afraid of awakening the mutinous spirit which he had once found it so
difficult to quell, was obliged to content himself with sending forward
his cavalry and German levies, and to permit the infantry to take up its
quarters in the capital, under strict orders to respect the persons and
property of the citizens.

He now lost no time in pressing the siege of the French fortresses, whose
impregnable situation might have derided the efforts of the most
formidable enemy in the ancient state of military science. But the
reduction of these places was intrusted to Pedro Navarro, the celebrated
engineer, whose improvements in the art of mining have gained him the
popular reputation of being its inventor, and who displayed such
unprecedented skill on this occasion, as makes it a memorable epoch in the
annals of war. [29]

Under his directions, the small tower of St. Vincenzo having been first
reduced by a furious cannonade, a mine was run under the outer defences of
the great fortress called Castel Nuovo. On the 21st of May, the mine was
sprung; a passage was opened over the prostrate ramparts, and the
assailants, rushing in with Gonsalvo and Navarro at their head, before the
garrison had time to secure the drawbridge, applied their ladders to the
walls of the castle, and succeeded in carrying the place by escalade,
after a desperate struggle, in which the greater part of the French were
slaughtered. An immense booty was found in the castle. The Angevin party
had made it a place of deposit for their most valuable effects, gold,
jewels, plate, and other treasures, which, together with its well-stored
magazines of grain and ammunition, became the indiscriminate spoil of the
victors. As some of these, however, complained of not getting their share
of the plunder, Gonsalvo, giving full scope in the exultation of the
moment to military license, called out gayly, "Make amends for it, then,