VI. 1 THE ITALIAN WARS. 93 believing that the French king would spare them all taxes, opened their gates, though they soon found out their mistake, and recalled Ludovico Sforza. He raised a band of Swiss to fight for him, but, when in sight of the French camp at Novara, they mutinied for pay, and betrayed him to the enemy. He was taken to France and kept a close prisoner at Loches. 9. The War in Naples, 1501. — Ferdinand the Second of Naples died soon after his restoration to his kingdom. The present king was his uncle Frederick. Lewis now pro- posed that Ferdinand of Aragon and himself should divide the kingdom of Naples between them, and that they should seal their union by a marriage between Lewis's infant daughter Claude and Charles of Austria, the grandson of Ferdinand. The unfortunate Frederick was driven from his throne by the united forces of France and Spain, the first under Lewis of Armagnac, Duke of Nemours, the son of him whom Lewis XL had put to death ; the second under Gonzalvo de Cordova., called the Great Captain, the ablest general then living. But quarrels soon arose between the two invading powers. The French held the north of the kingdom of Naples, and the Spaniards the south, but the Capitanaia in the middle was debateable ground, where some of the castles were held by one nation and some by the other. Challenges and skirmishes were frequent, till in 1 502 Lewis declared war unless the Spaniards should leave the Capitanata within twenty-four hours. He sent such reinforcements that Gonzalvo was forced to shut himself up in Barletta, where he remained patiently awaiting the certain effects of French rashness, and refused Nemours' challenges to battle until he was able to surprise Ruvo, and in it La Palisse, one of the bravest of the French captains, with large stores and 1000 horse. These enabled him to mount so many of his men that on the 5th of April, 1503, he sallied out and gained a great victory at Cerignola. The French, though full of graceful and punctilious honour and bravery to the Spanish and Italian gentlemen, had made themselves so detestable to the Neapolitans that their banners were torn down and they were driven out everywhere. Only Gaeta held out, and the French troops sent to relieve it were again defeated on the Garigliano, and for the second time the French were driven out of Southern Italy. The kings of Spain from this time kept both the kingdoms into which the kingdom of Sicily had been divided ; hence
