ITALIAN WAR OF 1494-1498

(Redirected from First Italian War)

The 'First Italian War' (1494–95), sometimes referred to as the 'Italian War of 1494' or 'Charles VIII's Italian War', was the opening phase of the Italian Wars. The war pitted Charles VIII of France, who had initial Milanese aid, against the Holy Roman Empire, Spain, and an alliance of Italian powers led by Pope Alexander VI.

Contents

Prelude

League of Venice

References

Prelude

Pope Innocent VIII, in conflict with Ferdinand I of Naples over Ferdinand's refusal to pay papal dues, had excommunicated and deposed Ferdinand by a bull of 11 September 1489 and offered the kingdom of Naples to Charles VIII; though in 1492 Innocent restored Ferdinand to favor before dying, 25 July 1494, the offer remained an apple of discord thrown into Italian politics.
Ludovico Sforza, having finally inherited the Duchy of Milan that he had long controlled, in October 1494, found himself opposed by Alfonso II of Naples, since that January the King of Naples, who also had a claim on the Duchy. Ludovico decided to remove this threat by spurring the efforts of Charles VIII, who had a remote claim to Naples through the Angevin line and was being encouraged by his favourite, Étienne de Vesc. Charles, encouraged by Ludovico, gathered a large army, including the first siege train to include artillery, and invaded the peninsula. Easily subduing Florence, the French reached Naples in February 1495 and captured it without a siege or pitched battle.

League of Venice

The speed of the French advance, together with the brutality of their attacks on cities, left the remaining states of Italy in shock. Ludovico, realizing that Charles had a claim to Milan as well, and would likely not be sated with the annexation of Naples alone, turned to the Papacy. Embroiled in a power game with France and various Italian states over his attempts to secure secular fiefdoms for his children, Alexander VI succeeded on 31 March 1495 in arranging an alliance, known as the Holy League of 1495 or the League of Venice, of several opponents of French hegemony in Italy— the Papacy, Ferdinand of Aragon who was also King of Sicily, the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I, Sforza in Milan and the Republic of Venice— whose ostensible purpose in joining the League was to oppose the Ottoman Empire, while its actual objective was to expel the French from Italy. This alliance, pledging itself to the expulsion of the French from Italy, gathered an army under the condottiero Francesco II of Gonzaga. Charles, unwilling to be trapped in Naples, marched north to Lombardy, where he met the League's army at the Battle of Fornovo, 6 July 1495. Although his defeat there after a very brief encounter was not decisive, he was nonetheless forced to abandon much of the booty from his campaign and return to France, where he soon died before he could regroup his forces and return to Italy.

References

★ Phillips, Charles and Alan Axelrod. ''Encyclopedia of Wars''. New York: Facts on File, 2005. ISBN 0-8160-2851-6.