Louis returned to Lyons before the end of the year; the fugitive hopes which he had excited already gave way to hatred. The insolence of the French, their violation of all national institutions, their contempt of Italian manners, the accumulation of taxes, and the irregularities in the administration rendered their yoke insupportable. Lodovico Sforza was informed of the general ferment, and of the desire of his subjects for his return. He was on the Swiss frontier, with a considerable treasure; a brave but disorderly crowd of young men, ready to serve anyone for pay, joined him. In a few days five hundred cavalry and eight thousand infantry assembled under his banner; and, in the month of February, 1500, he entered Lombardy at their head. Como, Milan, Parma, and Pavia immediately opened their gates to him: he next besieged Novara, which capitulated. Louis, meanwhile, displayed great activity in suppressing the rebellion: his general, Louis de la Trémouille, arrived before Novara, in the beginning of April, with an army in which were reckoned ten thousand Swiss. The men of that nation in the two hostile camps, opposed to each other for hire, hesitated, parleyed, and finally took a resolution more fatal to their honour than a battle between fellow-countrymen could have been. Those within Novara not only consented to withdraw themselves, but to give up to the French the Italian men-at-arms with whom they were incorporated, and who were immediately put to the sword or drowned in the river. They permitted La Trémouille to arrest in their ranks Lodovico Sforza and the two brothers San Severino, who attempted to escape in disguise. They received from the French the wages thus basely won, and afterwards, rendered reckless by the sense of their infamy, they in their retreat seized Bellinzona, which they ever after retained. Thus, even the weakest of the neighbours of Italy would have their share in her conquest. Lodovico Sforza was conducted into France, and there condemned to a severe captivity, which, ten years afterwards, ended with his life. The Milanese remained subject to the king of France from this period to the month of June, 1512.
Capo di Monte Palace, Naples
The facility with which Louis had conquered the duchy of Milan must have led him to expect that he should not meet with much more resistance from the kingdom of Naples. Frederick also, sensible of this, demanded peace; and, to obtain it, offered to hold his kingdom in fief, as tributary to France. He reckoned, however, on the support of Ferdinand the Catholic, his kinsman and neighbour, who had promised him powerful aid and had given him a pledge of the future by sending into Sicily his best general, Gonsalvo de Cordova, with sixty vessels and eight thousand chosen infantry. But Ferdinand had previously proposed to Louis a secret understanding to divide between them the spoils of the unhappy Frederick. While the French entered on the north to conquer the kingdom of Naples, he proposed that the Spaniards should enter on the south to defend it; and that, on meeting, they, instead of giving battle, should shake hands on the partition of the kingdom—each remaining master of one-half. This was the basis of the Treaty of Granada, signed on the 11th of November, 1500. In the summer of 1501 the perfidious compact was executed by the two greatest monarchs of Europe.
THE FRENCH AND SPANIARDS IN NAPLES
[1500-1504 A.D.]
The French army arrived at Rome on the 25th of June, at the same time that the army of Gonsalvo de Cordova landed in Calabria. The former, from the moment they passed the frontier, treated the Neapolitans as rebels, and hanged the soldiers who surrendered to them. Arrived before Capua, they entered that city while the magistrates were signing the capitulation, and massacred seven thousand of the inhabitants. The treachery of Ferdinand inspired the unhappy Frederick with still more aversion than the ferocity of the French. Having retired to the island of Ischia, he surrendered to Louis, and was sent to France, where he died, in a captivity by no means rigorous, three years afterwards. The Spaniards and French advanced towards each other, without encountering any resistance. They met on the limits which the treaty of Granada had respectively assigned to them; but the moment the conquest was terminated, jealousy appeared. The duke de Nemours and Gonsalvo de Cordova disputed upon the division of the kingdom; each claimed for his master some province not named in the treaty.
Hostilities at last began between them on the 19th of June, 1502, at Atripalda. Louis, while the negotiation was pending, delayed sending reinforcements to his general. After a struggle, not without glory, and in which La Palisse and Bayard first distinguished themselves, D’Aubigny was defeated at Seminara on the 21st of April, and Nemours at Cerignola on the 28th of the same month, 1503. The French army was entirely destroyed, and the kingdom of Naples lost to Louis XII. Louis had sent off, during the same campaign, a more powerful army than the first, to recover it; but, on arriving near Rome, news was received of the death of Alexander VI, which took place on the 18th of August, 1503. The cardinal D’Amboise, prime minister of Louis, detained the army there to support his intrigues in the conclave: when it renewed its march, in the month of October, the rainy season had commenced. Gonsalvo de Cordova had taken his position on the Garigliano, the passage of which he defended, amidst inundated plains, with a constancy and patience characteristic of the Spanish infantry. During more than two months the French suffered or perished in the marshes: a pestilential malady carried off the flower of the army, and damped the courage and confidence of the remainder. Gonsalvo, having at last passed the river himself, on the 27th of December, attacked and completely destroyed the French army. On the 1st of January, 1504, Gaeta surrendered to him; and the whole kingdom of Naples was now, like Sicily, but a Spanish possession.
Thus the greater part of Italy had already fallen under the yoke of the nations which the Italians denominated barbarian. The French were masters of the Milanese and of the whole of Liguria; the Spaniards of the Two Sicilies; even the Swiss had made some small conquests along the Lago Maggiore; and this was the moment in which Louis XII called the Germans also into Italy. On the 22nd of September of the same year in which he lost Gaeta, his last hold in the kingdom of Naples, he signed the Treaty of Blois, by which he divided with Maximilian the republic of Venice, as he had divided with Ferdinand the kingdom of Naples. Experience ought to have taught him that Maximilian, like Ferdinand, would reserve for himself the conquests made in common. The future ought to have alarmed him; for Charles, the grandson and heir of Maximilian of Austria, and of Ferdinand of Aragon, of Mary of Burgundy, and of Isabella of Castile, was already born. It was foreseen that he would unite under his sceptre the greatest monarchies in Europe; and Louis, instead of guarding against his future greatness, had promised to give him his daughter in marriage. It was the thoughtlessness of Maximilian, and not the prudence of Louis, that delayed during four years the execution of the Treaty of Blois.