THE FRENCH DRIVEN FROM NAPLES. 149 From the moment hostilities were brought to a chapter XV close, Gonsalvo displayed such generous sympathy ^ — ibr his late enemies, and such humanity in relieving courtesy. them, as to reflect more honor on his character than all his victories. He scrupulously enforced the faithful performance of the treaty, and severely pun- ished any violence offered to the French by his own men. His benign and courteous demeanour to- wards the vanquished, so remote from the images of terror with which he had been hitherto associated in their minds, excited unqualified admiration ; and they testified their sense of his amiable qualities, by speaking of him as the " gentil capitaine et gen- tii cavalier."^* The news of the rout of the Garigliano and the chagrin or ° Louis XII. surrender of Gaeta diffused general gloom and con- sternation over France. There was scarcely a fam- ily of rank, says a writer of that country, that had not some one of its members involved in these sad disasters. ^^ The court went into mourning. The king, mortified at the discomfiture of all his lofty spect to them as, without apparent- 5, apud Petitot, Collection des ly compromising their own honor, M6moires, torn. xvi. — Bernaldez, left the whole affair to the disere- Reyes Catolicos, MS., cap. 190. — tion of the Great Captain. Giovio, Vitae Illust. Virorum, fol. With regard to the sweeping 269, 270. — Chronica del Gran charge made by certain modern Capitan, cap. 111. French historians against the Span- i^ grantome, who visited the ish general, of a similar severity to banks of the Garigliano, some fifty the other Italians indiscriminately, years after this, beheld them in found in the place, there is not the imagination thronged with the slightest foundation for it in any shades of the illustrious dead, contemporary authority. See Gail- whose bones lay buried in its drea- lard, Rivalite, tom. iv. p. 254. — ry and pestilent marshes. There Gamier, Hist, de France, tom. v. is a sombre coloring in the vision p. 456. — Varillas, Hist, de Louis of the old chronicler, not unpoet- Xn., tom. i. pp. 419, 420. ical. Vies des Hommes Illustres, ^•* Fleurange, Meraoires, chap. disc. 6.
