Peace of Lodi
The Peace of Lodi was a treaty signed on April 9, 1454 between the Duke of Milan and the Republic of Venice . He put an end to lengthy armed conflicts between the Venetians and Duke Francesco Sforza , who had taken power in Milan in 1447 after the Visconti had died out. The contract was named after the city of Lodi , where it was signed.
prehistory
After the Visconti dynasty died out, the Duchy of Milan was in dissolution. Many cities, including Milan itself, tried to regain their independence. The Republic of Venice supported these developments, as this meant that the most powerful enemy would disappear from the map on the western border of their Terraferma . Francesco Sforza, who was married to the heir to the last Visconti Duke Filippo Maria , was able to smash the so-called Ambrosian Republic himself in Milan and secure the existence of the duchy through various campaigns. But it was not until March 1450 that he achieved official imperial recognition as Duke of Milan. Venice did not accept this and the open war broke out between the Republic and Francesco Sforza, which ended four years later with the Peace of Lodi.
The contract
Venice recognizes Francesco I. Sforza as Duke of Milan and receives the city of Crema in return . The Adda River formed the borderline between Venice and Milan for more than 300 years.
Effects
The settlement of the conflict between the two most important states in northern Italy created the conditions for an at the same time fragile equilibrium in the whole of Italy, which kept the peace for several decades. First of all, various small states (Savoy, Genoa, Mantua and Ferrara) that had operated in the shadow of Venice had to give up their ambitions to gain territories in Lombardy.
Florence, which had first been allied with Venice but then joined Francesco Sforza, was included in the peace order in August 1454 through the conclusion of a tripartite treaty. A little later, the Pope and the Kingdom of Naples also joined the treaty. The resulting pentarchy of the five largest Italian states finally collapsed in 1494 when King Charles VIII of France invaded Italy. As early as 1482, however, there were again armed conflicts between the Italian states, which had sparked off by the succession in the Duchy of Ferrara.
literature
- Werner Goez : History of Italy in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Darmstadt 1988.
- Felice Fossati: Francesco Sforza e la pace di Lodi. In: Archivio Veneto 87, 1957, pp. 16–34.