CHARLES VIII, King of France, son of Louis XI: b. Amboise, 30 June 1470; d. there, 8 April 1498. He succeeded his father in 1483, his sister, Anne de Beaujeu, acting as regent till he attained the age of 20. In 1491 he mar ried Anne, the heiress of Brittany, and thereby annexed that important duchy to the French Crown. By so doing, however, he both broke faith with the daughter of Maximilian, king of the Romans, to whom he had been espoused, and also robbed Maximilian of his bride, a marriage by proxy having been already con cluded between him and Anne. The leading incident of Charles VIII's reign is his Italian expedition and conquest AL the kingdom of Naples, to which he wasNap1es, iifffigated by Ludovico Sforza, the usurping Duke of Milan. The pre tension to Naples was asserted in virtue of the rights to that sovereignty transmitted by the house of Anjou to the royal family of France. The whole of Charles' expedition reads like a page from one of the old chivalrous romances. With an army of 30,000 men, unprovided either with money or stores, he suddenly crossed the Alps, advanced rapidly southward, and meeting with scarcely any obstruction, arrived before the walls and gained possession of Naples.
This, conquest, however, he did not retain for many months. Having left 5,000 men to guard his new acquisition he returned to France, and had scarcely reached it when the arms of Gonsalvo de Cordova effected the reannexation of Naples to Spain. The expedition of Charles VIII left thus hardly a trace upon the country, but is memorable as the commencement of that series of incursions into Italy by France and other northern nations which deluged that land with blood. He left no children, and was suc ceeded by his relative, the Duke of Orleans, under the title of Louis XII. Consult De Cherrier, de Charles VIII' (Paris ; Segur, de Charles VIII) (Paris 1884); Delaborde, Charles VIII en Italie' (Pans 1884); and translation of of Philip de Comines (London 1855).