the road back to
their mountains. Francis I. entered Milan in triumph. Maximilian Sforza
took refuge in the castle, and twenty days afterwards, on the 4th of
October, surrendered, consenting to retire to France with a pension of
thirty thousand crowns, and the promise of being recommended for a
cardinal's hat, and almost consoled for his downfall "by the pleasure of
being delivered from the insolence of the Swiss, the exactions of the
Emperor Maximilian, and the rascalities of the Spaniards." Fifteen years
afterwards, in June, 1530, he died in oblivion at Paris. Francis I.
regained possession of all Milaness, adding thereto, with the pope's
consent, the duchies of Parma and Piacenza, which had been detached from
it in 1512. Two treaties, one of November 7, 1515, and the other of
November 29, 1516, re-established not only peace, but perpetual alliance,
between the King of France and the thirteen Swiss cantons, with
stipulated conditions in detail. Whilst these negotiations were in
progress, Francis I. and Leo X., by a treaty published at Viterbo on the
13th of October, proclaimed their hearty reconciliation. The pope
guaranteed to Francis I. the duchy of Milan, restored to him those of
Parma and Piacenza, and recalled his troops which were still serving
against the Venetians; being careful, however, to cover his concessions
by means of forms and pretexts which gave them the character of a
necessity submitted to rather than that of an independent and definite
engagement. Francis I., on his side, guaranteed to the pope all the
possessions of the church, renounced the patronage of the petty princes
of the ecclesiastical estate, and promised to uphold the family of the
Medici in the position it had held at Florence since, with the King of
Spain's aid, in 1512, it had recovered the dominion there at the expense
of the party of republicans and friends of France.

The King of France and the pope had to discuss together questions far
more important on both sides than those which had just been thus settled
by their accredited agents. When they signed the treaty of Viterbo, it
was agreed that the two sovereigns should have a personal interview, at
which they should come to an arrangement upon points of which they had as
yet said nothing. Rome seemed the place most naturally adapted for this
interview; but the pope did not wish that Francis I. should go and
display his triumph there. Besides, he foresaw that the king woul