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Updated: May 18, 2025
Louis XII left Milan on November 7 one month after his triumphal entrance and set out to return to France, leaving Trivulzio to represent him as ruler of the Milanese.
During the next month Louis XII. remained in the Castello of Milan, joining in hunting-parties with his guests, the Duke of Ferrara and the Marquis of Mantua, and being royally entertained at banquets by the Viscontis and Borromeos and Giangiacomo Trivulzio.
The Duke of Milan was now more eager than ever to conclude peace, and when Louis of Orleans and Trivulzio urged the king to break off negotiations and march at the head of the Swiss on Milan, Charles replied curtly that it was too late, for the preliminaries of peace were already signed. He himself had no wish but to return home and send help to his distressed troops in Naples.
The Count of Caiazzo had gone out to meet Trivulzio the day before, and had been received with great honour, while his brothers Fracassa and Antonio Maria took refuge with Giovanni Adorno at Genoa, and waited to see how the tide would turn.
From 1510 to 1512 the war in Italy was thus proceeding, but with no great results, when Gaston de Foix, Duke of Nemours, came to take the command of the French army. He was scarcely twenty-three, and had hitherto only served under Trivulzio and La Palisse; but he had already a character for bravery and intelligence in war.
Happily for both the emperor and the Duke of Milan's peace of mind, the French king's military ardour had soon died away, and although Trivulzio was sent to Asti, and Orleans would gladly have followed him, Charles the Eighth spent his time in jousts and hunting-parties, and forgot his unhappy subjects in Southern Italy.
Trivulzio was repulsed in an attack on Novi; while an attempt to seize Genoa, which was set on foot by the Cardinal della Rovere and Battista Fregoso, was frustrated by the prompt measures of defence taken by the Duke of Milan and the Venetians. Meanwhile every possible honour was paid to the memory of Duchess Beatrice.
A nephew, Gian Antonio, whose name occurs in several of his uncle's letters is described by the latter as licet ex transverso natus; he served under Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, and finally, despite his bar sinister, married a daughter of Francesco, of the illustrious Milanese family of Pepoli.
Still the Castello held out, and Trivulzio was debating how best to reduce this almost impregnable citadel, when Bernardino da Corte sent a herald to parley with Francesco Bernardino Visconti. At the end of a few days the faithless governor agreed to surrender the Castello, in exchange for a large sum of money and the concession of various privileges for his family and friends.
Not only had the Marquis of Mantua broken faith and refused to defend the Milanese against the Venetians, but two of the Sanseverino brothers, Fracassa and Antonio Maria, had for some time past threatened to enter the Venetian service; while Francesco Bernardino Visconti, the Borromeos, and Pallavicini were secretly corresponding with Trivulzio, and the Count of Caiazzo was out of temper and jealous of his younger brother Galeazzo, if he was not, as Corio and other contemporaries affirm, already in league with the French.
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