Bern, 1516, that he
distributed the royal pensions to the lords by sound of trumpet. At
Freiburg he poured out silver crowns upon the ground, and, while he
heaped them up with a shovel, said to the bystanders, "Does not this
silver jingle better than the Emperor's empty words?" So much had love of
money debased the Swiss.

The twelve cantons, Appenzell being the only exception, were at one
moment allied with Milan against France, at the next with France against
Milan. Milan was rightly called the Schwyzer's grave. It was not unusual
for Confederates to fight against Confederates on foreign soil, and to
kill each other for hire. The ecclesiastical lord, Matthew Schinner,
Bishop of Sion in Valais, a very deceitful man, helped greatly to
occasion this. According as he was hired, he intrigued in Switzerland,
sometimes for the King of France, sometimes against France for the
Pope, who, in payment, even made him cardinal and ambassador to the
Confederacy.

The mercenary wars of the Swiss upon foreign battle-fields were not wars
for liberty or for honor; but these hirelings of princes maintained
their reputation for valor even there. With the aid of several thousand
Confederates, the King of France subjected the whole of Lombardy in the
space of twenty days. But the expelled Duke of the country soon returned
with five thousand Swiss, whom he had enlisted contrary to the will of
the magistracy, to drive out the French. Then the King of France received
twenty thousand men from the cantons with whom he was allied; maintained
himself in Italy, and gave to the three cantons, Uri, Schwyz, and
Unterwalden, 1502-1503, the districts of Palenza, Riviera, and Bellenz.
But, as soon as the King thought he could do without the Swiss, he
paid them badly and irregularly. Cardinal Schinner, pleased at this,
immediately shook a bag of gold, with fifty-three thousand guilders, in
favor of the Pope and of Venice. At once, 1512, twenty thousand Swiss
and Grisons crossed the high Alps and joined the Venetians against the
French. The Grisons took possession of Valtelina, Chiavenna, and Bormio.
They asserted that, a century before, an ejected duke of Milan had ceded
these valleys to the bishopric of Coire. The Confederates of the twelve
cantons subjected Lugano, Locarno, and Valmaggia. The French were driven
out of Lombardy, and the young duke Maximilian Sforza, son of him who had
been dispossessed by them, was reinstated in his father's inheritanc