A few months sufficed to disillusionise the Italians, and when, in February 1500, Ludovico returned with an army he had collected in the North, the French were forced to evacuate Milan and surrender their conquests as quickly as they had gained them. All seemed lost, when in April the French army, reinforced from France, again moved forward to relieve the citadel of Novara, which, with the castle of Milan, alone held out. The motley character of the army of Ludovico, composed as it was of mercenaries from Franche-Comté and Switzerland, Albania and Lombardy, would in any case have rendered victory doubtful, but the chances of battle were never tried owing to the treachery of the Germans and the Swiss. The latter pleaded as an excuse that they could not fight against their countrymen who were serving the French with leave of the Confederation. The only pretext the Germans could find was arrears of pay. Allowed by the French to retire, these honourable companions in arms did not even insist on the same terms being granted to their Milanese comrades, or to the Duke. When therefore the Milanese troops attempted to retreat, they were cut down by the French. The Duke was discovered among the Swiss in the disguise of a friar, and on April 17, the French re-entered the capital. The rich Duchy of Milan was now theirs, with the exception of the strip of country to the east of the Adda, which fell to the Venetians, and the district round Bellinzona, which was seized by the Swiss in the pay of Louis, and which they retain to this day. | Fortunes of the Sforza family. The Sforza family suffered cruelly for Ludovico’s fatal act in first calling the French into Italy and for his subsequent breach of faith. The Duke, who had vaunted himself on his cleverness, ended his days in the dungeons of Loches in Touraine (1508). His brother, the Cardinal Ascanio, and Francesco, son of the unfortunate Gian Galeazzo, also fell into French hands. Ascanio was released in 1503, but died in 1505. Francesco was forced to become a monk and died in 1511, and the only important representatives of the male line of the Sforza who remained were the two sons of Ludovico, Maximilian and Francesco Maria, who were hereafter for a period to regain the duchy.[12] The collapse of the power of Ludovico is a signal illustration of the insufficiency and untrustworthiness of mercenary troops. Caring nothing for the cause they had momentarily espoused, they were ever open to bribes, or ready to desert when desertion served their turn. | Short-sighted policy of Venice. For the rest, the policy of Venice in thus calling the French for the second time into Italy, was as short-sighted as it was blameworthy. The Venetians pleaded as a pretext their fears of the ambitious schemer Ludovico, yet he was never likely to be so formidable as the French, and, as Machiavelli well observes, ‘in their desire to win two districts in Lombardy they helped Louis to become master of two-thirds of Italy.’