Italian Wars
The
Italian Wars (1494â€"1559) was a series of conflicts that involved, 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. Originally arising from a dynastic dispute over
Naples, the wars rapidly became a general struggle for power and territory among their various participants, and were marked with an increasing degree of alliances, counter-alliances, and regular betrayals.
Following the
Wars in Lombardy, Northern Italy had been largely at peace during the reigns of
Cosimo de' Medici and
Lorenzo de' Medici in
Florence.
First Italian War (1494â€"95)
Ludovico Sforza, seeking an ally against the
Republic of Venice, encouraged
Charles VIII of France to invade Italy, using the
Angevin claim to the throne of
Naples as a pretext. When
Ferdinand I of Naples died in 1494, Charles invaded the peninsula. For several months, French forces moved through Italy virtually unopposed, since the
condottieri armies of the Italian
city-states were unable to resist them. Their sack of Naples finally provoked a reaction, however, and the
League of Venice was formed against them. Italian troops defeated the French at the
battle of Fornovo, forcing Charles to withdraw to France. Ludovico, having betrayed the French at Fornovo, retained his throne until
1499, when Charles' successor,
Louis XII of France, invaded
Lombardy and seized
Milan.
Second Italian War (1499–1504)
In 1500, Louis, having reached an agreement with
Ferdinand I of Spain to divide Naples, marched south from Milan. 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,
Ramon de Cardona.
War of the League of Cambrai (1508–16)
Meanwhile,
Pope Julius II was more concerned with curbing the territorial expansion of the
Republic of Venice, and in
1508 formed the League of Cambrai, in which France, the Papacy, Spain and the
Holy Roman Empire agreed to restrain the Venetians. Although the League destroyed much of the Venetian army at the
battle of Agnadello in
1509, it failed to capture
Padua, and in
1510, Julius, now regarding France as a greater threat, left the League and allied himself with Venice. Following a year of fighting over the
Romagna, during which the Veneto-Papal alliance was repeatedly defeated, the Pope proclaimed a Holy League against the French; this rapidly grew to include England, Spain, and the Holy Roman Empire.
French forces under
Gaston de Foix inflicted an overwhelming defeat on a Spanish army at the
Battle of Ravenna in 1512, but Foix was killed during the battle, and the French were forced to withdraw from Italy by an invasion of Milan by the
Swiss, who reinstated
Maximilian Sforza to the ducal throne. The Holy League, left victorious, fell apart over the subject of dividing the spoils, and in 1513 Venice allied with France, agreeing to partition Lombardy between them.
Louis mounted another invasion of Milan, but was defeated at the
battle of Novara, which was quickly followed by a series of Holy League victories at
La Motta,
Guinegate, and
Flodden Field, in which the French, Venetian, and Scottish forces were decisively defeated. However, the death of Julius left the League without effective leadership, and when Louis' successor,
Francis I, defeated the Swiss at
Marignano in
1515, the League collapsed, and by the treaties of Noyon and Brussels, surrendered to France and Venice the entirety of northern Italy.
Italian War of 1521 (1521–25)
The elevation of
Charles of Spain to
Holy Roman Emperor, a position that Francis had desired, led to a collapse of relations between France and the Habsburgs. In
1519, a Spanish invasion of
Navarre, nominally a French fief, provided Francis with a pretext for starting a general war; French forces flooded into Italy and began a campaign to drive Charles from Naples. The French were outmatched, however, by the fully-developed Spanish
tercio tactics, and suffered a series of crippling defeats at
Bicocca and
Sesia against Spanish troops under
Fernando de Avalos. With Milan itself threatened, Francis personally led a French army into Lombardy in 1525, only to be defeated and captured at the
battle of Pavia; imprisoned in
Madrid, Francis was forced to agree to extensive concessions over his Italian territories.
War of the League of Cognac (1526–30)
In 1526,
Pope Clement VII, alarmed at the growing power of the Empire, formed the
League of Cognac against Charles, allying himself, the
Republic of Venice,
Florence, and a number of smaller Italian states with France. Venice, however, refused to contribute troops; with the withdrawal of French forces from Lombardy, Charles proceeded to subdue Florence, and, in 1527,
sack Rome itself. Clement was imprisoned by Imperial troops, and offered no further resistance to Charles. With the conclusion of the
Treaty of Cambrai in 1529, which formally removed Francis from the war, the League collapsed; Venice made peace with Charles, while Florence was placed again under the
Medici.
