[3]. Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, canto xlii.
The gate which the Moro had thought to shut so easily upon the departed stranger was once more ajar. A second French expedition threatened Italy, and Milan in particular. Early in 1497, the great captain Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, head of the party in Milan hostile to the Sforza, and a bitter personal foe of the Moro, who had abandoned his country and was high in the French service, made a raid into the ducal dominions. At the same time his partisans stirred up the discontent of the people, and inspired their volatile minds with desire for a change of masters. And soon the League began to show its internal weakness. The interests of the two chief parties in it were fatally opposed. Venice found her designs on Pisa thwarted by Lodovico and in her rage began to ponder the advantages of making friends with the French. Out of the struggle for Naples now renewed between the French garrison and the Aragonese she might by a prudent policy, when both combatants were exhausted, secure the sea-kingdom of the South, and might not a second descent of the French King, lasting long enough to overthrow the Sforza and no more, put rich Lombardy at last within her reach? With such hopes the grave senators flattered their ambition and forgot their faith to Italy. The Pope, for his own interests, had turned his back on the Sforza, and was parleying with the common foe, while in Florence the Frate and the people still looked to Charles for the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth and the restitution of Pisa.
The King, however, swayed by opposite counsels, let the months go by, and the Moro, with desperate trust in his own statesmanship, still hoped to save his Dukedom. In spite of his anxieties and embarrassments, his unconquerable instinct of order maintained the fair aspect of his dominions. But on the great artistic projects of his triumphant days an arresting spell was laid. The resources of the State were exhausted in war and defensive preparations. The people were already taxed to rebellion, and no supplies were forthcoming for his painters and sculptors. Leonardo asked in vain for the bronze for casting the statue of Francesco Sforza. The clay model, raised in front of the Castello in 1493, on the occasion of Bianca Maria’s marriage with Maximilian, had remained there since, and it seemed more and more likely that this high thought of prince and artist combined would never take on any but an ephemeral form.
The brief, uneasy quiet was broken by a stroke of fate. Charles VIII. died suddenly (1498), and was succeeded by the Duke of Orleans. Louis XII. had no sooner ascended the throne than he announced his immediate intention of invading Milan.
Once more put to the trial, Italy proved again unfaithful to herself. And the pity of it was that the fault lay in her long-rooted political conditions, not in the will of the people. The sentiment of patriotism was strong in the country, and bon italiano was the current expression for one who hated and opposed the French. Yet it could not avail to overcome the conflict of interests among the different States, which was, after all, the blind continuous struggle of the national instinct, whether represented for the moment by Republic, hereditary tyrant or military usurper, towards the creation of a single and united kingdom. This time Venice was the arbiter of the situation. Answering the Moro’s piteous and self-humiliating appeals for help and protection only by cruel taunts of perfidy, the Republic concluded an alliance with the French (1498).
The Moro’s old disloyalties were now repaid to him tenfold. He looked round him in vain for a friend. The reward of usurpers and short tyrannic dynasties based on force, not love, met him in an alienated people, who refused to endure hardship or make sacrifices to save him, but looked instead to any change of government as desirable. His armies, composed chiefly of foreigners, were undisciplined and rebellious, serving only for pay. They were badly generaled by the Duke’s favourites. Lodovico, with all his ability, had little judgment in his choice of servants. He was led by his affections, which betrayed him. Chief among his trusted officers were the San Severini brothers—the Conte di Caiazzo, Galeazzo, famous champion of the tourney-lists, and the Moro’s son-in-law, and the gruff Gaspare, better known as Fracasso. They were the sons of Roberto di San Severino, but Lodovico had kept them always beside him and heaped honours and places upon them. Galeazzo, the prime favourite, had the chief command of his army. Francesco Bernardino Visconte, Antonio Maria Pallavicino, Antonio Trivulzio and the rest, all were alike unprepared in heart to sacrifice themselves for the sovereign in whose sunshine they had warmed themselves. The slight tie that bound together the various elements of the State could not endure against fear, ambition, greed and hereditary hate. The situation was further aggravated by the arrogance and exactions of the ducal favourites which excited the rage of the people and increased Lodovico’s unpopularity.
Events moved rapidly. In March 1499 the treaty between France, Venice and the Pope was publicly proclaimed. Louis was to conquer Milan, and Venice, as the price of assistance, was to share the spoils. Florence was nominally the Moro’s ally, but had neither means nor will to help him now. Naples was too weak to count, and Lodovico’s one friend, the unstable and spendthrift Maximilian, gave only empty promises. The Duke was left to make his desperate defence alone. In spite of his energetic preparations the presage of doom lay heavy on his soul, and affected all around him. He believed that Fortune, once his friend, was now contrary, and that God was angry with him.
In June the French army arrived in Asti, and immediately invaded the ducal territories. Every obstacle fell before them. Treachery and fear delivered castles and cities one after another into their hands. The Conte di Caiazzo made secret terms with them, and withdrew his troops from action. The rapid progress of the invaders brought them soon to the strong city of Alessandria, in which Galeazzo di San Severino and the main Milanese army lay to check their advance upon the capital itself. Here they met a promise of resistance, but the place had not been besieged many days when for some extraordinary and unexplained reason it was delivered to them. Some say that Galeazzo was seized with despair, others that he was deceived by a forged order to retire. Anyhow, one morning before daybreak he stole out with a few other nobles and galloped to Milan, and his army, when they found their general gone, incontinently fled in all directions.
No obstacle now remained between the enemy and Milan. With the same fatal spirit of despair which had undermined the whole defence, Lodovico gave himself up for lost. Though his great Castle at Milan was the strongest fortress in Europe, its garrison nearly three thousand, its artillery enormous in number and size, its munitions of war and all necessaries infinite, he could see no salvation except in abandoning the city and seeking aid in person from the Emperor. There may have been something of the instinct of bending before the storm in his decision. He knew that he could not hold the city, where the insurgent mob was already sacking the palaces of his favourites. If the citadel only stood firm, however, there was every chance of some revolution of the political wheel carrying him back before long. But blinded again by affection, he made a fatal mistake in his choice of a Castellan. In spite of many warnings he confided the entire command of the castle to one Bernardino da Corte, whom he had brought up from childhood and loaded with favours, charging him to guard it faithfully against the enemy, and promising to relieve him before three months were past.
Lodovico Sforza’s departure from the city which his father had won and he himself had ruled gloriously for many years; the tears and kisses with which he parted from his little motherless sons, sending them before him into Germany; his last visit, attended by weeping monks, to the tomb of his wife in Sta. Maria delle Grazie; his rapid ride out of the city next morning, after a night of fever and anguish, accompanied by a very few friends and followers, while the people’s cry changed from ‘Moro, Moro’ to ‘Franza, Franza,’ even as he passed—these things are all recorded with deep compassion by Corio, whose chronicle sadly concludes with this downfall of the House which he had served from boyhood.