Episode 48: Holy League, Holy Matrimony
When French king Charles VIII laid claims to the Kingdom of Naples and invaded Italy in September, 1494, an anti-French coalition called the League of Venice was formed, with the aim of kicking France out of the Italian peninsula. “Hang on a second, what does this have to do with the Netherlands?”, I hear you ask. Bear with me here. The League of Venice included a bunch of Italian city-states and regional powers, including the Pope Alexander VI, as well as our friend Emperor Maximilian and the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon. To help cement this anti-French alliance between Spain and the Habsburgs, a double marriage was arranged which would see Maximilian’s children marry the children of the Spanish monarchs Isabella and Ferdinand.
Many thanks to Steven Straatemans for this awesome comic inspired by this episode. Love all the little details! Check out more of Steven’s work on instagram https://www.instagram.com/straatemans/
If you came to this podcast with just a rudimentary knowledge of Dutch history, you would probably be aware of the fact that the progenitor of today’s “the Netherlands” was a republic known as the United Provinces of the Netherlands, formed when the northern territories of the Low Countries successfully won their independence from the Spanish Habsburg King, Philip II, after a drawn out revolt known as the Eighty Years’ War. Sorry for any spoilers to anyone in there but, you know, it’s been over four centuries. In our chronological crossing through Dutch history we now find ourselves in the mid-1490s, so roughly 70 years prior to that revolt against Spain breaking out, and we have barely spoken about Spain at all… yet. Well, today is the day! As we have learned, it turns out that telling the history of a specific country is pretty much impossible to do in a vacuum, especially in an era when our modern notion of nations wasn’t really a thing and so many of the political power struggles were a dynastic dance played out across a continent of quarrelling queens, petty princes, devious dukes and conniving kings. The wider continental (and soon world) political situation provides the framework necessary to understand the further unfolding of the story of the Netherlands. We can’t just loiter in our swamp, as much as we would love that.
So in order to set the context at various points on our ridiculously ambitious quest to tell the entire history of the Netherlands in podcast form, we have at times seemingly morphed into the History of Belgium, the History of England, the History of France, the History of Germany and Austria… well today we are going to continue on in that time honoured tradition. So if you find yourself at points in this episode wondering “Have I accidentally turned on the History of Spain and/or Italy podcast?”, just bear with us. Because today we will see how an invasion of Italy led by a French king would improbably lead to Spain being gobbled up into the burgeoning Habsburg empire. Ciao e benvenuto nella Storia dei Paesi Bassi, hola y bienvenidos a la Historia de los Países Bajos.
An abridged 1000 years of Spanish history
So to begin with today’s episode, we are going to go back over 1000 years and do a quick overview of what exactly had been happening in the Iberian peninsula up until the point in the chronology we find ourselves in now, the 1490s. This is obviously going to be very abridged and we’re not going to go into exhaustive detail about any of this because, despite everything, we do want to keep as related to the History of the Netherlands as possible, so if we skip over your favourite part of Spanish history in the next few minutes then, as my duolingo says, lo siento.
Prior to the rise of Rome, the peoples on the Iberian peninsula rode the many waves of Mediterranean commercial, social and technological development much as other parts of the region. These were people that have come to be known as Celtic, Iberian, Lusitanian or Tartessian, but given the extent of trade coming in and out, there was a big integration of other peoples and parts of the peninsula were ruled by Pheonecians, Greeks or Carthaginians. In the 3rd century BCE, Rome fought three wars against the powerful Carthage which, despite the legendary Hannibal initially marching from the south of the Iberian peninsula, across Gaul and over the Alps into Italy with a huge army and a bunch of war elephants and riding rough-shod over the Romans, ultimately resulted in Carthage being wiped off the map. These so-called Punic wars brought Rome into the Iberian peninsula, which they gradually brought ever more into their sphere of power, giving it a new name, Hispania, from which we get ‘Spain’. With the collapse of the Roman Empire and rise of the church - from around the 5th century CE - different Germanic tribes took over chunks of the peninsula, including the Visigoths, Vandals and, my personal favourite contender for best named tribe, the Alans, who had apparently originated in modern day Iran and wandered their way west across Europe. I imagine their war cry was something like… Oi! Alan! Alan! Alan!
