Hungarian yoke. Already his
bastard brother had entered Italy--already some of the Neapolitan states
had declared in his favour--already promises had been held out by the
northern monarch to the scattered Companies--and already those fierce
mercenaries gathered menacingly round the frontiers of that Eden of
Italy, attracted, as vultures to the carcass, by the preparation of war
and the hope of plunder. Such was the field to which the bold mind
of Montreal now turned its thoughts; and his soldiers had joyfully
conjectured his design when they had heard him fix Terracina as their
bourne. Provident of every resource, and refining his audacious and
unprincipled valour by a sagacity which promised, when years had more
matured and sobered his restless chivalry, to rank him among the most
dangerous enemies Italy had ever known, on the first sign of Louis's
warlike intentions, Montreal had seized and fortified a strong castle on
that delicious coast beyond Terracina, by which lies the celebrated pass
once held by Fabius against Hannibal, and which Nature has so favoured
for war as for peace, that a handful of armed men might stop the march
of an army. The possession of such a fortress on the very frontiers of
Naples, gave Montreal an importance of which he trusted to avail
himself with the Hungarian king: and now, thwarted in his more grand and
aspiring projects upon Rome, his sanguine, active, and elastic spirit
congratulated itself upon the resource it had secured.

The band halted at nightfall on this side the Pontine Marshes, seizing
without scruple some huts and sheds, from which they ejected the
miserable tenants, and slaughtering with no greater ceremony the swine,
cattle, and poultry of a neighbouring farm. Shortly after sunrise they
crossed those fatal swamps which had already been partially drained by
Boniface VIII.; and Montreal, refreshed by sleep, reconciled to his late
mortification by the advantages opened to him in the approaching war
with Naples, and rejoicing as he approached a home which held one who
alone divided his heart with ambition, had resumed all the gaiety which
belonged to his Gallic birth and his reckless habits. And that deadly
but consecrated road, where yet may be seen the labours of Augustus,
in the canal which had witnessed the Voyage so humourously described by
Horace, echoed with the loud laughter and frequent snatches of wild song
by which the barbarian robbers enlivened their rapid march.