The Rise and Fall of Renaissance France

French intervention in the area had a long history. The emperor Charlemagne had carried the defence of Christendom to the heart of Italy. The Capetian kings, on the other hand, had been content to observe Italian affairs from afar. St Louis refused the kingdom of Sicily, but allowed his brother Charles comte d’Anjou to respond to calls for help from the papacy and to accept for himself and his heirs territories in southern Italy. In 1481, Louis XI inherited the Angevin lands, including the county of Provence and the kingdom of Naples, but was too near death to take possession of them. In 1486 the annexation of Provence to the kingdom of France was formally ratified by the Parlement of Paris; but the claim to Naples was disputed between the king of France and the duke of Lorraine.

An additional complication was the fact that Naples was a papal fief. Its hereditary transmission was determined by a bull of investiture of 1265 which conferred the kingdom on Charles d’Anjou and his heirs in the direct or collateral line up to the fourth degree of kinship. Charles VIII was too far removed in kinship from Charles d’Anjou to qualify, but this did not deter him from pressing his claim. In 1493, Naples was ruled by Ferrante I, the brother-in-law of Ferdinand of Aragon, as part of a kingdom comprising the whole of Italy south of the States of the Church except Sicily which belonged to Ferdinand. Ferrante was hardly a docile vassal of the papacy: he had been excommunicated by Pope Innocent VIII and had opposed the election of Alexander VI, who repeatedly called on the French king to attack Naples.

Charles VIII wanted Naples not only for itself but as a springboard from which to launch a crusade against the Turks. The fifteenth century had seen a rapid expansion of Turkish power westward under Sultan Mehmet II. After capturing Greece and Albania, the Turks established a foothold in southern Italy in August 1480. The death of Mehmet in May 1481 was followed by a respite. In 1482 the Turks were driven out of southern Italy, but they remained a threat. There was general agreement among the Christian powers of the need for a new crusade aimed ultimately at freeing Constantinople and the Holy Places; but there was no consensus as to who should lead it. Two possible candidates were Charles VIII and Maximilian, King of the Romans. Although Philippe de Commynes doubted Charles’s sincerity in proposing a crusade, ample evidence suggests otherwise. As Robert Gaguin, on an embassy to England, explained: the king, his master, was anxious to follow the example set by Henry IV of England, who at the end of his life had planned to lead an expedition to the Holy Land. He was also much impressed by the efforts of Ferdinand of Aragon to wrest the kingdom of Granada from the Saracens. A Venetian envoy wrote from Rome in June 1495: ‘You may be sure that the king’s intention is to attack the Turks. He has made the vow to God and would already have launched his enterprise if so many troubles had not befallen him. I, who have spoken to His Majesty, know this to be true.’

In planning a crusade Charles was almost certainly influenced by a number of legends. One was that of Charlemagne, who had allegedly freed the Holy Places and handed them over to the emperor in Constantinople. Another was that of a king of France, called Philip ‘le despourveu’, who had travelled incognito to Naples in order to rescue the king of Sicily and his daughter from the Saracens. A prophecy popular in the 1490s forecast that a French prince called Charles, crowned at fourteen and married to Justice, would destroy Florence and be crowned in Rome after purging it of bad priests. He would then sail to Greece, become its king, defeat the Turks and end his life as king of Jerusalem.

Charles was also subject to less fanciful influences. There were Neapolitan exiles at his court, such as Antonello San Severino, who wanted his help to return to their native land. He gave them pensions and the use of a fortress in Burgundy until he could raise an army in support of their cause. Alongside the Neapolitans were Frenchmen, like Etienne de Vesc or Guillaume Briçonnet, who could see opportunities of personal enrichment or advancement arise out of a French intervention in Italy. Briçonnet was anxious to get a red hat. Even outside the court there was support for a French expedition south of the Alps. The bankers of Lyon and the merchants of Marseille wanted to expand their commercial interests in the Mediterranean at the expense of the Venetians and Aragonese.

