ABOUT this time a serious conspiracy against Leo was discovered. The prime mover in it was Alfonso Petrucci, Cardinal of Siena, whose property having been confiscated, and his family ruined by the Pontiff, he burned for revenge, and induced one Battista, a famous surgeon of Vercelli, along with the Pope's valet, to enter into his views. Leo being ill of fistula, it was arranged that Battista, who had procured recommendations as a skilful operator, should introduce poison into the dressings. The plot was revealed in time, and the Pontiff used every art, with promises of reconciliation and renewed favour, to entice the principal culprit to Rome. Having with difficulty effected this, he imprisoned him, along with his brother-cardinals Raffaello Riario and Bandinello Bishop of Sauli, along with the captain of the Sienese troops. Cardinal Alfonso was secretly put to death; the surgeon and the valet were publicly hanged and quartered; Sauli, condemned to perpetual imprisonment, was liberated but to die; while Riario, after purchasing at a high rate restoration to his escheated dignities, spent the brief remainder of his life in voluntary exile. Cardinals Soderini and Adriano of Corneto (the latter of whom held the sees of Hereford and Bath, and was papal collector in England), having confessed in open consistory their privacy to the plot, escaped from Rome. The former was saved by chancing to ride out to the chase on a mule, instead of going as usual in his litter, which followed at some distance, and was seized by the guard in consequence of his scarlet robe being left in it, whilst the culprit, in a simple chaplain's dress, fled to the Colonna strongholds. A mystery which hung over the fate of Adriano has been partially cleared up by my friend Mr. Rawdon Brown from the Sanuto Diaries, wherein it appears that he safely reached Venice through Calabria, and that the occasion of his unaccountable disappearance was a journey to the conclave on Leo's death, not his flight from Rome in the present year, as stated by Guicciardini, Valeriano, and Roscoe.[276]

Thus baffled in the field, and betrayed in the consistory, Leo found a great effort necessary. On the 20th of June he wrote a letter to Henry VIII., which has been published by Rymer, representing, in vague generalities, and abusive terms, the outrages committed against the dignity and temporal dominion of the Church by relentless robbers and adversaries, and enjoining him to contribute assistance, in the way to be orally explained by the bearer, a predicant friar named Nicholas.[277] He also made renewed instances with his other allies for more efficient aid against his contumacious vassal in Umbria, and sent to levy six thousand Swiss. In order to raise money for these new expenses, he, on the 26th of June, created thirty-one cardinals, thus at once filling his treasury with the price of their hats, and surrounding himself by chosen adherents. Nor did he omit still more profligate expedients. He had repeatedly profited by Maldonato's perfidy in the Urbino war, and now offered him 10,000 ducats, with the dignity of cardinal to his son, if he would deliver up Francesco Maria alive or dead.[278]

After the affair at Imperiale, the Papal troops keeping close in their garrisons, Francesco Maria had recourse to a partisan warfare of sallies and surprises, which greatly harassed them, but did not give sufficient employment to his own somewhat unmanageable levies. He had now ascertained from intercepted letters the full extent of Maldonato's treason; but, ere he ventured upon making an example, he thought it well to put his troops into good humour by a foraging expedition, which should also free his own state from their burdensome presence. Gian Paolo Baglioni, Lord of Perugia, had, during the whole campaign, been in the field against the Duke with three thousand men, and his relation and rival Carlo, exiled by his intrigues from that city, besought Francesco Maria's aid for his re-establishment. No proposal could have been more opportune, and the Duke drew all his forces towards the vale of Tiber.

