 returned from Tuscany,
when the army of the League was drawn up waiting to intercept and
crush him in the mousetrap of Fornovo. No road remained for Charles
and his troops but the rocky bed of the Taro, running, as I have
described it, between the spurs of steep hills. It is true that the
valley of the Baganza leads, from a little higher up among the
mountains, into Lombardy. But this pass runs straight to Parma; and to
follow it would have brought the French upon the walls of a strong
city. Charles could not do otherwise than descend upon the village of
Fornovo, and cut his way thence in the teeth of the Italian army over
stream and boulder between the gorges of throttling mountain. The
failure of the Italians to achieve what here upon the ground appears
so simple, delivered Italy hand-bound to strangers. Had they but
succeeded in arresting Charles and destroying his forces at Fornovo,
it is just possible that then--even then, at the eleventh hour--Italy
might have gained the sense of national coherence, or at least have
proved herself capable of holding by her leagues the foreigner at bay.
As it was, the battle of Fornovo, in spite of Venetian bonfires and
Mantuan Madonnas of Victory, made her conscious of incompetence and
convicted her of cowardice. After Fornovo, her sons scarcely dared to
hold their heads up in the field against invaders; and the battles
fought upon her soil were duels among aliens for the prize of Italy.

In order to comprehend the battle of Fornovo in its bearings on
Italian history, we must go back to the year 1492, and understand the
conditions of the various States of Italy at that date. On April 8 in
that year, Lorenzo de' Medici, who had succeeded in maintaining a
political equilibrium in the peninsula, expired, and was succeeded by
his son Piero, a vain and foolhardy young man, from whom no guidance
could be expected. On July 25, Innocent VIII. died, and was succeeded
by the very worst Pope who has ever occupied S. Peter's chair,
Roderigo Borgia, Alexander VI. It was felt at once that the old order
of things had somehow en