any troops as he could. But these
precautions availed him nothing against the impetuous onslaught of the
French, who in a few days had taken Annona, Arezzo, Novarro, Voghiera,
Castelnuovo, Ponte Corona, Tartone, and Alessandria, while Trivulce was
on the march to Milan.

Seeing the rapidity of this conquest and their numerous victories,
Ludovico Sforza, despairing of holding out in his capital, resolved
to retire to Germany, with his children, his brother, Cardinal Ascanio
Sforza, and his treasure, which had been reduced in the course of eight
years from 1,500,000 to 200,000 ducats. But before he went he left
Bernardino da Carte in charge of the castle of Milan. In vain did his
friends warn him to distrust this man, in vain did his brother Ascanio
offer to hold the fortress himself, and offer to hold it to the very
last; Ludovico refused to make any change in his arrangements, and
started on the 2nd of September, leaving in the citadel three thousand
foot and enough provisions, ammunition, and money to sustain a siege of
several months.

Two days after Ludovico's departure, the French entered Milan. Ten days
later Bernardino da Come gave up the castle before a single gun had been
fired. Twenty-one days had sufficed for the French to get possession of
the various towns, the capital, and all the territories of their enemy.

Louis XII received the news of this success while he was at Lyons, and
he at once started for Milan, where he was received with demonstrations
of joy that were really sincere. Citizens of every rank had come out
three miles' distance from the gates to receive him, and forty boys,
dressed in cloth of gold and silk, marched before him singing hymns of
victory composed by poets of the period, in which the king was styled
their liberator and the envoy of freedom. The great joy of the Milanese
people was due to the fact that friends of Louis had been spreading
reports beforehand that the King of France was rich enough to abolish
all taxes. And so soon as the second day from his arrival at Milan
the conqueror made some slight reduction, granted important favours
to certain Milanese gentlemen, and bestowed the town of Vigavano on
Trivulce as a reward for his swift and glorious campaign. But Caesar
Borgia, who had followed Louis XII with a view to playing his part in
the great hunting-ground of Italy, scarcely waited for him to attain his
end when he claimed the fulfilment of his promise, which the king with