Lectures on Modern historyActon, John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, Baron
History
Lectures on Modern history
Acton, John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, Baron
History, Modern
His successor, Lewis XII, was the Duke of Orleans, who descended
from the Visconti, and he at once prepared to enforce his claim
on Milan. He allied himself against his rival, Sforza, with Venice,
and with Pope Alexander. That he might marry the widowed queen,
and preserve her duchy of Brittany for the Crown, he required
that his own childless marriage should be annulled. Upon the
Legate who brought the necessary documents the grateful king
bestowed a principality, a bride of almost royal rank, and an
army wherewith to reconquer the lost possessions of the Church in
Central Italy. For the Legate was the Cardinal of Valencia, who
became thenceforward Duke of Valentinois, and is better known as
Caesar Borgia. The rich Lombard plain, the garden of Italy, was
conquered as easily as Naples had been in the first expedition.
Sforza said to the Venetians: "I have been the dinner; you will
be the supper"; and went up into the Alps to look for Swiss
levies. At Novara, in 1500, his mercenaries betrayed him and he
ended his days in a French prison. On their way home from the
scene of their treachery, the Swiss crowned their evil repute by
seizing Bellinzona and the valley of the Ticino, which has
remained one of their cantons.
Lewis, undisputed master of Milan and Genoa, assured of the Roman
and the Venetian alliance, was in a better position than his
predecessor to renew the claim on the throne of Naples. But now,
behind Frederic of Naples, there was Ferdinand of Aragon and
Sicily, who was not likely to allow the king for whom he had
fought to be deposed without resistance. Therefore it was a
welcome suggestion when Ferdinand proposed that they should
combine to expel Frederic and to divide his kingdom. As it was
Ferdinand who had just reinstated him, this was an adaptation to
the affairs of Christendom of the methods which passed for
justice in the treatment of unbelievers, and were applied without
scruple by the foremost men of the age, Albuquerque and Cortez.
Frederic turned for aid to the Sultan, and this felonious act was
put forward as the justification of his aggressors. The Pope
sanctioned the Treaty of Partition, and as the Crown of Naples
was technically in his gift, he deprived the king on the ground
stated by the allies. The exquisite significance of the plea was
that the Pope himself had invited Turkish intervention in Italy,
and now declared it a cause of forfeiture. In 1501 French and
Spaniards occupied their allotted portions, and then quarrelled
over the distribution of the spoil. For a time Gonsalvo, "the
great Captain," was driven to bay at Barletta on the Adriatic;
but at the end of 1503 he won a decisive victory, and the
defeated French, under Bayard, withdrew from the Garigliano to
the Po. Naples remained a dependency of Spain, for all purposes,
in modern history.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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