The expulsion of the French from Naples put an end, as might have been supposed, to The Most Holy League. For the high contracting parties, finding themselves secure from immediate danger, conceived themselves no longer bound by its provisions. Maximilian, ever penniless and generally faithless, had made no attempt to engage in any operations on the French frontier, nor had any one of the allies contributed to defray the heavy charges incurred by the Spanish sovereigns in fulfilling their part of the agreement. The Venetians were rather occupied in securing for themselves as much of the Neapolitan territory as they could acquire, by way of indemnification for their own expenses. The Duke of Milan had already made a separate treaty with Charles VIII. Each member of the league, in fact, after the first alarm had subsided, had shown himself ready to sacrifice the common cause to his own private advantage; and Ferdinand of Aragon, who had already suspended his operations on the frontiers of Spain in October, 1496, had no difficulty in agreeing to a further truce as regarded Naples and Italy, which was signed on the 5th of March, 1497. The Spaniards had borne the entire burden of the late war. They had been virtually abandoned by their allies, and their unassisted operations had led to the deliverance of Naples, to the safety of the Italian States, and the humiliation and the defeat of the French. Their immediate objects having been thus happily accomplished, Ferdinand and Isabella proposed to Charles VIII., without shame or hesitation, that the French and Spaniards should enter into an immediate treaty of alliance, with a view to drive out the reigning sovereign of Naples, and divide his kingdom between themselves! Meanwhile the Castilian envoy to the Holy See endeavored to induce Alexander VI. to withhold the investiture of his kingdom from Frederic, the new sovereign of Naples, on the ground that he was friendly to the Angevin party in Italy, the hereditary enemies of Spain. But Alexander paid no heed to Garcilaso de la Vega. Charles showed himself not only willing but eager to treat with Fernando de Estrada; but unwilling at once to abandon all his claims to Italian sovereignty, he offered to cede Navarre to Ferdinand, and keep all Naples to himself. Proposals and counter proposals thus passed between France and Spain; but before any definite programme had been agreed to, the negotiations were cut short by the sudden death of the French monarch, in the tennis court at Amboise, on the eve of Easter, 1498.