Lodovico Sforza enters Lyons as a captive--His imprisonment at
Pierre-Encise and Lys Saint-Georges--Laments over Il Moro in the popular
poetry of France and Italy--Efforts of the Emperor Maximilian to obtain
his release--Ascanio and Ermes Sforza released--Lodovico removed to
Loches--Paolo Giovio's account of his captivity--His attempt to
escape--Dungeon at Loches--Death of Lodovico Sforza--His burial in S.
Maria delle Grazie.
1500-1508
On the 2nd of May, 1500, barely a month after Lodovico Sforza's
triumphant return to Milan, the ancient city of Lyons witnessed a
strange and mournful procession, in which he was again the central
figure. That day the King of France's captive was led along the banks of
the swift Rhone and through the Grande Rue up to the fortress of
Pierre-Encise, on the top of the steep hill that crowns the old Roman
city. The scene has been described in a well-known letter by an
eye-witness, the Venetian ambassador Benedetto Trevisano, one of the
envoys who had been sent, three years before, to meet the emperor on his
descent into Italy, and whom the Duke of Milan had entertained royally
at Vigevano. The fierce and vindictive tone of the writer, the exultant
spirit in which he triumphs over the fallen foe, is another proof of the
terror and hatred which the Moro inspired in Venice. Trevisano's letter
was written on the evening of the 2nd of May, and addressed to the Doge.
"To-day, before two o'clock, Signor Lodovico was brought into the city.
The following was the order of the procession: first came twelve
officers of the city guard, to restrain the people who thronged the
streets from shouting. Then came the Governor of Lyons and Provost of
Justice on horseback, and then the said Signor Lodovico, clad in a black
camlet vest with black hose and riding-boots, and a black cloth
_berretta_, which he held most of the time in his hand. He looked about
him as if determined to hide his feelings in this great change of
fortune, but his face was very pale and he looked very ill, although he
had been shaved this morning, and his arms trembled and he shook all
over. Close beside him rode the captain of the king's archers, followed
by a hundred of his men. In this order they led him all through the
town, up to the castle on the hill, where he will be well guarded for
the next week, until the iron cage is ready, which will be his room both
by night and day. The cage, I hear, is very strong, and made of iron
framed in wood, in such a manner that the iron bars, instead of breaking
under a file or any other instrument, would throw out sparks of fire.
One thing I must not forget to tell you. The ambassador of Spain and I
were together at a window when Signor Lodovico passed, and when the
Spaniard was pointed out to him, he took off his hat and bowed. And
being told that I was the ambassador of your Serene Highness, he
stopped, and seemed about to speak. But I did not move, and the captain
of the archers, who rode by him, said, 'Go on--go on!' Afterwards the
captain mentioned this to the king, who said, 'Do you mean that he
refused to pay you any reverence?' adding that such men as this who do
not keep faith are bad, and so on. And I replied that I should have felt
shame rather than honour if I had received any sign of courtesy from a
person of this kind. The king was in his palace, and had seen Signor
Lodovico pass, and with him were many other lords and gentlemen, who
spoke much of the Moro. His Christian Majesty said that he had decided
not to send him to Loches as he had intended, because at certain seasons
of the year he himself goes there with his court for his amusement, and
would rather not be there with him, as he does not wish to see him. So
he has decided to send him to Lys in Berry, two leagues from the city of
Bourges, where the king has a very strong castle with trenches wider
than those of the Castello of Milan, full of water. This place is in the
centre of France, and is kept by a gentleman, who was captain of the
archers when his Majesty was Duke of Orleans, and had a body of tried
guards who were trained by the king himself. When the Moro alighted from
the mule which he rode, he was carried into the castle, and is, I am
told, so weak that he cannot walk a step without help. From this I judge
that his days will be few. I commend myself humbly to your Serene
Highness.
"BENEDICTUS TREVISANUS.[81]
_Eques. Orator_."
Fortunately, the iron cage seems to have been a fable invented by the
Venetian ambassador, and from all accounts the prisoner was well and
honourably treated, although the king absolutely refused his request to
see him during the fortnight that he remained in the fortress at Lyons.
