The War of Ferrara (also known as the Salt War, Italian: Guerra del Sale) ending with the Peace of Bagnolo, was fought in 1482-1484 between Ercole I d'Este, duke of Ferrara, and the Papal forces mustered by Ercole's personal nemesis, Pope Sixtus IV and his Venetian allies. Hostilities ended with the Treaty of Bagnolo, signed on 7 August 1484.
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The unexpected peace arrived at in 1480 as a result of Lorenzo de' Medici's daring personal diplomacy with Ferdinand I of Naples, the Pope's erstwhile champion, was a source of discontent among the Venetians and Pope Sixtus IV alike. Venice had ended its long conflict with the Ottoman Turks in 1479, with the Treaty of Constantinople, and was freed to turn its complete attention to its role in its terra firma (main land) and generally to the peninsula of Italy.
At the beginning of 1482, on the suggestion of representatives of Girolamo Riario — the nephew of Sixtus — who had taken possession of the strategic stronghold of Forlì in September 1480, with quick papal confirmation, and now looked towards Ferrara in extending Della Rovere territory, the Republic of Venice declared war on Ferrara, which was ruled by Ercole I d'Este.[1] Venice was in an expansionist phase in the terra firma. In addition to the usual minor friction over possession strongholds along the borders, was a contest over the commerce in salt, which was reserved to Venice by a commercial pact; nevertheless, the city of the Este had begun to control saltworks at Comacchio. These appeared a threat to mainland interests of the Serenissima.
The immediate casus belli, as usual, was a minor infraction of prerogatives: Venice maintained a representative in Ferrara with the high title of visdominio, under whose care were the Venetian community in Este lands; in 1481, overreaching his mandate with the arrest of a priest for debt, the visdominio was excommunicated by the vicar of the bishop of Ferrara, and forced out of the city. On this excuse, war was declared.
Allied with Venice, besides the papal troops and Riario as lord of Imola and Forlì, were contingents supplied by the Republic of Genoa and William VIII, Marquis of Montferrat.[2] Taking Ferrara's part, loosely under the command of Federico da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino, were troops of Ercole's father-in-law Ferdinand of Naples, under his son Alfonso of Calabria, who invaded the Papal States from the south, as well as troops sent by Ludovico il Moro of Milan and by the lords of two cities threatened by the mainland power of Venice, Federico I Gonzaga of Mantua and Giovanni II Bentivoglio of Bologna.
Venetian troops led by the condottiero Roberto Sanseverino[3] attacked Ferrarese territory from the north, brutally sacking Adria, quickly overrunning Comacchio, attacking Argenta at the edge of the saltmarshes and besieging Ficarolo in May (capitulated 29 June) and Rovigo (capitulated 17 August).
Venetian forces crossed the Po River and in November 1482 stood before the walls of Ferrara and laid strict siege to the city. Sixtus appears to have had a change of heart at the season's advances, which now threatened to put Venice in an uncomfortably strong position in mainland northern Italy.
In the Papal States, the Colonna took advantage of disorder, and fought pitched battles against their Della Rovere enemies. The main encounter, however, was the pitched Battle of Campomorto near Velletri, 21 August 1482, in which the Aragonese troops were soundly defeated by Roberto Malatesta, the duke of Calabria being rescued by a contingent of his Turkish soldiers. Some Orsini castles fell into papal hands, but where battle failed malaria succeeded, and Roberto Malatesta's death in Rome on 10 September largely unraveled Papal successes in the Lazio. Sixtus made a separate peace with Naples in a truce of 28 November and a peace treaty signed on 12 December.
His entreaties with Venice to cease hostilities were vigorously rebuffed, with threats of excommunication countered by the withdrawal of the Venetian ambassador, followed by Sixtus' interdict of Venice in May 1483. Now Sixtus granted free passage to Alfonso and his troops to go to the defense of Ferrara against the pope's recent allies, aided by papal troops under Virginio Orsini. A contingent of Florentine troops arrived also, and the fortunes of Este began to look up.
In a diversionary tactic, Venice sent Roberto Sanseverino to attack the Duchy of Milan under the pretext of supporting the rights of the Visconti heir, but the diversion was further diverted when Robert had to turn aside to counter Alfonso, who was sacking Milanese territories. The war began to lose momentum.
The war came to a conclusion with the Treaty of Bagnolo, signed on 7 August 1484. Ercole ceded the territory of Rovigo in the Polesine, lost at an early stage of the fighting, and the Venetian forces that were occupying Ferrara withdrew. Ercole avoided the absorption of Ferrara, seat of the Este, into the Papal States.
Sixtus may have been rendered more eager to capitulate by the series of victories by Venetian forces, who seized the opportunity to forward their territorial ambitions and had been hasty to declare war on Ferrara on a minor pretext in the first place. Florence, Naples, Mantua, Milan, and Bologna stood by Ferrara. While the papal forces were holding in check the Neapolitans who sought to pass north to aid Ferrara, and with the Roman Campagna being harassed by the Colonna, and Milan engaged combatting Genoa, the Venetians had besieged and overwhelmed the defenses of Ferrara, forcing the city to starvation. With the Venetians in Ferrara, the Pope, fearing his erstwhile allies, suddenly changed sides: he made a treaty with Naples, and permitted the Neapolitan army to pass through his territories, and they availed themselves of the opportunity to convey supplies to Ferrara and neutralize the siege. At the same time the Pope excommunicated the Venetians, and now urged all Italy to make war upon them.
The Peace of Bagnolo checked Venetian expansion in the terra firma, ceding to it the town of Rovigo and a broad swath of the fertile delta of the Po. This acquisition agreed upon at Bagnolo marked the high-point of Venetian territory; never again would Venice control so large a territory nor have so much influence as it did in the last half of the 15th century.
Nevertheless, Sixtus was not pleased with the terms arrived at without consulting him:
The war was the subject of an anonymous poem entitled La guerra di Ferrara[4]