The confederates then turned to the question of Milan. Maximilian was eager to secure this for his grandson Charles. But he was not acceptable to the Pope, the Venetians, or the Swiss, or even to Ferdinand. All dreaded the addition of the Milanese to the vast possessions present and reversionary of the young prince. Finally, it was agreed to recall Maximilian, the son of Ludovico il Moro, who had since his father’s fall been brought up in the imperial court. On the 29th of December, Maximilian received the keys from the Swiss and entered the city. In return, ‘their puppet duke’ ceded to the confederates the Val Maggia, Locarno, and Lugano; and to their allies, the Rhætian League (later the canton of the Grisons), Chiavenna, Bormio, and the Valtelline. This, added to the Val Leventina, acquired 1440, and to Bellinzona, granted by Louis XII. in 1503, gave the Swiss, and their allies, complete command over four of the most important passes of the Alps, the St. Gothard, the Splugen, the Maloia, and the Bernina, and extended their territory to the Italian lakes of Como, Lugano, and Maggiore.[25] Thus at the close of the year 1512, the Medici and the Sforza found themselves again in power as they had been at the invasion of Charles VIII. | Ferdinand conquers Spanish Navarre. July 1513. Meanwhile France had been threatened by a joint attack on Guienne--on the part of Ferdinand and Henry VIII. The English indeed landed at Bayonne, but fortunately for Louis, the attention of Ferdinand was called off to Navarre. That kingdom, which sat astride of the Pyrenees, was at this moment under the rule of Catherine de Foix and her husband, the Frenchman, John d’Albret. But her title had always been disputed by the younger line, represented by Gaston de Foix, the nephew of Louis XII. On his death at the battle of Ravenna, his claims passed to his sister Germaine, wife of Ferdinand, and these Ferdinand now proceeded to press. Catherine, the reigning queen, no longer afraid of France, sought the alliance of Louis XII. This gave Ferdinand the pretext he sought. He demanded a passage through Navarre for his attack on France, and on being refused, invaded the little kingdom. He was supported by a powerful faction, headed by the Beaumonts. The timid John fled. ‘Wert thou queen and I king, the realm would not be thus lost,’ said Catherine, but was forced to follow her cowardly husband, and, by the end of July, Ferdinand occupied all the territory on the Spanish side of the mountains. That portion of the country which lay on the French slope of the Pyrenees, continued an independent kingdom, to be absorbed into France in the sixteenth century, by the accession of Henry of Navarre to the French crown. The English, irritated at Ferdinand’s failure to co-operate with them, and attacked by disease, due to the hot climate, the incessant rain, and the heavy wine of the South in which they indulged too freely,