[Footnote 254: _Carteggio_, I., p. 213.] But with these revolutions, which ended in giving to Florence and Pisa independent popular governments,[*255] and with the war of rivalry which consequently ensued between them, we have at present no concern. The struggle was maintained during several years, with an obstinacy and bitterness which more than once compromised the general tranquillity of the Peninsula; when it terminated Pisa had been ruined and Florence was bankrupt. It was at this crisis that there occurred an anecdote preserved in the _Corteggiano_, among the _facetiæ_ of the court of Urbino. One of the Florentine council, in a committee of ways and means, proposed to augment the customs revenue by doubling the number of city gates at which dues were collected! [Footnote *255: These words are infinitely misleading.] Alexander, ever too occupied with private objects to heed the general cause, had meanwhile, upon a petty quarrel with the Colonna, withdrawn his troops from Romagna, to waste them and much precious time in wretched partizan struggles with these fractious barons, and in this miserable trifling employed his son Cesare. Vainly confident while no immediate danger impended, he had flattered himself that the French invasion would come to nothing. But when he saw two powerful armies reach his frontier, without obstacle or check, terror succeeded to foolish security. Abandoning his ally of Naples, he humbly besought his personal enemy Cardinal Ascanio Sforza to mediate with the French monarch in his behalf. Yet to the latest moment did he waver, alternately insolent and abject, fawning and fickle. Through these fluctuations it is needless to follow him. On the last day of 1494 the invading army marched unopposed and triumphant into Rome, and, leaving the city on the 28th of January, advanced towards Naples. A panic had already seized upon Alfonso, his army, and his people. On the 23rd of January he abdicated the crown in favour of his son Ferdinand, and fled with his treasures to Sicily, where he died after ten months of abject austerities, as an offset to long years of aggravated debauchery. The new King, upon his bloodless rout at the Garigliano, found himself without money, and supported neither by his troops nor his subjects. The bold front which he assumed availed nothing in circumstances so desperate. He retired to Ischia, and on the 22nd of February Charles took possession of Naples, amid the acclamations of a populace, whom the iron sway of the false and gloomy Ferdinand, and of his sanguinary son, had alienated from the Aragonese dynasty. But though we pass thus rapidly over the campaign of the French and Spaniards in Lower Italy, its results were of lasting importance. The foretaste of the Peninsula then obtained by these nations as its invaders or defenders stimulated a fatal relish for its attractions; and the appetite thus engendered was not stayed until that fair land