Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. III.djvu/145

ARMIES ON THE GARIGLIANO. 119 No sooner had the game, into which Cardinal chapter D'Amboise had entered with such prospects of sue- cess, been snatched from his grasp bj the superior address of his Italian rivals, and the election of Pius the Third been publicly announced, than the French army was permitted to resume its march on Naples, after the loss, — an irreparable loss, — of more than a month. A still greater misfortune had befallen it, in the mean time, in the illness of Tre- mouille, its chief; which compelled him to resign the command into the hands of the marquis of Mantua, an Italian nobleman, who held the second station in the army. He was a man of some mili- tary experience, having fought in the Venetian ser- vice, and led the allied forces, with doubtful credit indeed, against Charles the Eighth at the battle of Fornovo. His elevation was more acceptable to his own countrymen than to the French^ and in truth, however competent to ordinary exigencies, he was altogether unequal to the present, in which he was compelled to measure his genius with that of the greatest captain of the age.^^ The Spanish commander, in the mean while, was ^""fivo i ' ' repulsed be- detained before the strong post of Gaeta, into which Ives d'AUegre had thrown himself, as al- ready noticed, with the fugitives from the field of Cerignola, where he had been subsequently rein- forced by four thousand additional troops under the marquis of Saluzzo. From these circumstances, 12 Gamier, Hist.de France, torn, corsi, Diario, p. 83. — St. Gelais, V. pp. 435-438. — Guicciardini, Hist, de Louys XII., p. 173. Istoria, lib. 6, p. 316. — Buonac- fore Gaein.