The Duchy remained for the next six years in French possession, and was ruled with comparative justice and beneficence by the Constable de Bourbon, till the just, generous, and propitiatory impulses of the new sovereign yielded to indifference and forgetfulness, and it was abandoned to the cruel and arbitrary government of the Sieur de Lautrec, brother of the King’s mistress, the Comtesse de Châteaubriant. His tyranny helped to provoke another revolution in 1521, when the young Emperor Charles V. united with Pope Leo X. in a new _Holy_ League, and proclaiming his right to Milan as an imperial fief, sent an army to invade the Duchy. Lautrec, having executed some of the noblest citizens on suspicion of intriguing with the Imperialists, abandoned the city, leaving the Castello garrisoned, and took up his stand four miles from the city, at the Bicocca, where he suffered a tremendous defeat, which lost Milan again to France. This turn of the tide carried Francesco, Lodovico’s second son, to the ducal throne. The wild joy with which the oppressed and suffering Milanese greeted this new Sforza, in whose name they trusted with touching hopefulness for a return of the old glory of their city, was not wholly misplaced. Duke Francesco II. has left a memory of good repute. The misfortunes of his reign were not due to his faults or weaknesses, but to the political circumstances of the time, which deprived him of all real power, and made him a mere pawn in the great game played between Charles V. and Francis I. with Italy for stake. Milan was, in fact, dominated by the Spaniard, and the presence of a great army of these foreigners was a crushing burden upon prince and people. Though there to defend the city, they wrought little less destruction and cruelty than the French, when the latter returned as enemies in 1523, and advancing close to the capital, spread havoc and desolation all around. Though unable to take Milan, they established themselves in some of the neighbouring towns, and the approach of Francis himself with a large army in the following year (1524) drove the Duke into flight. The city, bereft of half its population and garrison by a terrible pestilence, was utterly unable to make any defence against the French monarch. Francis, having entered Milan in triumph, passed on to besiege Pavia, which kept him heroically at bay through many months.