LOUIS XII., son of Charles, duke of Orleans, descended from a younger son of Charles V., succeeded in 1498 Charles VIII., who bad left no children. Ile had beon obliged by Louis XL to marry his daughter Joau in 1476, but after his accession to the throne he dis solved the marriage, and married Anne of Brittany, the widow of Charles VIII. Louis asserted his claims to the duchy of Milan, which were derived from his grandmother, Valentina Viseouti, daughter of John Galeazzo, duke of Milan, and sister of the last duke, Filippo Maria, who had died without leaving legitimate children. But Filippo Maria left a natural daughter Bianca, who had married the famous condottiere Francesco Sforza, who succeeded his father-in-law as duke of Milan, and the Sforza family had been confirmed in the possessiou of the duchy by the emperor, Milan being considered as a fief of the empire. Francesco was succeeded by his son Galeazzo, who, being murdered iu 1475, left an infant son Clan Galeazzo, whose uncle Ludovico assumed the government during his minority. After the death of Chan Galeazzo in 1494, Ludovico, who was suspected of having poisoned his nephew, was proclaimed duke, and confirmed by a diploma of the Emperor Maximilian I. Louis however marched with an army into Italy, and took possession of the duchy of Milan in 1499. In the following year he made Ludovico Sforza prisoner, and carried him to France, where he died in confinement. Emboldened by this success, Louis now put forward tho claims of the crown of France to tho possession of Naples derived from the Aujous. [Louts XI.] These claims had been already asserted by his prede cessor Charles VIII., who however, after invading Naples, was obliged to give up his conquest. The Aragooese dynasty had resumed possession of that kiogdom ; and Frederic of Aragon, who was king of Naples, feeling that lie was too weak to resist Louis XII., applied for assistance to his relative Ferdinand the Catholic, king of Spain, who sent him an army under the celebrated commander Gonzalo of Cordova. Louis had recourse to secret negotiations; he proposed to Ferdinaud of Spain to dethrone his relative and protegd, aud to divide the kingdom of Naples between them. Such a proposal was exactly suited to the character of Ferdinand, and he assented to it. Whilst Louis marched against Naples, Gonzalo, in consequence of secret orders from his master, was occupying in his name the towns of Calabria and Puglia; and a third worthy partner in such a transaction, Pope Alexander VI., gave to Louie the solemn investiture of the crown of Naples, which he had a fow years before bestowed upon the unfor tun ate Frederic. The latter, perceiving the perfidiousness of his Spanish
relative, surrendered himself to Louis, who gave him the duchy of Anjou and a pension for life. Louis and Ferdinand soon quarrelled about their respective shares of the spoil, and Ferdinand gave orders to Gonzalo to drive away the French from Naples. The two battles of Seminara and Cerignola, both fought in April 1503, in which tho French were defeated by the Spaniards, decided the fate of the kingdom of Naples, which became entirely subject to Spain. A few years after, Pope Julius IL formed a league with Ferdivaud and the Swiss to drive the French out of Italy altogether; and after three campaigns, Gaston de Foix, duke of Nemours, being killed at the battle of Ravenna, the French abandoned Lombardy ; and Maximilian Sforza, son of Ludovico, supported by the Swiss, assumed the ducal crown of Milan in 1512. Louis sent a fresh army into Italy under La Trimouille, who was beaten at Novara by the Swiss in June 1513; and thus, after fifteen years of fighting, intrigues, and negotiations, the French lost all their conquests in Italy. Louis XIL has been styled by courtly historians "the father of his people;" he was in fact kind-hearted towards his subjects, and he reduced the taxes by one-half; but his foreign policy was unjust and imprudent. In order to forward his ambitious purposes he allied himself to the atrocious 13orgias and the unprincipled Ferdinand ; and the calamities which his troops inflicted upon Italy, the horrors of the storming of Brescia, the cruel execution of Count Avogadro and his two sons because they resisted the invaders, and other atrocities committed by the French commanders, are great stains on the memory of this `paternal' monarch. Having lost his best troops, he reluctantly gave up his Italian schemes, made peace with Ferdinand and the pope, and, at the age of fifty-three, married Mary, sister of Henry VEIL of England. His young wife made him forget his years and the weakness of his constitution : "On her account," says tho biographer 'of Bayard, " he changed all his mode of life : instead of dining at eight o'clock in the morning, or before, he fixed his dinner-hour at noon; and instead of going to bed at six in the evening, as heretofore, he often sat up till midnight." He did not live quite three months after his marriage, and died at Paris in January 1515, leaving no male issue. He was succeeded by Francis I.