Thus far matters seemed to be going in favour of the Duke of Ferrara and his allies. The Pope was angry as well as distressed, and in his anger and distress he did not disdain the policy followed by one Italian state after another, to the ruin of Italy, the policy of seeking help from a foreign power. To Louis XI. he addressed the bitterest complaints against Ferrante, seeking to stir up the French king to an expedition against Naples, where the prevailing discontent was in his favour, and he offered the Dauphin an opportunity of becoming a standard-bearer of the Church.[237] Raimond Pérault, afterwards Bishop of Saintes and Cardinal, was sent to the king with positive proposals. Louis XI. was too practical to enter upon such far-reaching and uncertain projects, but, as in all similar proposals, the seed sown did not fall on barren soil. Meanwhile things had changed in Italy. Ficcarolo surrendered after a siege of rather more than a month, and the enemy crossed the Po unimpeded by the troops of the Duke of Urbino, which were no match for the Venetians, especially when their leader, having been seized with fever in the low unhealthy neighbourhood of the river, had to be carried to Bologna. Ferrara was threatened, and a Venetian fleet alarmed the coast of Apulia. But the heaviest blow was yet to come. On August 21, at Campomorto, on the road from Rome to Porto d’Anzo, Alfonso of Calabria was completely defeated by Malatesta, with heavy loss of men and artillery.[238] The victor died at Rome on September 8, of fever which he had caught in the infected Campagna. At the same time the other side lost their best general, Federigo da Montefeltro, who closed his eventful life in Bologna. These two, opposed to each other on the battle-field, but connected by the closest family ties, each ignorant of the other’s mortal danger, commended in their last hour their states and families to each other’s care. Girolamo Riario had tried to profit both by the victory and the death of Malatesta, on the one hand to retake Città di Castello, and on the other to get Rimini into his own power. Both attempts were frustrated by the Florentines, who supported Vitelli and enabled Roberto’s widow, Elisabetta di Montefeltro, to preserve for her little step-son Pandolfo his paternal inheritance. Still the situation was very serious. Roberto Sanseverino established himself on the right bank of the Po, and raised strong fortifications at Pontelagoscuro, close to Ferrara. The duke began seriously to think of abandoning his capital and withdrawing to Modena, but the Florentine plenipotentiary, Bongianni Gianfigliazzi, restrained him. Lodovico Sforza was kept in check by a rising in the Parmesan territory.