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Updated: June 16, 2025
Francesco Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, was the general of the Venetian forces; and on him, therefore, fell the real responsibility of the battle. De Comines remarks on the imprudence of the allies, who allowed Charles to advance as far as Fornovo, when it was their obvious policy to have established themselves in the village and so have caught the French troops in a trap.
At Fornovo, north of the Apennines, he defeated the allies in July, 1495; and by November the main French army had got safely out of Italy. The forces left behind in Naples were worn out by war and pestilence, and the poor remnant of these, too, bringing with them the seeds of horrible contagious diseases, forced their way back to France in 1496. It was the last effort of the King.
The invasion of the French, the conquest of Naples, the battle of Fornovo, the peace of Vercelli, the proclamation of Lodovico as Duke of Milan, his coronation fêtes at Milan and Pavia, are all carefully recorded.
The stones of it glared like the sands of Africa; Fornovo baked under the sun all white and black; between us was this broad plain of parched shingle and rocks that could, in a night, become one enormous river, or dwindle to a chain of stagnant ponds. To-day some seven narrow streams wandered in the expanse, and again they seemed so easy to cross that again I wondered at the need of a guide.
Mantegna's "Madonna della Vittoria," in the Louvre, was painted to celebrate the deeds of Francesco Gonzaga in the battle of Fornovo. When he was ejected from Rome for making obscene pictures, Giulio Romano went to live at Mantua, and the city still bears the traces of his residence as well as of Mantegna's.
Lastly, the third division, i.e. the rear, preceded by six thousand beasts of burden bearing the baggage, was composed of only three hundred men-at-arms, commanded by de Guise and by de la Trimouille: this was the weakest part of the army. When this arrangement was settled, Charles ordered the van to cross the river, just at the little town of Fornovo.
As we advance, the hills approach again; between their skirts there is nothing but the river-bed; and now on rising ground above the stream, at the point of juncture between the Ceno and the Taro, we find Fornovo. Beyond the village the valley broadens out once more, disclosing Apennines capped with winter snow. To the right descends the Ceno.
It was in the duchy of Parma, near the town of Fornovo, on the right bank of the Taro, an affluent of the Po, that the French and Italian armies met, on the 5th of July, 1495.
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.
Charles could not do otherwise than descend upon the village of Fornovo, and cut his way thence in the teeth of the Italian army over stream and boulder between the gorges of throttling mountain. The failure of the Italians to achieve what here upon the ground appears so simple, delivered Italy hand-bound to strangers.
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