Anyway, it was not the Alans, but the Visigoths who ended up taking over the peninsula in the 5th century and for three hundred odd years there was the Visigothic Kingdom, or as it is also known, Kingdom of the Goths, which sounds like a fabulous name for a heavy metal festival. In the 8th century, however, Islamic Berber invaders arrived, commanded by a bloke called Tariq ibn Ziyad, operating on behalf of the Umayyad Caliph Al-Wahid. Tariq took control of the straits between North Africa and the Iberian peninsula in 710 CE, landing by the big rock that the Romans called Mons Calpe, but which was eventually renamed after him, the Mount of Tariq; Jabal Tariq; Gibraltar. He then spent half a decade overseeing the near-complete occupation of the Iberian peninsula. The Moors extended their domain as far as into the Frankish kingdom, until they were pushed back by Charles Martel, the grandfather of Charlemagne, at the Battle of Tours in 732. The next half a millennium would see a waxing and waning between the Islamic domain, known as Al-Andalus, and the small, Christian strongholds that remained in the north, being mainly, but not exclusively, Galicia, Portugal, Leon, Navarre, the Catalonian counties and, importantly for our story, Aragon and Castile. These all went about fighting, feuding, factionalising and fornicating with one another for ages, taking and losing territories to one another frequently, but also ultimately pushing the muslim forces back south in what would become known as the reconquista (the reconquest). Of these small Christian states, it was Castile which ended up the largest and most dominant. That was the state of the things in 1469 when the King of Castile, Henry IV died. His succession had already long been a much fought over thing, between one of his (possibly illegitimate) daughters, Joanna, and his half-sister, Isabella. In the event, it was Isabella who was crowned after his demise, but the King of Portugal and a bunch of high clergy and nobility supported Joanna. The Portuguese monarch even went as far as marrying her, and a nearly two year war ensued. In the end, Isabella and her husband Ferdinand, who was the crown prince of Aragon, came out victorious.
By 1479 Ferdinand had also succeeded his father to the Crown of Aragon and the joint Castile-Aragon monarchy ensued. Isabella and Ferdinand set about consolidating their joint power, bringing huge swathes of the peninsula under unified Christian rule for the first time since the Visigothic kingdom in the 8th century. Nobody could have known it at the time and there seems little evidence that this was their intention, but this union laid the foundations for what would become modern-day Spain. I’m sure someone out there is screaming furiously at the simplicity of this account, but remember this is History of the Netherlands, not Spain, so… deal with it. These two monarchs were spirited, powerful, ruthless and extremely Catholic; their religiosity will have a big impact on our story, but we are going to get into it some other time. By 1492 they had completed the reconquista by taking the last of Berber ruled Iberian land, Granada, and, following that - with the exceptions of Portugal and Navarre - they had the resources of the entire peninsula at their beck and call. When Columbus returned in that same year with news of his trans-Atlantic ‘New World’ discoveries they got access to the resources of the Americas as well. Isabella and Ferdinand ruled jointly for three decades, having a bunch of kids, of which five survived beyond infancy and some of whom would cling onto the sweeping tendrils of our story.
The Crown of Aragon and Naples
Even though Castile was the larger, more powerful of the two kingdoms at the time of Isabella and Ferdinad’s marriage, the Crown of Aragon which Ferdinand had inherited was still a sprawling thalassocracy which occupied an important strategic location with prime access to the Mediterranean. Again, we’re not going to go into this in great detail, but the crown of Aragon was, like so many examples at this time, a composite monarchy. It comprised the kingdoms of Aragon and Valencia, the counties of Barcelona (Catalonia) and the Balearic Islands, Sardinia, Sicily and Naples.