Even within Italy there were forces working for a French intervention. Lodovico Sforza, nicknamed Il Moro, the effective ruler of the duchy of Milan, urged the king of France as early as 1491 to make good his claim to Naples. He suggested that Genoa might serve as a base for an attack on the southern kingdom. In January 1494 he was much alarmed when Alfonso, who had tried several times to have him assassinated, became king of Naples. His appeals to the king of France became desperate. Among Italian states, Florence was the only ally of the king of Naples, for the silk trade on which much of its prosperity depended passed through his territories, yet even there support for a French invasion existed. Many Florentines, who resented the autocratic ways of Piero de’ Medici, looked favourably towards France. For example, the Dominican preacher Savonarola prophesied Charles VIII’s coming in his Lenten sermon of 1493. ‘I have seen’, he exclaimed, ‘in the sky a suspended sword and I have heard these words: Ecce gladius Domini super terram cito et velociter. The sword fell bringing about wars, massacres and numberless ills.’ As for the Venetians, their foreign policy was primarily dictated by commercial interests: they wanted to maintain the status quo in the Adriatic and were, in general, opposed to any move which might antagonize the Turks. Yet they needed French help against the Habsburgs, who, having gained control of Trieste and Fiume, were entertaining maritime ambitions. Thus the Venetians were among the first to encourage Charles VIII to seize Naples. Another Italian who exerted similar pressure upon the king was Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere. He came to France shortly after his defeat in the papal conclave of 1492. Hoping to use a French invasion to topple his successful rival, Pope Alexander VI, he assured the French of the support of the Colonna faction which controlled the port of Ostia and several castles in the Roman Campagna.

Yet if Charles was under heavy pressure at home and abroad to invade Italy, support for such an enterprise among his own subjects was far from unanimous. According to a Florentine envoy it was opposed by the princes of the blood, most other nobles, royal councillors, prelates, finance ministers and all the people. Belgioioso, the Milanese ambassador, remarked: ‘It is truly a miracle that the king, young as he is, has persevered in his design in spite of all the opposition he has encountered.’ Charles himself informed the Italians in 1494 that he had left his kingdom ‘against the wishes of the princes and great nobles’. The opposition, however, was not united. Some great nobles resented the influence exercised by de Vesc and Briçonnet over the king. Louis d’Orléans wanted to divert the expedition from Naples to Milan, to which he had inherited a claim from his grandmother Valentina Visconti. The Bourbons showed no enthusiasm for the enterprise, yet took part in it. Nobles generally believed that the costs of equipping themselves for such a distant campaign would not be offset by the results. However, the main focus of opposition lay in the towns of northern France which refused royal demands for a subsidy. Many French people disapproved of the king leaving his kingdom when the Dauphin was still only an infant.

Commynes tells us that the French invasion of Italy in 1494 was poorly prepared. ‘All things necessary to so great an enterprise’, he writes, ‘were lacking.’ But Guillaume de La Mare, a usually reliable eyewitness, wrote on 27 March: ‘the Neapolitan campaign … is being prepared with the utmost prudence and zeal …There is nothing that the king is not putting into execution with extreme activity and care.’ Collecting the funds necessary to such a campaign was a matter of primary importance. Marshal d’Esquerdes informed Charles that he would need one million gold écus before the start of the campaign and another million once the army had crossed the Alps. The king managed to raise the first million by resorting to various expedients. The great nobles were asked for a loan of 50,000 ducats and contributions were also requested from the Chambre des comptes and other state departments. What the clergy offered is unknown, but a number of bonnes villes responded with varying generosity. Lyon offered 10,000 livres, while Paris refused to give anything. Amiens gave 3000 livres, half as much as the king had demanded. Parts of the royal domain were sold or mortgaged to the tune of 120,000 livres. The wages of royal officials and pensioners were delayed for six months. Finally, the taille was increased to 575,000 livres. As far as the second million was concerned, Charles relied mainly on contributions from various Italian cities.

On 13 February 1494, shortly after the death of Ferrante of Naples, Charles VIII travelled to Lyon and assumed the title of King of Sicily and Jerusalem. He dispatched an ambassador to the pope asking for the investiture of Naples, but on 18 April, at a secret consistory, Alexander conferred it on Ferrante’s son Alfonso. This volte-face by the pope, who had previously been hostile to Ferrante, did not cause the king to change his plans. On 29 July he reaffirmed his determination to go to Italy and appointed Pierre de Bourbon as lieutenant-general of the kingdom in his absence. Meanwhile, Charles assembled his army.

