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"The
Italian Wars"
(written by Prof. M. Galandra;
translated by Donald Katz)
The period of the
so-called Italian Wars is certainly one of the most
important and least known of the history of our land (Italy).
For nearly half a century, from the invasion of Charles
VIII in 1494 until the peace of Cateau-Cambresis which
ended in 1559 the long struggle between France and Spain
for supremacy in Europe, foreign armies overran
the whole country from the Alps to Naples, ancient and
famous cities were besieged and sacked (remember Rome as
an example), seignories and principalities fell or
changed hands, bloody battles were fought. However, even
Italian Renaissance scholars sometimes have difficulties
in clearly understanding the alternating military events,
and prefer to focus their attention on the great
personages who lived and worked in those 'stormy' years.
The epoch of the Italian Wars gave birth to artists such
as Leonardo da Vinci, Raffaello, Michelangelo, Benvenuto
Cellini, historians like Machiavelli and Guicciardini,
great poets like Ludovico Ariosto. It's necessary to
remember, though, that these great men of art, culture,
poetry acted in the context of the political and
military events of the Italian Wars, and their works
were deeply influenced by them. It's enough to consider
the writings of Machiavelli and Guicciardini, to
consider the stormy relationship between Michelangelo
with that great "warrior Pope", namely Julius
II Della Rovere, to the verses dedicated by
Ludovico Ariosto to the arquebus, new and deadly arm,
which he described as “maledetto” (“accursed”)
and “abominoso ordigno” (”abominabal device”).
The upheaval in the Peninsula provoked by decades of
nearly uninterrupted wars, as we said, was enormous. The
artillery of Charles VIII of Valois, King of France,
disseminated terror by their numbers, and their
devastating effects, especially against the walls of the
cities that refused to open their gates to these
invaders from the other side of the Alps. The
ferocity of the battles, the habit of the Swiss and the
German Landsknechts to not preserve prisoners'
lives, provoked horror and reprobation. The increasing
use of portable firearms, put in discussion for the
first time the role of cavalry on the battlefield and
started a deep revolution, also in a democratic sense in
European military science (as cavalry was a prerogative
of aristocracy). At the same time, it became clear that
the Italian seignories, small and divided amongst
themselves, were not able anymore to successfully oppose
to armies of the "big powers" of the era:
Spain, France and the Holy Roman Empire.
After the battle of Fornovo (1495), the last one where a
completely Italian army would tackle a foreign monarch,
it seemed that the foreign danger had passed , but
Charles VIII's successor, Louis XII, had never renounced
his aims on the South of Italy (which he claimed as a
legitimate Angevin heir) and on the Duchy of Milan,
governed then by the Sforzas (through his direct descent
from Valentina Visconti).
First in the summer of 1499, and then in the spring of
1500, a French army entered Italy to overthrow the
Sforza seignory. Ludovico il Moro, the man who was
commonly indicated as the responsible for calling the
French into Italy, paid the penalty with his Duchy:
captured at Novara while trying to escape disguised as a
Swiss soldier, he was sent as a prisoner to France,
where he sadly died, some years later, in the Castle of
Loches, in Turenne.
The first French dominion of Lombardy lasted twelve
years, yielding peace to this region, while nearly all
the rest of Italy was aflame with fighting. In the south,
up to 1504, the French and the Spanish confronted each
other for the possession of the Reign of Naples, which,
in the end, remained in Spanish hands, transforming from
then, for 200 years, into a "Viceroyalty",
dependant of Madrid. In central Italy, the
vermilion star of Cesare Borgia, the
"Valentino", the dissolute son of Pope
Alexander VI, dawned and set . Machiavelli
took inspiration from the Valentino to write one of his
most famous works, the "Prince". After seizing,
with deception and treachery, the largest part of
the small seignories of Central Italy, with the help of
his father and King Louis XII of France, the
"Valentino" saw his dreams fade away with the
sudden death (it was said, obviously, caused by poison)
of Pope Alexander VI.
His successor to the papal throne was Giuliano della
Rovere, who named himself Julius II, an old and tough
fighter, determined to defend and increase the
temporal power (and also the earthly dominions) of the
Church and contemporarily to oppose to the expansionist
aims of the foreign Powers in Italy. In 1509, Julius II
officially adhered to the League of Cambrai, stipulated
in December 1508 by the emperor Maximilian of the
Hapsburgs, Ferdinand the Catholic, King of Spain, and by
Louis XII (who had just put down the Genoa revolt) to
contrast Venetian expansion. The Serenissima, utterly
beaten at Agnadello (14 May 1509) risked to losing al
its land possessions , but the Pope, finally worried by
the increasing French power, swiftly altered
alliances and gave birth to the so-called Holy League,
with Venice, Spain and the Empire.
