The Marquis of Mantua's squadrons were approaching.

"Sir," said the bastard of Bourbon, "there is no longer time for the amusement of making knights; the enemy is coming on in force; go we at him." The king gave orders to charge, and the battle began at all points.
[Illustration: Battle of Fornovo----303] It was very hotly contested, but did not last long, with alternations of success and reverse on both sides.

The two principal commanders in the king's army, Louis de la Tremoille and John James Trivulzio, sustained without recoiling the shock of troops far more numerous than their own.
"At the throat! at the throat!!" shouted La Tremoille, after the first onset, and his three hundred men-at-arms burst upon the enemy and broke their line.

In the midst of the melley, the French baggage was attacked by the Stradiots, a sort of light infantry composed of Greeks recruited and paid by the Venetians.

"Let them be," said Trivulzio to his men; "their zeal for plunder will make them forget all, and we shall give the better account of them." At one moment, the king had advanced before the main body of his guard, without looking to see if they were close behind him, and was not more than a hundred paces from the Marquis of Mantua, who, seeing him scantily attended, bore down at the head of his cavalry.
"Not possible is it," says Commynes, "to do more doughtily than was done on both sides." The king, being very hard pressed, defended himself fiercely against those who would have taken him; the bastard Matthew of Bourbon, his brother-in-arms and one of the bravest knights in the army, had thrown himself twenty paces in front of him to cover him, and had just been taken prisoner by the Marquis of Mantua in person, when a mass of the royal troops came to their aid, and released them from all peril.
Here it was that Peter du Terrail, the Chevalier de Bayard, who was barely twenty years of age, and destined to so glorious a renown, made his first essay in arms; he had two horses killed under him, and took a standard, which he presented to the king, who after the battle made him a present of five hundred crowns.
Charles VIII.