Here, as at Florence, the fouriers and harbingers of the monarch rode on before the rest of the army, and passed rapidly through the ancient streets filled with the memories of so many ages, marking out quarters for the troops and lodgings for the king and his court. They took no heed to triumphal arch, or broken statue, or ruined amphitheatre; but they marked the faces of the populace who thronged the streets and gathered thickly at the gates, and they saw a very different expression on those countenances from that which had appeared amongst the Tuscans. To the Romans Charles came as a deliverer, and an occasional shout of gratulation burst from the people as the strange horsemen passed. Hasty preparations only could be made, for the royal army was close behind, and just after sunset on the last day of the year 1494, the French army reached the gates of Rome. Those gates were thrown wide open; and shout after shout burst from the multitude as the men-at-arms poured in. Charles himself was at their head, armed cap-à-pie; "with his lance upon his thigh," says an eye-witness, "as if prepared for battle." The drums beat, the trumpet sounded; and every tenth man of the army carried a torch casting its red glare upon the dazzling arms and gorgeous surcoats of the cavalry, and upon the eager but joyous faces round. Shout after shout burst from the multitude; and thus, as a conqueror, Charles entered Rome. CHAPTER XXI. Rome, still grand even in her ruin, was in the hands of Charles of France. He had never in his life seen a stroke stricken in actual warfare, except at the insignificant town of Vivizano; he had never made a conquest more important than that of a village, nor obtained a victory over more than a score or two of men, and yet he felt himself almost on a par with Charlemagne when he stood in Rome exercising all the powers of an emperor. "He suited his corps de gardes and placed his sentinels in the squares of the noble city," says Old Brantome, "with many rounds and patrols, planted his courts of justice with gallowses and whipping-posts in five or six places; requisitions were made in his name; his edicts and ordonnances were cried and published with the sound of the trumpet as in Paris. Go find me a King of France who has ever done such things, except Charlemagne; and even he, I think, proceeded not with an authority so proud and imperious."