But his army, disorganised by the intrigues of Maldonato and one Suares (not the bearer of his cartel), broke out into tumult at Cantiano, clamouring for pay or pillage, and both of these officers, heading the mutiny, insulted and threatened their general. In this predicament, his adherents quickly collected from the neighbouring villages some money, church plate, and other valuables, which brought the refractory troops into better humour; and the opportune news of considerable booty having been obtained beyond the frontier, by the advanced guard of Gascons, induced them to move upon the Pianello di Perugia. The Spanish troops whom the Duke had brought from Lombardy consisted of two battalions, that of San Marco under Maldonato, and that of Verona under Alverado. The disaffection was confined to a portion of the former, and had for some time been detected through intercepted correspondence of their officers. On the march through the Apennines, Francesco Maria gradually prepared their comrades of Verona for the vengeance he had in store for the traitors. When all was ready, he halted on a small plain, and, whilst the surrounding defiles were being occupied by his staunchest adherents, he formed the Spaniards into a square, with their officers in the middle, whom he thus addressed: "Gentlemen and Captains! You are aware how I entered this country under your protection, and how, in committing myself into your hands, on your promise never in life or in death to abandon me, I relied upon your long-established reputation that you never had betrayed any of your leaders. I now, however, find that some among you seek miserably to sell me, and so for ever stain your honourable name; and this I presently shall prove, if you think fit, with the double object of saving myself from assassination and you from disgrace, but on condition that you shall at once take such steps as you deem best adapted to rescue me from pressing peril, and yourselves from lasting contumely." This harangue, falling upon well tutored ears, was answered by shouts of "Death to the traitors! reveal them at once!" Proofs were then read that Maldonato had engaged to slaughter the Duke and Federigo del Bozzolo, for the bribe of a life-pension to himself of 600 ducats, an episcopal see to his son, and double pay during the whole campaign to his troops. There is said to be a standard of honour among thieves; that of the Spaniards was piqued by this melodramatic impeachment of their truth, and the opportune discovery of further treasonable documents in the baggage of Maldonato's mistress exasperated them to fury. That craven captain threw himself at the feet of Francesco Maria, whom he had recently insulted, and prayed for mercy; but the latter withdrew from the square, saying that he left the affair to the soldiery. A cry then arose, "Let the faithful officers come out!" They did so, leaving eight whose names had been denounced, and who were instantly massacred by the troops. Thus was the army saved from destruction by the coolness and decision of its leader, and the companies of San Marco and Verona, purged from the imputation of perfidy, were from that day embodied in a single battalion.

Having so happily scotched the vipers that endangered his safety, the Duke of Urbino made his descent upon Perugia. After a short siege, during which he extended his forays as far as Spoleto and Orvieto, spreading alarm to the gates of Rome, that city capitulated on the 26th of May, receiving Carlo Baglioni as its master, and paying a ransom of 10,000 scudi, which Vermiglioli, the biographer of Gian Paolo, alleges the latter, with the bad faith usual in that age, to have shared, although the money had been raised from his own adherents. The same authority now estimates the Duke's army at twelve thousand men, with which it was his intention to make a diversion into the Florentine territory. But hearing that the Legate had taken the field, he hurried back across the Apennines, though too late to save Fossombrone and La Pergola. His wish of engaging the enemy having been foiled by their retreat into Pesaro, he had recourse to his former tactics of removing the seat of war from his own state, and turned his arms against the more wealthy towns of the Marca. Many of these, including Fabriano, Ancona, and Recanati, compounded for exemption from military violence, by paying seven or eight thousand ducats each. Corinaldo was saved by a well-timed sally, but Jesi, contrary to the wish of Francesco Maria, was sacked by his Spaniards, to whom his orderly and methodical way of laying the country under contributions, and pillaging only the refractory, was far from acceptable.

The lesson he had given to these free lances appears for a time to have borne fruit, and the following report by Minio, of a conversation with the Pontiff, affords honourable testimony to their steadiness, whilst it exhibits very graphically the character of the contest at this juncture. "I afterwards inquired of his Holiness if he had any news? He told me Francesco Maria was encamped under a castle named Corinaldo, situated in the Marca, and that infantry had been detached from his Holiness's army for its defence, so he hoped not to be disappointed; a trust wherein I think the Pontiff will be deceived, as he was regarding the other places. I said to him, 'It is a good sign, his inability to make any further progress, and merely laying siege to a few inconsiderable castles;' and to this his Holiness rejoined, 'He does it to raise money, as he did by the other places.' He then told me that Don Ugo de Moncada had been with the Spaniards, but was unable to make any settlement; adding, with an air of surprise, 'I was willing to give them three arrears of pay, yet they did not choose to come away, but despatched a friar to say that should I undertake an expedition against the infidels, they are willing to accept this offer, and serve.' I answered, that if so, they were willing to fight against the infidels on the same terms for which they now served Francesco Maria against the Holy See! The Pope evinced little hope of an agreement with these Spaniards. On my observing, 'The Viceroy [Don Ugo] has quitted Naples, we know not wherefore, unless it be to come to your Holiness's assistance,' he replied, 'They do say they are coming to aid me;' and then continued, with a smile on his lips, 'See what a mess this is! The French suspect these Spaniards of playing them some trick, and the Spaniards fear lest the French, through Francesco Maria, should attack them in the kingdom of Naples.' In order to elicit something more, I said that I deemed it mere suspicion on either side; and he replied, 'It is so.' I next asked how his Holiness stood with the Swiss? and he answered, 'We shall have the Grisons, but the Cantons have not yet decided, though they were to do so in a diet; at all events, I shall have some, and I have sent them the pensions they required of me.'" On the 14th of July, two days after this despatch, Minio reports that Don Ugo had been dismissed by the Spanish troops, drawn up in three fine battalions, with the following reply: "That they did not intend to desert Francesco Maria, unless war were waged [by him] against their most Catholic King, or some attempt made to occupy the kingdom of Naples, or unless his Holiness shall commence hostilities against his most Christian Majesty; in any other event they meant to keep their faith to Francesco Maria, and would in no respect fail him."

