AGE OF INVASIONS The year 1492 opened a new age for Italy. In this year Lorenzo died, and was succeeded by his son Piero ; France passed beneath the personal control of Charles VIII. ; the fall of Granada freed Spain from her embarrassments, Columbus discovered America, destroying the commercial supremacy of Venice ; last, but not least, Rodrigo Borgia assumed the tiara as Alexander VI. In this year Italy was once more drawn into the vortex of European affairs. After Galeazzo Maria's assassination, his crown passed to a boy, Gian Galeazzo, who was in due course married to a granddaughter of Ferdinand I. of Naples. But the government of Milan remained in the hands of this youth's uncle, Ludovico, surnamed Il Moro, who resolved to become duke of Milan. The king of Naples was his natural enemy and he suspected that Piero de' Medici might abandon his alliance. Feeling himself alone, with no right to the title he was bent on seizing, he had recourse to Charles VIII. of France, whom he urged to make good his claim to the kingdom of Naples, which rested on the will of King Rene of Anjou. Charles finally agreed to invade Italy. He crossed the Alps in passed through Lombardy, entered Tuscany, freed Pisa from the yoke of Florence, witnessed the expulsion of the Medici, marched to Naples and was crowned there —all this without striking a blow. Meanwhile Ludovico pro cured his nephew's death, and raised a league against the French in Lombardy. Charles hurried back from Naples, and narrowly escaped destruction at Fornovo in the passes of the Apennines, returning to France in 1495. Little was left him of his recent acquisitions; but he had convulsed Italy by this invasion, de stroyed her equilibrium, exposed her military weakness and po litical disunion, and revealed her wealth to greedy and more powerful nations.
The princes of the house of Aragon, now represented by Frederick, a son of Ferdinand I., returned to Naples, and Florence made herself a republic. At this crisis she was ruled by the monk Girolamo Savonarola, who inspired the people with a thirst for freedom, preached the necessity of reformation, and placed him self in direct antagonism to Rome. After a short but eventful career, the influence of which was long effective, he lost his hold upon the citizens. Alexander VI. procured a mock trial, and his enemies had him put to death in 1498. In this year Louis XII. succeeded Charles VIII. upon the throne of France. As duke of Orleans he had certain claims to Milan through his grandmother Valentina, daughter of Gian Galeazzo, the first duke, and in 1499 Louis entered and subdued the Milanese. Ludovico escaped to Germany, returned the next year, was betrayed by his Swiss mercenaries and sent to die at Loches in France. In i500 Louis concluded a treaty at Granada with Ferdinand the Catholic, whereby the French and Spanish kings were to divide the spoil. The conquest was easy; but, when it came to a partition, Ferdi nand played his ally false. He made himself supreme over the two Sicilies, which he now reunited under a single crown. Three years later Louis signed the treaty of Blois (1504), whereby he invited the emperor Maximilian to aid him in the subjugation of Venice.
The stage was now prepared for the ruin of Italy. Spain, France, Germany, with their Swiss auxiliaries, had been sum moned upon various pretexts to seize her provinces. Then, too late, patriots like Machiavelli perceived the suicidal self-indul gence of the past, which, by substituting mercenary troops for national militias, left the Italians at the absolute discretion of their neighbours. The game was in the hands of French, Spanish and German invaders, and no scheme for combination against common foes arose in the peninsula. Each petty potentate strove for his own private advantage in the confusion ; and at this epoch the chief gains accrued to the papacy. Aided by his terrible son,
Cesare Borgia, Alexander VI. chastised the Roman nobles, sub dued Romagna and the March, threatened Tuscany, and seemed to be upon the point of creating a Central Italian state in favour of his progeny, when he died suddenly in 1503 while Cesare was ill. His conquests reverted to the Holy See. Julius II. continued Alexander's policy, but no longer in the interest of his own rela tives. It became the nobler ambition of Julius to aggrandize the Church, and to reassume the protectorate of the Italian people. With this object, he secured Emilia, carried his victorious arms against Ferrara, and curbed the tyranny of the Baglioni in Perugia. Quarreling with the Venetians in 1508, he combined the forces of all Europe by the league of Cambrai against them; and, when he had succeeded in his first purpose of humbling them, he turned round in 151o, uttered his famous resolve to expel the barbarians from Italy, and pitted the Spaniards against the French. It was with the Swiss that he hoped to effect this revolution; but the Swiss, formed for mercenary warfare, proved a perilous in strument in the hands of those who used them, and were hardly less injurious to their friends than to their foes. In 1512 the battle of Ravenna between the French troops and the allies of Julius—Spaniards, Venetians and Swiss—was fought. Gaston de Foix bought a doubtful victory dearly with his death ; and the allies immediately afterwards expelled the French from Lom bardy. Julius II. had only exchanged one set of foreign masters for another. As a consequence of the battle of Ravenna, the Medici returned in 1512 to Florence.
When Leo X. was elected in 1513, Rome and Florence rejoiced ; but Italy had no repose. Louis XII. had lost the game, and the Spaniards were triumphant. By the victory of Marignano in 1515 Francis I., having now succeeded to the throne of France, regained the Milanese and broke the power of the Swiss, who held it for Massimiliano Sforza, the titular duke. Leo for a while relied on Francis; for the vast power of Charles V., who suc ceeded to the empire in 1519, as in 1516 he had succeeded to the crowns of Spain and Lower Italy, threatened the whole of Europe. Leo, however, in 1521, changed sides, allied himself to Charles, and died after hearing that the imperial troops had again expelled the French from Milan. At the decisive battle of Pavia in 1525, Francis was taken prisoner, and Italy lay open to the Spanish armies. Meanwhile Leo X. had been followed by Adrian VI., and Adrian by Clement VII. of the house of Medici. The year 1527 was signalized by the famous sack of Rome. An army of mixed German and Spanish troops, pretending to act for the emperor, but which may rather be regarded as a vast marauding party, entered Italy under their leader Frundsberg. After his death Rome was taken by assault. The Constable de Bourbon, who commanded the army, was killed in the first onslaught; Clement was imprisoned in the castle of St. Angelo; Rome was abandoned to the rage of 30,00o ruffians. As an immediate result of this disaster, Florence shook off the Medici and re-established the republic. But Clement, having made peace with the emperor, turned the remnants of the army which had sacked Rome against his native city. After a desperate resistance, Florence fell in 1530. Alessandro de' Medici was placed there and, on his murder in 1537, Cosimo de' Medici, of the younger branch of the ruling house, was make duke, and bequeathed to his descendants the grand-duchy of Tuscany.