Let’s focus on Naples though. Ciao, Napoli! The kingdom of Naples at this point was not just the city that we all know today, but extended across the southern part of the Italian peninsula. When we look at Italy as a leg with a boot, The kingdom of Naples was the boot. From 1414, the Queen of Naples had been a woman named Joanna II. She had no children and faced circumstances like being imprisoned by her husband for a while (that’s amoré!). At one point, when she was in the middle of a showdown with the pope, she named Alfonso V, King of Aragon and uncle of the aforementioned Ferdinand, as her heir. She had really just wanted a few swords to help against the pope, but instead had just let this ambitious king’s foot jam open the door of Naples. A whole lot of intrigue went down at this point, which we are going to skip, but suffice to say things didn’t work out between Alfonso V and Joanna, so she decided to pull the plug on the whole him-being-her-heir idea and she later instead agreed to be succeeded by a guy called Rene Duke of Anjou. The King of Aragon Alfonso V might have been un-adopted by Joanna, but he never forgot about the claims that the endeavour had given him to the Crown of Naples. In 1441 Alfonso V invaded and conquered Naples, adding to his list of crowns and forcing Rene to slink back to France to lick his wounds. When Alfonso died in 1458, there was another four year struggle of succession in Naples, before his illegitimately born but legitimised son Ferrante succeeded him as king of Naples, separating it again from the crown of Aragon. The Kingdom of Aragon itself went to Alfonso’s brother, John II, the father of the aforementioned Ferdinand, but only after 10 years of civil war in which 3 other people claimed the crown, including Rene of Anjou, the one who had been booted out of Naples! As you might have gathered, there was quite a lot of bad blood between the Anjous and the Aragonese. Naples was now controlled by an offshoot of the Aragonese royal family, but a bunch of powerful princes and nobles in Italy were unhappy about this and did everything they could to try to oust Ferrante from the throne, supporting the house of Anjou instead.
The Anjou claims to Naples remained in the hands of Rene until he died in 1480, whereupon things got even murkier. Rene had outlived his son John II, Duke of Lorraine (who had died apparently of poisoning in Barcelona after going there trying to further the Anjou’s claim to Aragon), as well as HIS son, Nicholas I, meaning that Rene’s title of Duke of Anjou and his claim to Naples passed to his nephew, who then also died a year later without having had children. In his will, this nephew named the Universal Spider, Louis XI, king of France as his successor; meaning that, when Louis XI died, the claim to the crown of Naples passed into the hands of the young king Charles VIII. Capiche? Like we said, it’s complicated. It’s made even more complicated, because when Rene’s grandson, the Duke of Lorraine had died, he had passed on the Duchy of Lorraine to his aunt, Yolande who then immediately passed it on to her son… Rene II. What this meant is that Rene II also had a pretty strong claim to be the King of Naples too. We have already spoken about him a lot, because, firstly, he was the guy who defeated Charles the Bold at Nancy and, secondly, was married to Philippa, the twin sister of the now rebellious Duke of Guelders, Charles of Egmont.
In 1488 Rene II actually made an attempt to go to Naples and claim the crown for himself (wouldn’t you?) but was thwarted. In the book A Bewitched Duchy: Lorraine and its Dukes, Historian E. William Monter writes of this: “Subsidized by an annual pension of twenty thousand livres from the French regent in 1488, René prepared to invade southern Italy in support of his claim to Sicily. However, his reckless attempt to kidnap the Ottoman prince Djem, then being held at a remote castle in eastern France, compromised his standing at the French court. René got only as far as Lyon when the French crown ruined his plans by cancelling his pension. It would not be restored until 1497, three years after the French king had invaded Italy himself”. So René was not super interested in further pressing his claims to Naples because he relied on the money which he was receiving from the French, and he would need to be sure that he stayed on the right side of the French king.
As a quick aside: the Ottoman prince who was mentioned in that quote, Djem, was the third son of the late Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II and was himself involved in a dispute with his older brother Bayezid over who was the rightful successor. Djem had gone into exile in Egypt after unsuccessfully pressing his claims, before becoming a, um, guest? of the Knights Hospitaller and being taken to France in 1483 where he remained imprisoned in a tower for over five years before being handed over to the Pope in Rome. As we have seen with this whole story, any spurious claim to a throne could represent a real and existential danger to any ruler. So holding Djem meant that the pope, or any Christian prince, could use him either as a bargaining chip to keep the peace or as a threat towards the Ottoman sultan.
