The
wars in Lombardy were a series of conflicts fought
in central-northern Italy
between the
Republic of
Venice
and the Duchy of Milan
, and their different allies. They lasted
from 1425 until 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, 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, as Venetian conflicts focussed
elsewhere.
First campaign
The first
of four campaigns against the territorial ambitions of Filippo Maria Visconti, duke of Milan, was connected to the death of
the lord of Forlì
, Giorgio Ordelaffi. He had named
Visconti the trustee of his nine-year-old heir,
Teobaldo II.
The latter's mother,
Lucrezia degli Alidosi,
daughter of the lord of Imola
, did not
agree and assumed the regency for herself. The Forlivesi
rebelled and called in the city the Milanese
Visconti's condottiero,
Agnolo della Pergola (
May 14 1423). Florence reacted by
declaring war on Visconti. Its captain
Pandolfo Malatesta therefore entered
Romagna to help the Alidosi of Imola, but he was defeated and the
city stormed on
February 14 1424.
The young Luigi degli Alidosi was sent captive to
Milan and a few days later the lord of Faenza
, Guidantonio Manfredi, joined the
Visconti party. The Florentine army, this time commanded by
Carlo Malatesta, was again
defeated, at the
Battle of
Zagonara in July; Carlo, taken prisoner, was freed by Visconti
and joined him too. Florence thus hired
Niccolò Piccinino and
Oddo da Montone, but the two were also
beaten in
Val di Lamone. Oddo was
killed but Piccinino was able to convince Manfredi to declare war
against Visconti.
After the failure in Romagna, Florence tried to defy the Visconti
from the
Ligurian side, by allying with the
Aragonese of
Naples. However, both
a fleet of 24 Aragonese galleys sent to Genoa to move it to fight
against the Milanese, and a land army, were unsuccessful. In the
meantime, Piccinino and the other condottiero
Francesco Sforza had been hired by
Visconti, who also sent an army to invade Tuscany under
Guido Torello. He subsequently defeated the
Florentine army at Anghiari and Faggiuola.
The
Florentine disaster was countered by the pact signed on December 4, 1425 with the
Republic of
Venice. 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 Brescia
, which he
had recently taken on behalf of Visconti, after a long siege which
saw massive use of artillery (november
26 1426). Meanwhile the Venetian
fleet on the Po
River
, under Francesco
Bembo, advanced as far as Padua
, and the
Florentines regained all their lands in Tuscany. Visconti,
who had already ceded Forlì and Imola to the
Pope to gain his favour, called a mediation.
Through the intervention of the Papal legate,
Niccolò degli Albergati, the
peace was signed on
December 30 1426 in Venice.
Visconti
regained the lands occupied by Florence in Liguria, but had to
renounce the area of Vercelli
, conquered by Amadeus VIII of Savoy, and Brescia,
which went to Venice, and to promise to stop encroaching himself in
Romagna and Tuscany.
Second campaign
The peace did not last very long. Under advice by the emperor
Sigismund, Visconti
refused to ratify it and the war broke out in May 1427.
The
Milanese were initially victorious, taking Casalmaggiore
and besieging Brescello
; the fleet sent there was set on fire by the
Venetian fleet of Bembo; however, Niccolò Piccinino was able to defeat
Carmagnola at Gottolengo on May 29.
The
Venetian commander pushed him back and conquered Casalmaggiore on
July 12, while Orlando Pallavicino, lord of several
castles near Parma
, rebelled
against the Visconti as Amadeus VIII and John Jacob of Montferrat invaded
Lombardy from East.
Visconti could count on some of the best condottieri of the time,
such as Sforza, della Pergola, Piccinino and
Guido Torello. But, as they were jealous, he
named supreme commander Carlo Malatesta. The latter led the
Milanese at
Maclodio (
October 4,
1427), being
crushed by the Venetians under Carmagnola.
The victory was
however indecisive, and Visconti managed to reconciliate with
Amadeus by ceding him Vercelli and marrying his daughter Maria. However, as
Sforza was defeated by some Genoese exiled and Sigismund's help was
wanting, Visconti sued for a treaty. With the mediation of the
Pope, the peace was signed at Ferrara on
April
18 1428.
A Venetian governor was established at
Bergamo
and Crema (1429) in addition
to confirming the Venetian possession of Brescia and its
contado (neighbourhood). The Florentines
recovered the strongholds they had lost, apart from Volterra
who rebelled against the new settlement.
