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Updated: June 16, 2025
Proclamation of the new league against France at Venice Charles VIII. at Naples Demoralization of the victors Charles leaves Naples and returns to Rome The Duke of Orleans refuses to give up Asti Arrival of the imperial ambassadors at Milan Lodovico presented with the ducal insignia Fêtes in the Castello The Duke of Orleans seizes Novara Terror of Lodovico Battle of Fornovo Victory claimed by both parties The French reach Asti Isabella's trophies restored by Beatrice.
Here the boy bade me wait, and asked a group of peasants whether the guide was in; they said they thought so, and some went up into the hillside with the boy to fetch him, others remained with me, looking at the river-bed and at Fornovo beyond, shaking their heads, and saying it had not been done for days.
So clinging is the sense of instability that appertains to every fragment of that dry-rot tyranny which seized by evil fortune in the sunset of her golden day on Italy. In this theatre I mused one morning after visiting Fornovo; and the thoughts suggested by the battlefield found their proper atmosphere in the dilapidated place.
After a stay of only fifty days in his new capital, the French king hurried northward. Moving quickly through the Papal States and Tuscany, he engaged his troops in the passes of the Apennines near Pontremoli, and on July 5th, 1495, took up his quarters in the village of Fornovo.
That night they lodged at Fiorenzuola, the next at Piacenza, and so on; till on the eighth day they arrived at Asti without having been so much as incommoded by the army of the allies in their rear. Although the field of Fornovo was in reality so disgraceful to the Italians, they reckoned it a victory upon the technical pretence that the camp and baggage of the French had been seized.
From the top of the mountain which overlooked Fornovo, one could get a view, as we said before, of the two camps, and could easily calculate the numerical difference between them.
It was by this pass that Charles VIII. in 1495 returned from Tuscany, when the army of the League was drawn up waiting to intercept and crush him in the mouse-trap of Fornovo. No road remained for Charles and his troops but the rocky bed of the Taro, running as I have described it between the spurs of steep hills.
They crossed the Apennines with great labour and difficulty, to find their passage barred by the confederates on the Emilian plain near the village of Fornovo. Never was battle more fiercely contested than on that Monday, 6th July, when the French succeeded in breaking through the host of their enemies.
From the village of Fornovo, where the Italian League was camped awaiting Charles VIII. upon that memorable July morn in 1495, the road strikes suddenly aside, gains a spur of the descending Apennines, and keeps this vantage till the pass of La Cisa is reached.
Now, Francisco de Gonzaga, general-in-chief of the confederate troops, had modelled his plans on those of the King of France; by his orders, Count de Cajazzo, with four hundred men-at-arms and two thousand infantry, had crossed the Taro where the Venetian camp lay, and was to attack the French van; while Gonzaga himself, following the right bank as far as Fornovo, would go over the river by the same ford that Charles had used, with a view to attacking his rear.
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