At the start of the summer of 1494 the king’s gendarmerie comprised slightly more than 1500 lances: that is to say, about 6000 to 8000 troops reinforced by the cavalry, archers and crossbowmen of the royal household. In addition there were some Italian lances, comprising fewer men than the French ones (one auxiliary and one page per man-at-arms). The infantry consisted of 4000 to 5000 men raised in France and about as many Swiss mercenaries. Thus it was an army of about 16,000 to 20,000 men which Charles led into Italy. To this number must be added the sizeable amount of non-combatants such as valets and pages, secretaries, merchants, camp followers and vagabonds in quest of loot. An important component of the French army was the artillery, which was larger and more advanced technically than any other and accounted for 8 per cent of the king’s total military expenditure. In 1489, Charles had about 150 pieces, dozens of gunners and large quantities of gunpowder. He was allegedly the first to use in Italy cannon balls made of iron instead of stone.

Charles crossed the Alps at the end of August, using the Mont Genèvre pass. His principal lieutenants were Stuart d’Aubigny, Louis d’Orléans and Gilbert de Montpensier. The army’s passage through the mountains was eased by the fact that the artillery was sent to Genoa by sea. On reaching Piedmont the army marched on Asti, which belonged to the duc d’Orléans, before advancing on Turin. The house of Savoy had for some time distanced itself from France, but the duke was a child and his mother, Blanche, could only welcome her cousin the French king, backed, as he was, by such a considerable force. On 5 September he was magnificently received in Turin. Meanwhile, at Rapallo, the first serious engagement of the campaign took place, when a Neapolitan attack on Genoa was repulsed by a fleet commanded by Louis d’Orléans. After spending nearly a month in Asti, Charles moved to Milan. On 22 October, following the death of Giangaleazzo Sforza, the citizens asked Lodovico to become their duke. Although there were other claimants to the duchy, including Louis d’Orléans, Charles did not oppose Lodovico for fear of prejudicing his own campaign.

Meanwhile, in Florence, news of the French invasion revived the myth of liberty so closely associated with the French crown. Piero de’ Medici, unlike his father, had failed to remain primus inter pares. His government had become increasingly arbitrary. Without the consent of the Signoria he had drawn closer to Naples and broken the city’s alliance with France, a move seen by the Florentines as a serious abuse of power. Their civic tradition was deeply rooted in the Carolingian legend. According to Villani, Charlemagne had given them independence and freedom while Charles d’Anjou had caused the Guelf cause to triumph over imperial tutelage. Charles VIII was regarded as their descendant and his coming was taken by the Florentines as an opportunity to demonstrate their unshaken loyalty to the French alliance. As the French army penetrated Tuscany there was panic in Florence. On 30 October, after a show of resistance, Piero handed over to Charles the Signoria’s fortresses. His caution or cowardice precipitated his downfall. On 9 November the Medici regime was toppled.

The French invasion of Italy also coincided with a widely felt eschatological vision. Many people believed that the old world was coming to an end and a new Golden Age was about to begin. This seemed confirmed by a profusion of natural phenomena such as eclipses, floods and thunderbolts. Charles VIII appeared as the man of Providence chosen to bring peace, liberty and justice, to purify the church, to drive the infidel out of Jerusalem and to rid Italy of her shame. He was still in Pisa when he was visited by a deputation from Florence headed by Savonarola, who, claiming to be God’s spokesman, acclaimed him as ‘an instrument in the hands of the Lord’. The friar urged Charles to fulfil his divine mission of purification, begging him at the same time to show mercy to the people of Florence. Meanwhile, the Pisans asked to be released from Florentine tutelage, but Charles would give them only vague promises; the support of Florence was more precious to him at this moment than the gratitude of the Pisans. On 17 November he entered Florence in triumph. However, his accord with the republic alienated the duke of Milan who had hoped to recover two former Genoese towns – Sarzana and Pietrasanta – which Florence had seized in the past. He recalled 6000 troops who were serving alongside the French and began to intrigue against them with other powers.

From the moment Charles crossed the Alps until his arrival in Naples, his march through Italy was a triumphal progress. Wherever he passed, large crowds flocked to acclaim him. Each town received him in the same way: an official deputation, made up of senior churchmen and representatives of the local government, would come forward to meet him, they would hand him the keys of the town, and a length of its wall would be destroyed as a mark of subservience. Great efforts were also made to decorate the streets in the king’s honour. Precious hangings adorned the façades of houses and temporary monuments, such as triumphal arches, were erected in his path. Inscriptions comparing him to Caesar or Alexander the Great stressed the sacredness of his mission as well as his invincibility. Many coins bearing his effigy were struck. Wherever the king made his entry he was accompanied by a large military contingent. Italian spectators were much impressed by the sheer size of the French army and by the colourful costumes worn by the king and his nobles.

