The real problem for France in the 1480's and '90's was Rome but she wanted Naples. Just so, France required a foothold on the peninsula to oversee their interests. This was so that, long after their invasions and capture of Milan at the end of the 15th century, France could continue to demand attention from the whole of Italy.
But why Milan in 1494? Simply put, they were rich and relatively near and had been just out of reach for so long. France could not afford to let all Italy slip into Spanish control.
There were five major city-states besides Rome in Italy during the time we call the renaissance: Venice, Milan, Florence, Naples and Genoa. Any external or internal force that wanted to to deal with any part of Italy including the trade routes for example and the markets that went through it, had to deal with all of these independent city-states, at some level. They were all independent and all interconnected. They all had histories of plying the forces of the church against the emperor and vice versa. They all were in different places on their historical path or different points on their individual cycles. All these cycles were dependent on and influenced each other and in turn had effect on and were effected by the church and Rome as well as the effects of the emperor. It's a complicated and fascinating series of stories. Milan and Genoa both aided Charles VIII in his advancement on Italy. All interconnected.
Genoa, a declining second-rate state who was physically closer to France had already ceded control to the French at least twice because they couldn't maintain their own freedom from outside interests while quelling internal instability at the same time. Indeed, Genoa was no longer the prize she had been even a hundred years before because of these numerous problems. They would give up their freedom in exchange for protection by Francesco Sforza or his heirs ruling Milan, again and again through the fifteenth century as well.
But Milan had meanwhile enjoyed a period of prosperity and stability during the regency of 'il Moro', Ludovico Sforza that was fully a part of the Renaissance sweeping Italy. Leonardo da Vinci lived there through the '80's and '90's - the 1480's and '90's - and France could certainly recognize that. Venice was more complicated and were more useful to the French left focusing on the Ottoman Turks and their holdings in the Adriatic Sea. Despite what Louis XII would tell the Venetians, the problem for France was still Rome and also Naples. And France required a foothold on the peninsula to oversee their interests. The reasons were many, the personalities that brought it to happen varied according to background and motivation. In the end, the city of Milan that had known freedoms and triumphs, glories and tragedies and losses was once again brought low but this time through foreign intervention and control.
For Charles VIII of France, the problem with Rome was her Spanish influence. In 1492 a Borgia had purchased the papacy. Fifty years before the Spanish House of Aragon had taken and held Naples - the 'capital' of The Kingdom of Two Sicily's. Prior to that, the Kingdom of Two Sicilies had been French, a protectorate of the House of Anjou, since the pope in 1264 had asked for help in defending herself and the Papal States of Italy. But in the early 1400's there were a pair of Joanna's of that name that held the titles and the inheritances but needed help in quelling revolt. So extreme was the situation that in 1420, Joanna II adopted and marked Alfonso of the House of Aragon as her heir. He dutifully did his part but she thought he might go farther and exceed his usefulness, so she disowned him. When she died in 1435 she had instead named Rene of Anjou as her heir to Naples and the Sicilies. Alfonso saw his chance and proceeded to try to take Gaeta for a launchpad, fifty miles north of Naples. For nearly eight years Alfonso the Magnanimous would, time and again attack and lay siege to Naples.
In that time Milan had been held under the despotic monarchial dynasty of the Visconti since 1277. There were good Visconti and bad ones, generous and cruel ones. By that time Alfonso of Aragon was trying to take the cape of Gaeta, he himself was captured in a battle at sea by the Genoese. At that time, August 1435, Genoa's sovereign was Milan , so instead of a victory party for themselves, they instead brought him all the way north to be dealt with by the most recent, but also last incarnation of the line, Duke Filippo Maria Visconti. Alfonso V of Aragon knew he had to convince the Duke of one thing. The French, he predicted were making their move and if this Visconti was to keep his inheritance he had to have friends. Alfonso explained he was in the south trying to take back Naples and with the French friendly with Venice in the East and pressuring Genoa in the west, it was just a matter of time before the House of Anjou or Valois would strike again. Filippo of Milan agreed and sent him back south. Better to have such a dangerous man a long way away.
It took many years of war and cost many lives but Alfonso took Naples and in just a few years Fillippo Visconti died without male heir. The naval battle that captured Alfonso V off Gaeta (1435) was perhaps the last naval battle Genoa could claim in her long proud history. Naples would stay in mostly Spanish hands until 1713.
The last Visconti had married his only daughter, a girl Bianca born from a mistress to a mercneary who was canny enough to take the last name given to his father by Joanna II and brave enough to fight with his own men and to take towns with strategy rather than the size of his army. Francesco Sforza fought for Milan, Florence, and Venice, so by the time a few years later when he took and even held Milan the rest of Italy could accept it. Sforza and his heirs would maintain and increase Milan and her income all through the 1400's. By the time Francesco's fourth son Ludovico - il Moro - had died in the dungeon at Loches on the Loire valley in France in 1508, betrayed several times over, both father and son had been called the greatest of Renaissance rulers. It was Ludovico's son that would be the first Duke of Milan to visit Venice in 1530. When he died in 1535, another round of Italian Wars would start.
But in 1492 , the Treaty of Barcelona was set, and the Italian Wars were not long off when Columbus 'discovered' Hispaniola in the Caribbean, and Pope Innocent VIII a friend of the della Rovere clan had died and the Borgia clan were ready to pay if need be to take Rome and the papacy. And so they did. The Borgias would have their time at the height of European power for just over ten years and then their power too would collapse.
sources:
The Renaissance , Will Durant, chs. 6, 13, 16; also pp 609-13; Simon & Schuster, New York, 1953.
Genoa and the Genoese, 958-1528 Steven A Epstein , UNC Press, Chapel Hill, 1996
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