Italian Wars, 1494–1559

Abstract

According to the Florentine historian Francesco Guicciardini, Italy enjoyed peace and plenty in the years around 1490. From 1494 it was plunged into what he and others regarded as a series of “calamities,” triggered by the French kings Charles VIII (r. 1483–1498) and Louis XII (r. 1498–1515), who claimed to rule the kingdom of Naples and the duchy of Milan, respectively. Francis I (r. 1515–1547) retained the claim to Milan, and the wars themselves continued through the reign of Henry II (r. 1547–1559). Rule over Naples was contested and secured by Ferdinand II of Aragon (r. 1479–1516) and maintained by his Iberian successors. Milan was an imperial fief, so was contested by Ferdinand’s grandson Charles V in his capacity as Holy Roman emperor (r. 1519–1556). The conflicts waged in Italy in the names of these various princes between 1494 and 1559 are collectively known as the Italian Wars. They include the War of the League of Cambrai (1508–1516), that of the League of Cognac (1526–1530), and the War of Siena (1552–1559). This article approaches the wars by means of Reference Works and Overviews specifically devoted to the Italian Wars, though it is also worth teasing information from histories of Renaissance Warfare. Contemporary Sources provide innumerable angles on a subject that can be difficult to define beyond events on the battlefield or the besieged city and are therefore subdivided into four types: Memoirs and Chronicles, Histories, Official Records, and cultural evidence, the last of which appears under the heading Art of War, Art and War. Some publications deal with individual episodes or short spans of time and therefore feature in a Chronology of War, itself subdivided at the death of Louis XII/accession of Francis I, 1494–1515 and 1515–1559. The biographical genre—Lives and Times—is the most obvious way of dealing with the leading protagonists, who tended to be Princes, but group studies are also relevant when one turns to Subjects and Citizens who contributed to the conflicts in some form or other. Some authors have confined their research to military history, including the recruitment of soldiers, their pay, and provisions, as well as their activities on the battlefield, but the Italian Wars witnessed so much overlap between the lives of Soldiers and Civilians that they are brought together in the penultimate section of the article, which then concludes with the miscellanies that are Collections of Papers.