Charles VIII sets his sights on Naples
As for Charles VIII, he had shown interest in his inherited claim to Naples since he had succeeded his father as King of France. Amongst the titles which had reverted to the French crown after the Anjou line had died out were the titles ‘King of Jerusalem,’ which the monarchs of Naples had chucked onto their names in the 13th century, which sounds cool but didn’t really mean much, as well as Count of Provence. Provence is basically the part of France which borders Italy along the Mediterranean, and taking this into the royal domains meant that all of a sudden, the French king had a few really nice Mediterranean ports to play with, such as Marseille and Toulon. If one was to have ambitions to rock around the Mediterranean imposing one’s will, sending ships off to fight the Turks, or claiming Italian kingdoms, these ports would prove to be pretty handy indeed.
One of Charles VIII’s advisors was a Calabresi monk called Francesco di Paola. According to historian Christine Shaw, in her book The Italian Wars 1494-1559, Paola’s advice to the king “filled his mind with ideas of freeing the Neapolitan people from the tyrannies of the Aragonese and the threats from the Turks.” In 1484 he ordered an enquiry into his claim and, by the 1490s, had settled on the idea - at least publicly - that his right to the kingdom of Naples and control over the port city of Genoa would provide a launching pad for a new crusade.
If Charles was to successfully invade Italy, however, he would need local support within Italy. The opportunity for this arrived when one of Italy’s most powerful men, the ruler of Florence Lorenzo de Medici, died in 1492. Medici had been the chief engineer of something called the Italic League, which was a concord between the five major powers in Italy: The republics of Florence and Venice, the Papal States, the Duchy of Milan and the much-mentioned Kingdom of Naples. Since 1454 this had, with the steady leading hand of Medici, maintained a balance of power and peace. With Medici dying in 1492 and then the Aragonian King of Naples, Ferrante, also dying in 1494, the forty year period of peace ended.
Charles VIII’s biggest local supporter in Italy was the Regent of the Duchy of Milan, Ludovico Sforza. The actual Duke of Milan was his nephew Gian Galleazo Sforza, but since he had inherited the duchy at the age of seven, Ludovico had ruled in his stead. Ludovico was known as both ‘Il Moro’ / ‘The Moor’, because of his dark complexion, and also as ‘the arbiter of Italy’, which sounds… very ominous. Over the years of his regency Ludovico Sforza consolidated all the ducal power in his hands and became a very influential factor in Milan’s renaissance. In 1491 he had his nephew, the actual Duke, along with his nephew’s wife, Isabella of Aragon, imprisoned in the castle of Visconti, in Pava, Lombardy. Isabella’s grandfather was Ferrante, the king of Naples. When Ferrante died in 1494 and it kicked off all these different claims to the Neapolitan throne, her father, Ferrante’s son, Alfonso II, was one of them. Isabella of Aragon, from Visconti Castle, then asked her father for help in taking her husband’s ducal power back off his uncle Ludovico. Ludovico responded by contacting the King of France, Charles VIII, and suggesting that now would be a good time to go and make good on his Anjou claim to Naples. See how this all ties together? Ludovico may not have thought about all the possible consequences of this, perhaps best expressed in the words of historian John Edwards, from his book The Spain of the Catholic Monarchs:
“It is doubtful whether Ludovico wished to see French domination of Italy. More probably he merely sought support from across the frontier in his own struggles to make good his claim to investiture as duke, in succession to Giangaleazzo, and to defend it against Italian rivals, and against his Catalan enemies, whose sovereign was Ferdinand. The Milanese duke would have to do business with whomever was king of Naples, and had no special interest in seeing either a Valois or a Trastamaran ruler there. To other Italian powers, Ludovico later presented himself as victim of French aggression, who was forced by long-standing ties of alliance to support Charles’s claim to Naples…”
So, to quickly summarise, because this has been very complex: By 1494 the Italian balance of power had collapsed with the deaths of Lorenzo de Medici and the King of Naples. Alfonso II of Aragon, a direct relative of one of the two Spanish monarchs, became the new King of Naples. But French king Charles VIII, having been told since childhood that he had the rightful claim to the kingdom, as well as some fancy Mediterranean ports and an outspoken desire to wage a crusade against the Ottomans, contested this. The regent of the powerful Duchy of Milan, Ludovico Sforza, has effectively imprisoned the actual Duke of Milan, his nephew Gian Galleazo Sforza, whose wife is the daughter of Alfonso II in Naples. To take power in Milan for good, he has now opened the door for Charles VIII to waltz in and go take Naples. But as we have seen, time and time again, when somebody said “I am the king of such such” and violently went to the place to make their case, very often it would spark an equally violent rebuttal.
