Filippo Maria entered with a comparatively small following and in the wake of a train of bread-carts sent ahead to relieve the famine which already was beginning to press upon the inhabitants. The acclamations of 'Live the Duke!' quieted his natural timidity as he rode through the streets to shut himself up in the Castle of Porta Giovia, which remained ever afterwards his residence. Not for Filippo Maria the Palace of the Old Broletto or the gaiety of courts. His dark, scheming, yet pusillanimous nature craved the security of a stronghold. For assisting him to the ducal throne, and no doubt to ensure their continued support, he rewarded his captains generously, and none more generously than Bellarion to whom he considered that he owed everything. Bellarion was not only confirmed in the lordship of Valsassina in feud, for himself and his heirs forever, but the Duke raised the fief into a principality. Bellarion remained the Duke's marshal in chief and military adviser, and it was by the dispositions which he made during that summer and autumn of 1412 that the lands of the duchy were finally cleared of the insurgent brigands who had renewed their depredations. Peace being restored at home, and industry being liberated at last from the trammels that had lain upon it since the death of Gian Galeazzo, prosperity flowed swiftly back to the State of Milan, and the people heaped blessings upon the shy, furtive ruler of whom they saw so little. It is possible that Filippo Maria would have been content to rest for the present upon what was done, to leave the frontiers of the duchy as he found them, and to dismiss the greater part of the costly condottas in his employ. But Bellarion at his elbow goaded him to further enterprise, and met his sluggish reluctance with a culminating argument that shamed him into action. 'Will you leave, in tranquil possession, the brigands who have encroached upon the glorious patrimony built up by your illustrious father? Will you dishonour his memory and be false to your name, Lord Duke?' Thus, and similarly, Bellarion, with a heat that was purely histrionic. He cared no more for the integrity of Gian Galeazzo's patrimony than he cared for that of the Kingdom of England. What he cared for was that the order to dispossess those tyrants would sound the knell of Theodore of Montferrat. Thus, at last, should he be enabled to complete the service, to which five years ago he had dedicated himself, and to which unfalteringly, if obscurely and tortuously, he had held. Very patiently had he waited for this hour, when, yielding at last to his bold importunities, the Duke summoned a council of the officers of State and the chief condottieri to determine the order in which action should be taken. At once Bellarion urged that a beginning should be made by recovering Vercelli, than which few strongholds were of more importance to the safety of the duchy. It provoked a protest from Beccarla, who was the Duke's Minister of State.