The trouble ahead was, however, as yet hidden. Milan kept calm. The air-bubble expectations of the conspirators had perished at the touch of reality. There was no attempt at a rising. The widowed Duchess assumed without opposition the supreme authority as regent for her son, the child Gian Galeazzo, with Cecco Simonetta as her chief minister. The dead Duke’s brothers, Sforza, Duke of Bari, and Lodovico il Moro, were absent in France, Ascanio the priest in Rome. But the situation was pregnant with danger, as Simonetta well knew. He suspended all Galeazzo Maria’s works of embellishment in the city, set the engineers and builders to construct new defences, threw a strong garrison into the Castle, and adopted every precaution against revolt. The chief menace came from the nobles of the old Ghibelline party. They hated Simonetta, who was a Sicilian and the creature of Francesco Sforza, with no interest apart from his master’s House, which he strengthened by depressing the great feudatories. The veteran minister was unpopular with the people too, because he was a foreigner, and because of the heavy taxes. Sforza and Lodovico, hurrying back from France, and joined by Ascanio, found a powerful party, headed by the fiery and restless soldier, Roberto di San Severino, ready to support them in overthrowing the government. But Simonetta was on the watch. He seized one of the chiefs of the disaffected party, and filled the city with troops. San Severino promptly fled to Naples, and the three princes retreated to a little distance, ready to escape. Their youngest brother, Ottaviano, a youth of eighteen, who was involved in their plot, also rode hastily out of the city, and finding himself pursued, leapt into the swollen Adda, and was washed off his horse and drowned. A formal decree banishing the elder princes was issued, and for the moment the danger was over and Simonetta triumphed.