From various passages in the same envoy's despatches, it is clear that these jealousies, though here ridiculed by Leo, were shared by himself in a high degree: his own policy being generally hollow and Machiavellian, he looked for no longer measure of good faith from his allies. Ever since interest had been made at Bologna by Francis I. in behalf of the Duke of Urbino, the Pontiff regarded him as at heart adverse to all nepotic schemes upon that principality; and, at this particular juncture, suspicion was strengthened by a variety of circumstances, singly of little moment. Among these, were the retention by his Holiness of Modena and Reggio; the apparent slight of passing, in the late wholesale distribution of cardinal's hats, over Ludovico Canossa, who, while legate in France, had gained the King's affections, more perhaps than was approved at the Vatican; the dilatory advance of those French lances long since promised to Lorenzo de' Medici; but most of all the adherence to the della Rovere banner of the Gascons, who owed at least a nominal allegiance to the French crown. Influenced by these doubts, and the apparently interminable expenses of this miserable and mismanaged contest, the Pope so far lost heart, about the end of July, as to hint at an accommodation.

The Duke of Urbino's next move was to repeat at Fermo his Perugian policy of restoring an exiled faction, by expelling Ludovico Freducci, then head of the government, who after a gallant struggle suffered a complete rout, with the loss of six hundred slain. The Duke then directed his march upon Ascoli, but was recalled by learning the approach of two thousand Swiss to reinforce the papal troops. Hurrying to intercept them, he by forced marches suddenly appeared near Rimini, where he found that, simultaneously with their arrival, M. de l'Escu had at length brought up his three hundred French gens-d'-arms, with instructions from Francis to arrange, if possible, some issue to this unhappy war. Nor was the Legate disinclined to the proposal, for the Pontiff had been playing a ruinous game, which disgusted his allies, alienated his subjects, and drained his treasury.

