The Italian Wars 1494-1559
Part One - the first phase of the conflict 1494-1501
The long series of wars fought by the Holy Roman Roman Emperors, Maximilian I and Charles V, against the French kings, Louis XII and Francis I, for control of Italy would have a dramatic effect on the lives Edmund and Richard de la Pole...
The root causes of Maximilian’s Italian problems was the revival of a French claim to the Kingdom of Naples and Milan’s strategic location at the base of the Alps. Because no French army could reach southern Italy without passing through this enormously wealthy, imperial duchy, Milan was in danger of falling into French hands and Maximilian could not allow this cornerstone of his power to be conquered by his hereditary enemy.
The Valois-Habsburg struggle for Milan would be at the heart of what became known as the Italian Wars, which lasted from 1494 until 1559, and whilst Naples and Milan are a long way from Suffolk, the early years of this long, blood-soaked conflict had a direct effect on the lives of both Edmund and Richard de la Pole. Consequently, it will be worthwhile taking a brief pause in our narrative to examine the often bewildering origins of the Italian Wars.
For most of the Late Middle Ages, the Kings of France had fought the Kings of Aragon for control of southern Italy but the claim which so troubled Maximilian originated in 1435 with the coronation of a French nobleman, René, duke d’Anjou, as King of Naples. Coincidentally, Rene’s daughter, Margaret of Anjou, married the English king Henry VI and she did much to revive the flagging Lancastrian fortunes during the Wars of the Roses but, ultimately, she fared no better in England than her father did in Italy.
Predictably, the rule of “René the Good” was challenged by the Aragonese King Alfonso V, who besieged Naples and forced his French rival to abdicate. Southern Italy, Sicily and Sardinia were thus returned to the Kingdom of Aragon but Alfonso was cursed by that perennial problem for medieval monarchs, the lack of a legitimate son to succeed him. That said, Alfonso did have a brother, John, and an illegitimate son, Ferdinand, so he decided to divide his empire between them.
When Alfonso died in 1458, his brother inherited Aragon, Sicily and Sardinia whilst his bastard son received the southern Italian mainland. However, Ferdinand’s illegitimacy prompted Jean d’Anjou, son of Rene d’Anjou, to revive his father’s claim . Despite being deprived of two thirds of his inheritance, Ferdinand of Naples, who is better known to history as Ferrante, defeated both the French Angevins and the native Calabrians who had allied themselves with Jean. He also became notorious for keeping the mummified bodies of his enemies in a grisly museum .
More importantly for our story, Ferrante’s chief ally in his struggle for Naples was Francesco Sforza, a freebooting condottiero who had made himself 4th duke of Milan after the male line of the ruling Visconti dynasty had died out . Though the two men had their differences, Francesco needed Ferrante’s support to keep his hard-won duchy but, in creating the Milan-Naples axis, Francesco and Ferrante had unwittingly sown the seeds of their descendants’ downfall.
The issue facing Ferrante was the French monarchs’ continued interest in his kingdom whilst the almost identical problem for Francesco was the French duke d’Orléans’ claim to the duchy of Milan, and the neighbouring County of Asti. The d’Orléans claim sprung from the French duke’s marriage to Valentina Visconti, half-sister of the last Visconti but, for reasons that need not concern us here, both claims lay dormant for a generation. Eventually another Milanese succession crisis provided the reigning King of France, Charles VIII, and his heir presumptive, Louis d’Orléans, with an opportunity to reassert their ancestral rights.
The new crisis began in the early 1490s when the duchy’s de facto ruler, Ludovico Sforza, refused to relinquish his office of regent for his young nephew, Gian Galeazzo Sforza, on the grounds the boy was too debauched to rule. Nicknamed il Moro (the Moor), because of his swarthy complexion, Ludovico had been appointed regent after the assassination of Gian Galeazzo’s father, the 5th duke, but he had steadily side-lined the rightful 6th duke of Milan by indulging his nephew’s increasingly depraved pleasures . Such ruthless ambition typified Ludovico’s character but Gian Galeazzo’s wife had powerful friends in Naples.
In 1489, Gian Galeazzo had married Isabella of Aragon, whose father, Alfonso II, was the heir to the Neapolitan throne and whose grandfather was the ghoulish King Ferrante. Isabella resented the way her husband was being robbed of his birthright by his wicked uncle and matters came to a head when Ludovico’s wife, Beatrice d’Este, daughter of the duke of Ferrara, gave birth to a son, Massimiliano.
Not unnaturally, Isabella had expected that the son she had given Milan’s legitimate duke would inherit his father’s duchy but Beatrice was equally determined that Massimiliano would supplant his cousin in the Milanese line of succession. Beatrice’s scheming was the last straw for Milan’s duchess and she insisted that her Neapolitan relatives do something.
