Having completed these arrangements, Louis lost no time in mustering his
forces, which, descending like a torrent on the fair plains of Lombardy,
effected the conquest of the entire duchy in little more than a fortnight;
and, although the prize was snatched for a moment from his grasp, yet
French valor and Swiss perfidy soon restored it. The miserable Sforza, the
dupe of arts which he had so long practised, was transported into France,
where he lingered out the remainder of his days in doleful captivity. He
had first called the _barbarians_ into Italy, and it was a righteous
retribution which made him their earliest victim. [3]

By the conquest of Milan, France now took her place among the Italian
powers. A preponderating weight was thus thrown into the scale, which
disturbed the ancient political balance, and which, if the projects on
Naples should be realized, would wholly annihilate it. These consequences,
to which the Italian states seemed strangely insensible, had long been
foreseen by the sagacious eye of Ferdinand the Catholic, who watched the
movements of his powerful neighbor with the deepest anxiety. He had
endeavored, before the invasion of Milan, to awaken the different
governments in Italy to a sense of their danger, and to stir them up to
some efficient combination against it. [4] Both he and the queen had
beheld with disquietude the increasing corruptions of the papal court, and
that shameless cupidity and lust of power, which made it the convenient
tool of the French monarch.

By their orders, Garcilasso de la Vega, the Spanish ambassador, read a
letter from his sovereigns in the presence of his Holiness, commenting on
his scandalous immorality, his invasion of ecclesiastical rights
appertaining to the Spanish crown, his schemes of selfish aggrandizement,
and especially his avowed purpose of transferring his son Caesar Borgia,