| Notes |
- The trend towards an autocratic monarchy is continued by Louis XI,
son of Charles VII, though at times during his reign it seems as
though he will lose control to rebellious nobles or to his great rival
and enemy, Charles the Bold of Burgundy.
Louis fails diplomatically in relation to Burgundy, doing nothing
to ensure that the Burgundian heiress, daughter of Charles the Bold,
marries his own son, the French dauphin. Instead she marries a
Habsburg, and most of the extensive territories of Burgundy are lost
to France.
But diplomacy pays off, at a price, when Louis brings the Hundred
Years War to its final conclusion in 1475. He persuades the English
king, Edward IV, to take his invading army straight home with
financial compensation for lost opportunities.
Louis takes active steps to improve his kingdom's trade and
commerce, as when he begins a great tradition of Lyons fairs by
granting the city the privilege in 1463 to hold four such events
annually. In the following year he establishes an official postal
system for government business. He bequeaths a strong and prosperous
France to his son, Charles VIII. But the young king has romantic ideas
which endanger French interests.
Charles VIII is thirteen when he inherits the crown of France in
1483. He is twenty-four when he marches south, in 1494, to involve the
kingdom in a series of disastrous Italian campaigns which will drain
its resources to no good purpose over the next five decades.
Charles is misled by a romantic notion (encouraged by the duke of
Milan, who needs support in Italy) that he can march to claim the
throne of Naples, to which he has a right through the Angevin line. He
even dreams of a further stage of glory. He imagines himself sailing
from Naples to drive the Turks from Constantinople or Jerusalem. He
will be crowned a new eastern emperor.
Charles VIII crosses the Alps in September 1494 with a massive army
of 30,000 men. They pass peacefully through the territory of Milan and
no doubt expect to do the same through Florence's Tuscan lands.
France's quarrel is only with Naples.
But Florence has been recently identified as an ally of Naples.
Sensing a crisis, the young Piero de' Medici imitates his father's
famous act of personal diplomacy (his visit to the king of Naples).
Without informing the signoria, the official government of Florence,
Piero makes his way to the camp of the French king.
In this encounter between two inexperienced young rulers, both in
their early twenties, the Frenchman has the better of the bargain.
Charles VIII emphasizes that all he wants is an assurance of
Florence's good will, but adds that a convincing token of this would
be the delivery into French hands of several key castles together with
the ports of Pisa and Livorno. The records suggest that the French are
astonished when Piero agrees.
So, when they hear of it, are the signoria in Florence. They
protest that Piero has no authority to cede these Florentine
possesssions, but it is too late. The French enter Florence and occupy
Pisa (glad to be rid of the Florentine yoke) before moving on south.
Charles VIII and his army reach Rome on the last day of 1494. Pope
Alexander VI, powerless to resist them, takes shelter in the Castel
Sant' Angelo. On February 22, still unopposed, the French enter
Naples. Two months later, on May 12, Charles is crowned king in his
new city.
But in his inexperience he has left his line of withdrawal
undefended. During March the pope and the other main Italian powers
(except Florence) form the League of Venice against the intruder. As
Charles withdraws north he is confronted at Fornovo, in July, by an
army of the League (also sometimes known as the Holy League). The
battle is confused and indecisive. Charles and his army escape to
safety in France.
Charles has left French garrisons in Naples, but they soon lose the
kingdom again to the Aragonese. Nevertheless Charles is preparing a
new expedition to Naples when he dies, as the result of an accident at
Amboise, in 1498.
This Neapolitan adventure, fruitless though it is, gives the kings
of France a taste for campaigning in Italy. They briefly recover part
of the kingdom of Naples in 1501-3. But their ambitions focus
increasingly on northern Italy - which becomes in the early 16th
century an almost permanent international battleground.
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1433 - 1507 (74 years)