t took refuge at the Court of France, where
in 1541 he obtained such credit, especially with the Dauphin, that he
was entrusted with a mission for raising revolt in Siena against the
Spaniards.[229] His transactions in that city with Giulio Salvi, then
aspiring to its lordship, and in Rome with the French ambassador, led to
a conspiracy which only awaited the appearance of French troops upon the
Tuscan frontier to break out into open rebellion. The plot, however,
transpired before it had been matured; and Lodovico took flight through
the Florentine territory. He was arrested at Montevarchi and confined in
the fortress of Florence, where he made such revelations as rendered the
extinction of the Sienese revolt an easy matter. After this we do not
hear of him until he reappears at Venice in the year 1545. He was now
accredited to the English ambassador with the title of Henry VIII.'s
'Colonel,' and enjoyed the consideration accorded to a powerful
monarch's privy agent.

[Footnote 228: See Rawdon Brown's _Calendar of State Papers_, vol. iv.]

[Footnote 229: See Botta, Book IV., for the story of Lodovico's
intrigues at Siena.]

His pension amounted to fifty crowns a month, while he kept eight
captains at his orders, each of whom received half that sum as pay.
These subordinates were people of some social standing. We find among
them a Trissino of Vicenza and a Bonifacio of Verona, the one entitled
Marquis and the other Count. What the object of Lodovico's residence in
Italy might be, did not appear. Though he carried letters of
recommendation from the English Court, he laid no claim to the rank of
diplomatic envoy. But it was tolerably well known that he employed
himself in levying troops. Whether these were meant to be used against
France or in favor of Savoy, or whether, as the Court of Rome suggested,
Henry had given orders for the murder of his cousin, Cardinal Pole, at
Trento, remained an open question. Lodovico might have dwelt in peace
under the tolerant rule of the Venetians, had he not exposed himself to
a collision with their police. In the month of August he assaulted the
captain of the night guard in a street brawl; and it was also proved
against him that he had despatched two of his men to inflict a wound of
infamy upon a gentleman at Treviso. These offenses, coinciding with
urgent remonstrances from the Papal Curia, gave the Venetian Government
fair pretext for expelling him from their dominions. A ban was t