Already more than one invitation to cross the Alps had reached the young French king from Italy. In January, 1484, when Venice was waging a desperate war against Milan and Naples, Antonio Loredano was sent to the French court with secret instructions to remind Charles VIII., who had just succeeded his father, Louis XI., that the kingdom of Naples had formerly belonged to his family, and that, besides occupying a throne to which he had no right, Ferrante of Aragon had instigated Lodovico Sforza to usurp the crown of Milan. The Venetian envoy was further desired to inform the Duke of Orleans that Lodovico evidently intended to make himself Duke of Milan in his nephew's stead, and to point out that Louis could not find a better moment than this, to assert his own claim to the duchy of his Visconti ancestors.
"Say all you can to instigate the Duke of Orleans to undertake this enterprise," were the secret instructions of the Ten, "and tell the French that if they wish to dethrone the tyrant Ferrante and seize Naples, they will never have a better opportunity."[17]
A month later the Venetian Government sent another message to Louis of Orleans, urging him to invade Milan, and offering him the help of their forces. The duke was by no means averse to the suggestion, but Anne de Beaujeu, who governed France during her brother's minority, wisely declined to meddle in the quarrels of Italian States, and by August peace had been concluded between Venice and Milan.
Five years afterwards Pope Innocent VIII., having quarrelled with King Ferrante, invited Charles VIII. to invade Naples, and offered him the investiture of this important fief of the Church. But at that time the French monarch had no leisure to think of a foreign expedition. He was already engaged in war with Maximilian, King of the Romans, and in a fierce quarrel with the States of Brittany over the regency of that province during the minority of young Duchess Anne, the betrothed bride of the future Emperor, whose first wife, Mary of Burgundy, had died in 1482. Finding that there was no prospect of help from this quarter, the Pope had been forced to come to terms with Ferrante, whose armies threatened Rome, and made peace with Naples in January, 1492.
Meanwhile Charles VIII. had mortally offended the King of the Romans by sending back his daughter Margaret, to whom while yet Dauphin he had been formally betrothed by his father, Louis XI., and who had been educated in Touraine for the last six years, and taking Maximilian's affianced bride, Anne of Brittany, for his wife. The marriage was solemnized in the Castle of Langeais in December, 1491, and two months afterwards the new queen was crowned at Saint Denis. Maximilian now sought to form a coalition against Charles, to avenge his injured honour; and his ally, Henry VII. of England, sent a letter to Lodovico Sforza, asking him to join the league and invade France from the south.
Under these circumstances Charles VIII. was naturally anxious to strengthen the old alliance which had existed between his father and the House of Sforza. Even before his own marriage, in the summer of 1490, Lodovico had sent Erasmo Brasca on a private mission to the French king, to ask for a renewal of the investiture of the Duchy of Genoa, originally granted to Francesco Sforza by Louis XI. Since those days, Genoa had been lost during the regency of Duchess Bona, and only recovered in 1888, by Lodovico's successful negotiations. Now Charles VIII. gladly granted the regent's request, and proposed to send an embassy to Milan in the course of the next year. Lodovico, on his part, prepared to give the French ambassadors a splendid reception, and in March, 1491, wrote to his chief secretary, Bartolommeo Calco, from Vigevano, giving minute instructions for the preparation of a suite of rooms in the Castello, where the Most Christian King's envoys were to be lodged. Since, at that time, extensive improvements were being made in other parts of the palace, Lodovico gave up his own rooms on the ground floor for the use of these distinguished strangers. The chief ambassador, the Scottish noble, Bernard Stuart d'Aubigny, Chamberlain to King Charles, he wrote word, would occupy the Duchess of Bari's apartment, known as the Sala della Asse, from the raised platform at one end of the room, and would use the duchess's boudoir, with the painted Amorini over the mantelpiece, and the adjoining chambers for his dining and robing room. The second ambassador, Jean Roux de Visque, was to occupy Lodovico's apartments; and the third, King Charles's doctor, the Italian Teodoro Guainiero of Pavia, would be lodged in the rooms of Madonna Beatrice, Niccolo da Correggio's mother, and of the duke's secretary, Jacopo Antiquario. All of these rooms had been decorated and hung with rich tapestries and curtains of velvet and brocade for Lodovico's wedding a year before, but on this occasion he desired that canopies adorned with the fleur-de-lys should be placed over the beds, and that other changes should be made in the hangings and furniture. And since there was not room in the Castello, where the court officials and servants who were daily lodged and fed within its precincts already numbered some two hundred, for the whole of the suite, the remainder were to be entertained at the duke's expense at the different inns of the city, at the sign of the Stella, the Fontana and Campana.
