Page:Readings in European History Vol 2.djvu/53

 Europe at the Opening of the Sixteenth Century I 5 in past ages, it is before all things necessary, as the true National foundation of every such attempt, to be provided with national t ro °ps should 1 1 r • 1 r 1 be subs tl- troops, since you can have no braver, truer, or more faithful tuted for the soldiers. And although every single man of them be good, mercenaries collectively they will be better, seeing themselves com- manded by their own prince, and honored and esteemed by him. That you may be able, therefore, to defend yourself against the foreigner with Italian valor, the first step is to provide yourself with an army such as this. . . . This opportunity, then, for Italy at last to look on her deliverer, ought not to be allowed to pass away. With what love he would be received in all those provinces which have suffered from the foreign inundation ; with what thirst for vengeance, with what firm fidelity, with what devotion and what tears, no words of mine can declare. What gates would be closed against him ? What people would refuse him obe- dience ? What jealousy would stand in his way ? What Ital- ian but would yield him homage ? This barbarian tyranny stinks in all nostrils. III. The Good Chevalier Bayard. The Battle of Marignano (15 i 5) In the dreary annals of the bloody and fruitless The life of wars carried on by the French kings, Charles VIII, Bayard by Louis XII, and Francis I, with the hope of gaining a the Loyal x 00 Servitor. foothold in Italy, one brave warrior stands out whom the French have rightly never ceased to love, — the Chevalier Bayard, the knight " without fear and with- out reproach." We have a beautiful life of him, the very title of which might make it immortal, The very Joyous, Pleasing, and Diverting History of the Gentle Lord of Bayard, written by the Loyal Servitor. We are carried back to the knightly St. Louis and his biographer, 1 only the Loyal Servitor, as he chose to 1 See above, Vol. I, pp. 212 sq.