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is a lie, because, since I not only give audience to officials, but allow all your subjects to speak to me whenever they choose, no disturbance can arise without my knowledge." Three days afterwards the news of the first skirmish between the two armies reached Mantua, and Isabella hastened to congratulate her husband on his success :

"Most illustrious Lord, I did not write before to-day, because I had nothing to say, but now that I hear of your success against the enemy, I will not delay one moment to congratulate Your Highness on this good news, which has given me the greatest pleasure, and I hope in God that you will gain further victories. I thank you more than I can say for your letter, and I beg of you to take care of yourself, because I am always very anxious when I remember you are in the camp, even although this is where you have always wished to be. I commend myself to Your Highness a thousand, thousand times. From her who loves and longs to see Your Highness, ISABELLA, with her own hand." Mantua, July 2.

With this letter Isabella sent her husband a little gold cross and Agnus Dei containing a fragment of the wood of the Cross, begging him to wear it round his neck in order that the virtue of this relic and his own devotions to the Virgin might keep him safe in the hour of danger. "All the clergy in Mantua," she adds, "are praying for Your Excellency, moved thereto by my anxious affection." On the 5th of July, the eve of the battle, the Marquis sent a short note thanking his dearest wife for her letter and the little cross, which he will cherish with singular devotion, 1 Luzio in Archivio Storico Italiano, 1890.

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but saying that he is so busy he has time neither to eat nor sleep.

On the 7th, he wrote again from the victorious camp of the League in the valley of the Taro, telling his wife of the battle which had been fought the day before, and of the heavy loss he had sustained in the death of his uncle Rodolfo, and his cousin Giovanni Maria, whom he loved as his own self.1

"Yesterday's battle, as you will have heard from the herald, was very fiercely contested, and we lost many of our men, amongst others, Signor Rodolfo and Messer Giovanni Maria; but certainly many more of the enemy were slain. And what we ourselves did is known to all, so that I need not speak of it here, and will only tell you that we found ourselves in a position of such peril that only God could deliver us. The chief cause of the disorder was the disobedience of the Stradiots, who gave themselves up to plunder, and in the hour of danger not one of them appeared. By the grace of God we and this army have been saved, but many fled without being pursued by any one, and most of the footsoldiers, so that few of these remain. These things have caused me the greatest sorrow which I have ever known, and if by ill chance our enemies had turned upon us, we must have been utterly destroyed. Some French nobles were made prisoners by our company, amongst others the Comte de Pigliano and Monsieur le Bâtard de Bourbon. The enemies departed this morning, and are gone over the hill towards Borgo San Domino and Piacenza. We will watch their course and see what we have to do. If others had fought as we did, the victory would have 1 Luzio, op. cit.

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been complete, and not a single Frenchman would have escaped. Farewell."

A sense of bitter disappointment breathes in every line of this letter which the Marquis addressed to his wife. In spite of their heavy losses the French army had succeeded in crossing the Taro that night, and early the next morning continued their retreat across the Lombard plains. But, as the royal camp and baggage were abandoned, the advantage remained with the allies, and, before long, Francesco persuaded himself that he had won a glorious victory. Of his personal prowess on this occasion there could be no doubt. After three horses had been killed under him, he fought on foot in the thick of the mêlée till his sword broke in his hands. "Since the days of Hector of Troy," wrote the Marchesa's faithful seneschal, Alessandro da Baesso, who himself risked his life to save his master, "no one ever fought as he did. I believe he killed ten men with his own hand. And I think you must have said some psalm for him, for indeed it is a miracle that he is alive and unhurt." The French king narrowly escaped being made prisoner, and was only rescued by his chamberlain, the Bastard of Bourbon, who rushed to his help. This prince, a son of Jean, Duc de Bourbon, was himself taken prisoner, and sent to Mantua, where Isabella gave him lodgings in the Castello, and treated him with the greatest courtesy until he was exchanged two months later. "Madama lets the French Count want for nothing," wrote Capilupi to the Marquis, and when he was released, he told the Marchesa that he could not sufficiently thank her for all the kindness which he had received. This very kindness, Marino Sanuto

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tells us, was afterwards reckoned by the jealous Signory of Venice as a sign of Francesco's dangerous leanings towards France.1

Among the spoils found in the king's tent were his own sword and helmet, a silver casket containing the seals of state, and a precious reliquary with the wood of the true Cross and a limb of St. Denis, on which he set especial store. Many of these were courteously returned to Charles by the Marquis, but he sent one magnificent set of hangings to Mantua, together with a book containing the portraits of Italian beauties which had been specially executed for the king, and the shattered sword with which he himself had fought on the battle-field. Isabella received these trophies joyfully, and gave her husband's sword to Monsignore Sigismondo, who told his brother that it was as sacred in his eyes as the spear of Longinus, since the blood with which it was stained had been shed for the deliverance of Italy.2

Great were the rejoicings at Venice, where Francesco was compared to Hannibal and Scipio, and the Signory not only gave him the high-sounding title of Captain-general of the armies of the Republic, but increased his yearly salary by 2000 ducats and bestowed a pension of another 1000 ducats on his wife. The money was very acceptable to Isabella, whose funds were at a low ebb, and on the 29th of July she wrote to Zorzo Brognolo, begging him to pay her debts to the jeweller Pagano and spend the rest in buying four pieces of the finest tab which he could find in Venice. This precious Oriental fabric, which the Italian ladies of the Renaissance valued so highly, 1 Spedizione di Carlo, viii. p. 482.

2 Luzio in Emporium, vol. x. 366.

was a species of watered silk, manufactured in a quarter of Damascus, which, Mr. Guy le Strange tells us, originally took its name from a Governor of Mecca called Attabiyeh. The word in its different forms of attabi and tabi passed into the English, French, and Spanish languages. Taby silks are often mentioned in English records of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Queen Elizabeth appeared on state occasions in a dress of silver and white taby, Pepys wore a false taby waistcoat, and Fanny Burney affected a gown of lilac taby. Probably few of us are aware that the word tabby cat is derived from the name of a man who was a companion of Mahommed, and Governor of Mecca in the seventh century.1

But while poets and sonnet-writers were extolling Francesco as the deliverer of Italy, Isabella herself could not conceal her anxiety for her husband's safety, and she wrote to him in the camp before Novara, where he was besieging the Duke of Orleans, begging him to be less reckless of his life. "It does not please me that you should always run such terrible risks, and I pray and entreat you to be very careful and not to expose yourself to these dangers, as I am sure you discharge your office best and most efficiently by giving orders to others rather than by fighting yourself." In the same letter she enclosed the following little note, supposed to be written by her two-year-old daughter Leonora to the Marquis, and signed with the words, Filia obsequentiss: adhuc lactans: "To my dearest and victorious father. Most illustrious and excellent Prince, in my cradle where I am now lying, and when I am sucking in the arms of my most illustrious and sweetest mother, 1 "Baghdad during the Abassieh Caliphate,” p. 138.