Wars in Lombardy

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The wars in Lombardy between Venice and Milan, lasted from 1425 to the signing of the Treaty of Lodi in 1454. During their course, the political structure of Italy was transformed: out of a competitive congeries of communes and city-states, emerged the five major Italian territorial powers that would make up the map of Italy until the Italian Wars. Important cultural centers of Tuscany and Northern Italy—Siena, Pisa, Urbino, Mantua, Ferrara—became politically marginalized. The wars, fought in four campaigns, were a struggle for hegemony in Northern Italy that ravaged the economy of Lombardy and weakened the power of Venice, whose leaders failed to heed the words of warning in doge Tommaso Mocenigo's famous farewell letter (1423):

"Beware of the desire to take what belongs to others, and of making unjust war, for God will destroy you."

The war, which was both a result and cause of Venetian involvement in the power politics of mainland Italy,[1] found Venetian territory extended to the banks of the Adda and involved the rest of Italy in shifting alliances but only minor skirmishing. The shifting counterweight in the balance was the allegiance of Florence, at first allied with Venice against encroachments by Visconti Milan, then switching to ally with Francesco Sforza against the increasing territorial threat of Venice. The Peace of Lodi, concluded in 1454, brought forty years of comparative peace to Northern Italy,[2] as Venetian conflicts focussed elsewhere.[3]

Contents

[edit] First campaign

The prelude to the first of four campaigns against the territorial ambitions of Filippo Maria Visconti, duke of Milan, was embodied in the pact signed between Venice and Florence, on May 4, 1425.[4] By the agreement the war was to be pursued at the common expense of both: the conquests in Lombardy to be assigned to the Venetians; those in Romagna and Tuscany to the Florentines; and the condottiero Carmagnola was appointed Captain General of the League. In the ensuing fighting seasons (1425-26), Carmagnola, recently in the pay of Visconti, retook for Venice Brescia, which he had recently taken for Visconti; meanwhile the Venetian fleet on the Po advanced as far as Padua before hostilities were halted "by means of a legate of the pope" (Machiavelli).

[edit] Second campaign

The second campaign (1427-28) saw the single decisive Venetian victory, at Maclodio (October 4, 1427); in its aftermath a treaty was concluded in 1428, by which a Venetian governor was established at Bergamo and Crema (1429) in addition to confirming the Venetian possession of Brescia and its contado (neighbourhood). Though the Florentines recovered the strongholds they had lost, Machiavelli noted in retrospect "In this war the Florentines expended three millions and a half of ducats, extended the territory and power of the Venetians, and brought poverty and disunion upon themselves."[5]

[edit] Third campaign

The third war (1431-33) was occasioned by Visconti took up the cause of Lucca, which was hard pressed by Florentine forces, and sent them Francesco Sforza, who was eventually bought off with fifty thousand ducats from Florence. A further military reverse encouraged the Florentines to engage the aid of Venice once more and re-erect their League. The Po fleet was defeated at Cremona, but Venice won a naval victory over Milan's puppet Genoa,[6] at San Fruttuoso on 27 August 1431. On this occasion Carmagnola's inaction resulted in his suspension; recalled by the Council of Ten, he was arrested in March 1432, tried for treason and beheaded outside the Doge's Palace. In the November 1432 a Venetian army was crushed at the Battle of Delebio by a collegate army of Milan and Valtellina, which had been invaded by the Serenissima in 1431.

The peace of Ferrara in May 1433 institutionalized an unsteady status quo. The Florentine war with Lucca and her allies likewise resulted in a return to the previous status quo.

[edit] Fourth campaign

In the so-called "fourth war" broader questions were personalized in the combats among antagonistic condottieri: Gattamelata, and later Francesco Sforza fought nominally for Venice, while the Visconti side was led by Niccolò Piccinino. Piccinino laid siege to Brescia in 1438 and penetrated Verona. Venice's response to this crisis was the famous transportation (1439) of six galleys and other lesser craft, which were hauled overland by teams of oxen from the Adige to Lake Garda, more than 2,000 oxen being used in the unprecedented operation. On the field of Cavriana, Sforza acted as mediator between the two sides accomplishing the act for which Carmagnola had lost his head. No territorial changes were made in the ensuing Peace of Cremona of 20 November 1441, another truce.

[edit] Aftermaths

Off the battlefields, important dynastic and political changes occurred: Francesco Sforza entered the service of Visconti and married his daughter, while Florence took a new turn under Cosimo de' Medici. After Visconti died in 1447, Francesco Sforza, backed by Lorenzo de' Medici, entered Milan in triumph (May 1450).[7] Two coalitions now formed: Sforza Milan allied with Medici Florence on the one hand, faced Venice and the Aragonese Kingdom of Naples on the other. The main theater of war remained Lombardy, where both sides joined in the Peace of Lodi (May 1454), a compromise peace that formed the basis for a general accord among the four contenders, Venice, Milan, Florence and Naples, under the blessings of Pope Nicholas V, representing the fifth power in Italy. The peace of Lodi is often marked as the emergence of a consciously expressed political principle of balance of power.

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Venice subdued Verona in 1402, Padua in 1405, and the rest of eastern Lombardy, the Venetian terra ferma ("mainland"), the following year. Previously Venice had been strictly a maritime power: her battles with Genoa, culminating in the battle of Chioggia, were all fought at sea.
  2. ^ See however the brief War of Ferrara (1482–1484) that was settled by the Peace of Bagnolo.
  3. ^ The extension of Ottoman power into the Balkans and in the Aegean had involved Venice in intermittent warfare since 1415.
  4. ^ Florence had been struggling with Filippo Maria, who had enforced his position as trustee of the young Ordelaffi lord of Forlì, by sending his emissary the marchese of Ferrara to take the city by force; the diplomatic breaking point had come when Agnolo della Pergola, Visconti's condottiero, took the fortress of Imola in 1424 and sent its young lord captive to Milan.
  5. ^ History VI.iii
  6. ^ Milan had occupied the Republic of Genoa since 1421.
  7. ^ after the demise of the short-lived Ambrosian Republic.

[edit] References

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