to confront the papal abuses. Alexander is reported to have been reduced to laughter when Savonarola's denunciations were related to him. Nevertheless, he appointed Sebastian Maggi to investigate the friar, and he responded on 16 October 1495: The hostility of Savonarola seems to have been political rather than personal, and the friar sent a letter of condolence to the pope on the death of the Duke of Gandia; "Faith, most Holy Father, is the one and true source of peace and consolation... Faith alone brings consolation from a far-off country." But eventually the Florentines tired of the friar's moralising and the Florentine government condemned the reformer to death, executing him on 23 May 1498. Familial aggrandizement The prominent Italian families looked down on the Spanish Borgia family, and they resented their power, which they sought for themselves. This is, at least partially, why both Pope Callixtus III and Pope Alexander VI gave powers to family members whom they could trust. In these circumstances, Alexander, feeling more than ever that he could rely only on his own kin, turned his thoughts to further family aggrandizement. He had annulled Lucrezia's marriage to Giovanni Sforza, who had responded to the suggestion that he was impotent with the unsubstantiated counter-claim that Alexander and Cesare indulged in incestuous relations with Lucrezia, in 1497. Unable to arrange a union between Cesare and the daughter of King Frederick IV of Naples (who had succeeded Ferdinand II the previous year), he induced Frederick by threats to agree to a marriage between the Duke of Bisceglie, a natural son of Alfonso II, and Lucrezia. Alexander and the new French king Louis XII entered a secret agreement; in exchange for a bull of divorce between the king and Joan of France (so he could marry Anne of Brittany) and making Georges d'Amboise (the king's chief advisor) the cardinal of Rouen, Cesare was given the duchy of Valentinois (chosen because it was consistent with his nickname, Valentino), military assistance to help him subjugate the feudal princelings of papal Romagna, and a princess bride, Charlotte of Albret from the Kingdom of Navarre. Alexander hoped that Louis XII's help would be more profitable to his house than that of Charles VIII had been. In spite of the remonstrances of Spain and of the Sforza, he allied himself with France in January 1499 and was joined by Venice. By autumn Louis XII was in