Quotation from: A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times, Volume 3Written by: Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot |
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Rome had for pope Alexander VI. (Poderigo Borgia), a prince who was covetous, licentious, and brazen-facedly fickle and disloyal in his policy, and who would be regarded as one of the most utterly demoralized men of the fifteenth century, only that he had for son a Caesar Borgia. Finally, at Naples, in 1494, three months before the day on which Charles VIII, entered Italy, King Alphonso II. ascended the throne. "No man," says Commynes, "was ever more cruel than he, or more wicked, or more vicious and tainted, or more gluttonous; less dangerous, however, than his father, King Ferdinand, the which did take in and betray folks whilst giving them good cheer (kindly welcome), as hath been told to me by his relatives and friends, and who did never have any pity or compassion for his poor people." Such, in Italy, whether in her kingdoms or her republics, were the Heads with whom Charles VIII. had to deal when he went, in the name of a disputed right, three hundred leagues away from his own kingdom in quest of a bootless and ephemeral conquest.
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