The diplomacy being thus successfully closed, an army of twenty-two thousand men was put in vigorous motion in July, 1499.

They crossed the Alps, fought a few battles, in which, with overpowering numbers, they easily conquered their opposers, and in twenty days were in possession of Milan.

The Duke Ludovico with difficulty escaped.

With a few followers he threaded the defiles of the Tyrolese mountains, and hastened to Innspruck, the capital of Tyrol, where Maximilian then was, to whom he conveyed the first tidings of his disaster.

Louis XII.
followed after his triumphant army, and on the 6th of October made a triumphal entry into the captured city, and was inaugurated Duke of Milan.
Maximilian promised assistance, but could raise neither money nor men.
Ludovico, however, succeeded in hiring fifteen hundred Burgundian horsemen, and eight thousand Swiss mercenaries--for in those ages of ignorance and crime all men were ready, for pay, to fight in any cause--and emerging from the mountains upon the plains of Milan, found all his former subjects disgusted with the French, and eager to rally under his banners.