In October 1499, Isabella d’Este, marchesa of Mantua (1474–1539), wrote her envoy in Venice a letter that she intended to be shown to the French ambassador, Accurse Mainier. The ambassador was making veiled threats of a visit to Mantua and had sent apologies to Isabella, with a menacing undertone, for having questioned the marchesa's commitment to Mantua's alliance with France. Should the ambassador visit her, Isabella reassured Mainier, he would find her dressed all in lilies, her clothing adorned with French fleurs-de-lys. The symbolism of Isabella's attire, asserting her credibility as ‘a good francese’, and dedicated ally of Louis XII, was politically powerful in dangerous times. October 1499 found Isabella and her husband Marchese Francesco II Gonzaga (1466–1519) in a thorny predicament. Five years into the Italian Wars (1494–1559), with the peninsula a battleground for supremacy between French and imperial powers and with ever-shifting alliances and tussles for advancement – indeed, for survival – by the states of Italy, Mantua was the kind of second-league principality ripe for swallowing up. It was eyed greedily by foreign sovereigns and by state-snatching chancers, such as the pope's son Cesare Borgia, with the backing of an ultramontane army. On 6 October, the king of France had entered Milan and ejected the city's duke Lodovico Sforza, husband of Isabella's late sister Beatrice d’Este, and at the king's side were the rapacious Cesare Borgia and Isabella's husband Francesco Gonzaga, in his capacity as military captain.