A few weeks later the ambassadors arrived at Milan, and were magnificently received by Lodovico and his nephew, both of whom wore sumptuous vests of white Lyons brocade, presented to them in the French king's name, at the ceremony of investiture which followed. Giangaleazzo was formally invested with the Duchy of Genoa, and did homage to the representative of his suzerain, the French king, in the presence of the whole court. Among the members of the ducal family present on this occasion was the duke's elder sister, Bianca Maria, who still remained unmarried since her affianced husband, the son of Matthias Corvinus, had been driven from the throne of Hungary, after his father's death in 1490. The splendour of the ceremony, and the dazzling white velvet suits worn by her brother and uncle, were long remembered by this princess of seventeen, who spent most of her time with her mother, Bona, at Abbiategrasso. More than seven years afterwards, when poor Giangaleazzo was dead, and the Sforzas' throne was already tottering to its fall, Bianca Maria, then the wife of the Emperor Maximilian, wrote from Fribourg, begging her uncle to try and procure her a robe of the white velvet woven at Lyons, "like the vests worn by yourself and my brother, of blessed memory, on the day when he was invested with the Duchy of Genoa."[18] The young empress, whose mind, as her husband complained, never rose above childish things, and who, in the lonely splendour of her grim castles in the Tyrol, pined for the brightness of her fair Milanese home, had set her heart on a gown of this material, and begged her kind uncle to excuse her if she asked too much, assuring him that nothing else could give her so much pleasure.
The beauty of Milan, with its stately Castello and white marble Duomo, its spacious streets and long rows of armourers' and goldsmiths' shops, its beautiful gardens and frescoed palaces, made a deep impression upon these strangers from the North. Never had they seen so fair a city or so rich a land. Marvellous were the tales they had to tell their countrymen of the splendid court where they had lived like princes, and of this wealthy and magnificent Signor Lodovico, who had entertained them in so royal a manner.
But although the investiture of Genoa had been provisionally granted, and a treaty of alliance agreed upon, several articles of the league still remained to be discussed. Negotiations dragged on all through the year, chiefly with regard to certain castles belonging to Charles's ally, the Marquis of Montferrat, which had been seized by the Milanese. Niccolo da Correggio was sent to France in the summer to endeavour to bring matters to a satisfactory conclusion, but nothing was finally settled until the winter, when Charles decided to send a second embassy to Milan. This time one of the former envoys, Jean Roux de Visque, was selected for the office, and, together with Le Sieur Pierre de Courthardi, left Paris early in December, and arrived at Milan in January, 1492.
Lodovico himself received the ambassadors in the Castello, and entertained them with his wonted magnificence. A treaty was drawn up, by which Charles agreed to recognize all the claims advanced by the Duke of Milan, and admitted the Duke of Bari by name as governor of his nephew into the defensive and offensive league concluded on the 13th of January, and on the 19th the French ambassadors left Milan. Before their departure, however, Lodovico, anxious to do his guests honour and at the same time impress them with his wealth and the vast resources at his command, himself conducted them over the Treasury of the Castello, which was deservedly regarded as one of the principal sights of Milan.