The balance of power in Italy falls apart
Ferrante, the King of Naples, died in January 1494, sparking a flurry of action from those who had claims to be crown of Naples. Ferrante’s son Alfonso II sent a missive to the Pope, Alexander VI, promising to pay him a bunch of cash as well as provide a lot of support to the Alexander’s three sons if the Pope supported Alfonso’s investiture as King of Naples. French envoys to the Pope arrived to quite assertively make Charles’ claim clear, bringing a rebuke from Alexander, expressing that his role as pope was to “appease and extinguish animosities, not to foment wars between Christian princes”, especially when the Turks posed such a threat. Even without the Pope on-side, Charles still decided to go ahead with his planned invasion to take Naples. In February 1494, he began mustering his armies and a fleet in Lyon and Provence. Charles sent for the Marshall of France, Philip de Crevecouer, to come and lead the charge. Along the way, however, the 76 year old Crevecoeur passed away in the village of Bresle. A moment of silence, please, for Philip de Crevecoeur, the turncoat noble whose military prowess had seen him play a pivotal role for decades in the wars between Burgundy and France, on both sides. After his death, Charles took control of the invasion of Italy himself.
There was still a lot of uncertainty about the logistical issues, like the cost, projected time-span and level of local support, as well as how many troops were necessary, how many boats they needed and what exactly the best plan would be to get to Naples. Remember, Naples lies south of Rome, meaning that if he was going to by land, he was going to need to cross over half of Italy to get there. As we have already touched upon just when speaking about Naples, the Italian peninsula was rife with competition and rivalries between the different powers. A huge invasion by a foreign king would mean having to delicately deal with those powers and any misstep could easily turn them against him.
In regard to local support, Ludovico Sforza, the regent of Milan was on team Charles, and in too deep to back out now. He had ensured that the French could use the port town of Genoa, with the idea that French forces would arrive and from there head south into Naples. In July, 1494, the French king’s cousin, the Duke of Orleans, Louis, arrived in Genoa with an army of French troops and Swiss mercenaries, who were joined by the Milanese. In Florence, the popular opinion was to support France. Florence was run by international commerce, similar to Bruges in Flanders, and much of its business was done in France. However, also like Bruges and Flanders, there was a disconnect between what the citizens wanted and what the rulers decided. Piero de Medici, having succeeded his late father Lorenzo, stated publicly that their alliance was with Naples and their honour demanded they stick to it. He said the same to Charles’ ambassadors when they arrived to request passage of supplies through Tuscany. This irritated the French monarch enough that he banished all Medici bankers and agents from France. Only the Medici though. In the words of Christine Shaw, “Other Florentine merchants and bankers were left in peace, because, Charles said, he knew that the people of Florence were sympathetic to him.”
The other major republican power in Italy was Venice. Their biggest concern was keeping trade lubricated between East and West, which they did by maintaining control over various Eastern Mediterranean and Adriatic ports and holdings. The Venetian Republic was face-to-face with the Ottoman empire, which had surged into super-power status in the 15th century, resulting in the capture of Constantinople in 1453. The Venetians had managed to maintain some trade access to this gateway to the East, but nonetheless were in a pretty consistent struggle with the Ottomans over the control of vital trade routes. They listened to the entreaties of both Charles VIII and Alfonso II, both of whom wanted the Venetians support in claiming the crown of Naples. Despite French offers of various ports as prizes, they were kindly advised that the Republic of Venice, also known as La Serenissima (The most Serene Republic) must stay serenely neutral, so as to be able to deal with any issues that might arise on their Eastern board.
