Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. III.djvu/146

120 ITALIAJN WARS. PART II. (Strength of his forces. as well as the great strength of the place, Gonsal- vo experienced an opposition, to which, of late, he had been wholly unaccustomed. His exposed sit- uation in the plains, under the guns of the city, occasioned the loss of many of his best men, and, among others, that of his friend Don Hugo de Car- dona, one of the late victors at Seminara, w^ho was shot down at his side, while conversing with him. At length, after a desperate but ineffectual attempt to extricate himself from his perilous position, by forcing the neighbouring eminence of Mount Orlan- do, he was compelled to retire to a greater distance, and draw off his army to the adjacent village of Castellone, which may call up more agreeable as- sociations in the reader's mind, as the site of the Villa Formiana of Cicero.'^ At this place he was still occupied with the blockade of Gaeta, when he received intelligence, that the French had crossed the Tiber, and were in full march against him.^^ While Gonsalvo lay before Gaeta, he had been intent on collecting such reinforcements as he could from every quarter. The Neapolitan division under Navarro had already joined him, as well as the victorious legions of Andrada from Calabria. His strength was further augmented by the arrival of between two and three thousand troops, Span- 13 Cicero's country seat stood midway between Gaeta and Mola, the ancient Foimise, about two miles and a half from each. (Clu- verius, Ital. Antiq., lib. 3, cap. 6.) The remains of his mansion and of his mausoleum may still be dis- cerned, on the borders of the old Appian way, by the classical and credulous tourist. 14 Giovio, Vitjc Illust. Virorum, fol. 258, 259.— Chronica del Gran Capitan, lib. 2, cap. 95. — Ulloa, Vita di Carlo V., fol. 19. — Peter Martyr, Opus Epist., epist. 261.