al 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 8th 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 25th, Innocent VIII. died, and was succeeded by the
very worst pope who has ever occupied St. Peter's chair, Roderigo
Borgia, Alexander VI. It was felt at once that the old order of things
had somehow ended, and that a new era, the destinies of which as yet
remained incalculable, was opening for Italy. The chief Italian powers,
hitherto kept in equipoise by the diplomacy of Lorenzo de' Medici, were
these--the Duchy of Milan, the Republic of Venice, the Republic of
Florence, the Papacy, and the Kingdom of Naples. Minor states, such as
the republics of Genoa and Siena, the duchies of Urbino and Ferrara, the
marquisate of Mantua, the petty tyrannies of Romagna, and the wealthy
city of Bologna, were sufficiently important to affect the balance of
power, and to produce new combinations. For the present purpose it is,
however, enough to consider the five great powers.

After the peace of Constance, which freed the Lombard Communes from
imperial interference in the year 1183, Milan, by her geographical
position, rose rapidly to be the first city of North Italy. Without
narrating the changes by which she lost her freedom as a Commune, it is
enough to state that, earliest of all Italian cities, Milan passed into
the hands of a single family. The Visconti managed to convert this
flourishing commonwealth, with all its dependencies, into their private
property, ruling it exclusively for their own profit, using its
municipal institutions as the machinery of administration, and employing
the taxes which they raised upon its wealth for purely selfish ends.
When the li