The invasion of Italy
So, as this all began to come to a head in August and September 1494, Florence and the Pope were with Alfonso as king of Naples, Milan led by Ludovico Sforza was with France and The Republic of Venice had stayed neutral. The expected invasion still managed some surprises, as word spread around that the French had, mainly, marched over the Alps, with Charles VIII arriving in the town of Asti on September 9. Alfonso had thought that the best way to keep himself in power in Naples was to make sure that Charles and the French never arrived there in the first place. His plan was to incite a rebellion in Genoa against Milan and France. For this purpose, at the beginning of September 1494, an Arogonese fleet landed 4000 Neapolitan troops just south of Genoa at a place called Rapallo. Unfortunately for them, the Duke of Orleans, Louis, was able to catch them in a kind of pincer with Swiss mercenaries and Milanese troops attacking them by land whilst French artillery shot at them from ships in the bay. It was a big defeat for the Neapolitans and assured that Genoa would remain in France’s possession. It wasn’t the biggest battle by any measure, but it threw a big spanner in the Plan A of Alfonso. His troops had to withdraw and he now had to accept that he was not going to prevent the French from arriving. They were here.
We are not going into the absolute depths of detail about this war, which would become known as the First Italian War or, the first of the Valois-Habsburg wars. But just a quick couple of highlights: almost immediately after arriving in Italy in September 1494, Charles VIII fell incredibly sick and almost had to go back to France, which would have been quite the fizzer after all of this build up, but sometimes, that’s just how things go! Charles recovered, however, and a month later he was in Pavia where he visited the real Duke of Milan, the one who Ludovico Sforza was ruling for, Gian Galleazzo Sforza. He just suddenly happened to be on his death bed. Weird timing. Just to quote a little bit of The History of Italy, an account of these wars written by Francesco Guicciardini, who was a contemporary and major political writer of these times: “It was published abroad, that the Death of Galeazzo had proceeded from an immoderate use of the matrimonial bed: but it was universally believed through Italy that no natural infirmity nor incontinence was the cause…one of the royal physicians…affirmed that he had observed most manifest symptoms of poison. And if that was the case, no one doubted but Lodovico was the Author”. I don’t like making jokes about people dying, but I have to laugh at Ludovico’s plan to convince Italians that you could have too much sex. It worked out for him though, because after Gian Galleazzo Sforza’s death, Ludovico was officially made Duke of Milan. The French army went a rampaging through Tuscany, destroying castles and slaughtering all of their inhabitants, just really winning the hearts and minds of Italians. Charles occupied Florence after a popular revolt had ejected Pierro d’Medici and then moved south. Charles wrote letters to the Pope telling him he was coming to Rome and letting him know that if there was no resistance in this: “immediately upon the King’s entrance he [the pope] would find all their differences converted into the most sincere Love and Friendship” Crumbling under this pressure, Pope Alexander agreed. King Alfonso’s son, Ferdinando, had been in Rome but was granted permission to leave and safety on his return to Naples. Apparently at the exact same moment that Ferdinando left Rome from one gate, Charles VIII entered from another on New Year’s Eve 1494. Whilst in Rome, Charles was given back possession of that Ottoman prince Djem which would be helpful for any crusading plans he had after this. Unfortunately for Djem, he also suddenly fell ill and died a month later.
By the end of January, 1495, the Aragonese resistance in Naples was on its last legs and all of Italy was in a state of shock at the speed and brutality with which French forces had mown down the peninsula. Alfonso, who had never been particularly popular among his subjects, abdicated on January 22 and bailed on the whole scene, heading to a monastery to live out his (not that many) remaining days. His son, Ferdinando, who had left Rome just as Charles had entered, was now left in charge of the flailing Aragonese hold on Naples. Within a month, his forces had been pushed all the way back to the coast, as town after town fell to the ever advancing wave of invaders. The French rocked up at a castle on the outskirts of Naples called Monte San Giovanni Campano, where, in the words of Francesco Guicciardini again: “there were Three Hundred foreign Foot, and Five Hundred of the Inhabitants determined to defend themselves to the last, which made People imagine the French would be detained here for some Days. But after firing the Cannon for a few Hours, they gave the assault in the King's presence, who was come thither from Veruli with so much Bravery, that they overcame all Difficulties, and took it by Storm the same Day, and prompted by their own natural Fury, and also to set an Example to others not to make any Opposition, made a vast Slaughter, and, after perpetrating all Sorts of Barbarities, they exercised their Cruelties against the Edifices by setting them on Fire. This Manner of making War not having been practised in Italy for many Ages, filled the whole Kingdom with vast Consternation.”. This brutality in victory sent shockwaves across Italy and would become instrumental in turning the tide of the war against the French. Charles VIII marched triumphantly into Naples, with Ferdinando fleeing to Sicily, promising his subjects that he would return with reinforcement in 15 days and, should he not, they were to be released from their fealty to him. It took him a bit longer, but he would return.