Italian War of 1535 (1535–38)
The inconclusive third war between Charles and Francis began with the death of
Francesco Maria Sforza, the duke of
Milan. When Charles' son
Phillip inherited the duchy, Francis invaded Italy, capturing
Turin, but failed to take Milan. In response, Charles invaded
Provence, advancing to
Aix-en-Provence, but withdrew to Spain rather than attacking the heavily fortified
Avignon. The
Truce of Nice ended the war, leaving Turin in French hands but effecting no significant change in the map of Italy.
Italian War of 1542 (1542–46)
Francis, allying himself with
Suleiman I of the
Ottoman Empire, launched a final invasion of Italy. A Franco-Ottoman fleet captured the city of
Nice in August 1543, and laid siege to the citadel. The defenders were relieved within a month. The French, under François, Count d'Enghien, defeated an Imperial army at the
Battle of Ceresole in 1544, but the French failed to penetrate further into Lombardy. Charles and
Henry VIII of England then proceeded to invade northern France, seizing
Boulogne and
Soissons. A lack of cooperation between the Spanish and English armies, coupled with increasingly aggressive Ottoman attacks, led Charles to abandon these conquests, restoring the status quo once again.
Habsburg-Valois War (1551–59)
In 1551,
Henry II of France, who had succeeded Francis to the throne, declared war against Charles with the intent of recapturing Italy and ensuring French, rather than Habsburg, domination of European affairs. An early offensive against
Lorraine was successful, but the attempted French invasion of
Tuscany in 1553 was defeated at the
Battle of Marciano. Charles' abdication in 1556 split the Habsburg empire between
Phillip II of Spain and
Ferdinand I, and shifted the focus of the war to
Flanders, where Phillip, in conjunction with
Emmanuel Philibert of
Savoy, defeated the French at
St. Quentin. England's entry into the war later that year led to the French capture of
Calais, and French armies plundered Spanish possessions in the
Low Countries; but Henry was nonetheless forced to accept the
Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis, in which he renounced any further claims to Italy.
The wars saw the introduction of many significant advances in military technology and tactics, including
field artillery, muskets, and
combined arms tactics.
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 impacts on the work and workplace of
Leonardo da Vinci, for example scuppering his plans for a "
Gran Cavallo" horse statue in
1495 when the seventy tons of bronze were instead cast into weapons to save
Milan.
The Italian Wars are one of the first major conflicts for which extensive contemporary accounts from people involved in the wars are available, owing largely to the presence of literateâ€"and often extremely well-educatedâ€"commanders.
Nomenclature
The naming of the component conflicts within the Italian Wars has never been standardized, and has varied among the various historians dealing with the period. Some wars may be split or combined in a number of permutations, causing ordinal numbering systems to be inconsistent among different sources. The wars may be referred to by their dates, or by the monarchs fighting them.
Contemporary accounts
A major contemporary account for the early portion of the Italian Wars is
Francesco Guicciardini's
Storia d'Italia (
History of Italy), written during the conflict, and advantaged by the access Guicciardini had to Papal affairs.
The death of
Henry II of France at the celebrations of the wars' end quickly led to the collapse of the French monarchy in the
French Wars of Religion.
* Arfaioli, Maurizio.
The Black Bands of Giovanni: Infantry and Diplomacy During the Italian Wars (1526â€"1528). Pisa: Pisa University Press, Edizioni Plus, 2005. ISBN 8884922313.
* Baumgartner, Frederic J.
Louis XII. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994. ISBN 0312120729.
*
Black, Jeremy. "Dynasty Forged by Fire."
MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History 18, no. 3 (Spring 2006): 34â€"43. .
*
Blockmans, Wim.
Emperor Charles V, 1500â€"1558. Translated by Isola van den Hoven-Vardon. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. ISBN 0340731109.
*
Guicciardini, Francesco.
The History of Italy. Translated by Sydney Alexander. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984. ISBN 0691008000.
* Hackett, Francis.
Francis the First. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1937.
* Hall, Bert.
Weapons and Warfare in Renaissance Europe: Gunpowder, Technology, and Tactics. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. ISBN 0801855314.
* Konstam, Angus.
Pavia 1525: The Climax of the Italian Wars. Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 1996. ISBN 1855325047.
*
Norwich, John Julius.
A History of Venice. New York: Vintage Books, 1989. ISBN 0679721975.
*
Oman, Charles.
A History of the Art of War in the Sixteenth Century. London: Methuen & Co., 1937.
* Phillips, Charles and Alan Axelrod.
Encyclopedia of Wars. 3 vols. New York: Facts on File, 2005. ISBN 0816028516.
* Taylor, Frederick Lewis.
The Art of War in Italy, 1494â€"1529. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1973. ISBN 0837150256.
