LUDOVICO SFORZA.
From the woodcut in Antonio Campo’s “Istoria di Cremona.”
To face p. 136.
The King dispatched his armies to Italy under the command of Louis de Ligny and the Count d’Aubigny but did not immediately go himself.
Ludovico il Moro was attacked simultaneously by the French and the Venetians, and as his own people hated him and his governors proved false, he lost all his cities one by one and was reduced to the last extremity and finally compelled to make his escape to Germany. When the Gascon archers entered Milan, October 2, 1499, they shot his statue—the work of Leonardo da Vinci—to pieces with their arrows.
Caesar was still in France but was preparing to come to Italy; before leaving he gave his wife a power of attorney to enable her to act as administrator of his new possessions, the Duchy of Valentinois, the County of Diois, and all his seignories and property in the Kingdom of France, and in Dauphiné.
Valentinois had lived with his wife from the last of April until September, and early in 1500 Charlotte bore him a daughter, who was christened Louise and who was destined never to know her father. The Duchess of Valentinois never saw Caesar again.
Valentino may have returned to Italy with the King of France, for the chronicler Jean d’Auton records that the Duke was among the great lords who accompanied Louis XII. when he entered Milan, Sunday, October 6, 1499.[21] The cardinals Delia Rovere and Amboise were also present, together with the dukes of Savoy and Ferrara, the Marquis of Mantua, the ambassadors of Genoa, Florence, Pisa, Siena, and Bologna, and innumerable other high dignitaries. Baldessare Castiglione, who accompanied the Marquis of Mantua, describes Valentinois as molte galante. A month later when Louis XII. set out to return to France, having left the government of the conquered duchy to Trivulzio, he directed two of his captains, Yves d’Allegre and the Bailli of Dijon to place themselves under Valentino’s orders. The former had a company of three hundred lances and the latter four thousand Swiss and Gascons, while Caesar himself had collected a considerable number of men.