Italy’s Political Decline (1494-1527)

• Treaty of Lodi (1454-1455) created a balance of power among the city-states of Italy– Allied Milan, Naples, and

Florence to check the power of Venice and Papal States

– Worked together against foreign invaders

The French Invasion• Lodi shattered in 1494Naples

prepared to attack Milan• Ludovico il Moro (Milan) invited

Charles VIII of France to lead the French troops against Naples to reclaim former lands (1266-1435)

• French invaded in 1494 and forced Florence, Naples, and the Papal states into concession

• The pope and Venice persuaded King Ferdinand of Aragon (Spain) to come help resist the French

• 1490s-1590sItaly became a battleground in a war for supremacy between European monarchs

• May 6, 1527, Spanish and German troops' sacking Rome that for two decades all but ended the role of the Papacy as the largest patron of Renaissance art and architecture

• Ultimately led to the suppression and end of the Renaissance in Italy

• leads to Italian political decline & Habsburg-Valois (Spanish-French) wars of first half 16th c., all French losses

Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527)

Machiavelli: A Method of Power

• The struggle between pope and the Holy Roman emperor had left Italy politically shattered while Spain, France, and England under the guidance of shrewd rulers, developed powerful states.

• Machiavelli, a Florentine bureaucrat and diplomat, was deeply conscious of Italian disunity– He analyzed the methods of a great ruler in his

infamous, The Prince

Machiavelli’s View

• convinced by chaos of foreign invasions that Italian political unity & independence were ends justifying any means

• concluded only a strongman could impose order on a divided & selfish people (Italians)

• admirer of Roman rulers & citizens• virtù: ability to act heroically & decisively for

the good of one’s country

• The Prince (1513): recommends temporary use of fraud & brutality to achieve Italian unity; hoped for strong ruler from the Medici family

• NM hopes were not achieved when Emperor Charles V of Spain sacked Rome in 1527, the year of Machiavelli’s death

The French Invasions (1494–1527)• Pope Alexander VI: corrupt member of Borgia family, children

Cesare & Lucrezia• Louis XII (r. 1498–1515): allies with Alexander and takes Milan

& part of Naples• Pope Julius II: “warrior pope” drives French out again• Francis I (r. 1515–1547): third French invasion