But the voices cried in the wilderness. King Ferrante’s was spent by death early in 1494, and in the following autumn Charles appeared at last at the head of a splendid host, and was welcomed with immense pomp and revelry by Lodovico and Beatrice at Pavia. There in the Castle the young Duke lay dying. The King visited him, and the piteous spectacle roused the sympathy of the monarch and his followers, for whom the person of legitimate sovereignty had a sacredness unfelt by the Italians. Charles was, however, much embarrassed by the Duchess Isabella, who besought him to have mercy on her father, the King of Naples. _She had better have prayed for herself, who was still a young and fair lady_, observes Commines.
The invaders passed on, finding their path cleared before them, and their progress already an assured triumph. Their cruelty when they had first entered the country had terrified all inclination to oppose them out of the Italians. Piero de’ Medici’s shameful surrender, Florence’s welcome, the inactivity of the Pope, the speedy fall of Naples, all the details of the pitiful story are well-known. Charles had not gone far when Gian Galeazzo died. The cruel report at once arose, and was widely believed by both French and Italians, that Lodovico had had him poisoned, and the Moro’s memory has come down to our day loaded with this detestable sin. Modern inquiry has, however, shown how little foundation there is for the charge, disproving the preliminary accusations against Lodovico of starving and ill-treating the ducal couple, and making it clear that Gian Galeazzo was surrounded by physicians and carefully tended. It is evident that Lodovico’s temperament was incapable of such a crime—that he would have been repelled by the mere idea of murdering this nephew whom he had brought up, and who loved him with a pathetic fidelity to the last. Gian Galeazzo’s longing on his death-bed for the uncle, who was far away, riding in splendour beside the French King, his touching questions to one of Lodovico’s gentlemen whether he thought his Excellency the Moro _li volesse bene_—loved him, Gian Galeazzo—and whether he seemed sorry that he was ill, go far to dissipate the cruel suspicion. Nevertheless, the young Duke’s death relieved Lodovico’s conscience of its last scruple with regard to the Dukedom. He hastened back to Milan and had himself invested with the ducal mantle, cap and sceptre, in the midst of a stupendous pomp.