Note 478 — BOOK THE EIGHTH. (continued 2)

The misfortunes of the French, after the surrender of Atella, are thus described by Mr. Prescott: “Unfortunately Montpensier was unable to enforce the full performance of his own treaty: as many of the French refused to deliver up the places entrusted to them, under the pretence that their authority was derived not from the viceroy but from the king himself. During the discussion of this point, the French troops were removed to Baiæ and Pozzuolo and the adjacent places on the coast. The unhealthiness of the situation, together with that of the autumnal season and an intemperate indulgence in fruit and wine, soon brought on an epidemic among the soldiers, which swept them off in great numbers. The gallant Montpensier was one of the first victims. He refused the earnest solicitations of his brother-in-law, the Marquis of Mantua, to quit his unfortunate companions, and retire to a place of safety in the interior. The shore was literally strewed with the bodies of the dying and the dead. Of the whole number of Frenchmen, amounting to not less than five thousand, who marched out of Atella, not more than five hundred ever reached their native country. The Swiss and other mercenaries were scarcely more fortunate. ‘They made their way back as they could, through Italy,’ says Giovio, ‘in the most deplorable state of destitution and suffering; the gaze of all, and a sad example of the caprice of fortune.’ Such was the miserable fate of that brilliant and formidable army which, scarcely two years before, had poured down on the fair fields of Italy in all the insolence of expected conquest.”—History of Ferdinand and Isabella, vol. ii. p. 300.