"Throw the Barbarians out" (the French, in
this case), the bellicose Julius II would declare, but,
by this time, expelling a foreign invader from Italy was
possible only by opening the gates to another foreign
landlord. Louis XII had a brilliant victory at Ravenna
(11 April 1512) against the Spanish allied with the
Pope, thanks to the military genius of Gaston de
Foix, who also died during the battle. However, his army
was compelled to retreat in front of preponderant enemy
forces, reinforced by as many as 20,000 Swiss
mercenaries, recruited in the Cantons of the Swiss
Confederation. After uselessly trying to resist at
Pavia, the French army recrossed the Alps and Maximilian
Sforza, first son of Ludovico il Moro, entered Milan,
where he was received with incredible manifestations of
joy.
Under the heavy guardianship of the Swiss, the seignory
of Maximilan Sforza survived only three years. Although
a first attempt by the French to conquer it back was
repelled near Novara (6 June 1513), the Swiss
Confederates were soundly beaten at Marignano two years
later (13-14 September 1515) by another army coming from
France, this time commanded by the new French king, François
I Valois-Angouleme. Maximilian Sforza lost his Duchy and
was sent to France, where he died about 10 years later,
in golden captivity.
The second French domination in Lombardy lasted only a
few years. In 1519, Charles of the Hapsburgs, king of
Spain from 1516, became Holy Roman Emperor of the
German Nation. Now anxious about the menace weighing on
his kingdom, François I resorted to arms once again. As
usual, the main theatre of operations was Italy, where
France on the one side, allied with the Republic of
Venice, confronted a league composed of Spain, the
Empire and the Pope. The Spanish-Papal allies seized
Milan in November, 1521, and two subsequent French
expeditions sent by the king of France to regain the
capital of Lombardy ended in disaster, with the
defeats of Bicocca (1522) and Romagnano Sesia (1523).
Finally, in autumn 1524, François I decided to
personally invade Italy at the head of a powerful army.
Inferior in numbers, Charles V's army left Milan and
nearly all of Lombardy without a fight, leaving a strong
garrison in the city of Pavia, which the French troops
besieged from October, 1524. After several months, an
Imperial relief army came close to the city. At dawn of
24 February 1525, near the big Parco Visconteo which
stretched from Pavia to the Certosa, the French and
Imperial armies clashed in a short and confused
battle, which ended in the complete rout, and
capture on the field, of the King of France.
Notwithstanding this defeat, which endangered the very
existence of the French kingdom, and one year of harsh
imprisonment in Spain, François I, as soon as he was
freed, restarted his personal war against Charles V. In
May, 1526, he stipulated at Cognac a league with those
Italian States, which most felt the weight of Spanish
dominance upon them: the Papacy, Venice and the same
Francesco II Sforza, second son of Ludovico il Moro,
just placed on the throne of the Duchy of Milan, once
again by imperial arms. It was a new, unusual
"Holy League", supported by the
super-christian king of France against the catholic King
of Spain,Charles V!
First, tragic consequence of this resumption of
hostilities was the coming into Italy, in November 1526,
of a new Imperial army, composed of thousands of German
Landsknechts, which, after some hesitation, made its way
to Rome, "pursued but not molested” by the League
army. By the first days of May 1527, the Eternal City,
which refused to open its gates to Charles V's soldiers,
was assaulted and submitted to an horrendous sack, which
terrorized and upset Christianity for the
brutalities and the sacrileges which took place. The
pope himself, Clemente VII, barely survived by taking
shelter in Castel Sant'Angelo, where he was compelled by
the victors to stipulate an humiliating truce, which, as
a first step, envisioned his immediate departure from
the League. Two months after the Sack of Rome, a French
army, once again commanded by viscount Lautrec, came to
Italy and again marched towards Lombardy. Antonio de
Leyva, governor of the Duchy of Milan, rallied his few
forces in the capital, leaving nearly unguarded the rest
of the Duchy. The city of Pavia, defended only by a weak
imperial garrison, was seized, and brutally sacked, by
the French army, which, afterwards, headed south, in a
late and useless attempt to "free" Rome.
Lautrec's army decimated by disease, dissolved at the
gates of Naples, while besieging it in the
summer of 1528. Another French army , this time
commanded by François de Bourbon, count of Saint-Pol,
was utterly defeated in June ,1529,at Landriano in
the Milanese country, by de Leyva's Spanish forces.
The defeat of Landriano, and the ensuing treaty of
Cambrai, are the last important events of the Italian
Wars, together with the siege and surrender of
Florence, which opened its gates to the Imperial troops
in August, 1530, returning it to the Seignory of the
Medici.
In November 1535, Francesco II Sforza died and Milan
became in all respects a Spanish province. The following
military campaigns waged by François I and by his son
and successor ,Henry II, did not substantially change
the situation. The peace of Cateau-Cambresis, signed on
the 3rd of April 1559, where France renounced to all its
claims on Naples and Lombardy, may be really considered
the last, definitive victory of Charles V of the
Hapsburgs and the confirmation of Spanish supremacy in
Italy for many years to come.
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