First Italian War
Encyclopedia : F : FI : FIR : First Italian War
| First Italian War |
|---|
| Naples – Seminara – Fornovo |
| Italian Wars |
|---|
| First – Second – League of Cambrai – 1521 – League of Cognac – 1535 – 1542 – Habsburg-Valois |
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.
Ludovico Sforza, having seized the throne of the Duchy of Milan in 1494, found himself opposed by the Kingdom of Naples, whose ruler also had a claim on the Duchy. Ludovico decided to remove this threat by the efforts of Charles VIII, who had a claim to Naples through the Angevin line. 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 and captured it with little opposition.
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; Alexander proceeded to construct the League of Venice, including himself, Milan, the Republic of Venice, the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I, and Ferdinand I of Spain. This alliance, pledging itself to the expulsion of the French from Italy, gathered a condottiere army under 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; although his defeat there was not decisive, he was nonetheless forced to abandon much of the booty from his campaign and return to France, where he soon died.
References
- Phillips, Charles and Alan Axelrod. Encyclopedia of Wars. New York: Facts on File, 2005. ISBN 0816028516.
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.