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Updated: June 16, 2025
A fitting conclusion to this sketch, connecting its close with the commencement, may be found in some remarks upon the manner of warfare to which the Italians of the Renaissance had become accustomed, and which proved so futile on the field of Fornovo. During the Middle Ages, and in the days of the Communes, the whole male population of Italy had fought light armed on foot.
Charles left eleven thousand men under Gilbert de Montpensier, at Naples; and after being exposed to much peril, although he won a victory at Fornovo , he made his way back to France. Ferdinand II., aided by Spanish troops, expelled the French from Naples; and the remnant of their garrisons, after the death of Montpensier, was led back to France.
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.
Finally, a boy that stood by said he remembered a man who knew the river better than any one, and he, if any one could, would get me across. So I took the boy with me up the road, and as we went I saw, parallel to the road, a wide plain of dazzling rocks and sand, and beyond it, shining and silhouetted like an Arab village, the group of houses that was Fornovo.
It was a Sunday when the French marched down upon Fornovo. Before them spread the plain of Lombardy, and beyond it the white crests of the Alps. "We were," says De Comines, "in a valley between two little mountain flanks, and in that valley ran a river which could easily be forded on foot, except when it is swelled with sudden rains.
I stood at last upon the rocks above a torrent that went thundering down the mighty gorge which it had cloven itself between the hills. Thence I looked down a long, wavering valley over which the rays of the evening sun were slanting, and hazily in the distance I could see the russet city of Fornovo which I had earlier passed that day.
The whole valley was a bed of gravel and big stones, very difficult for horses, about a quarter of a league in breadth, and on the right bank lodged our enemies. Any one who has visited Fornovo can understand the situation of the two armies. Charles occupied the village on the right bank of the Taro.
Immediately after Fornovo, the Count of Caiazzo's cavalry had joined his brother Galeazzo's force before Novara, and on the 19th of July the Marquis of Mantua encamped under the walls with the Venetian army.
He landed in Calabria in the spring of 1496, and war broke out afresh through that already sorely devastated land. The Spaniards were joined by the allied forces of Venice and the Church under the condotta of the Marquis Gonzaga of Mantua, the leader of the Italians at Fornovo. Lodovico had detached himself from the league, and again made terms with France for his own safety's sake.
The distance to that pass as the crow flies was only a little more than thirty miles. So exceedingly difficult was the task that it took me over two days. Till I reached Fornovo beyond the Taro, I was not really in the hills. By country roads, picking my way, I made that afternoon for Medesano.
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