While the way was thus being prepared in Milan for his restoration, Lodovico, in his exile at Innsbrück, was using every means to accomplish it, even to the desperate expedient of inciting the Turk to attack the Venetian State. At the same time he gathered together a strong body of Swiss and German mercenaries, and prepared to start for Italy as soon as he learnt from his friends in Milan that the moment was come. The French strength in the Duchy had been greatly diminished by the departure of large detachments for Naples and the Romagna, when the report ran through Milan that the Moro was come back and had retaken Como (1500). The whole city was immediately in an uproar, and the mob surged round the palace of the governor, who, after vainly endeavouring to quiet them, was forced to hide from their insults and threats. A few days later he left Milan. Immediately after, Lodovico’s forerunners, Cardinal Ascanio and two of the San Severini, rode in at the head of four thousand Swiss. Messer Galeazzo, flowering once more in the sunshine of his Lord’s success, had arrayed himself all in white, with a great feather on his head, and a pair of shoes on his feet much more fitted for the service of Venus than of Mars, as a sarcastic chronicler observes. The Duke himself followed a day later and re-entered his capital in state. But his triumph was only apparent. The Castello was now the bulwark of his enemy. It stood with its huge bastions and vast squares of parapets furnished with a thousand engines of war, frowning over the defenceless city. Even as the Moro paced in stately procession through the streets the bells rang out, and a terrified cry arose that the French had sallied from the fortress. The Duke was not strong enough to attempt its reduction, and unwilling to face the constant peril of its presence, he left the city, which he was never to see again, and removed to Pavia.