“Unless necessity constrain him thereto,” says Machiavelli [treatise Du Prince, ch. xxi.], “a prince ought never to form alliance with one stronger than himself in order to attack others, for, the most powerful being victor, thou remainest, thyself, at his discretion, and princes ought to avoid, as much as ever they can, being at another’s discretion.  The Venetians allied themselves with France against the Duke of Milan; and yet they might have avoided this alliance, which entailed their ruin.”  For all his great and profound intellect, Machiavelli was wrong about this event and the actors in it.  The Venetians did not deserve his censure.  By allying themselves, in 1499, with Louis XII. against the Duke of Milan, they did not fall into Louis’s hands, for, between 1499 and 1515, and many times over, they sided alternately with and against him, always preserving their independence and displaying it as suited them at the moment.  And these vicissitudes in their policy did not bring about their ruin, for at the death of Louis XII. their power and importance in Southern Europe had not declined.  It was Louis XII. who deserved Machiavelli’s strictures for having engaged, by means of diplomatic alliances of the most contradictory kind, at one time with the Venetians’ support, and at another against them, in a policy of distant and incoherent conquests, without any connection with the national interests of France, and, in the long run, without any success.

[Illustration:  Bayard——­315]

Louis was at Lyons when he heard of his army’s victory in Milaness and of Ludovic Sforza’s flight.  He was eager to go and take possession of his conquest, and, on the 6th of October, 1499, he made his triumphal entry into Milan amidst cries of “Hurrah! for France.”  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.  He had the passions of a partisan and the habits of a man of war; and he soon became as tyrannical and as much detested in Milaness as Ludovic the Moor had but lately been.  A plot was formed in favor of the fallen tyrant, who was in Germany expecting it, and was recruiting, during expectancy, amongst the Germans and Swiss in order to take advantage of it.  On the 25th of January, 1500, the insurrection broke out; and two months later Ludovic Sforza had once more become master of Milaness, where the French possessed nothing but the castle of Milan.  In one of the fights brought about by this sudden revolution the young Chevalier Bayard,