He was urged to place himself under cover a little, so as to give his orders thence; but, "It is no odds," said he; "they who are afraid have only to put themselves behind me." A body of Gascons showed signs of wavering: "Lads," shouted La Tremoille, "the king sees you." They dashed forward; and the Venetians were broken, in spite of the brave resistance of Alviano, who was taken and brought, all covered with blood, and with one eye out, into the presence of the king.

Louis said to him, courteously, "You shall have fair treatment and fair captivity; have fair patience." "So I will," answered the condottiere; "if I had won the battle, I had been the most victorious man in the world; and, though I have lost it, still have I the great honor of having had against me a King of France in person." Louis, who had often heard talk of the warrior's intrepid presence of mind, had a fancy for putting it to further proof, and, all the time chatting with him, gave secret orders to have the alarm sounded not far from them.

"What is this, pray, Sir Barthelemy ?" asked the king: "your folks are very difficult to please; is it that they want to begin again ?" "Sir," said Alviano, "if there is fighting still, it must be that the French are fighting one another; as for my folks, I assure you, on my life, they will not pay you a visit this fortnight." The Venetian army, in fact, withdrew with a precipitation which resembled a rout: for, to rally it, its general, the Count of Petigliano, appointed for its gathering-point the ground beneath the walls of Brescia, forty miles from the field of battle.

"Few men-at-arms," says Guicciardini, "were slain in this affair; the great loss fell upon the Venetians' infantry, which lost, according to some, eight thousand men; others say that the number of dead on both sides did not amount to more than six thousand." The territorial results of the victory were greater than the numerical losses of the armies.

Within a fortnight, the towns of Caravaggio, Bergamo, Brescia, Crema, Cremona, and Pizzighitone surrendered to the French.
Peschiera alone, a strong fortress at the southern extremity of the Lake of Garda, resisted, and was carried by assault.