Italian wars
As Italian Wars and Italian wars or Renaissance -Kriege a series of wars is known that from 1494 to 1559 in large part on the territory of modern Italy were held. In addition to all major European countries, almost all Italian states and the Ottoman Empire were also involved.
Different war goals were pursued in changing alliances, the wars initially sparking off a dynastic power conflict over the Kingdom of Naples and later escalating into a European power struggle between the French royal house of Valois and the Habsburgs . The conflict ended in 1559 in the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis in favor of Habsburg Spain .
The political situation in Italy
In the 14th and 15th centuries, the feudal states were joined by signories (city rulers, e.g. Venice and Florence ). The party struggles between imperial Ghibellines and papal Guelphs , but also between craftsmen, patricians and noble families promoted the election of political leaders ( Podestà ). Many of these leaders used cunning and violence to become hereditary Signore. As a result, they often extended the rule of the signoria to other cities, cared for the people and promoted the arts and sciences. This patronage allowed Italy to experience an economic and cultural heyday despite constant unrest. The Peace of Lodi in 1454 set the stage for a fragile equilibrium in Italy that kept peace for several decades. With the advance of France, the Italian state system collapsed in 1494.
French campaigns
First French campaign (1494/95)
In Milan, Ludovico Sforza ruled from 1481 for his underage nephew Gian Galeazzo Sforza , but wanted to become a duke himself. King Ferdinand I of Naples tried to prevent this and, together with the Medici , to shift the balance of power in Italy in his favor. After Ferdinand's death in 1494, Milan (in the meantime Ludovico had become Duke) allied with King Charles VIII of France in order to jointly enforce his claims to the throne of Naples . Charles had prepared his campaign diplomatically in 1492 in the Treaty of Étaples with the English King Henry VII , in 1493 in the Treaty of Barcelona with Ferdinand II of Aragón and in the Treaty of Senlis with the Roman-German King Maximilian I. Milan served the French army as a base in Italy. Charles VIII of France marched into Italy with an army and powerful siege equipment. On September 8, 1494, Charles VIII's army, led by Louis of Orléans, stormed the city of Rapallo , which wanted to hold up the troops with the support of 5,000 Aragonese soldiers. In retaliation for this attempt, all men, women and children in the city were massacred. On October 31, 1494, Florence surrendered under Piero di Lorenzo de 'Medici . Two months later, on December 31, Charles VIII took Rome and moved to Naples, which he also conquered on February 22, 1495 after a brief siege. The Ennetbirgischen campaigns , which represented a series of warlike actions that took place between the Confederation , the Duchy of Milan , France , the House of Habsburg , the Pope Alexander VI , in the years from 1402 to 1515 can also be counted among these conflicts . and various Italian states played for supremacy in northern Italy .
The speed of the French advance in the first French campaign and the severity with which the resistance of the cities was broken startled the other small states of Italy. Ludovico Sforza, who now realized that Charles could lay claim to Milan and would probably not be satisfied with the annexation of Naples, turned to Pope Alexander VI. for help, who then organized the League of Venice . The league assembled an army under the Marquis of Mantua and Condottiere Gianfrancesco II of Gonzaga . Charles did not want to be cut off in Naples and moved with his army to Lombardy , where the battle of Fornovo took place on July 6, 1495 about 30 km southeast of Parma . His losses were so heavy that he left the booty of his Italian expedition and returned to France. Due to the high debt burden, he was unable to continue the war. He died at the age of 27 on April 7, 1498 in an accident at Amboise Castle .
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Second French campaign (1499–1504)
The new French King Louis XII. As the grandson of the Milanese princess Valentina Visconti and the Duke Ludwig von Orléans from the House of Valois raised claims to Milan. He sent another army to Italy, which occupied Milan under Gian Giacomo Trivulzio . The defeated Ludovico Sforza came to France as a prisoner after the betrayal of Novara in 1500. The French and Spanish occupied Naples together, but a power struggle broke out that resulted in war. After the battles of Cerignola (April 21, 1503) and Garigliano (December 29, 1503), the Spanish under Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba y Aguilar, with the support of Italian mercenaries (including Disfida di Barletta ), drove the French out and remained masters under Ferdinand II in the Kingdom of Naples.
consequences
Naples lost its independence to Spain, which was recognized by Louis in the Treaty of Blois (October 12, 1505). This was the beginning of the 200-year Spanish-Habsburg rule over southern Italy.
