Almost without the loss of a soldier and in less than six months he had achieved his stepping-stone. Alexander VI., referring to the campaign, remarked sarcastically that the French needed only a child’s wooden spurs to urge on their horses, and chalk to mark their lodgings for the night. For all their previous scoffing the armies of Italy had melted away like mist before the despised “Barbarians,” or else had fled in terror at the first encounter. Contemporary historians are ready enough with their explanations. The wars in the peninsula, says the Florentine Guicciardini, had been waged hitherto chiefly in the study or on paper; and his fellow-citizen, Machiavelli, elaborates this theory. The luxury, the civilization, and the culture, that made the cities of Italy the admiration and the desire of the rest of Europe, had produced an enervating atmosphere in which the healthy virtues of patriotism and hardihood withered away. States grew to rely for their defence not on their own subjects but on mercenary armies enrolled by _Condottieri_ generals; and these, actuated by no motive save to secure their pay for as many weeks as possible, converted war from a grim struggle for existence into an intricate but nearly bloodless pastime. They spared no effort to relieve themselves and their men from fatigue and danger, not killing one another in battle, but making prisoners who were afterwards released without ransom. They would attack no town by night, nor would those within make sorties against their besieging foe. Their camps were without rampart or trench. They fought no winter campaigns. Little wonder if men used to a warfare of courtesies shrank appalled from a ferocity that, once aroused, spared neither young nor old, women nor invalids. In the early stages of the invasion the Duke of Orleans had defeated Federigo, brother of King Alfonso of Naples, at Rapallo; and the town, daring to resist the conquerors, had been put to the sack with all the brutality attending a general massacre. Its fate had a paralysing effect on future attempts to hinder the French advance, especially in Naples, where devotion to the reigning House of Aragon was never more than half-hearted. Ferrante I. and his son, Alfonso II., had been typical Italian despots, ruling by fear rather than by love, and to satisfy their own caprice rather than to win their land prosperity or glory. Ferrante II. was gentle and well-intentioned but too little known to be popular. Thus the Neapolitans, cynically assured that the sovereign did not exist for whom it was worth while to risk their lives, threw open their gates to the French and joyfully acclaimed them as long-hoped for saviours.