The Powers of Italy had taken alarm. It had never been contemplated that France would meet submission all along the line, and actually become arbiter of the whole country. Milan, Florence the Papal States, and now the Regno, had fallen: with the French in France in the north, and the French in Naples in the south, these intermediate duchies, states and republics found themselves in the position of an uncracked nut in a monkey’s jaw: wherefore Italy gave way to fear. Also, Spain was the enemy of France, so was the Holy Roman Empire; and the Elect-Emperor Maximilian and the Catholic King realized the arrival of a unique opportunity for invading France by south and east, seeing that the French army was in Naples, cut off from its base by the Italian states. All these circumstances and considerations, skilfully perceived and engineered by the Pope’s Holiness from His eyrie at Viterbo, quite naturally resulted in the conclusion of a Holy League, consisting of the Papacy, the Empire, Spain, and the Italian Powers, against France. His position having become untenable, the Christian King resolved upon retreat. Half his army he left in Naples; and marched northward with the rest. His coming had been a triumphal procession. His going was a flight through hostile territory. A second time he entered Rome with the hope of retrieving his lost prestige: but the Pope again retired, this time to Orvieto, and refused to meet him. Enraged by the slight, the polite chivalry of France to pain the Pope avenged itself on women, pillaging the house of Madonna Giovanna de’ Catanei, and making Madonna Giulia Orsini (nata Farnese) a prisoner. Onward, northward, went the Christian King, conferring with the mattoid Fra Girolamo Savonarola at Poggibonzi; fighting a desperate battle at Fornuovo, where he lost his army stores; reaching France with his forces disgraced and in disorder; and he himself disabled by the sentence of the Greater Excommunication which the thoroughly angry and triumphant Pontiff fulminated after him. * * * * *