The unanimous capitulation of towns to Charles VIII was inspired not only by his reputation as a divinely appointed liberator but also by fear of the force at his disposal. The size of the French army, its formidable armament and the fighting qualities of its troops were awesome to the Italians. Although the invasion met with little resistance and was, therefore, largely bloodless, a few incidents, such as the sack of a fortress at Fivizzano, revealed the cruelty of the French. They took no prisoners, and massacred everyone regardless of sex or age. They seemed to have respect neither for God nor the devil. The furia francese was compared by some observers to a tempest. Not content with shedding blood, the French liked to set fire to everything. An eyewitness, Passaro, described them as worse than the Turks and the Moors, worse even than savages.

The French invasion divided Italy rather than helping to unify it. The various states fell into two camps as they sided with or against Charles. His coming created a climate of tension in the peninsula in which antagonisms hitherto latent became manifest. A wind of revolt blew across the peninsula, reviving old conflicts between Guelfs and Ghibellines. Mercenary captains offered their services to the highest bidder. Towns of the contado rid themselves of the tutelage of the Signoria. In Tuscany, revolts broke out in Pisa, Montepulciano and Arezzo. The fragile edifice of the States of the Church also collapsed: at Perugia, the Baglioni strengthened their authority at the pope’s expense. The towns of the papal states capitulated to the French in rapid succession. Partisans of the Colonna harried the pope up to the gates of Rome. Alexander VI, finding himself abandoned by his court and the people of Rome, prepared to fortify Castel Sant’Angelo in self-defence.

The pope had every reason to be fearful as the French drew closer to Rome. He was not unduly worried about the threat to the Aragonese regime in Naples, which had not always been submissive to his suzerainty, but he did not wish to see the French permanently established in the southern kingdom. On the other hand, he could not risk opposing the king of France for fear of provoking a Gallican reaction and reviving an earlier threat that a General Council would be created bent on reforming the church in its head and members. Charles, for his part, did not wish to incur excommunication which would harm his international standing. So both sides played a devious game. In a bid to avoid Charles’s presence in Rome, Alexander offered to meet him on the way, but the king declared himself unworthy of such an honour. His Christian duty, he explained, was to do the pope reverence in his own apostolic palace. He assured him of his desire to lead a crusade against the Turks after reconquering his Neapolitan inheritance.

As the king pressed on through Orvieto, Viterbo and Bracciano, his army occupied Civitavecchia. On 20 December the French vanguard was joined outside Ostia by 2000 infantry that had come from Genoa by sea. The talks with the pope, meanwhile, dragged on. Charles wanted the investiture of Naples and the surrender into his own hands of Djem, the sultan’s brother, who was being held hostage in Rome. Alexander wriggled for as long as possible, but eventually gave way. On 29 December the French army entered Rome as a few Neapolitan troops who had come to defend the pope left the city. Charles made his entry by torchlight on the night of 31 December. He had cause to feel satisfied with his progress to date. Within four months he had reached the Holy City without encountering any major obstacle; his army was more or less intact.

On 15 January, Charles and the pope came to an agreement and next day the king knelt before the Vicar of Christ after attending mass at St Peter’s. On 20 January, Alexander celebrated mass in the basilica before the king and a congregation of 15,000 people. Among the cardinals present was the newly created Guillaume Briçonnet. The service lasted five hours, after which the pope blessed the French troops and gave them general absolution. Charles took his leave of the pope on 28 January. He had gained right of passage for his army through the States of the Church, but Alexander had not given him the investiture of Naples.

The French now resumed their southward advance. On 4 February they attacked the fortress of Monte San Giovanni. As the king wrote:

My cousin Montpensier had arrived before me with my artillery … and after firing for four hours my said artillery had made a breach wide enough for an assault. I ordered it to be made by men-at-arms and others, and though the place was held by 5–600 good fighting men as well as its inhabitants, they went in in such a manner that, thanks to God [the town] has been taken with little loss to me, and to the defenders great loss, punishment and great example to those others who might think of obstructing me.

