He answered me that the king would have trouble on the road, but that the honor would remain his, though he had but a hundred men at his back; but, seeing that he had not done well for the reformation of the Church, as he ought, and had suffered his men to plunder and rob the people, God had given sentence against him, and in short he would have a touch of the scourge." Several contemporary historians affirm that if the Italian army, formed by the Venetians and the Duke of Milan, had opposed the march of the French army, they might have put it in great peril; but nothing of the kind was attempted.

It was at the passage of the Appennines, so as to cross them and descend into the duchy of Parma, that Charles VIII.

had for the first time to overcome resistance, not from men, but from nature.
He had in his train a numerous and powerful artillery, from which he promised himself a great deal when the day of battle came; and he had to get it up and down by steep paths, "Here never," says the chronicle of La Tremoille, "had car or carriage gone.

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