An interview was, therefore, held at the monastery of La Colonella, between the Duke, Cardinal Bibbiena, and the French captain. A guarantee of 10,000 ducats of income in any residence he should select was offered to Francesco Maria, if he would resign his state. But he declared himself ready to die rather than so to sell it and his honour, avowing, however, that if the Pope were resolved to deprive him of his sovereignty on account of the Cardinal's slaughter, he would abdicate in favour of his infant son, and carry his army to Greece, to fight for the recovery of Constantinople. When negotiations had been thus broken off, as described by Giraldi, the smooth-tongued churchman, nothing abashed by the contrast of their early familiarity with their present circumstances, invited him to partake of a splendid collation. This he courteously declined, and retired to breakfast with l'Escu, answering the Cardinal's remonstrances by a jesting but pungent remark, that "priests kill with wine-cups, soldiers with the sword." The Duke making somewhat minute inquiries as to the Swiss reinforcements, the Legate laughingly asked, "if he destined for them such a supper as he provided for the Germans and Spaniards at the Imperiale"; to which he rejoined, "And why not, if they are my foes?"[279] Nor was the taunt lost upon him. Next night he led his men through the Marecchia, and surprised the Swiss levies who were quartered in S. Giuliano, a suburb of Rimini beyond that river. Notwithstanding a gallant resistance, they were driven into the stream, with severe loss on both sides, whilst Francesco Maria, after receiving a ball in his cuirass, dexterously withdrew from his perilous position, under cover of the smoke raised by a vast funeral pile, on which he left the bodies of four hundred slain, amid a mass of combustibles. He now resumed his projects of carrying fire and sword into Tuscany, and reached the Upper Vale of the Tiber at Borgo S. Sepolcro, but, for want of artillery, was unable to do anything against the fortified places. The Duke's whole policy in this protracted and inconclusive warfare has been severely blamed by Roscoe, and there can be no doubt that, in his circumstances, rapid and aggressive tactics were most likely to succeed. Had he, by a series of uninterrupted advantages, maintained the impression made at his first onset, or had he risked all in one engagement when his enemies had been daunted by Lorenzo's severe wound, it is clear, from the Minio despatches, that Leo might have been frightened into fair terms, at a moment when treason was rife even within the Sacred College. The like result would, perhaps, have been attained with greater certainty, had he, instead of harassing his own territory and La Marca with an exhausting civil war, carried his arms at once across the Apennines, and, by threatening Siena or Florence, made it a question whether the Medici were to lose Tuscany or gain Urbino. But we shall have ample reason, in other instances, to perceive that procrastination was more natural to him than energy, and, in the present case, delays for a time appeared injurious to his enemies rather than to himself. It is, however, fair to admit that, whilst his biographers continually claim for him anxiety to bring on a decisive action, even the prejudiced Guicciardini never accuses him of having evaded one.

A general feeling gained ground that this weary and wasteful strife was approaching its close. The Duke's mercenaries, seeing no prospect of their pay, which was contingent on complete success, and dissatisfied with their limited opportunities for pillage, began to look out for some more profitable engagement. Their most Christian and most Catholic majesties had also combined to bring the struggle to a conclusion, by recalling their respective subjects from the army of Francesco Maria; nor did the Spaniards think it a disgrace to entertain tempting offers for their secession from a cheerless enterprise. Three of their captains accordingly went to Rome, on the 6th of August, apparently with his sanction, and offered for 60,000 ducats to place the whole state of Urbino in the hands of these two monarchs, for their award as to which competitor should be preferred. The Pontiff at first made a show of entertaining this proposition, in so far at least as regarded the duchy proper; but this was probably a pretext for gaining time until the arrival of four thousand lansquenets, whom he expected from the Emperor. Accordingly, on the 14th, in an audience with Minio, he denounced these terms as "the most brutal possible, nor could Francesco Maria send to demand of me what he does, were he the Grand Turk, and encamped at Tivoli! He wants us to give him up the places we hold, namely, Pesaro and Sinigaglia: see, by your faith, what notions he has! We really desired this agreement, that we might attend to the Turkish affairs, but these people are indeed elated and brutal." The like opinion prevailed at Rome, and the imperial ambassador deprecated the arrangement to his Holiness as disgraceful. It was therefore rejected after some delay; nor was it until the papal court had taken new alarm, on the Duke's movement into Tuscany, that the Spaniards were bought off by the auditor of the treasury, who had been sent for the purpose to their camp near Anghiari. He was met by the Duke, with his faithful partisan di Bozzolo, and the Spanish captains. After a protracted discussion, the former went forth, moved almost to tears, exclaiming, "It is impossible for me to accept these terms." In his absence it was agreed that the duchy should be given up to Lorenzo, and that the Spaniards should accompany Don Ugo de Moncada towards Naples, after receiving 50,000 ducats, under an obligation to serve in reinstating Lorenzo in Urbino, if called upon to do so.

On hearing these stipulations, Francesco Maria had an altercation with the Spanish captains, which ended in his riding over to the quarters of his other adherents, who yet remained faithful, and who were with difficulty dissuaded from falling upon the renegades. An idea now entertained, of making a last stand in the highlands with that residue, was soon abandoned, for similar influences were at work on them. But, mindful of their solemn obligation not to quit the field until victory had crowned their enterprise, they resolved to retire with honour intact. The Gascons, accordingly, by the mediation of l'Escu and Guise, obtained from the Pontiff not only an exemption from their engagement, but such a capitulation for the Duke of Urbino as he might, with due regard to his dignity, accept. In order to persuade the latter to such a course as circumstances rendered necessary, the entreaties of his friends were added to the pressing instances of Don Ugo and the French generals. The French and German troops, after receiving 25,000 ducats, were to fall back upon Milan, leaving him safely at Mantua; but the Italian soldiery appear to have shared no part of this golden harvest.

