I arrived at Lyons on the 12th of December, in the year 1495: and there I found the king and his whole army. The king had been absent on his expedition about a year and two months.[460] The castles of Naples still held out for him, as you have heard. The Lord de Montpensier, his lieutenant in that kingdom, was at Salerno with the prince of that place; the Lord d’Aubigny was in Calabria, where he had done signal service, though under a long fit of sickness; the Lord Gracian des Guerres was in Abruzzo, Don Julian at Mount St. Angelo, and George de Suilly at Tarento; but all of them most miserably poor, and so far abandoned by our court that they could seldom or never receive letters or news out of France, and when they did, it was nothing but shams and promises without effect; for (as I said before) the king did nothing of himself. If they had been supplied with money in time, even a sixth part of what was spent afterwards to no purpose would have saved that kingdom from being lost; for at length when all was lost, they sent them forty thousand crowns as part of a year’s pay, and yet if that had arrived but a month sooner, the calamities and disgraces which they endured had never befallen them, and their divisions had been prevented; all which was occasioned through the negligence of the king, who managed nothing himself, and would not so much as hear anybody that came from them, and those whom he employed were careless and inexperienced, and I think some of them held a correspondence with the Pope; so that in appearance God had forsaken our king, and taken away that grace with which He had hitherto conducted him.