whereas now it is dreaded by a king of France, whom it has been able to drive out of Italy, and has also been able to ruin the Venetians. Therefore, although this is well known, I do not think it superfluous to call it to mind. Before Charles, King of France, came into Italy, this country was under the rule of the pope, the Venetians, the King of Naples, the Duke of Milan, and the Florentines. These potentates had to have two chief cares: one, that no foreigner should enter Italy by force of arms, the other that none of the existing governments should extend its dominions. Those chiefly to be watched were the pope and the Venetians. To keep back the Venetians required the ruin of all the others, as in the defence of Ferrara, and to keep down the pope they made use of the Roman barons. These were divided into two factions, the Orsinis and the Colonnas, and as there was constant quarrelling between them, and they were constantly under arms, before the eyes of the pope, they kept the papacy weak and infirm. And although there arose now and then a resolute pope like Sextus, yet his fortune or ability was never able to liberate him from these evils. The shortness of their life was the reason of this, for in the course of ten years which, as a general rule, a pope lived, he had great difficulty in suppressing even one of the factions, and if, for example, a pope had almost put down the Colonnas, a new pope would succeed who was hostile to the Orsinis, which caused the Colonnas to spring up again, and he was not in time to suppress them. This caused the temporal power of the pope to be of little esteem in Italy.
Then arose Alexander VI. who, of all the pontiffs who have ever reigned, best showed how a pope might prevail both by money and by force. With Duke Valentine as his instrument, and on the occasion of the French invasion, he did all that I