The conditions obtained for Francesco Maria were as follows: Plenary absolution for himself, his family, and adherents, from ecclesiastical censures; permission to him and them to retire where they pleased, and to take any service except against his Holiness; leave to remove all his private property in arms, artillery, and furniture, especially his MS. library; the enjoyment of their usufructuary rights to the dowager and reigning Duchesses; a general amnesty and exchange of prisoners, including Sigismondo Varana. This convention was accepted by his Holiness on the 16th of September, and it fell to Bembo's lot, as papal secretary, to affix his signature to what he, perhaps, persuaded himself were favourable terms for his former friend and benefactor.

The conduct of the Spaniards was regarded with universal contempt and disgust. As they withdrew towards the Neapolitan territory, a formidable band four or five thousand strong, the men of Gubbio stood on their defence, but those of Fabriano, less alert, were surprised and pillaged to the value of 2000 scudi. "But if the wretches sinned at Fabriano, they did penance at Ripatrasone; for, in trying to sack it also, many of them were slain, and the survivors were taken to Gerbe, in Africa, where they nearly all died,—some from drinking too much, some from drinking too little. The former by great good luck were drowned, and the latter, marching through that country in the parching summer heats, with water scarce, and no wine, perished of thirst; so that they had better have followed the Duke to marvellous enterprises and mighty gains, rather than have left to the world a degraded name." There is something quaint in the concentrated rancour wherewith Giraldi thus dismisses these selfish adventurers; and not less so in the following rustic memorial. Grateful for their escape, comparatively scathless, from perils which nearly menaced them, the people of Maciola, a village two miles from Urbino, placed in their church a votive picture to the Madonna, which is still inscribed with these simple verses:—

In the war thus concluded, Francesco Maria struggled for eight months, single-handed and penniless, against the temporal and spiritual influence of the Holy See, backed by all the continental powers. Unable to carry his object by a coup-de-main, he was in the end vanquished by the superior resources of his oppressor. In a parting address to his subjects, he assumed the tone of victory, asserting that he withdrew, not under compulsion, but from consideration of their interests, which a prolonged struggle must have deeply compromised. Thus retiring with honour, he promised to return to them with glory, when he could do so without detriment to their welfare. He was escorted by l'Escu as far as Cento, whence he rejoined his family at Mantua, presenting his consort with sixty-four standards, taken during this brief and unequal campaign, wherein his talents had been developed, his character strengthened, his fame extended.

We have dwelt somewhat minutely—it may be tediously—upon these events, for the contest was one of vital moment to Francesco Maria, his duchy being at once the theatre of operations and the guerdon of victory. Yet this petty war was pregnant with results of wider interest; for the enormous drain of money it occasioned so aggravated the financial difficulties of the papacy, as to bring to a crisis those abuses which finally matured the Reformation. The Minio despatches abound in proofs of the desperate state to which the treasury was reduced, and of the simoniacal expedients resorted to for ready money. One of these may be noted as compromising Bembo, who so often re-appears in these pages. He and Sadoleto had, since Leo's accession, monopolised his private brieves, which afforded them a handsome return, from gratuities and bribes, to the exclusion of the other papal secretaries. Now, however, the latter offered to their needy master a purse of 25,000 ducats, if admitted to share the spoils, which was greedily accepted, without regard to vested interests; and his Holiness was delighted to find the purchase-money of his ordinary secretaryships thereby raised at once from 6000 to 7000 ducats each. The imposition of one tenth laid on the clergy, avowedly for the proposed Turkish crusade, was absorbed by this Urbino campaign, which was thought to have cost the Holy See thirty thousand men, and a million of scudi. Even Henry VIII. was applied to for a loan of 200,000 ducats, which he characteristically evaded by offering 100,000, on condition of levying for himself the clergy tenths. But let us take the Pontiff's own statement, volunteered to Minio:—"See, by your troth, what a business this is! The war costs us 700,000 ducats; and we have been so ill served by these ministers, that worse cannot be imagined: this very month we had to disburse 120,000. When we commenced the war we had some few funds, which we had not chosen to touch, but the Lord God has aided us. We should never have thought it possible to raise 100,000 ducats, and we have obtained 700,000; see how astonishing this is! Had we deemed it possible to obtain 700,000 ducats, we would have undertaken the expedition against the Turks single-handed."