As the French were entering the kingdom of Naples, its people rose in rebellion. King Alfonso fled to Sicily after abdicating in favour of his son Ferrandino, who, finding himself abandoned by most of his followers, shut himself up in the Castel Nuovo in Naples. On 19 February the first French troops entered the city. Soon afterwards Ferrandino accepted the offer of honourable retirement in France.

Charles VIII had improved on Caesar’s achievement for, as Guicciardini wrote, the king had conquered even before he had seen. This he owed largely to the reputation which had preceded him, clearing obstacles from his path. Without exception every town on his march south had opened its gates to him, making possible the spanking pace of his progress. In the words of Marsilio Ficino, Charles ‘had shaken the world by a nod of his head’. Chroniclers were dumbfounded by the effortlessness of his victory. One remarked that he had conquered Naples with a falcon on his wrist. Some contemporaries looked for rational explanations of his triumph; others just called it a miracle.

The king’s first task was to reward all the people who had assisted him in his campaign. They were showered with offices and lands. Eleven Frenchmen and only one Neapolitan were appointed to the council of state (sacro consilio). Frenchmen also acquired the principal offices of state, the only notable exceptions being the prince of Salerno and Giacomo Caracciolo, who recovered their offices of admiral and chancellor respectively. The governorships of provinces and towns were distributed in the same way. Etienne de Vesc, one of the main promoters of the Neapolitan expedition, acquired a veritable principality: he became duke of Nola and Ascoli, count of Avellino, great chamberlain and president of the Sommaria or chamber of accounts. The Colonna family was rewarded with dozens of fiefs. Several profitable marriages were also concluded between French noblemen and Neapolitan heiresses. Thus Louis de Luxembourg married Eleonora de Guevara, whose lands in Apulia yielded an annual income of 30,000 to 40,000 ducats, and Pierre de Rohan, marshal de Gié, married Eleonora’s younger sister.

However, the French conquest of Naples was not acceptable in the long term to other Italian states. In March 1495, as the king of France and his troops were enjoying the pleasures, reputable and disreputable, of Naples, four states – Milan, Venice, the papacy and Mantua – formed a league aimed at their expulsion from the peninsula. They planned to sever Charles’s communications with France. The king’s position was made all the more critical by the material aid promised to the league by Maximilian (who had succeeded as emperor in 1493) and King Ferdinand of Aragon. Maximilian recalled that the French expedition had been intended as a crusade, not a conquest, while Ferdinand argued that Charles had broken the Treaty of Barcelona. The league was the beginning of official interference by Spain in Italian affairs and more generally of foreign domination of the peninsula; it soon reached out beyond Italy, becoming a European coalition. Not all the Italian states joined the league. Florence and Ferrara abstained, and the hostility that divided the latter from Venice showed that the league could not eradicate internal rivalries. In spite of the challenge posed by the French conquest of Naples, Italian politics continued to focus on local interests. However, contemporary historians and chroniclers argued that the Italian states needed to work more closely together. As from 1494 the political outlook of many Italians, notably Machiavelli, was not entirely devoid of a certain national consciousness.

Charles wisely decided not to linger in his southern kingdom but to return home as quickly as possible. He divided his army into two parts: one to defend Naples under Gilbert de Montpensier as viceroy, the other to escort him back to France. On 20 May, Charles left Naples and travelled to Rome in only ten days. To avoid meeting him the pope retired first to Orvieto, then to Perugia. Meanwhile, in northern Italy, Louis d’Orléans, acting on his own authority, pre-empted a move by Lodovico Sforza against Asti by attacking the Milanese town of Novara. As this was an imperial fief, Louis’s move offered Maximilian a legitimate pretext for armed intervention. Charles, much alarmed by this turn of events, asked Pierre de Bourbon to send reinforcements in haste to Asti. Meanwhile, the king continued his march northward: he was at Siena on 13 June and at Pisa on the 20th, having by-passed Florence. While part of his army moved on Genoa, the bulk crossed the Appenines. Waiting for them on the north side was the league’s much larger army commanded by the marquis of Mantua. Charles was inclined to seek terms for a free passage, but Marshal Trivulzio argued successfully in favour of engaging the enemy. On 6 July the armies collided at Fornovo during a thunderstorm. Charles was nearly captured several times in the course of the battle which was extremely bloody, especially for the league. The marquis of Mantua claimed it as a victory, but it was really a draw; the French got through, admittedly with the loss of much baggage.