office until June 1620. The main problem for Spain in Italy was French and Savoyard ambitions on the Duchy of Milan, a key territory from the strategic point of view to maintain military communications between Spain and the Low Countries and other Habsburg territories in Europe. Between 1613 and 1618 Spain and Savoy were actually at war, the former trying to contain the Duke of Savoy within the boundaries established after the Treaty of Cateau-Cambresis (1559), and the Duke, playing the role of Italian leader against foreign invaders (the Spaniards) trying by all means to enlarge his territories and, if possible, with French and Venetian help, to conquer Milan. The main provider of financial help to Savoy was the Republic of Venice; Osuna considered that to end the Venetian dominion of the Adriatic gulf and even to conquer Venice itself was convenient and feasible. In May 1618 the Venetian authorities claimed to have uncovered a very serious conspiracy to sack the city and burn the arsenal, summarily executing a number of alleged participants (all of them French) but insinuating that the real and secret heads of the plot were Osuna and the Spanish ambassador to Venice, Bedmar. The so-called "Conspiracy of the Spaniards against Venice of 1618" has been a question open to discussion among historians for the last four centuries. Spanish and German historians have a tendency to deny that the conspiracy was real or was serious enough; French and Italian historians have the opposite view. The end of Osuna's government in Naples was very confused and tense. On the one hand, the nobility of Naples was increasingly hostile to Osuna, one of the main reasons being the economic burden imposed by the need to feed and lodge the big military force (12,000 soldiers) that Osuna had lodged in the city without the agreement of its representative bodies. On the other, because of Osuna's support to the political demands of the representatives of the low classes, "the people". In June 1620 the new temporary Viceroy, Cardinal Borja, former ambassador to Rome, took possession of the Viceroyalty against all formal rules, but Osuna accepted the authority of Borja and returned obediently to Madrid. Fall and death A few days after Philip III's death, in 1621, in a "purge" of the ministers of the new and very young king against Lerma's family and friends, Osuna was arrested by a decision of