The Holy League
So, we promised that this would all get related to the History of the Netherlands at the beginning, and now is the time to make good on that promise! Charles might have won the battle for Naples, but he had scared so many people and made so many enemies throughout his campaign that in March, 1495, in Venice (which remember, had been neutral in this war) a great meeting took place between power brokers from across Italy and the continent to figure out what to do about Charles. This meeting resulted in the creation of The Holy League, or the League of Venice, on March 31, 1495. At this point, we are going to let a guy we haven’t heard from for a while, since he bailed on Burgundy, Philip de Commynes, take over the narrative: “The league was concluded one night very late; the next morning I was sent for to the senate…As soon as I came thither, and had taken my seat, the duke told me, that in honour to the Holy Trinity they had entered into an alliance with the pope, the kings of the Romans , and Castile , and the duke of Milan, upon three principal ends; one was to defend Christendom against the Turk ; the second for the defence of Italy ; and the third for the preservation of their territories ; which they desired I would notify to the king my master . They were in all about a hundred , or more, looked very gay, their noses tossed up into the air, and no such sadness in their countenances, as upon the surrender of the castle at Naples.” So here we have it: a grand alliance of Charles’ enemies, who, under the pretence of defending Christendom against the Turks, were going to collectively au revoir Charles from Naples. On one side we’ve got Charles VIII on his lonesome, and on the other we have: the pope, the Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza, who had switched allegiances after getting what he wanted and no longer needed a rampaging French king on his side, Venice, the Spanish Monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella and the King of the Romans, Emperor Maximilian. You can imagine Maximilian, who was always keen on a bit of glory hunting, drooling over the prospect of joining with such illustrious company to smack down Charles VIII.
Charles VIII sat around in Naples for a bit and on May 12, 1495 waved a fancy stick around in front of the city saying “I am the King”. But with the pope now once again against him, he didn’t have of the spiritual or temporal backing required for this to be legitimate. A week later, wary of getting trapped in Italy by the Holy League, Charles left Naples and began retreating north, heading home towards France. Two months later, Ferdinando, who had promised his subjects he would return in 15 days, made a true Italian style late entrance, rallied supporters around Naples, and retook the city of Naples. About a year after that, the last French resistance in the surrounding areas of Naples surrendered. A happy ending for Ferdinando, right?! Well, not really, because you need to consolidate these things by more than just swords. Ferdinando took the bold move of marrying his aunty - yes his father’s sister - who was, also ten years his junior. Even in a time of rampant incest amongst the European aristocracy, there were still some lines that other’s would not have crossed. Philip de Commyne’s wrote of this particular level of incest that “”I cannot think of this marriage without horror”. But then he reflected that “...though there were several of the same nature in that family within the memory of man, and that within the last thirty years.” That’s…eergh…amore.