But where was the minion for whom all this crime and misery had been perpetrated? From Ancona he paid a brief visit to the Vatican, on his way to Florence, where he slowly recovered from his severe wound, only to plunge deeper in debaucheries more congenial to his degraded character than the privations of military life. He was never named during the rest of the contest, but as soon as it was over he met his uncle at Viterbo, where, and in the neighbouring country, the papal court passed most of October in field sports. His hard-won sovereignty seems to have afforded him little satisfaction or interest; but in the following year he became an instrument for the further promotion of his uncle's ambition. His marriage having been negotiated through Cardinal Bibbiena to Madelaine de la Tour, daughter of Jean Count of Boulogne and Auvergne, a relation of the French monarch, the titular Duke of Urbino proceeded to Paris in the spring of 1518, for the double ceremonial of his own nuptials, and the Dauphin's baptism, at which he stood sponsor on the 25th of April, as proxy for the Pontiff. Both these events were celebrated with much festive merriment in the gay capital of France, and the young couple were overwhelmed by splendid dowries and wedding-gifts by the Pope and the Monarch. But their bridal joy was of brief duration. The Duchess died in childbed on the 23rd of April following, and was followed to the grave five days after by her husband, who expiated with his life the dissolute vices in which he had continuously indulged. Their child survived to be a scourge of the Huguenots, in the person of Catherine de' Medici, wife of Henry II. of France, mother of Francis II., Charles IX., and Henry III.,—in the last of whom the line of Valois and the descendants of Duke Lorenzo became extinct.

Hearing of Lorenzo's desperate state, the Pope despatched Cardinal Giulio de' Medici to maintain at Florence the supremacy of his house. The titular dukedom of Urbino passed, in terms of the new investiture, to the infant Catherine; but the territory was unceremoniously seized by his Holiness, notwithstanding the wish of its inhabitants for restoration of their legitimate sovereign. Montefeltro, with S. Leo and Maiuolo, was assigned to Florence, in security or compensation for 150,000 scudi said to have been advanced in the late war, and the remainder of the duchy was annexed to the Church. The walls of its capital, whose loyalty to its native princes amid all their reverses is finely commemorated in the current appellation of Urbino fidelissimo, were thrown down, and its metropolitan privileges transferred to Gubbio, which had shown itself less devoted to the della Rovere interests.

We may here mention the fate of Gian Paolo Baglioni, known to us, in 1502, as one of the confederates of La Magione, who, in the quaint words of an unpublished chronicle, escaped the violin-string of Michelotto at Sinigaglia "to fall into the pit which he had digged." We have more lately seen him, in 1517, buying off Francesco Maria from the city of Perugia, with a bribe shared by himself, and have at the same time alluded to the broils there raging between various members of his family. These it would be beyond our purpose to follow; but they were attended by a series of bad faith on his part, and of suffering on that of the people, which gained for him the merited title of tyrant of Perugia. Less, perhaps, with the intention of vindicating the latter, than of liberating himself from a talented and unscrupulous vassal, who, long accustomed to rule supreme in that city, ill brooked and scarcely yielded that obedience to the Holy See which Julius II. had imposed on him in 1506, Leo summoned Gian Paolo to Rome in 1520, with amicable professions. There he arrived on the 16th of March, and next day sought an audience of the Pontiff in S. Angelo, the gates of which were immediately closed upon him as a state prisoner. After he had lingered for some months in mysterious durance, unconscious of the charge brought against him, a plan was formed to liberate him, disguised as a woman who visited the castellan; but at that juncture the Pope, who, according to the gossip of a contemporary diarist, had dreamt at La Magliana of a mouse escaping from a trap, sent a summary order for his execution, which took place secretly on the 11th of June.

