Under his directions, the small tower of St. Vincenzo having been first reduced by a furious cannonade, a mine was run under the outer defences of the great fortress called Castel Nuovo. On the 21st of May, the mine was sprung; a passage was opened over the prostrate ramparts, and the assailants, rushing in with Gonsalvo and Navarro at their head, before the garrison had time to secure the drawbridge, applied their ladders to the walls of the castle, and succeeded in carrying the place by escalade, after a desperate struggle, in which the greater part of the French were slaughtered. An immense booty was found in the castle. The Angevin party had made it a place of deposit for their most valuable effects, gold, jewels, plate, and other treasures, which, together with its well-stored magazines of grain and ammunition, became the indiscriminate spoil of the victors. As some of these, however, complained of not getting their share of the plunder, Gonsalvo, giving full scope in the exultation of the moment to military license, called out gayly, "Make amends for it, then, by what you can find in my quarters!" The words were not uttered to deaf ears. The mob of soldiery rushed to the splendid palace of the Angevin prince of Salerno, then occupied by the Great Captain, and in a moment its sumptuous furniture, paintings, and other costly decorations, together with the contents of its generous cellar, were seized and appropriated without ceremony by the invaders, who thus indemnified themselves at their general's expense for the remissness of government.
After some weeks of protracted operations, the remaining fortress, Castel d'Uovo, as it was called, opened its gates to Navarro; and a French fleet, coming into the harbor, had the mortification to find itself fired on from the walls of the place it was intended to relieve. Before this event, Gonsalvo, having obtained funds from Spain for paying off his men, quitted the capital and directed his march on Gaeta. The important results of his victories were now fully disclosed. D'Aubigny, with the wreck of the forces escaped from Seminara, had surrendered. The two Abruzzi, the Capitanate, all the Basilicate, except Venosa, still held by Louis d'Ars, and indeed every considerable place in the kingdom, had tendered its submission, with the exception of Gaeta. Summoning, therefore, to his aid Andrada, Navarro, and his other officers, the Great Captain resolved to concentrate all his strength on this point, designing to press the siege, and thus exterminate at a blow the feeble remains of the French power in Italy. The enterprise was attended with more difficulty than he had anticipated. [30]
FOOTNOTES
[1] Carbajal, Anales, MS., año 1500.—Sandoval, Hist. del Emp. Carlos V., tom. i. p. 2.
The queen expressed herself in the language of Scripture. "Sora cecidit super Mathiam," in allusion to the circumstance of Charles being born on that saint's day; a day which, if we are to believe Garibay, was fortunate to him through the whole course of his life. Compendio, tom. ii. lib. 19, cap. 9.
[2] Charles VIII., Louis's predecessor, had contrived to secure the hand of Anne of Bretagne, notwithstanding she was already married by proxy to Philip's father, the emperor Maximilian; and this, too, in contempt of his own engagements to Margaret, the emperor's daughter, to whom he had been affianced from her infancy. This twofold insult, which sunk deep into the heart of Maximilian, seems to have made no impression on the volatile spirits of his son.
[3] Mariana, Hist. de España, lib. 27, cap. 11.—St. Gelais describes the cordial reception of Philip and Joanna by the Court at Blois, where he was probably present himself. The historian shows his own opinion of the effect produced on their young minds by these flattering attentions, by remarking, "Le roy leur monstra si très grand semblant d'amour, que par noblesse et honesteté de coeur il les obligeoit envers luy de leur en souvenir toute leur vie." Hist. de Louys. XII., pp. 164, 165.
In passing through Paris, Philip took his seat in parliament as peer of France, and subsequently did homage to Louis XII., as his suzerain for his estates in Flanders; an acknowledgment of inferiority not at all palatable to the Spanish historians, who insist with much satisfaction on the haughty refusal of his wife, the archduchess, to take part in the ceremony. Zurita, Anales, tom. v. lib. 4, cap. 55.—Carbajal, Anales, MS., año 1502.—Abarca, Reyes de Aragon, tom. ii. rey 30, cap. 13, sec. 1.— Dumont, Corps Diplomatique, tom. iv. part. 1, p. 17.
[4] Carbajal, Anales, MS., año 1501.—Sandoval, Hist. del Emp. Carlos V., tom. i. p. 5.
[5] Zurita, Anales, tom. v. lib. 4, cap. 55.—Ferreras, Hist. d'Espagne, tom. viii. p. 220.