Great Venetian War
War of the League of Cambrai (1508-1510)
To restore their influence in Italy, Pope Julius II , Maximilian I, King Louis XII, Henry VII of England and Ferdinand II of Aragon joined the League of Cambrai on December 10, 1508 against the Republic of Venice to recapture the Venice on the mainland ( Terraferma ) occupied territory. This alliance against Venice, operated by Julius II, turned out to be a mistake because after the withdrawal of Venice, weakened by the defeat in the Battle of Agnadello , it left the field to the French and the Habsburg Spaniards.
Holy League War (1511-1513)
The Holy League concluded against France in 1511 by Pope Julius II , Maximilian , Ferdinand , his son-in-law Henry VIII of England, Venice and the Swiss initially rectified the situation as the French had to withdraw from the Duchy of Milan . In March 1513, however, Venice switched sides and allied with France, which further complicated the political situation. On June 6, 1513 the Swiss defeated Ludwig XII. in the Battle of Novara and put the Sforza back as masters in Milan. The Spaniards defeated Venice on October 7, 1513 at the Battle of La Motta . On 13./14. September 1515, King Francis I of France defeated the Swiss at Marignano, who were in the pay of Sforza , and won back Milan.
Habsburg-French conflict
Wars between Charles V and Franz I.
First war of Charles V against Francis I (1521–1525)
Maximilian I died in 1519. The royal dignity went to Charles I of Spain, who also came from the House of Habsburg , which led to the unification of all Habsburg possessions in Europe and the encirclement of France. The Habsburgs and the French were now at war not only for supremacy in Italy, but also for supremacy in Europe and in the world. One of the main theaters of war was Italy, where individual Italian states sometimes allied with one, sometimes with the other great power in order to expand their respective spheres of power and territories in their slipstream.
Wine red: Castile
Red: Aragon's possessions
Orange: Burgundian possessions
Yellow: Austrian hereditary lands
Pale yellow: Holy Roman Empire
In 1521 King Charles V allied himself with Pope Leo X (from the Medici family) and Henry VIII against King Francis I , who, in alliance with Genoa , Venice and Ferrara , wanted to attack Naples via Milan, including the Habsburgs To release the clutch. On November 19, 1521, the imperial general Pescara conquered Milan again for the Holy Roman Empire, and on April 27, 1522 a Spanish army under Prospero Colonna defeated Francis I's troops in the battle of Bicocca .
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After 1522 Genoa, Venice and Ferrara again turned away from France, as did the (Flemish) Pope Hadrian VI. because of Franz's alliance with the Ottomans . In 1524 France took Milan again, Venice and the Medici Pope Clement VII switched to Francis I's side.
On February 24, 1525, the German-Spanish army stormed the French besieging Pavia and took Francis I prisoner in the battle of Pavia . With the Armistice of Toledo (August 11, 1525) the peace of Madrid , sealed on January 14, 1526, was prepared. Here, France was forced to renounce Milan, Genoa and Burgundy. After his release, Franz I revoked the peace treaty, arguing that it had been forced upon him while in captivity.
War of the League of Cognac (1526-1530)
In the same year, due to the increasing power of Charles V, the League of Cognac was formed between France, Milan, Florence, Venice and the Papal States at the instigation of the Pope. Georg von Frundsberg was commissioned to assemble a mercenary army to reinforce the troops in Lombardy , but Archduke Ferdinand did not pay the fee. One consequence of this was the sacking of Rome (" Sacco di Roma ") from May 6, 1527.
France tried, together with Genoa , to besiege Naples. Genoa had allied itself with France under Andrea Doria in 1522 in order to throw the German and Spanish troops out of the city. Doria returned the favor by liberating Marseilles from the siege. But when the French king did not pay the wages and did not want to return Savona, Doria entered the service of the German king in 1528. The Genoese withdrew their troops from Naples , thus ending the siege of the city. The French had to leave Genoa as a result.
After the Pope had reconciled himself with Charles V in the Peace of Barcelona in 1529 , he crowned him King of Italy and Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in Bologna in 1530 . Since the defeated France had also made peace with the emperor ( Lady Peace of Cambrai 1529), Charles V was the unrestricted ruler of Italy. He promised the Medici Pope Clement the restoration of his family's rule in Florence, which, however, fought bitterly. In the battle of Gavinana, the Florentines under Francesco Ferrucci were defeated by the imperial troops under Charles V because of a betrayal in August 1530. The besieged Florence, forced by famine and epidemics, finally had to bow to the imperial will. Alessandro de 'Medici became the new duke.
Third and fourth war of Charles V against Francis I (1535–1544)
This war between Emperor Charles V and King Franz I broke out after the death of the Duke of Milan, Francesco II Sforza , and the ensuing dispute over the succession. When Emperor Karl's son Philip became Duke, Franz I attacked in northern Italy. He managed to occupy Turin , but the capture of Milan failed. The emperor responded with an invasion of Provence .
