increased at every step.  He fell fiercely upon the invaders, routed them everywhere, drove them from the duchy, and recovered his country and his capital as rapidly as he had lost them.  One fortress only the French maintained.  The intrepid Chevalier De Bayard, the knight without fear and without reproach, threw himself into the citadel of Novarra, and held out against all the efforts of Ludovico, awaiting the succor which he was sure would come from his powerful sovereign the King of France.

CHAPTER VI.

MAXIMILIAN I.

From 1500 to 1519.

Base Treachery of the Swiss Soldiers.—­Perfidy of Ferdinand of Arragon.—­Appeals by Superstition.—­Coalition with Spain.—­The League of Cambray.—­Infamy of the Pope.—­The Kings’s Apology.—­Failure of the Plot.—­Germany Aroused.—­Confidence of Maximilian.—­Longings for the Pontifical Chair.—­Maximilian Bribed.—­Leo X.—­Dawning Prosperity.—­ Matrimonial Projects.—­Commencement of the War of Reformation.—­Sickness of Maximilian.—­His Last Directions.—­His Death.—­The Standard by which his Character is to be Judged.

Louis XII., stung by the disgrace of his speedy expulsion from Milan, immediately raised another army of five thousand horse and fifteen thousand foot to recover his lost plunder.  He also sent to Switzerland to hire troops, and without difficulty engaged ten thousand men to meet, on the plains of Milan, the six thousand of their brethren whom Ludovico had hired, to hew each other to pieces for the miserable pittance of a few pennies a day.  But Louis XII. was as great in diplomacy as in war.  He sent secret emissaries to the Swiss in the camp of Ludovico, offering them larger wages if they would abandon the service of Ludovico and return home.  They promptly closed the bargain, unfurled the banner of mutiny, and informed the Duke of Milan that they could not, in conscience, fight against their own brethren.  The duke was in despair.  He plead even with tears that they would not abandon him.  All was in vain.  They not only commenced their march home, but basely betrayed the duke to the French.  He was taken prisoner by Louis, carried to France and for five years was kept in rigorous confinement in the strong fortresses of the kingdom.  Afterward, through the intercession of Maximilian, he was allowed a little more freedom.  He was, however, kept in captivity until he died in the year 1510.  Ludovico merits no commiseration.  He was as perfidious and unprincipled as any of his assailants could be.

The reconquest of Milan by Louis, and the capture of Ludovico, alarmed Maximilian and roused him to new efforts.  He again summoned the States of the empire and implored their cooeperation to resist the aggressions of France.  But he was as unsuccessful as in his previous endeavors.  Louis watched anxiously the movements of the German diet, and finding that he had nothing to fear from the troops of the empire,