Lehal Library

five states had been in the habit of frightening each other with the threat of foreign intervention. During the war against Rome and Naples in 1480, Florence had invited the French king to pursue his claim to the throne of Naples more actively. In 1482, during a Venetian assault on Ferrara, Florence and Milan had encouraged the Turks to step up their attacks on Venice’s maritime possessions. Venice had replied by inviting the Duke of Orleans to pursue his claim to Milan. In a war against Naples in 1483, Pope Innocent VIII had reminded the Duke of Lorraine that he too had a claim to the southern kingdom and invited him to send troops. There was an element of bluff and brinkmanship in these threats, but in 1494 when King Charles VIII of France accepted Milan’s invitation to make good his claim to the crown of Naples, the bluff was called. Charles marched south with an army far larger than any Italians had seen in living memory. From that moment on, the peninsula would not be free from foreign intervention until the completion of the Risorgimento in 1870. Struggling to hold Naples, the French would invite in the Spanish from Sicily to split the kingdom with them, and the Spanish, after Charles I of Spain inherited the crown of the Holy Roman Empire, would eventually push France back north of the Alps, put Rome to the sack and dominate Italy for 150 years. But that is to leap ahead. In 1494, when the French first marched through Lombardy heading for Naples, Florence was directly in their path and, what’s more, an ally of