Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. III.djvu/104

78 78 ITALIAN WARS. PART any resistance. Louis d'Ars, at the head of such '■ — of the men-at-arms as could follow him, went off in one direction, and Ives d'AUegre, with his light cavalry, which had hardly come into action, in an- other ; thus fully verifying the ominous prediction of his commander. The slaughter fell most heavily on the Swiss and Gascon foot, whom the cavalry under Mendoza and Pedro de la Paz rode down and cut to pieces without sparing, till the shades of evening shielded them at length from their pitiless pursuers. ^° Prospero Colonna pushed on to the French en- campment, where he found the tables in the duke's tent spread for his evening repast ; of which the Italian general and his followers did not fail to make good account. A trifling incident, that well illustrates the sudden reverses of war. Their loss. The Great Captain passed the night on the field of battle, which, on the following morning, pre- sented a ghastly spectacle of the dying and the dead. More than three thousand French are com- puted by the best accounts to have fallen. The loss of the Spaniards, covered as they were by their defences, was inconsiderable.^^ All the enemy's 20 Chronica del Gran Capitan, dez, Reyes Cat61icos, MS., cap. cap. 75. — Gamier, Hist, de France, 180. — Peter Martyr, Opus Epist., torn. V. pp. 396, 397. — Fleurange, epist. 256. — Fleurange, Memoires, M^moires, chap. 5, apud Pctitot, chap. 5. Collection des Memoires, torn. xvi. No accoint, that I know of, — Giovio, Vita; Illust. Virorum,ubi places the French loss so low as sup. — Guicciardini, Istoria, torn. i. 3,000 ; Garibay raises it to 4,500, pp. 303, 304. — St. Golais, Hist, and the French marechal de Fleu- de Louys XII., pp. 171, 172. — range rates that of the Swiss alone Brantome, Qi^nvres, torn. ii. disc. 8. at 5,000; around exaggeration, 21 Giovio, Vita; Illust. Virorum, not readily accounted for, as he had fol. 255. — Garibay, Compendio, undoubted access to the best means torn. ii. lib. 19, cap. 15. — Ijernal- of information. The Spaniards