Upon its progress we need not dwell. By his oppressive sway Lautrec had rendered the French name odious at Milan, and when the confederate army approached its walls, bringing with them Francesco Sforza, second son of Ludovico il Moro, and brother of Maximiliano their last native sovereign, the people hailed them as liberators, and expelled their foreign masters. [Footnote 280: MOLINI, _Documenti di Storia Italiana_, I., pp. 122, 135.] [Footnote 281: Oliveriana MSS. No. 375; I., pp. 51, 75.] CHAPTER XXXVII Death of Leo X.--Restoration of Francesco Maria--He enters the Venetian service--Louis XII. invades the Milanese--Death of Bayard--The Duke's honourable reception at Venice--Battle of Pavia. News of the evacuation of Milan by the French reached Leo X. at his hunting-seat of La Magliana, five miles down the Tiber from Rome. Though not quite well, he hurried to his capital on the 24th of November, to witness the bonfires and rejoicings at their discomfiture, and on the morning of the 1st of December was found dead in bed.[*282] The mystery attending this sudden death of one in the prime of life has never been cleared up. Suspicions of poison were rife at the time, and have not been removed; they point at the Duke of Urbino or of Ferrara, whom he had grievously outraged, or at Francis I., whom he recently disgusted, as its probable but undetected author. In absence of tangible accusation or tittle of evidence, it seems needless to repel such a charge from Francesco Maria, especially as other accounts impute the Pontiff's dissolution to malaria fever, to a severe catarrh,[283] to debauchery, or even to excessive exultation at the joyful news. So unexpected was the event that there was not time to administer the last sacrament, a circumstance which gave occasion to this bitter epigram, in allusion to the notorious venality of church privileges during his reign:-- "Why were not Leo's latest hours consoled By holy rites? such rites he long had sold."[284] [Footnote *282: He seems to have received the news at La Magliana on November 25th. He returned to Rome at once. The illness was not considered serious till November 30th. He died on the evening of December 1st. Cf. PARIS DE GRASSIS, in ROSCOE, _Leo X._, App. CCXII.-IV., and clerk's letters of December 1st and 2nd, in BREWER, _Calendar_ (1824-5).]