History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic, vol 3 | Page 4

which settled all the existing differences with that country. And a

treaty with Savoy in the following year guaranteed a free passage
through her mountain passes to the French army into Italy. [2]
Having completed these arrangements, Louis lost no time in mustering
his forces, which, descending like a torrent on the fair plains of
Lombardy, effected the conquest of the entire duchy in little more than
a fortnight; and, although the prize was snatched for a moment from his
grasp, yet French valor and Swiss perfidy soon restored it. The
miserable Sforza, the dupe of arts which he had so long practised, was
transported into France, where he lingered out the remainder of his
days in doleful captivity. He had first called the barbarians into Italy,
and it was a righteous retribution which made him their earliest victim.
[3]
By the conquest of Milan, France now took her place among the Italian
powers. A preponderating weight was thus thrown into the scale, which
disturbed the ancient political balance, and which, if the projects on
Naples should be realized, would wholly annihilate it. These
consequences, to which the Italian states seemed strangely insensible,
had long been foreseen by the sagacious eye of Ferdinand the Catholic,
who watched the movements of his powerful neighbor with the deepest
anxiety. He had endeavored, before the invasion of Milan, to awaken
the different governments in Italy to a sense of their danger, and to stir
them up to some efficient combination against it. [4] Both he and the
queen had beheld with disquietude the increasing corruptions of the
papal court, and that shameless cupidity and lust of power, which made
it the convenient tool of the French monarch.
By their orders, Garcilasso de la Vega, the Spanish ambassador, read a
letter from his sovereigns in the presence of his Holiness, commenting
on his scandalous immorality, his invasion of ecclesiastical rights
appertaining to the Spanish crown, his schemes of selfish
aggrandizement, and especially his avowed purpose of transferring his
son Caesar Borgia, from a sacred to a secular dignity; a circumstance
that must necessarily make him, from the manner in which it was to be
conducted, the instrument of Louis the Twelfth. [5]
This unsavory rebuke, which probably lost nothing of its pungency
from the tone in which it was delivered, so incensed the pope that he
attempted to seize the paper and tear it in pieces, giving vent at the
same time to the most indecent reproaches against the minister and his

sovereigns. Garcilasso coolly waited till the storm had subsided, and
then replied undauntedly, "That he had uttered no more than became a
loyal subject of Castile; that he should never shrink from declaring
freely what his sovereigns commanded, or what he conceived to be for
the good of Christendom; and, if his Holiness were displeased with it,
he could dismiss him from his court, where he was convinced, indeed,
his residence could be no longer useful." [6]
Ferdinand had no better fortune at Venice, where his negotiations were
conducted by Lorenzo Suarez de la Vega, an adroit diplomatist, brother
of Garcilasso. [7] These negotiations were resumed after the occupation
of Milan by the French, when the minister availed himself of the
jealousy occasioned by that event to excite a determined resistance to
the proposed aggression on Naples. But the republic was too sorely
pressed by the Turkish war,--which Sforza, in the hope of creating a
diversion in his own favor, had brought on his country,--to allow
leisure for other operations. Nor did the Spanish court succeed any
better at this crisis with the emperor Maximilian, whose magnificent
pretensions were ridiculously contrasted with his limited authority, and
still more limited revenues, so scanty, indeed, as to gain him the
contemptuous epithet among the Italians of _pochi denari_, or "the
Moneyless." He had conceived himself, indeed, greatly injured, both on
the score of his imperial rights and his connection with Sforza, by the
conquest of Milan; but, with the levity and cupidity essential to his
character, he suffered himself, notwithstanding the remonstrances of
the Spanish court, to be bribed into a truce with King Louis, which
gave the latter full scope for his meditated enterprise on Naples. [8]
Thus disembarrassed of the most formidable means of annoyance, the
French monarch went briskly forward with his preparations, the object
of which he did not affect to conceal. Frederic, the unfortunate king of
Naples, saw himself with dismay now menaced with the loss of empire,
before he had time to taste the sweets of it. He knew not where to turn
for refuge, in his desolate condition, from the impending storm. His
treasury was drained, and his kingdom wasted, by the late war. His
subjects, although attached to his person, were too familiar with
revolutions to stake their