“Isabella, the wife of Giovanni Galeazzo, a woman of a masculine spirit, was ever soliciting her father and grandfather, that, if they were not to be moved by the shame of the indignity offered to her husband and herself, they would take some concern at least for their lives, of which they and their children stood in danger.” , wrote the contemporary Italian chronicler Francesco Guicciardini.
Though Isabella’s outraged father, Alfonso, was keen to go to war on his daughter’s behalf , her ageing grandfather was reluctant to upset the fragile balance of power created in 1454 by the Peace of Lodi . This treaty had ended decades of war between Italy’s city-states, and Isabella’s marriage to Gian Galeazzo had been intended to extend that peace into the new century . Nevertheless, il Moro’s attempts to counter the potential threat from his nephew’s Neapolitan in-laws would plunge the entire peninsular back into chaos.
To forestall any attempt by Ferrante to deprive him of his ill-gotten power, Ludovico appealed to Milan’s feudal overlord, the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian, to recognise him as the rightful duke of Milan . He also sought a new alliance with Milan’s traditional friend north of the Alps, the King of France.
Though Ludovico was trying to win the support of two implacable enemies, the Emperor’s blessing was easily secured. Maximilian’s marriage to Ludovico’s niece, the profligate Bianca Maria Sforza, and an outrageous bribe of 400,000 ducats disguised as the girl’s dowry , were enough to persuade the Emperor to officially divest Gian Galeazzo of his title but this was only half the battle.
For the time being, Ludovico could not make public his formal investiture as duke because, to do so, would provoke a war with Gian Galeazzo’s Neapolitan relatives . If Ludovico was to turn imperial recognition of his rule in Milan into truly lasting power, he had to defeat Ferrante and the best way to do that was to install the French king, Charles VIII, as King of Naples.
Unfortunately for Italy, the wily Ludovico knew that Charles’ descent from René d’Anjou made him the heir to the Kingdom of Jerusalem, as well as Naples, and the Machiavellian usurper knew exactly how to exploit the French king’s ancestral claim to both crowns.
Though the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem had been destroyed centuries ago, the utterly unscrupulous Ludovico encouraged Charles to press his claim to Naples under the pretext of using the ports of southern Italy as bases for his reconquest of the Holy Land. As an added bonus, any plan for a new crusade was bound to be approved by the pope and Ludovico even offered Charles free passage through Milan in order to facilitate his attack on Naples .
The stage was now set for a French invasion of Italy but Charles could not cross the Alps until he had made sure that England, Spain and the Empire would not use his absence as an opportunity to seize French territory in Picardy, the Pyrenees and Burgundy . Accordingly, Charles signed the Peace of Étaples that ended French support for the Yorkist pretender Perkin Warbeck and paid the king of England a ruinously large pension .
In return, Henry VII abandoned his siege of Boulogne and Charles’ rapprochement with the English was followed by a similar settlement with the Spanish monarchs, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castille. Under the Treaty of Barcelona, signed in January 1493, the disputed territory of Roussillon, the Catalan speaking area on the French side of the Pyrenees, was returned to the Kingdom of Aragon and Ferdinand undertook not intervene in Italy .
The French king’s diplomacy also secured an unlikely agreement with Maximilian, whereby the whole of Artois would be handed back to the Empire if he too remained neutral in the forthcoming struggle for Naples .
At this stage, Charles had no serious designs on Milan, so Maximilian was quite prepared to throw Ferrante to the French wolves in return for gains in Flanders but the veteran king of Naples died on the 25th of January, 1494 and his hot-headed successor, his son Alfonso, had no intention of following his late father’s policy of maintaining the Peace of Lodi. As soon as he was king, Afonso dispatched a fleet and an army to northern Italy and their orders were to save the rightful duke and duchess of Milan from Ludovico and the French .
After landing on the Ligurian coast, the Neapolitans quickly captured the port of Rapallo, near Genoa, but they were soon forced to withdraw by a Franco-Milanese counterattack . Leading the French in this battle, which was fought on the 5th of September 1494, was Charles VIII’s brother-in-law, cousin and heir, Louis d’Orléans, whose grandmother was the aforementioned Valentina Visconti. As a consequence of this relationship, Louis was simultaneously Ludovico’s ally and rival.
This new threat to Ludovico notwithstanding, the defeat of Alfonso gave the usurper the opportunity to remove his nephew from the Milanese succession permanently. With his French allies ready to silence any protests, il Moro had Gian Galeazzo poisoned and blamed the dissolute ex-duke’s sudden death on an energetic bout of lovemaking.
