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"The Spaniards," says John d'Auton, "halted before the place, made as if they would lay siege to it, and so remained for two or three days. The French, who were there in great numbers, had scarcely any provisions, and could not hold out for long; however, they put a good face upon it.
He died at Chits on the 25th of November, 1456, and, according to the historian John d'Auton, who had probably lived in the society of Jacques Coeur's children, "he remained interred in the church of the Cordeliers in that island, at the centre of the choir."
Early the next day they travelled by boat to Abbiategrasso, past the fair villas and smiling gardens that charmed the eyes of Jean d'Auton when he travelled along the banks of the Ticino.
When couriers arrived in Mantua and Ferrara, saying that Duke Lodovico had that day entered Milan in triumph, people refused to believe the news. But it was true. "The Moro has returned," wrote Jean d'Auton, "and has entered Milan, where he has been received as if he were a God from heaven, great and small shouting Moro! with one accord. Verily these Lombards seem to adore him.
The sorrowful destiny of the "infelice Duca," who had once boasted himself to be the favourite of fortune "Il Figlio della Fortuna" became the burden of popular poetry, alike in France and Italy. Jean d'Auton himself gives vent to his feelings in an elegy on the vanity of earthly glories
Anger gave place to pity at the sight of this victim who had suffered so terrible a reverse of fortune, and the Benedictine chronicler, Jean d'Auton, deplores the sad fate of this unfortunate prince, who, after many golden days of wealth and prosperity, was doomed to end his life in weary and lonely captivity far from house and friends: "Somme, si le pauvre Seigneur captif, de deuil inconsolable avoit le coeur serrè a nul devoit sembler merveilles."
"To say the truth," writes Jean d'Auton, "the whole duchy of Milan was secretly in favour of Lodovico, and all the Lombards were swollen with poison, and ready like vipers to shoot out the deadly venom of their treason."
Jean d'Auton in his Chronicles of Louis XII speaks in warm terms of the duke's valour and of the manner in which, by words and by example, he encouraged his followers to charge the Colonna forces, with such good effect that they utterly routed the Neapolitans, and drove them headlong back to the shelter of Capua's walls. The allies brought up their cannon, and opened the bombardment.
D'Auton, too, bears witness to this wholesale violation of the women, "which," he adds, "is the very worst of all war's excesses." He informs us further that "the foot-soldiers of the Duke of Valentinois acquitted themselves so well in this, that thirty of the most beautiful women went captive to Rome," a figure which is confirmed by Burchard. "What an opportunity was not this for Guicciardini!
And "thus was the duchy of Milan, within seven months and a half, twice conquered by the French," says John d'Auton in his Claronique, "and for the nonce was ended the war in Lombardy, and the authors thereof were captives and exiles."
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