The ravages in the palace were concealed by the gorgeous decorations. Two years later the king came again, and the company on this occasion was so superb that the meanest dresses were of brocade. These were but temporary liftings of the gloom. In 1512 the castle was besieged by the Holy League, and the French turned out. Again in 1515 it was retaken by the French, and the weak young Duke Massimiliano Sforza was replaced by the splendid Francis I., who rode in, fresh from his victory in the Battle of the Giants, beneath the usual arches of triumph. In 1521 a terrific explosion of gunpowder, lit it is said by a thunderbolt from a serene sky, destroyed the great Torre di Filarete, and killed the Castellan and a number of the garrison. A few months later the Castle was besieged by Charles V.’s army, and after fourteen months of heroic endurance, the French were again expelled. The reign of Francesco II. Sforza followed with all its terrible vicissitudes of war and siege and Spanish occupation. Bombardments, the necessity for new defences and alterations, the polluting presence of the Spaniards and lanzknechts wrecked ever more and more the proud habitation of the Sforza. A mocking reflection of its old glory brightened it for a few years after Duke Francesco’s reconciliation with the Emperor in 1530, and one or two splendid pageants were added to the long succession of gorgeous spectacles of which it had been the scene under the Sforza. These ended in 1535 in the melancholy ceremony of the last Duke’s funeral, when his dead body, or rather an image of it, arrayed in crimson velvet and scarlet hose, and a mantle of richest golden brocade, and crowned with the ducal beretta, was borne forth beneath a canopy of cloth of gold, by the doctors of the University, preceded by an endless train of friars and monks and clergy and black-hooded mourners carrying torches, and followed by kinsmen, ambassadors and nobles in sable robes reaching to the ground. The real body was carried out quietly to the Duomo the same evening. Thus in symbolic show and unreal grandeur the short-lived dynasty of the Sforza vanished out of this great fabric of its creation. From this time the Castello ceased to be the chief palace of a sovereign prince. Under the Spaniards its precincts were enlarged and strengthened in the second half of the sixteenth century by an immense outer quadrangle of fortifications which completely altered its aspect. The changing conditions of warfare, and the advance of the science of fortification, brought continual additions and changes, and many of the beautiful constructions of the Sforza period were ruthlessly sacrificed. Yet the Castello remained for long one of the famous sights of Europe, and is described with admiration by many travellers.