History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic, vol 3 | Page 7

its course for the Morea. The Turkish
squadron, lying before Napoli di Romania, without waiting Gonsalvo's
approach, raised the siege, and retreated precipitately to Constantinople.
The Spanish general, then uniting his forces with the Venetians,
stationed at Corfu, proceeded at once against the fortified place of St.
George, in Cephalonia, which the Turks had lately wrested from the
republic. [21]

The town stood high on a rock, in an impregnable position, and was
garrisoned by four hundred Turks, all veteran soldiers, prepared to die
in its defence. We have not room for the details of this siege, in which
both parties displayed unbounded courage and resources, and which
was protracted nearly two months under all the privations of famine,
and the inclemencies of a cold and stormy winter. [22]
At length, weary with this fatal procrastination, Gonsalvo and the
Venetian admiral, Pesaro, resolved on a simultaneous attack on
separate quarters of the town. The ramparts had been already shaken by
the mining operations of Pedro Navarro, who, in the Italian wars,
acquired such terrible celebrity in this department, till then little
understood. The Venetian cannon, larger and better served than that of
the Spaniards, had opened a practicable breach in the works, which the
besieged repaired with such temporary defences as they could. The
signal being given at the appointed hour, the two armies made a
desperate assault on different quarters of the town, under cover of a
murderous fire of artillery. The Turks sustained the attack with
dauntless resolution, stopping up the breach with the bodies of their
dead and dying comrades, and pouring down volleys of shot, arrows,
burning oil and sulphur, and missiles of every kind, on the heads of the
assailants. But the desperate energy, as well as numbers of the latter,
proved too strong for them. Some forced the breach, others scaled the
ramparts; and, after a short and deadly struggle within the walls, the
brave garrison, four-fifths of whom with their commander had fallen,
were overpowered, and the victorious banners of St. Jago and St. Mark
were planted side by side triumphantly on the towers. [23]
The capture of this place, although accomplished at considerable loss,
and after a most gallant resistance by a mere handful of men, was of
great service to the Venetian cause; since it was the first cheek given to
the arms of Bajazet, who had filched one place after another from the
republic, menacing its whole colonial territory in the Levant. The
promptness and efficiency of King Ferdinand's succor to the Venetians
gained him high reputation throughout Europe, and precisely of the
kind which he most coveted, that of being the zealous defender of the
faith; while it formed a favorable contrast to the cold supineness of the
other powers of Christendom.
The capture of St. George restored to Venice the possession of

Cephalonia; and the Great Captain, having accomplished this important
object, returned in the beginning of the following year, 1501, to Sicily.
Soon after his arrival there, an embassy waited on him from the
Venetian senate, to express their grateful sense of his services; which
they testified by enrolling his name on the golden book, as a nobleman
of Venice, and by a magnificent present of plate, curious silks and
velvets, and a stud of beautiful Turkish horses. Gonsalvo courteously
accepted the proffered honors, but distributed the whole of the costly
largess, with the exception of a few pieces of plate, among his friends
and soldiers. [24]
In the mean while, Louis the Twelfth having completed his
preparations for the invasion of Naples, an army, consisting of one
thousand lances and ten thousand Swiss and Gascon foot, crossed the
Alps, and directed its march towards the south. At the same time a
powerful armament, under Philip de Ravenstein, with six thousand five
hundred additional troops on board, quitted Genoa for the Neapolitan
capital. The command of the land forces was given to the Sire
d'Aubigny, the same brave and experienced officer who had formerly
coped with Gonsalvo in the campaigns of Calabria. [25]
No sooner had D'Aubigny crossed the papal borders, than the French
and Spanish ambassadors announced to Alexander the Sixth and the
college of cardinals the existence of the treaty for the partition of the
kingdom between the sovereigns, their masters, requesting his Holiness
to confirm it, and grant them the investiture of their respective shares.
In this very reasonable petition his Holiness, well drilled in the part he
was to play, acquiesced without difficulty; declaring himself moved
thereto solely by his consideration of the pious intentions of the parties,
and the unworthiness of King Frederic, whose treachery to the
Christian commonwealth had forfeited all right (if he ever possessed
any) to the crown of Naples. [26]
From the moment that the French forces had descended into