The singular good fortune which accumulated coronets and crowns on the brows of Charles V., until he found himself sovereign by inheritance of a large portion of Europe, here demands our notice. The Emperor Maximilian had, by Mary, daughter and heiress of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, a son Philip, who predeceased him in 1506, after marrying Joanna, daughter and heiress of Ferdinand and Isabella of Aragon and Castile. Joanna being disqualified by mental imbecility, the united crowns of Spain devolved, on the death of Ferdinand in 1516, to her son Charles, who already held the Netherlands through his grandmother, Mary of Burgundy. As representative of the house of Aragon, he was also sovereign of Naples and Sicily; but the former crown required the papal investiture, which Leo was loath to bestow, partly with a vague hope of reserving it for one of his own race, partly from aversion to the establishment of a new line of foreign rulers in the Italian peninsula. On the death of Maximilian in January 1519, without having formerly received the imperial crown, his grandson, Charles, stepped into Austria, as his natural heritage, and sought still further aggrandisement by offering himself candidate for the throne of Germany. Little as the balance of power was then comprehended in European policy, this young monarch's rapid acquisitions called forth many jealousies. Francis had a double motive for standing forward as a competitor for the empire;—the dignity was flattering to his gallant character and ambitious views, and he grudged it to a younger rival, whose overgrown territory already hemmed him in on every side. Leo, at heart disliking them equally, as ultramontane sovereigns formidable to Italy, on the ruins of whose freedom were based the successes of either, sought to play them off against each other, so as to weaken and embarrass both. But in spite of these intrigues, Charles was elected emperor on the 28th of June, 1519, when but nineteen years of age.

The Pope had covertly supported the claims of Francis, with whom he intended some ulterior combination for expelling the Spaniards from Lower Italy. But the accession of strength which their sovereign thus acquired gave Leo an excuse for changing sides, an evolution grateful to his faithless nature. The struggle was once more to be made in Lombardy, and, as Charles was bent upon wresting the Milanese from his rival, the opportunity seemed tempting of recovering Parma and Piacenza for the Church by his means. To men in the Duke of Urbino's desperate position, any convulsion would be welcome, as offering the chance of better things. The impression left by his biographers, that he maintained a cautious neutrality in the contest thus opening, is disproved by some documents in the BibliothÈque du Roi, which establish him as a retained adherent of the French monarch.[280] One of them is an undated draft of articles proposed by him, his nephew Sigismondo Varana, Camillo Orsini, the Baglioni, and the Petrucci, as conditions of their entering the service of Francis, with the usual pay and allowances. They stipulated for his constant protection and support in the recovery of their respective states, and for the restoration of various allodial fiefs claimed by them in Naples, as soon as Francis should, with their aid, regain that kingdom. Francesco Maria, finding it necessary to quit the territory of his brother-in-law Federigo, now Duke of Mantua, who had been named captain-general of the ecclesiastical forces, and to surrender the allowance of 3000 scudi, hitherto made by him for the Duchess's maintenance, asked a pension of equal amount from his new ally, together with 1500 scudi in hand, to meet the expense of removing his family to a place of security, probably Goito. He accompanied these overtures with a plan for very extended operations upon Central Italy, whereby, with the assistance of Venice and Genoa, armaments by sea and land were to be directed in overwhelming force, at once against Tuscany and the Papal States. The result of this negotiation does not appear, but the only one of its provisions which seems to have taken effect was the Duke's pension, for which he writes thanks to the French Monarch from the camp of Lautrec on the Taro, the 27th of September, 1521. Giraldi mentions that he suddenly quitted the French service in consequence of a slight from Lautrec at a council of war, and he appears then to have retired to Lonno on the Lago di Guarda. From that lovely spot he watched the course of events, until the wheel of fortune should bring round his turn. The ladies of his family meanwhile lived in great seclusion at Mantua, and on the 19th of July, 1521, the dowager Duchess writes him, that she and his consort frequented the convents, soliciting from the nuns their prayers that God would direct his counsels, and vouchsafe the fulfilment of his wishes.[281] As the strife approached, these distinguished ladies withdrew to Verona. Upon its progress we need not dwell. By his oppressive sway Lautrec had rendered the French name odious at Milan, and when the confederate army approached its walls, bringing with them Francesco Sforza, second son of Ludovico il Moro, and brother of Maximiliano their last native sovereign, the people hailed them as liberators, and expelled their foreign masters.