had been trodden down by successive hosts, scarcely less damaging to her prosperity and destructive to her liberties as her selfish allies, than as her open foes. Experience had by this time shown the folly of the Italian policy, and the various states were not unwilling to profit by its lesson. Forgetting for the moment their individual ends, they resolved to throw off an incubus which threatened to make the Peninsula a province of France. Ludovico Sforza had long sought to resile from his ill-judged engagements with Charles; the Venetians found that the Turkish crusade was but a false pretext; the Florentines saw their adhesion to the invader repaid by the loss of Pisa; the Pope, ever inclined to intrigue, was more especially ready to join in any plan which should open an escape from his blunders in bringing down such dangerous neighbours. Nor did the ultra-montane powers view with satisfaction so vast an accession to French influence. Ferdinand II. of Spain, whose envoy had formally broken with Charles ere he crossed the Neapolitan frontier, now put himself forward to wean the Venetians from their neutrality. Maximilian (who, not having been crowned, was only King of the Romans, but whom we shall generally call Emperor) burned for opportunity of avenging a double wrong which the French monarch had done him by jilting his daughter Margaret, and by espousing his betrothed bride, Anne of Bretagne. Having himself married in 1493 Bianca Sforza, her uncle Ludovico il Moro bribed him by a large dowry to take advantage of certain alleged flaws in the Milanese investitures, and to recognise him as Duke, passing over his sickly nephew Giovanni Galeazzo. The new charter in favour of Il Moro reached him immediately after the death of the latter, whose feeble and wretched existence was terminated, perhaps by poison, in October 1494. He left a son, and in defiance of the title of this child, whose injuries his uncle, Alfonso of Naples, was no longer in circumstances to redress, Ludovico seized the trappings of that sovereignty, which he virtually had usurped long before the imperial diploma reached him. Thus were these parties prepared for a united exertion in the common cause; and the minor feudatories of the Peninsula willingly joined them in a five years' league, for the purpose of restoring and maintaining the independence of Italy. It was concluded at Venice, on the 31st of March 1495, and by it Germany, Spain, Venice, Milan, and the Pope were bound to furnish 34,000 horse, and 20,000 foot, or monied contributions proportioned to their respective contingents of that force. [Illustration: _Anderson_ BIANCA, DAUGHTER OF LUDOVICO SFORZA _After the picture by Ambrogio de' Predis in the Biblioteca Ambrogiana, Milan_]