Charles VIII was moving back towards France, having ticked off his aim, in his mind anyway, of becoming king of Naples but, in reality, making a dignified retreat. A couple of things stood in the way of a clean French exit, one being a combined Milanese-Venetian force that tried to block their way at Fornovo, at a place where the river Taro flows through a mountain pass. In an undecided battle, the French managed to get through, however the level of Italian resistance showed the strength of the Holy League. They suffered more casualties but also ransacked the French baggage train, taking a huge amount of booty from Charles VIII. The other problem for the French retreat was the humiliation Charles’ cousin, the Duke of Orleans, Louis, at the Siege of Novara. When Ludovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan, had switched sides against the French, Louis had taken that as a personal affront and decided to dust off his own claims to the Duchy of Milan (because why not, everybody seems to have been claiming any title they fancied at this point [his grandmother was a Visconti, if you are playing along]). Louis had managed to take the castle of Novara nearby Milan, against Charles’ wishes. Ludovico had suffered some kind of illness but his wife, Beatrice d’Este, took personal command of the situation and had Louis besieged in Novara. According to Christine Shaw, after Louis meekly surrendered and left Novara in September, 1495, “only half of the 10000 or so men had survived the three months of siege; only 500 or 600 were in a condition to bear arms”. So Louis, Duke of Orleans, was unable to press further his ambitions in Milan, but… these are called the Italian WARS, not the Italian war, and Louis would return in the future, as King Louis XII.
By October, Charles VIII had signed some treaties that gave him funds and allowed him to save enough face to set off again over the Alps back to France. He left a governor in charge of consolidating the non-legitimised holdings the French still controlled in Naples but the reality was that this endeavour had allied some of Europe’s biggest powers, as well as - even if only temporarily - unified almost all the other Italian states against him. His war in Italy had achieved no net positive for France, had a cost a bunch of money and caused a lot of misery. It did, however, focus European military ambitions on Italy for the next few decades as the Valois and Habsburg dynasties made it their playground to contest their supremacy. Luckily we don’t need to cover all of that. But, relevant to our tale, and the reason we have gone on this huge tangent, far away, up river, over mountains and on the other side of Europe, is because of the long-term diplomatic consequences of the Holy League. The agreement made in Venice, in this seemingly unrelated conflict, was a key driver in bringing together the Habsburgs and Spanish domains. And without having some understanding of how that came about, we feel we would be limited in our understanding of the Netherlands’ history going forward, hence why we’ve dedicated a whole episode to this.
According to Christine Shaw, the “prime mover” of the Holy League had been Ferdinand of Aragon. In its creation, he was furthering a bunch of his own personal ambitions. One was the checking of French power. Another was restoring his family to the crown of Naples (which he had grand designs on for himself and in case we don’t ever come back to this part of Europe, he will successfully obtain for himself in 1504). But finally, it gave real impetus to plans which had already been afoot between himself and Maximilian about binding their families together in alliance through the time honoured tradition of political expediency, marriage. Now THAT’S amore. The planned marriages, which came together partly because of all the stuff we have just gone through, would be between the Crown prince of Castile and Aragon, Ferdinand and Isabella's oldest son and heir, Prince Juan, and our very own Margaret of Austria, former Queen consort of France. That’s right! Margaret had been humiliated and robbed of her chance to be a Queen when Charles VIII had ditched her for Anne of Brittany, but now she was going to be a Queen in Spain instead! The second marriage would be between Maximilian’s son and heir, the archduke of Burgundy, Philip the Handsome to Isabella and Ferdinand’s second daughter, Joanna. If everybody had lived happily ever after from this point, these marriages would have resulted in a Dutch queen married into the Spanish royal family and a Spanish Holy Roman Empress, married to a Dutch Emperor. But life isn’t a fairy tale and this isn’t what would happen. But that, guapos y belissimas, is all for future episodes of History of the Netherlands.
Source used:
Monarchies, States Generals and Parliaments by Helmut Koenigsberger
‘The Burgundian Netherlands, 1477–1521’ in The New Cambridge Modern History, chapter by C. A. J. Armstrong
The Historical Memoirs of Philip de Comines, Containing the Transactions of Lewis XI and of Charles VIII of France and of Edward IV and Henry VII of England by Philippe de Commynes
A Bewitched Duchy: Lorraine and Its Dukes, 1477-1736 by E. William Monter
Jem Sultan : the adventures of a captive Turkish prince in Renaissance Europe by John Freely
The Italian Wars 1494-1559 by Christine Shaw
Cronaca milanese by Giovanni Andrea Prato.
The Spain of the Catholic Monarchs 1474-1520 by John Edwards
Beatrice d’Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 by Julia Cartwright
The History of Italy by Francesco Guicciardini