Third Campaign
The third war (1431-1433) started, therefore, when Visconti took up the Lucchese cause, by sending them Francesco Sforza, with 3,000 horse; Sforza, however, was eventually bought off with fifty thousand ducats from the Florentines, who continued the siege of Lucca after the condottiero had left. Called in by the besieged, Visconti managed to have the Republic of Genoa declare war against Florence. The subsequent defeat on the Serchio banks of their commander, Guidantonio da Montefeltro (December 2, 1430) encouraged the Florentines to engage the aid of Venice once more and re-erect their lapsed League, with the favour of the new Pope, Eugene IV, a Venetian. Visconti replied by rehiring Piccinino and Sforza, who were again to face Carmagnola.
The League's army was first beaten at Soncino (May 17, 1431), while Luigi Colonna defeated the Venetians at Cremona, Cristoforo Lavello pushed back the Montferrat troops, and Piccinino established strong positions in Tuscany. Another source of dismay for the revived League was the destruction of the Po Fleet under Niccolò Trevisani near Pavia (June 23). In 1431 Visconti also found a precious ally in Amadeus VIII of Savoy in exchange for his help against John Jacob of Montferrat.
Venice won a naval victory over Genoa at San Fruttuoso on 27 August 1431, but on land Carmagnola, the commander of Venetian forces, moved cautiously, avoiding a pitched battle and raising the suspicion he could have been bought by Visconti, while the latter was also joined by Sigismund who had entered Italy to receive the imperial crown. In the end Carmagnola was suspended; recalled by the Council of Ten, he was arrested in March 1432, tried for treason and beheaded outside the Doge's Palace. In the November 1432 a Venetian army was crushed by Piccinino at the Battle of Delebio by a joint army of Milan and Valtellina, which had been invaded by the Serenissima in 1431.
The peace of Ferrara in May 1433 institutionalized an unsteady status quo. The Florentine war with Lucca and her allies likewise resulted in a return to the previous status quo, but the major League leader's lack of successes had lost much charisma: the Venetian doge Francesco Foscari was on the verge of resigning, while Cosimo de' Medici was imprisoned and confined in Padua. Another result of the peace agreement was the reduction of Montferrat to a satellite of Savoy.
Read more about this topic: Wars In Lombardy
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