Military History of Italy - Italian Wars

Italian Wars

For more details on this topic, see Italian Wars.

The relative peace that had prevailed in Italy following the Treaty of Lodi was shattered by the beginning of the Italian Wars in 1494. Ludovico Sforza, seeking allies, suggested to Charles VIII of France that the latter press his claim to the throne of Naples; Charles obliged and launched an invasion of the peninsula. The French march to, and capture of, Naples was accomplished with relative ease—the Italian states being shocked at the brutality of French tactics and the efficacy of the new French artillery—but Charles was forced to withdraw from Italy in 1495, after a hastily-constructed alliance fought him at the Battle of Fornovo. Charles died in 1498, but the conflict he started would be continued by his successors; the Italian Wars would last until 1559, involving, at various times, all the major states of western Europe (France, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, England, Scotland, the Republic of Venice, the Papal States, and most of the city-states of Italy) as well as the Ottoman Empire, and rapidly becoming a general struggle for power and territory among the various participants, marked with an increasing degree of alliances, counter-alliances, and regular betrayals.

In 1499, Louis XII of France launched the Second Italian War, invading Lombardy and seizing the Duchy of Milan. He then reached an agreement with Ferdinand I of Spain to divide Naples. By 1502, combined French and Spanish forces had seized control of the Kingdom; disagreements about the terms of the partition led to a war between Louis and Ferdinand. By 1503, Louis, having been defeated at the Battle of Cerignola and Battle of Garigliano, was forced to withdraw from Naples, which was left under the control of the Spanish viceroy, Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba. Meanwhile, Pope Alexander VI attempted to carve a Borgia state from the Romagna through the efforts of Cesare Borgia.

In 1508, Pope Julius II formed the League of Cambrai, in which France, the Papacy, Spain and the Holy Roman Empire agreed to attack the Republic of Venice and partition her mainland territories. The resulting War of the League of Cambrai was a kaleidoscope of shifting alliances. The French defeated the Venetian army at the Battle of Agnadello, capturing extensive territories; but Julius, now regarding France as a greater threat, left the League and allied himself with Venice. After a year of fighting over the Romagna, he proclaimed a Holy League against the French; this rapidly grew to include England, Spain, and the Holy Roman Empire. The French were driven from Italy in late 1512, despite their victory at the Battle of Ravenna earlier that year, leaving Milan in the hands of Maximilian Sforza and his Swiss mercenaries; but the Holy League fell apart over the subject of dividing the spoils, and in 1513 Venice allied with France, agreeing to partition Lombardy between them. The French invasion of Milan in 1513 was defeated at the Battle of Novara, which was followed by a series of defeats for the French alliance; but Francis I of France defeated the Swiss at the Battle of Marignano in 1515, and the treaties of Noyon and Brussels left France and Venice in control of northern Italy.

The election of Charles of Spain as Holy Roman Emperor in 1519 led to a collapse of relations between France and the Habsburgs which resulted in the Italian War of 1521, in which France and Venice were pitted against England, the Papacy, and Charles's Habsburg possessions. Prosper Colonna defeated the French at the Battle of Bicocca, driving them from Lombardy. A series of abortive invasions of France by the allies and of Italy by the French continued until 1524, when Francis personally led a French army into Lombardy, only to be defeated and captured at the Battle of Pavia; imprisoned in Madrid, Francis was forced to agree to extensive concessions. Released in 1526, Francis repudiated the terms of the agreement, allied himself with Venice, the Papacy, Milan, and England, and launched the War of the League of Cognac. In 1527, Imperial troops sacked Rome itself; the French expedition to capture Naples the next year failed, leading Francis and Charles to conclude the Treaty of Cambrai. Charles then concluded a series of treaties at Barcelona and Bologna which eliminated all his opponents save the Florentine Republic, which was subdued by the Siege of Florence and returned to the Medici.

The remainder of the Italian Wars—which flared up again in 1535—was primarily a struggle between the Habsburgs and the Valois; while Italy was, at times, a battlefield, the Italian states played little further role in the fighting. The French managed to seize and hold Turin, defeating an Imperial army at the Battle of Ceresole in 1544; but the warfare continued (primarily in northern France) until Henry II of France was forced to accept the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis in 1559, in which he renounced any further claims to Italy.

By the end of the wars in 1559, Habsburg Spain had been established as the premier power of Europe, to the detriment of France. The states of Italy, which had wielded power disproportionate to their size during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, were reduced to second-rate powers or destroyed entirely.

The Italian Wars had a number of consequences for the work and workplace of Leonardo da Vinci; his plans for a "Gran Cavallo" horse statue in 1495 were dropped when the seventy tons of bronze intended for the statue were instead cast into weapons to save Milan. Later, following a chance encounter with Francis I after the Battle of Marignano, Leonardo agreed to move to France, where he spent his final years.

In France, Henry II was fatally wounded in a joust held during the celebrations of the peace. His death led to the accession of his 15-year-old son Francis II, who in turn soon died. The French monarchy was thrown into turmoil, which increased further with the outbreak of the French Wars of Religion in 1562.