The
troops sent to reduce that city, under Niccolò Fortebraccio, were later
sent to invade the Lucca
, whose lord,
Paolo Guinigi, had previously sided
with the Visconti.
Third campaign
The third war (1431-1433) started, therefore, when Visconti took up
the Lucchese cause, by sending them
Francesco Sforza, with 3,000 horse; Sforza,
however, was eventually bought off with fifty thousand ducats from
the Florentines, who continued the siege of Lucca after the
condottiero had left. Called in by the besieged, Visconti managed
to have the
Republic of Genoa
declare war against Florence.
The subsequent defeat on the Serchio
banks of their commander, Guidantonio da
Montefeltro (December 2 1430, encouraged the Florentines to engage the aid of
Venice once more and re-erect their lapsed League, with the favour
of the new Pope, Eugene IV, a
Venetian. Visconti replied by rehiring Piccinino and Sforza,
who were again to face Carmagnola.
The
League's army was first beaten at Soncino (May 17
1431), while Luigi
Colonna defeated the Venetians at Cremona
, Cristoforo Lavello pushed back the Montferrat
troops, and Piccinino established strong positions in
Tuscany. Another source of dismay for the revived League was
the
destruction of the Po
Fleet under
Niccolò
Trevisani near Pavia (
June 23). In 1431
Visconti also found a precious ally in Amadeus VIII of Savoy in
exchange for his help against John Jacob of Montferrat.
Venice won a naval victory over Genoa at
San Fruttuoso on 27 August 1431, but on land
Carmagnola, the commander of Venetian forces, moved cautiously,
avoiding a pitched battle and raising the suspicion he could have
been bought by Visconti, while the latter was also joined by
Sigismund who had entered Italy to receive the imperial crown.
In the
end Carmagnola was suspended; 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 by Piccinino at the Battle of Delebio by a joint 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, but the major
League leader's lack of successes had lost much charisma: the
Venetian doge
Francesco Foscari
was on the verge of resigning, while
Cosimo de' Medici was imprisoned and
confined in Padua. Another result of the peace agreement was the
reduction of
Montferrat to a satellite of
Savoy.
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, who had promised
to Eugene IV to reconquer the Marche for him.
But, in a reversal
typical of the time, when he captured Ravenna
and Bologna
, he forced the cities to recognize Milanese
suzerainty.
Piccinino, backed by
Gian
Francesco Gonzaga, had invaded the Lombard possessions of
Venice.
In September 1438 he laid siege to Brescia
and assaulted Bergamo and Verona
. In
response to this Venice signed an alliance with Florence and
Francesco Sforza, including some notable captains of the time such
as
Astorre II Manfredi,
Pietro Persaliano and
Niccolò III of Ferrara, who was also
restored the
Polesine in exchange for his
support.
The Milanese were repeatedly defeated in Tuscany and at
Soncino (
June 14
1440). The war seemed won for Venice, and
Sforza went to Venice to receive the honour of a triumph. However,
Piccinino returned from Romagna in February 1441 and crushed
Sforza's garrison at Chiari.
Sforza besieged Martinengo
, but when Piccinino cut him off from any
possibility of retreat the situation looked again favourable to
Milan. Believing that the victory was now in his
hands, he asked from Visconti the signiory of Piacenza
in exchange for it. The lord of Milan
preferred instead to appeal to Sforza for an agreement.
On the field of Cavriana, Sforza acted as mediator between the two
sides, accomplishing the act for which Carmagnola had lost his
head.
No
large territorial changes were made in the ensuing Peace of Cremona
of 20 November 1441:
Venice kept Ravenna, Florence the Casentino
. Piccinino was awarded the lands of Orlando
Pallavicino in the Parmense, while Filippo Maria Visconti
recognized the independence of Genoa and again promised to stop
interfering with the situation in Tuscany and Romagna.
Aftermath
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). 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
European political principle of
balance
of power.
See also
Notes
- 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 the Republic of
Genoa, culminating in the battle of Chioggia, were all fought
at sea.
- See however the brief War of Ferrara (1482–1484) that was settled
by the Peace of Bagnolo.
- The extension of Ottoman power into the Balkans and in the Aegean had involved Venice in intermittent
warfare since 1415.
- Milan controlled Genoa since 1421.
- After the demise of the short-lived Ambrosian
Republic.
References
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