Thus at the time when our story begins, the whole force and policy of Milan was moved at the will of one man. Ludovico, called the Duke of Bari from the Neapolitan fief he owned, and known from his complexion as the Moor, made a great impression on the men of his time. He was a master of every political art as then understood by Italian statesmen. By his wisdom he had risen, and by it he aspired to dominate Italy. Mistakes he made, no doubt, as for instance in marrying his nephew to the Neapolitan princess. But his versatile and unscrupulous intelligence, well served by his agents with information from every Court, was never at a loss for an expedient to meet a difficulty. His weakness was partly the weakness of his school of statesmanship, in which good faith and consistency were not valued as political qualities. A more serious defect was the lack of courage and nerve which he showed under the stress of danger. His munificence towards artists and men of letters, his luxurious and noble ostentation, while they tended no doubt to diminish his unpopularity, proved a heavy burden on his finances, and increased the weight of his exactions.
The State over which he ruled was one of the richest of Italy. His annual revenue was estimated at 700,000 ducats, about the same sum as Ferrante raised from Naples. The Dukes of Milan, though frequently embarrassed, again and again surprise us by the enormous sums of which they disposed. Thus Ludovico was able to give to Maximilian with his niece, Bianca Maria, no less a sum as dowry than 400,000 ducats. Only Venice had more ample resources; and the fixed charges on the Venetian treasury were heavier than Milan had to bear. The Duke of Milan controlled Genoa and her navy, which, although no longer a match for that of Venice, could be employed with great effect on the western seaboard of Italy. Through the Genoese his influence extended over the chief part of Corsica, whence on occasion good foot-soldiers could be drawn. But the military strength of Milan, like that of the other Italian States, left much to be desired. While good infantry was scarce, the inferior infantry was very bad; and the brilliant troops of mercenary horse, on which principal reliance was put, were untrustworthy and unused to serious war. Moreover the old party animosities still survived in Milan; and, if policy prompted, Guelf could still be roused against Ghibelline. Again, the Sforza rule had not yet received imperial confirmation, and the claims of the Duke of Orleans were a permanent and a serious menace.
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,