With full consciousness of their own weakness, and sincere mutual distrust, the Italian powers had watched the growth of France. French intervention in Italy was no new thing. While her strength was yet immature, France had given one race of kings to Naples, and had endeavoured to give another. Charles VII had driven the English from France, and before his death Genoa had asked and received French protection and a French governor. Louis XI found that Genoa had revolted, but was too wise to waste his resources on distant enterprises, and gave no material aid to the ill-fated quest of John of Calabria as a pretender to the kingdom of Naples. Louis devoted his whole energy to the union of France under his absolute rule; but he never lost sight of the affairs of Italy. The powers of Italy abased themselves before him in rivalry to win his favour. He answered them impartially with good words and maintained them in slavish expectation of good services. Thus the French King came to be more and more regarded as the arbiter of Italian fortunes. The presents made to his ambassadors and courtiers and their reception when they visited Italy assisted to foster the belief that Italy was rich, disunited, and helpless, an easy prey to a militant monarchy. There was no reason to believe that the successor of Louis would be hampered by his difficulties or inclined to his reserve.
The leagues formed among themselves by the Italian States served to prevent the undue aggrandisement of any one State at the expense of the others. But no such partial alliance could stand up against the French King, in view of the suspicion,—almost the certainty,—that the other powers would join the invaders, and that the members of the alliance itself could not be trusted. The union of Italy against a foreign foe was almost unthinkable. Charles VIII had hardly come to the throne when the Signoria of Venice approached his government with the proposal that the conquest of Milan and of Naples should be at once undertaken. This treacherous act, if treachery can be imputed where there is no mutual assurance of good faith, is explained by the position of Venice, then engaged in a single-handed struggle with almost the whole of Italy. But it proved, if proof was needed, that a French invasion, whatever its pretext, would find allies in the peninsula. Ludovico deserves the doubtful credit of having been the first to bring his goods to market. French ambition had two excuses for intervention in Italy. The first was the claim of Orleans to Milan, resting on the marriage of Valentina Visconti to the first Duke of Orleans, and on the marriage contract of Valentina, confirmed by Clement VII, in which her right to succeed to her father in default of male heirs was recognised. There seems also to have been a will of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, securing the succession to her male issue in default of the direct male line; but Ludovico alone knew of this and caused all known copies to be destroyed. Legal objections might be urged against all these grounds of claim, but they were good enough to support a dynastic war. Louis of Orleans had in 1491 recovered his favour at Court, and it was not impossible that Milan would be made the object of the French attack. Milan lay dangerously near to France, and strategically was much less difficult of access than Naples. On the other hand Charles might well be unwilling to aggrandise one of the most powerful of his nobles, a possible heir to the throne, who, though reconciled, had not long ago been in arms against his King. It was Ludovico’s natural policy to endeavour to divert this danger from himself.
The second French pretext was the claim to Naples, resting on similar grounds, and similarly open to cavil. Joanna I, Queen of Naples of the first Angevin line, had no heirs of her body. The lawful heir was Charles of Durazzo, descended from the younger son of Charles II of Naples. Being at enmity with Charles of Durazzo, Joanna adopted her remote cousin Louis, Duke of Anjou by the second creation. Charles and his descendants had successfully defended their rights against Louis and his heirs, until their line also died out in Joanna II. The latter, in order to defend herself against the attacks of Louis III of Anjou, adopted Alfonso of Aragon as her heir. When later Alfonso wished to make himself master of Naples without waiting for Joanna’s death, Joanna revoked this act of adoption, adopted Louis III, and on her death (1435) made his brother Rene her heir. Thus Alfonso, who seized the kingdom, was legally only a successful usurper; and all the claims which Louis I derived from the adoption of Joanna I, together with the claims of the house of Durazzo, were united in the person of Rene, who more than once tried to recover his heritage. The rights of Rene passed in 1481, through his nephew the Count of Maine, by will and also, though not so certainly, by succession, to Louis XI, and after him to Charles VIII. Sixtus IV, although he refused to consider the application of Charles du Maine for the investiture of Naples, in 1482, moved by different thoughts, urged Louis to undertake the conquest of the kingdom, “which belongs to him.” At the beginning of the reign of Charles VIII there was some talk of putting forward Rene of Lorraine, a descendant through the female line of the house of Anjou, as claimant to the kingdom, but these proposals seem never to have been serious, and cannot be said to impair the rights of Charles VIII.’
Thus there were two paths open to the ambition of the French king, when freed from the prudent tutelage of his sister Anne. The head of the young monarch was filled with chimerical dreams. His domestic troubles had been satisfactorily composed. His standing force of cavalry, fitted alike for the shock of battle, for scouting and skirmishing, and for missile tactics, was full of military enthusiasm and wanted work. His artillery was far ahead of any other in Europe. His infantry was less satisfactory, but could be strengthened from abroad. He had himself but lately come to man’s estate and was eager to prove himself a man and a king. At his Court were the Neapolitan exiles, especially the San Severino princes, eager to press on him a definite plan of conquest. He was estranged from the wise counsellors who had kept him so long in leading-strings. Supple courtiers and men of business, Etienne de Vesc, and Guillaume Briconnet, were at his side, ready to find means for the execution of any scheme that pleased their royal master, and promised to them incidental profits. The crown of Sicily carried with it the crown of Jerusalem, thus suggesting at once and facilitating an ulterior project of crusade; and Europe needed a crusade.
The Moor was probably the first among the Italian princes to see that French intervention in Italy, so often talked of, had at length become a real danger. He approached the King of France in 1491, and received from him in the name of his nephew the investiture of Genoa, which had been similarly granted to Francesco, his father, by Louis XI. In 1492 he obtained the renewal of the alliance formerly enjoyed by his father, thus recovering the position of favour which his elder brother had lost through his indiscreet leanings towards Charles the Bold.
The Milanese embassy of unusual magnificence that soon afterwards visited France had no compromising instructions. Its object was to win the French courtiers by presents, to make all vague assurances of general devotion, and to secure if possible the protection of the King for the Duke of Bari himself. In all this it succeeded. Whatever may have been spoken of in private—and Commines suggests that the most important topics were discussed—it is probable that no promises were made which Ludovico could not afterwards disavow. Yet it is clear that he desired to secure a safeguard for himself, not only against France, but also against Naples. For his relations with that country were less than cordial. The King of Naples could hardly acquiesce permanently in the humiliation of his grand-daughter, which Isabella herself deeply resented. Hitherto he had been hampered by war with the Pope, but peace was concluded at the end of 1491. Ludovico looked to France to protect him against Naples; he hoped to achieve this end without armed French intervention; but in any case, if invasion occurred, he was determined that Naples and not Milan or the Duke of Bari should be the victim.
The events of the next two years illustrate the unstable nature of Italian policy and Italian alliances. Lorenzo de’ Medici died in April, 1492, while the Milanese embassy was at Paris. The choice before his son Piero was a difficult one. It was the traditional policy of Florence to keep up intimate, almost subservient, relations with France, where the commercial and financial interests of the Medici Bank were important, but on the other hand to prevent, if possible, active foreign interference in Italy. These two aims were probably now no longer to be reconciled; and Piero sacrificed the first without