The war ended on 17th / 18th. June 1538 with the armistice of Nice . The French kept Savoy and Piedmont , otherwise the political map of Italy remained essentially unchanged.
The dissatisfied Francis I forged an alliance with the Ottomans in 1542 in order to carry out another attack on Italy. In August 1543, a French-Ottoman force besieged Nice . In the battle of Ceresole on April 11, 1544, the French defeated an imperial army , but were unable to advance further into Lombardy . The Emperor and King Henry VIII of England then attacked northern France and occupied Boulogne and Soissons . Due to a lack of cooperation between the English and Spanish armies and the increasing pressure from the Ottomans under Suleyman I , however, Charles V withdrew again.
The clashes ended briefly in 1544 in the Peace of Crépy .
War of Charles V against Henry II (1552–1556)
Since the new French king Heinrich II did not want to bow to the Habsburg rule in Italy, he formed new alliances against the emperor. Allies were the Ottomans , some Italian states and the Protestant German princes who rebelled against the Catholic Emperor ( Treaty of Chambord ). Initial successes there was in Lorraine , a cast of Tuscany but failed on August 2, 1554 the Battle of Marciano , as a French army under Piero Strozzi the Duke of Florence, Cosimo I , was defeated. Charles V suffered heavy losses in August 1554 in the Battle of Renty ( Artois ), the last military operation he had personally directed before his abdication, against the French invading army under the Duke of Guise , which was already in retreat . The emperor then withdrew to Brussels and left the warfare to his military leader Philibert of Savoy . Nevertheless, the superior Imperial-Burgundian-Spanish forces succeeded in driving the French out of Burgundian Flanders.
On February 5, 1556, the armistice of Vaucelles was concluded, in which Henry II was awarded the dioceses of Metz, Verdun and Toul as well as Piedmont. 1,556 thanked Emperor Charles V from, making his empire between his son Philip II. Of Spain and his brother Ferdinand I. was divided.
Philip II's war against Henry II (1557–1559)
The armistice concluded at Vaucelles was short-lived. The new anti-Habsburg alliance between Pope Paul IV and Henry II, however, was unsuccessful; instead, the Duke of Alba occupied the Papal States , and the Pope had to consent to the peace of Cave-Palestrina on September 12, 1557 . On August 10, 1557, the French under Coligny were decisively defeated by the Spanish troops under Philibert of Savoy at the Battle of Saint-Quentin . The defeat against a Spanish army allied with the English fleet in the battle of Gravelines , near Calais, on July 13, 1558 sealed the unsatisfactory course of the war for France.
After the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis , Emanuel Philibert of Savoy received his former French-occupied territories in Savoy and Piedmont back from the emperor .
Consequences of war
The Spanish-Habsburg supremacy in Europe and in the world was initially sealed by the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis . However, since the Habsburg-French antagonism persisted, France tried, with varying degrees of success, to break away from the Habsburg clutches, which only Louis XIV finally managed to break . In the Peace of Westphalia of 1648 and the Peace of Pyrenees of 1659 France succeeded in weakening the Spanish-Habsburg position of power and establishing its own supremacy in Europe, as a result of which Italy again became the theater of Franco-Habsburg wars. With the takeover of the Spanish throne by the French royal house of the Bourbons after the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, which ended the War of the Spanish Succession , the connection between Habsburg and Spain finally fell apart.
The Italian states lost their independence in the wars between France and Habsburg and until the unification of Italy in 1861 they became the plaything and theater of war in the conflicts between the major European powers. At the same time, however, the foundations for a strong state were laid in Savoy , which in the 17th and 18th centuries developed into a European middle power as the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont and was supposed to liberate Italy from foreign rule in the Risorgimento in the 19th century .
literature
- Alfred Kohler : Charles V 1500–1558. A biography. CH Beck, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-406-45359-7 (several new editions).
- Alfred Kohler: The Reich in the struggle for hegemony in Europe 1521-1648 (= Encyclopedia of German History. Vol. 6). 2nd edition expanded to include a supplement. Oldenbourg, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-486-59782-0 .
- Michael Mallet, Christine Shaw: The Italian Wars, 1494–1559. War, State and Society in early modern Europe. Pearson, Harlow et al. 2012, ISBN 978-0-582-05758-6 .
- David Potter: Renaissance France at war. Armies, culture and society, c. 1480-1560. Boydell Press, Woodbridge 2008, ISBN 978-1-84383-405-2 .
