The French in Milan

In 1499 the army of the king of France, Louis XII, defeated the troops of Ludovico il Moro, Duke of Milan, who was forced to retreat to Ferrara. The twenty-year-old Castiglione, was at that time in Milan to complete his apprenticeship as a humanist and as a courtier in the splendid court of the Sforzas. Here, at the beginning of October, he witnessed the entrance of the French sovereign and his soldiers into the city, and sent his brother Girolamo Boschetto a picturesque description: “La piacia era carica di gente, e lì dove passava la Sua Maiestà era fatto una strata de guasconi, balestrieri a piedi, armati cum celata da coppa e quelli vestitelli, ma non recamati. Quelli guasconi sono homini di poca statura: li arcieri poi sonno molto corpulenti. In questa pompa entrò la Maiestà del Re di Francia nel Castello de Milano: già receptaculo del fior de li homini del mundo, adesso pieno di betole e perfumato di ledame” (The square was full of people, and there where the King passed the street was lined with Frenchmen, crossbowmen on foot, armed and wearing helmets and those clothes, but not embroidered. Those Frenchmen are small in stature: the archers are very corpulent. In this pomp His Majesty the King of France entered the castle of Milan: once inhabited by the flower of humanity from all over the world, now full of shacks and smelling of sewage)  (B. Castiglione, Le lettere, edited by G. La Rocca, I, Milan 1978, 6).

Certain particulars stand out in this passage denoting the special and refined sensibility of the author: on the one hand the meticulous recording of the clothes and the arms of the conquering army, with a hint of implicit sarcasm about the corpulent archers and Frenchmen of small stature; on the other hand he dramatically highlights the sudden transformation the court underwent at the hands of the foreigners. The Castle of Ludovico il Moro, once a great centre for arts and letters, was now “pieno di betole e perfumato di ledame” (full of shacks and smelling of sewage). This was the effect of the collapse of the Sforza dominion; this is the result, as Castiglione had occasion to remark, as well as in The Cortegiano, in the letter to Leone X and in the one to Alfonso de Valdés, of the affirmation of the force of violence and war over peace. The macabre spectacle of the French archers, inside the Castle, using the model made by Leonardo for he equestrian statue of Francesco Sforza, was to tragically repeat itself during the Sack of Rome.