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This letter relating to the Certosa altar-piece and the gift to Leonardo were the last public acts in which the great Moro showed his love of art and generosity to artists. His fate was sealed, and already his foes were at the door. Before the end of May, King Louis and Cæsar Borgia came to Lyons, and Trivulzio descended upon Asti with fifteen thousand men.
Yet he knew how to appreciate genius, and after his triumphant return to Milan in 1499, employed Leonardo to paint his portrait and design his tomb. Although a Guelph by birth, Trivulzio, up to this time, had been one of Lodovico's most active supporters.
Trivulzio, offensively treated at Milan, and subjected to accusations at Paris, went, at eighty-two years of age, to France to justify himself before the king; but Francis I. gave him a cold reception, barely spoke to him, and declined his explanations.
On the 6th of September, after a feeble effort on the part of the Milanese nobles to preserve the rights and liberties of the city, the keys were given up to Trivulzio, who entered by the Porta Ticinese with Ligny and two hundred horse, and, after visiting the Duomo, breakfasted in the house of his kinsman, the Bishop of Como.
At the same time, having learned that the garrison, which was commanded by Trivulzio, was composed of only a few regular troops, and a large force of guerillas, he gave notice that such combatants were not entitled to quarter, and that if captured they would be all put to the sword. The reply to this threat was not evacuation but defiance.
He reduced the heavy imposts established by the Sforzas, revoked the vexatious game-laws, instituted at Milan a court of justice analogous to the French parliaments, loaded with favors the scholars and artists who were the honor of Lombardy, and recrossed the Alps at the end of some weeks, leaving as governor of Milaness John James Trivulzio, the valiant Condottiere, who, four years before, had quitted the service of Ferdinand II., King of Naples, for that of Charles VIII. Unfortunately Trivulzio was himself a Milanese and of the faction of the Guelphs.
Trivulzio, in whose heart the old wrong still rankled, greeted his captive with the words, "It is you, Lodovico Sforza, who drove me out for the sake of a stranger, and, not content with this, have stirred the Milanese to rebellion." Lodovico merely shrugged his shoulders, and replied quietly, "Who among us can tell the reason why we love one man and hate another?"
"In the castle of S. Angelo," says Vasari, "he painted many of the rooms a grotesche; but in the tower below, in the garden, he depicted scenes from the life of Alexander VI. There he painted the Catholic Queen Isabella; Niccolò Orsini, Count of Pitigliano; Giangiacomo Trivulzio; and many other kinsmen and friends of the Pope, and especially Cæsar Borgia and his brother and sisters, as well as numerous great men of the age."
Before he had completed his arrangements for supplies on the island of Cadzand, he learned from scouts and reconnoitring parties that Spinola had sent a thousand infantry, besides five hundred cavalry, under Trivulzio, to guard the passage across the Swint. Maurice was thus on the wrong side of the great channel by which Sluy's communicated with the sea?
A few of these which he pawned to a Venetian merchant in 1495, were valued at 150,000 ducats, and a list, which is still preserved in the Trivulzio library, gives a description of the different jewels which in the troubled times at the close of his reign were pledged to bankers in Rome and Milan.
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