It was useless to think of parleying with a prince who acted in such
expeditious fashion as this. Alexander accordingly warned Ferdinand to
quit Rome as soon as possible, in the interests of his own personal
safety. But Ferdinand refused to listen to a word, and declared that he
would not go out at one gate while Charles VIII came in at another. His
sojourn was not long. Two days later, about eleven o'clock in the
morning, a sentinel placed on a watch-tower at the top of the Castle S.
Angelo, whither the pope had retired, cried out that the vanguard of the
enemy was visible on the horizon. At once Alexander and the Duke of
Calabria went up an the terrace which tops the fortress, and assured
themselves with their own eyes that what the soldier said was true.
Then, and not till then, did the duke of Calabria mount an horseback,
and, to use his own words, went out at the gate of San Sebastiana, at the
same moment that the French vanguard halted five hundred feet from the
Gate of the People. This was on the 31st of December 1494.

At three in the afternoon the whole army had arrived, and the vanguard
began their march, drums beating, ensigns unfurled. It was composed,
says Paolo Giove, an eye-witness (book ii, p. 41 of his History), of
Swiss and German soldiers, with short tight coats of various colours:
they were armed with short swords, with steel edges like those of the
ancient Romans, and carried ashen lances ten feet long, with straight and
sharp iron spikes: only one-fourth of their number bore halberts instead
of lances, the spikes cut into the form of an axe and surmounted by a
four-cornered spike, to be used both for cutting like an axe and piercing
like a bayonet: the first row of each battalion wore helmets and
cuirasses which protected the head and chest, and when the men were drawn
up for battle they presented to the enemy a triple array of iron spikes,
which they could raise or lower like the spines of a porcupine. To each
thousand of the soldiery were attached a hundred fusiliers: their