He received visits, however, from several of the king's ministers, who
all remarked that if he had been guilty of some foolish actions his
words were remarkably wise--"_toutefois moult sagement parloit_." Anger
gave place to pity at the sight of this victim who had suffered so
terrible a reverse of fortune, and the Benedictine chronicler, Jean
d'Auton, deplores the sad fate of this unfortunate prince, who, after
many golden days of wealth and prosperity, was doomed to end his life in
weary and lonely captivity far from house and friends: "_Somme, si le
pauvre Seigneur captif, de deuil inconsolable avoit le coeur serrè a nul
devoit sembler merveilles_." The sorrowful destiny of the "_infelice
Duca_," who had once boasted himself to be the favourite of
fortune--"_Il Figlio della Fortuna_"--became the burden of popular
poetry, alike in France and Italy. Jean d'Auton himself gives vent to
his feelings in an elegy on the vanity of earthly glories--
"Si Ludovic, qui jadys pleine cacque
Heut de ducatz et pouvoir magnifique,
Est en exil, sans targe, escu ne placque,
Captif, afflict, plus mausain que cung heticque,
Et que, de main hostile et inimique,
Malheur le fiere rudement et estocque--
Gloire mondaine est fragile et caducque."
The grief of the Milanese bards for their duke's cruel fate found
utterance in the following lament:
Son quel duca in Milano
Che compianto sto in dolore ...
Io diceva che un sel Dio
Era in cielo e un Moro in terra--
E secondo il mio disio
Io faveva pace e guerra
Son quel duca di Milano," etc.
Fausto Andrelino wrote a Latin poem beginning with the lines--
"Ille ego sum Maurus, franco qui captus ab hoste
Exemplum instabilis non leve sortis eo;"
and Jean Marot found inspiration in a Venetian song--"Ogni fumo viene al
basso"--which he rendered in the following lines, alluding to the legend
of the Moro's fresco in the Castello of Milan:--
"Jadiz fist paindre une dame, embellie
Par sur sa robe, des villes d'Ytalie
Et luy au près tenant des epoussetes,
Voullant dire, par superbe follie,
Que l'Ytalie estoit toute sonillie
Et qu'il voulloit faire les villes nettes.
Le roi Loys, voulant ravoir ses mettes,
Par bonne guerre luy a fait tel ennuy
Que l'Ytalie est nettoyé de lui!
Chose usurpée legier est consommée,
Comme argent vif qui retourne en fumée."
From Lyons the captive duke was removed to Lys Saint-Georges in Berry,
where he remained during the next four years in the charge of Gilbert
Bertrand, the king's old captain of the guard. He was allowed to take
exercise in the precincts of the castle and to fish in the moat.
According to Sanuto, he was not wholly cut off from his friends. "Since
he likes to know what is happening in the world outside, the king allows
him to receive letters and to hear the news." But his health suffered
from the confinement, and in the summer of 1501, he became so ill that
Louis XII., who was hunting in the neighbourhood, sent his doctor,
Maitre Salomon, to see him. The physician was shocked at the prisoner's
altered appearance; his long hair, as we learn from a contemporary
miniature, had turned entirely white, and there were black circles round
his eyes. He sighed constantly, complained of the faithless subjects who
had caused his ruin, and asked eagerly for the latest news of the treaty
with the King of the Romans. Maitre Salomon told the king that he
believed Signor Lodovico was losing his reason, and his account moved
Louis so much that he sent to Milan for one of the duke's favourite
dwarfs, in order to beguile the weary hours of captivity. Meanwhile, in
justice to Maximilian, it must be said that he was untiring in his
efforts to obtain the release of his friend and kinsman. For many years
he steadily refused to grant Louis XII. the investiture of Milan, unless
Lodovico was set at liberty, and repeated his solicitations to this
effect with the most unwearied pertinacity. On this point, however, the
French king was inexorable. He knew the hold which the Moro had retained
on the hearts of his subjects, and would not run the risk of another
rebellion by allowing Lodovico to join his children at Innsbrück. At the
prayer of the Empress Bianca, he released her brother, Ermes Sforza, in
1502, and a year later allowed Ascanio Sforza to return to Rome, at the
request of Cardinal d'Amboise, and give his vote in the papal conclave.
After the accession of his old enemy, Giuliano della Rovere, to the
papal throne, Cardinal Sforza once more attained a high degree of honour
and prosperity, and when he died, in 1505, Julius II. raised the
magnificent monument in the church of S. Maria del Popolo to his memory.
In February, 1504, the German ambassador made another strong appeal to
the king on his master's behalf for Lodovico's release, but the only
concession that he could obtain was some relaxation in the rigour of his
treatment. The duke was removed to the château of Loches in Touraine, a
healthy and beautiful spot, on the summit of a lofty hill, and was
allowed greater liberty and more society.
All contemporary writers agree that he bore his long and tedious
captivity with remarkable patience and fortitude. "I have heard," writes
the Como historian, Paolo Giovio, "from Pier Francesco da Pontremoli,
who was the duke's faithful companion and servant during his captivity,
that he bore his miserable condition with pious resignation and
sweetness, often saying that God had sent him these tribulations as a
punishment for the sins of his youth, since nothing but the sudden might
of destiny could have subverted the counsels of human wisdom."