“It was published abroad that the death of Galeazzo had proceeded from an immoderate use of the matrimonial bed; but it was universally believed throughout Italy that no natural infirmity nor incontinence was the cause; and Theodore of Pavia, one of the royal physicians, affirmed that he had observed most manifest symptoms of poison,” wrote Guicciardini.
There were a few loose ends; Gian Galeazzo’s widow and infant son were still alive but Guicciardini tells us that Charles was so impatient to reach Naples he simply ignored Isabella’s pleas for justice.
“She threw herself in a most miserable manner, before all the company, at the [French] king's feet, and with a flood of tears begged he would have compassion on the distresses of the Aragonian family. Charles, moved with her youth and beauty, seemed to pity her but, he answered that his enterprise was in such a forwardness as laid him under a necessity to proceed,” he wrote and it wasn’t only Isabella who suffered at French hands. Indeed, Charles’ progress south was marked by a ferociousness that shocked the whole of Italy.
“Prompted by their own natural fury, and also to set an example to others not to make any opposition, [the French] made a vast slaughter and, after perpetrating all sorts of barbarities they exercised their cruelties against the edifices by setting them on fire. This manner of making war, not having been practised in Italy for many ages, filled the whole kingdom with vast consternation,” wrote Guicciardini who was a Florentine and the chronicler’s home city was Charles’ next objective.
Though there were many in Florence who shared Guicciardini’s fears, there were others who welcomed the coming of the French. Some Francophiles were merchants, who had heeded Charles’ warnings that any resistance would mean the end of their highly lucrative trade with France. Others were landowners, who could not forgive the Neapolitans for devastating the Tuscan countryside during a brief lapse in the Peace of Lodi , but both pro and anti-French factions were united in their hatred of Florence’s Medici overlords.
With Charles’ help, the Florentines ousted the aptly named Piero “the Unfortunate” even though the once omnipotent Lord of Florence had agreed to all of the French king’s demands. Incidentally, Piero Medici was replaced by the fanatical Dominican preacher, Girolamo Savonarola , who established a theocratic republic and burned thousands of “decadent” art treasures in the notorious purge dubbed the Bonfire of the Vanities.
With Florence subdued, Charles’ rapid advance continued and the scheming of pro-French factions in Rome persuaded the terrified Pope Alexander to grant the invaders safe passage through the Papal States . At the end of January 1495, Charles captured Monte San Giovanni, an important fortress on the Papal-Neapolitan border, and massacred its garrison but Alfonso had already resigned himself to defeat thanks to a series of doom-laden visions that had reduced the King of Naples to a state of paralysis .
To Alfonso, whose dreams were haunted by memories of the men he had murdered and the women he had violated, the French appeared to be vengeful furies come to punish his many sins but there was nothing supernatural about Charles’ success. In reality, the French owed their victories to their innovative bronze cannon, which fired iron shot instead of stone balls, and these guns could smash formerly impregnable fortresses to rubble in a matter of hours .
Such advances in gunnery were of little concern to the increasingly unstable Alfonso, who abdicated in favour of his son, Ferrandino (little Ferrante), and fled to the safety of Spanish Sicily, where he died the following year . Unlike his father, Ferrandino was popular but without allies he too had no hope of defeating Charles. After failing to halt the invaders at Capua, Ferrandino also abandoned Naples and decamped to Sicily .
Fearing that their city would suffer the same fate as Monte San Giovanni, the Neapolitans surrendered on the 21st of February, 1495. Not a sword had been drawn or a shot fired in defence of their city but whilst Charles’ ruthlessness had delivered southern Italy into his hands, the bestial behaviour of his troops united the infamously fractious Italian states against the French, which was something the last three kings of Naples had failed to do.
Putting aside their numerous differences, Pope Alexander, the Venetian Doge, Ferdinand of Aragon, (who was also King of Sicily), and Emperor Maximilian, (who was also king of the Romans), formed the League of Venice to expel Charles from Italy . However, the man who had brokered this anti-French pact was none other than the double-dealing duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza .
With Charles now master of Naples, Ludovico feared he was about to suffer the same fate as Alfonso , especially as Louis d’ Orléans had been left in his ancestral city of Asti to guard the French supply lines over the Alps . Officially, Louis was still Ludovico’s ally but the Frenchman had made no secret that he intended to win back his Visconti inheritance and had started using the title “Duke d’Orléans and Milan” in all his official correspondence .
Realising he had a French tiger by the tail, Ludovico persuaded the Venetians to attack Charles, whilst he launched a pre-emptive strike against Louis , but his treachery almost backfired. The 10,000 Milanese troops Ludovico sent to drive the French out of Asti found the city’s defences too strong and Louis countered by occupying Novara, on the Asti-Milan border .
