In inviting Charles, Lodovico doubtless thought to produce a temporary diversion, which should weaken Naples and produce a political upheaval, amid which he should be able to secure the ducal throne, and once seated in it, readjust by adroit diplomacy, the balance of power in the peninsula after the retirement of the invader in due course. But he had left out of account the respective conditions of France and Italy—the pent-up military fury in the noble classes in the first country, which raged for an outlet, the fatal weakness of disunion in the second, and the enervation which peace and unparalleled prosperity had produced in its people. He may have hoped to achieve his ends by the mere threat of French invasion, and counted on the indecision of the young king and his own subtle craft to keep the matter from going any further. Charles, however, whose weak head swam with the flatteries of venal councillors, and with romantic ideas imbibed from the tales of the Paladins, was easily persuaded to undertake the conquest of Naples as a preliminary step to the redemption of Christendom from the Turk.
But the preparations for the expedition were very dilatory, and more than two years passed before they were completed. During this time of suspense Italy was full of doubts and fears. Lodovico’s allies began to hesitate, and there were daily shiftings of policy in the various States, now in favour of Naples, now of France, all actuated by self-interest, which guided them finally in this crisis of their country’s fate to a despicable neutrality, waiting upon events. The Moro’s own policy was shifting and tortuous, even displaying at times an anxiety—little credited by his neighbours—to save Naples from the catastrophe which he himself was bringing upon her. Already he was working for a reaction against the French in the event of their success in Italy. But his advances to the opposite party won for him only the distrust of his friends, and in France many warned Charles of the folly of relying upon this man, _homme sans foy, s’il voyoit son profit pour la rompre_, as Commines pronounces him.
Meanwhile, careless apparently of the future, Italy continued her wild dance of pleasure. In Milan, gaiety and licence reigned supreme. Yet there are many signs that a sense of sin and of a reckoning at hand had begun to awaken. The sonnets of il Pistoia grew grave with prophecies to laughing Italy of the much weeping which time would soon draw from her, and of the shortness of the hours between her and her immense, irreparable sorrow. The superstitious Moro himself must have been shaken by the blind friar who is said to have appeared in the Piazza of Milan at the time of his negotiations with the French King, crying—_Prince, show him not the way, else thou wilt repent it_. From Florence came the echo of Savonarola’s annunciation, _Gladius Domini super terram cito et velociter_. More poignant still to ears that could hear was the tremulous voice of the octogenarian King of Naples, warning Pope and Moro, again and again, of the peril clear to the terrible prevision of the dying—_He who will may begin a war, but stop it, no!_