Early in the spring of 1508, the Moro seems to have made a desperate
attempt to escape. According to the Milanese chronicler Prato, he bribed
one of his guardians, with gold supplied, as we learn, from Padre
Gattico, by the friars of S. Maria delle Grazie, and succeeded in making
his way out of the castle gates hidden in a waggon load of straw. But he
lost his way in the woods that surround Loches, and after wandering all
night in search of the road to Germany, he was discovered on the
following day by blood-hounds, who were put upon his track. After this,
his captivity became more severe. He was deprived of books and writing
materials and cut off from intercourse with the outer world. It was
then, too, in all likelihood, that he was confined in the subterranean
dungeon, still shown as the Moro's prison. The cell, as visitors to
Loches remember, is cut out of the solid rock, and light and air can
only penetrate by one narrow loophole. There, tradition says, Leonardo's
patron, the great duke who had once reigned over Milan, beguiled the
weary hours of his captivity by painting red and blue devices and
mottoes on his prison walls. Among these rude attempts at decoration we
may still discover traces of a portrait of himself in casque and armour,
and a sun-dial roughly scratched on the stone opposite the slit in the
rock. And there, too, half effaced by the damp, are fragments of
inscriptions, which tell the same piteous tale of regret for vanished
days and weary longings for the end that would not come.
"Quand Mort me assault et que je ne puis mourir
Et se courir on ne me veult, mais me faire rudesse
Et de liesse me voir bannir. Que dois je plus guèrir?"
Or this--
"Je porte en prison pour ma device que je m'arme de patience par force
de peine que l'on me fait pouster" (porter) . .
Again, in large letters among the fragment of red and blue paint, we
read--
"Celui qui ne craint fortune n'est pas bien saige."
Even more pathetic, when we recall the joyous days at Milan and
Vigevano, where Lodovico listened to readings from Dante in Beatrice's
rooms, is the following version of Francesca da Rimini's famous lines:--
"Il n'y au monde plus grande destresse,
Du bon tempts soi souvenir en la tristesse."
At length death brought the desired release. Marino Sanuto briefly
records the fact in the following words: "On the 17th day of May, 1508,
at Loches, Signor Lodovico Sforza, formerly Duke of Milan, who was there
in prison, died as a good Christian with the rites of the Catholic
Church." All we know besides is that his faithful servant, Pier
Francesco, was with him to the end, and closed his eyes in the last
sleep. To this day the place of his burial remains unknown. A local
tradition says that he was interred in the church of Loches at the
entrance of the choir, but a manuscript account of the Sieur Dubuisson's
travels in 1642, preserved in the Mazarin Library, states that Ludovic
Sforza sleeps in the Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre on the eastern side of
the church. On his death-bed, it is said, he desired to be buried in the
church of the Dominican friars at Tarascon, but we never hear if his
wishes were carried out, and no trace of his burial is to be found in
this place. On the whole we are inclined to think the most trustworthy
authority on the subject is the Dominican historian of S. Maria delle
Grazie, Padre Gattico. In the history of the convent which he wrote a
hundred and fifty years after the Moro's death, he tells us that the
friars of his convent supplied the duke with means for his unfortunate
attempt to escape, and that this having failed, after his death they
removed his body to Milan, and buried him by the side of his wife,
Duchess Beatrice. This may very well have been effected during the reign
of Lodovico's son Maximilian, who was restored to his father's throne in
1512, and would explain the uncertainty which has always existed at
Loches as to the Moro's grave, and the absence of any inscription to
mark his burial-place.
For Lodovico's sake, let us hope, the good Dominican's story is true. It
is good to think that, after all the distress of those long years of
exile and captivity, the unfortunate prince should have been brought
back to rest in his own sunny Milanese, under Bramante's cupola, in the
tomb where he had wished to lie, at Beatrice's side. There, during the
next three centuries, masses were duly said for the repose of Duke
Lodovico's soul and that of his wife, on the four anniversaries sacred
to their memory, "in gratitude," writes Padre Pino, "for all the
benefactions that we have received from this duke and duchess." And to
this day, on the Feast of All Souls, the stone floor immediately in
front of the high altar, where Beatrice's monument once stood, is
solemnly censed, year by year, in memory of the illustrious dead who
sleep there, in Lodovico's own words, "until the day of resurrection."
FOOTNOTES:
[81] M. Sanuto. _Diarii_, iii. 320.