This was the moment for which Louis had been waiting. If his men could be reinforced by the main French army, Milan would be his, yet Lady Luck was with Ludovico. At the Battle of Fornovo, fought near Parma on the 6th of July 1495, Charles exhausted his army’s strength defeating the Venetians and the French were forced to abandon all they had won .
By the end of 1495, Charles had retreated to Lyon, Ludovico still ruled Milan and Ferrandino had been restored in Naples but Louis would neither forgive nor forget il Moro’s betrayal. When Louis succeeded Charles, who died after hitting his head on the door-lintel of a tennis court , he added his cousin’s claim to Naples to his own designs on Milan.
The duke d’Orléans was crowned King Louis XII on the 7th of April 1498 and he immediately vowed to punish Ludovico but, like Charles before him, he had to prevent opportunist attacks by the Spanish, English and Imperials before he could resume the war in Italy .
To this end, Louis renewed the Treaty of Étaples with England, who had joined the League of Venice in 1496 . Louis also revived the “Auld Alliance” with Scotland , just in case Henry failed to keep his word, and signed a truce with Ferdinand of Aragon at Marcoussis, near Paris . To ensure that the pope would continue to look favourably on his Italian ambitions, Louis gave Alexander’s illegitimate son, Cesare Borgia, the French dukedom of Valentinois .
By now, Maximilian had realised that French rule in Naples and Milan would be a calamity for the Empire but the outbreak of the Swabian War, with the Swiss Confederacy, forced him to sign a truce with Louis . To add to Maximilian’s troubles, his son, Archduke Philip, who now ruled Burgundy as his father’s proxy, had reached a separate agreement with Louis regarding the disputed Burgundian territories.
By the beginning of 1499, the only remaining power in the anti-French League was Venice but, by exploiting the long standing enmity between the Milanese and Venetians, Louis persuaded the latter to become French allies. Under the terms of the Treaty of Blois, the Venetians agreed to attack Milan from the east whilst Louis invaded from the west .
With Ludovico now thoroughly isolated, Louis restarted the Italian Wars by besieging the Milanese border stronghold of Arazzo and the brutal French tactics of the previous conflict were repeated. As soon as the state-of-the-art French guns had battered the town into submission, Louis had its defenders executed and, for good measure, the citizens of nearby Annone were also massacred a few days later .
Though Charles VIII had alienated the Italians by committing similar atrocities, he had captured Naples without fighting a pitched battle and Louis’ terror tactics achieved exactly the same results in Milan. The mere sight of the advancing French persuaded many Milanese towns to open their gates but Ludovico had one last card to play.
Though Milan surrendered to the French on the 6th of October, 1499, Ludovico cobbled together an army of Sforza loyalists, bolstered by large numbers of Swiss mercenaries, and he attacked the French at Novara in April 1500 but here Lady Fortune abandoned il Moro. His Swiss deserted when they were ordered to fight their countrymen serving with the French and Ludovico was captured trying to flee the battle disguised as a humble pikeman . The duplicitous duke was sent to France in an iron cage and he ended his days in a French dungeon.
The year following Milan’s fall, the triumphant Louis turned his attention to Naples whose restored king had died of malaria. Because the late Ferrandino’s short-lived marriage to his aunt had been childless, the Neapolitan crown had passed to his uncle, Frederick of Aragon, who appealed to his Spanish kinsman, Ferdinand of Aragon, for aid. Unfortunately for Frederick, Louis and Ferdinand had recently concluded the secret Treaty of Granada.
Under the terms of this shamelessly self-serving pact, the two kings had agreed to divide Neapolitan territory between themselves and Pope Alexander had tacitly blessed the partition by continuing to accept Louis and Ferdinand’s highly disingenuous argument that they could not launch a crusade against the Turks without occupying Naples . Betrayed by his Spanish cousin, and bereft of friends in Italy, Frederick could nothing to stop Louis.
By July 1501, the invaders had reached Capua, sixteen miles north of Naples, where the now familiar pattern of French brutality was repeated. Louis’ merciless guns quickly demolished the city’s ancient walls and thousands were killed during the French sack of the town. Anxious to avoid a similar fate, the cities of Campania surrendered en masse whereupon Frederick abdicated in favour of Louis . The victorious King of France marched into Naples on the 12th of October 1501 but the war was far from over.
North of the Alps, the Emperor watched Louis’ triumphs in Italy with growing alarm. Apart from the indignity of losing Milan, which had been a jewel in the imperial crown for more than 500 years, Maximilian could not afford to let two of the wealthiest territories in Italy fall into the hands of his enemies; yet, losing the brief, but bloody, Swabian War with the Swiss, was proof that the Empire could not defeat Louis alone.