to the quarters of La Tremoille, who said no more than, “Welcome, lord.”  Next day, April 11, Louis XII. received near Lyons the news of this capture, “whereat he was right joyous, and had bonfires lighted, together with devotional processions, giving thanks to the Prince of princes for the happy victory he had, by the divine aid, obtained over his enemies.”  Ludovic was taken to Lyons.  “At the entrance into the city a great number of gentlemen from the king’s household were present to meet him; and the provost of the household conducted him all along the high street to the castle of Pierre-Encise, where he was lodged and placed in security.”  There he passed a fortnight.  Louis refused to see him, but had him “questioned as to several matters by the lords of his grand council; and, granted that he had committed nought but follies, still he spoke right wisely.”  He was conducted from Pierre-Encise to the castle of Loches in Touraine, where he was at first kept in very strict captivity, “without books, paper, or ink,” but it was afterwards less severe.  “He plays at tennis and at cards,” says a despatch of the Venetian ambassador, Dominic of Treviso, “and he is fatter than ever.” [La Diplomatic Venitienne, by M. Armand Baschet (1862), p. 363.] He died in his prison at the end of eight years, having to the very last great confidence in the future of his name, for he wrote, they say, on the wall of his prison these words:  “Services rendered me will count for an heritage.”  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.”

Whilst matters were thus going on in the north of Italy, Louis XII. was preparing for his second great Italian venture, the conquest of the kingdom of Naples, in which his predecessor Charles VIII. had failed.  He thought to render the enterprise easier by not bearing the whole burden by himself alone.  On the 11th of November, 1500, he concluded at Grenada “with Ferdinand and Isabella, King and Queen of Castile and Arragon,” a treaty, by which the Kings of France and Spain divided, by anticipation, between them the kingdom of Naples, which they were making an engagement to conquer together.  Terra di Lavoro and the province of the Abruzzi, with the cities of Naples and Gaeta, were to be the share of Louis XII., who would assume the title of King of Naples and of Jerusalem; Calabria and Puglia (Apulia), with the title of duchies, would belong to the King of Spain, to whom Louis XII., in order to obtain this chance of an accessary and precarious kingship, gave up entirely Roussillon and Cerdagne, that French frontier of the Pyrenees which Louis XI. had purchased, a golden bargain, from John II., King of Arragon.  In this arrangement there was a blemish and a danger of which the superficial and reckless policy of Louis XII.