France's Pivotal Role: Sanudo Diaries: October 12, 1498

In 1530 the very last Duke of Milan visited Venice on October 10 for the first time. The visit was a long time coming but to learn this story you have to go back over thirty years and learn a bit about France and more about Sanudo's own history.

nedits: In 1494 Charles VIII of France led an expedition over the Alps to take Milan. He claimed it part of his inheritance though there were other claimants. Charles' cousin, his successor Louis XII eventually did seize Milan and held it in 1499. But Marin Sanudo saw the first attempt as such a momentous one, he wrote a book about it, called La spedizione di Carlo VIII in Italia which tells that story through December 1495. His Diaries begin January 1, 1496 with a broader scope. He was recognizing that the range of Venetian interests was much larger. [p. xxvii, intro of Cita Excelentissima: Venice.] 

Editor's note: "... in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries Venice gave no European power more consideration than it gave France. The Venetian alliance with the French king "the most Christian king", was usually the hinge of its policy. Whether Venice found itself opposed to that power, as in the earliest passages of the diaries on the French campaign, fearing the preponderant role France might play in the politics of Italy, or allied, as in the League of Cognac, it was clear that the role of the French monarch and his armies loomed large, drawing alternately Venice's admiration and it's apprehension.

Charles VIII did not long survive the expedition to Italy that had been the subject of Sanudo's book and had prompted its continuity in the shape of the diaries. Charles died in 1498, to be succeeded by his cousin Louis XII, whose Orleans inheritance included a claim to Milan. The Italian Wars now continued with a focus on northern Italy..." p. 186.

nedits: this relazione, their term for 'report' comes from their representative at the French court, named Stella who tells the Signoria about the new king Louis.

Editor's footnote: "Stella was one of the most successful Venetian civil servants, a non-patrician who would rise to the highest citizen rank, that of grand chancellor."

Sanudo Diaries: October 12, 1498, (2:30-31); "Zuan Piero Stella, our secretary, having arrived from France, presented his report to the Collegio. First: His Majesty the king [Louis XII] sent his greeting and recommended himself to the most serene prince and Signoria of Venice. He is forty years of age, distrustful, and avaricious. The taking of Milan is very important to him and he bears great ill will toward Lord Lodovico [Sforza], the present Duke of Milan. He has told him [Stella]: "You will say to the Signoria that while it is my ally, it need fear no power on earth." The king's favorite, the Monsignor of Ligny, who is twenty-eight years old and a Savoyard, is in negotiation to marry him [Louis XII] to the daughter of King Federico [of Naples]. She is in France, and a grand master of Brittany is also negotiating with her .... In France many have died of hunger because of the levies [taxes] ordered by Charles [before his death], principally from Paris south. When our ambassadors arrived in France, two opinions circulated in the court: one was that the Signoria would not tolerate the king's taking of Milan, [because it did not want] to have someone of this kind and power so near. The other was that the Signoria would not mind, because the king had no children and never had been able to have children with any woman; he would conquer the state of Milan, and then the Signoria would have it after his death, as happened in the case of Monsignor of Andrages with Pisa, etc. Our secretary believes that the king has formed a union with the queen [of Brittany], who is the widow of King Charles, called Lady Anne, at San German, near Paris, where he found the king and her and another man alone in a chamber."

Editor's footnote: " Two months after this report in December 1498, King Louis XII obtained a divorce from Jeanne (daughter of Louis XI) and early in 1499 he married Anne of Brittany (widow of Charles VIII) in order to keep this important duchy for the crown. In spite of the speculation, this matched produced two daughters, Claude (who married the future [French king] Francis I) and Renee, who married Ercole II d'Este." p. 187

Sanudo's Diaries: (con't) "The Monsignor of Clarius [William of Poitiers, Monsignor of Clariens], a native of Provence and former intimate friend of the king who went chasing after women with him when they were young, is completely on the Aragonese side [read: Naples' side]. He is the one who arranged for Frederico's ambassadors to come to France, and he thinks that he will handle those matters, since the king is more concerned with the Milanese undertaking, saying that that duchy pertains to him, while the kingdom [of Naples] does not. The king has found no money remaining in King Charles's treasury and has spent 60,000 francs for his funeral. He does not wish to impose new levies, and his soldiers were paid... four times a year. All of the king's revenues come from Languedoc and Normandy [Brittany]. There is no money in France, and they are poor, and little money circulates between Paris and Italy...."

Editor's note: "The reign of Louis XII [1498-1514] saw a number of invasions into Italy as the French king pressed his claims to Milan. He [Louis] joined the War of the League of Cambrai against Venice, occupying Milan and Brescia and leading his own troops to victory at Agnadello, but then he saw territorial conquests slip back into Venetian hands. " p. 188

nedits: Brescia was recaptured by the French in 1512 but lost again when Gaston de Foix was killed in 1513.

Editor's note: "Louis died during the night of December 31, 1514, leaving the kingdom to the Valois line and the young dashing Francis I (1515-1547), whose tastes were as Italianate as his ambitions." p. 188


All quotes as Sanudo Diaries or Editor's notes or Editor's Footnotes from Venice, Cita Excellentissima, Selection from the Renaissance Diaries of Marin Sanudo translated by Linda L Carroll,  editors: Patricia H LaBalme and Laura Sanguineti White, published by Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008