Madonna Sancia, bastard of King Don Alonso II, who confirmed to him the title of Prince of Squillace with a revenue of forty thousand ducats. Also, as an earnest of his gratitude to the Pope, the King of Naples conferred the Principalities of Teano and Tricarico on Don Juan Francisco de Lançol y Borja, eldest surviving bastard of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI (who already had procured for him the Spanish duchy of Gandia;) and enriched Cardinal Cesare (detto Borgia) with Neapolitan benefices. The Papacy and the Regno now were a Dual Alliance. * * * * * In Italy of the fifteenth century, men’s minds chiefly were occupied with the accumulation and disposition of matters connected with the intellect and the tastes. The Elect-Emperor Maximilian, who in 1493 succeeded the Pacific Caesar Friedrich IV on the throne of Central Europe (called the Holy Roman Empire) was adding outlying territories to the possessions of his dynasty, the Habsburg House of Austria. Spain was freeing herself, by means of steel and faggot, from her brain, _i.e._, the Moors and Jews; and in exploiting her New World. England was enjoying peace and a new dynasty, since the close of the War of the Roses in 1485. France had made peace, at a price, with King Henry VII Tudor in 1492; and with Spain, at the cost of her frontier provinces of Cerdogne and Rouissillion, in 1493. Lastly, the Christian King Charles VIII of France had pacified the rage of the Elect-Emperor Maximilian, whom he had robbed of his betrothed the Duchess Anne of Bretagne, by ceding to him the greater part of Burgundy. For the rest, nearly all the kingdoms, duchies, and fiefs of France had fallen into the hands of the vaunting Charles, by conquest, inheritance, lapse or marriage. Finding himself at the head of a great army experienced in the art of war, and with a domain smiling with prosperity, he looked for fresh fields to conquer. The chivalric glamour of the Crusade had by no means faded: it dazzled the pink eye of France: and, at one time, undoubtedly the Christian King intended to march on the Muslim Infidel, now settled in Europe and unmolested. But, with the death of King Don Ferrando I, the fickle Frenchman revived an old claim of the House of Anjou to the crown of Naples, intrigued with Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, and brought his veteran army south to Lyons; where he spent his time in lubricity, until he should have felt the pulses of the Italian Powers with reference to his undertaking. French envoys reported to him that the Papacy was allied with Naples, and Naples with Don Piero de’ Medici of Tuscany; that Don Filiberto the Fair, (the boy-duke of Savoja, married to the Elect-Emperor’s daughter Anne,) with Duke Ercole d’Este of Ferrara, the Marquesses of Monserrat and Saluzzo, and the Republic of Venice, were neutral. The auguries were not propitious for France; but the Christian King, emboldened by the presence, and attentive to the