Italy from c. 1380 to c. 1500

Political development, 1380–1454

From the 1380s to the 1450s Italy was torn by a long series of large-scale wars. The principal aggressor in these conflicts was the Visconti family, who, having seized the signoria of Milan, had extended their power to many other cities, from Asti in Piedmont to Reggio in Emilia. From 1385 the ruthless and energetic Gian Galeazzo Visconti (created duke of Milan by Emperor Wenceslas in 1395) embarked on a series of diplomatic and military campaigns that brought him virtual hegemony over northern and central Italy. He extended his power through a series of dynastic marriages—essentially, the bartering of Visconti wealth for noble blood—which gave the family immense prestige. Gian Galeazzo’s first wife was Isabella of Valois, daughter of King John II of France; his sister, Violante, was married (albeit briefly) to Lionel, son of Edward III of England; and his nieces were married to the dukes of Bavaria and Austria.

In 1387 Gian Galeazzo seized Verona and Vicenza from their signori; in 1388 he took Padua and other territories in the Veneto. These coups provoked the suspicions of Florence, and, after the failure of attempts to delineate their respective spheres of influence, three wars erupted between the two powers (1390–92, 1397–98, 1400–02). Gian Galeazzo apparently achieved an overwhelming predominance, for he was recognized as signore of Pisa and Siena in 1399 and of Perugia, Spoleto, and Assisi in 1400. In June 1402 he took Bologna. Florence was now encircled, and perhaps it was saved from conquest only by Gian Galeazzo’s death in September from plague. At his death the state that he had built up collapsed, and his son, the vicious and incompetent Giovanni Maria Visconti (duke 1402–12), was incapable of restoring the dynasty’s fortunes. With the accession of Giovanni’s brother, Filippo Maria Visconti (duke 1412–47), however, a new era of Visconti expansion dawned. By 1422 Filippo Maria had restored the family’s Lombard possessions. Thenceforward, until the middle of the century, there came a series of virtually continuous conflicts against an alliance of Florence and Venice.

Until the 14th century Venice had ruled only the lagoon, the eastern and Adriatic possessions that had served to maintain its commerce, and, on the Italian mainland, a thin strip of land bordering the lagoon. Yet the rise of Visconti power from the 1380s persuaded the Serenissima finally to establish itself as a territorial power on the peninsula. If the old signori—the della Scala at Verona and the Carraresi at Padua—had seemed from time to time in the past to threaten the free passage of goods from Venice over the Alpine passes or into Lombardy, the threat of the Visconti dukes with all their power could only reinforce Venetian apprehensions. With Gian Galeazzo’s death the republic turned accordingly to extending its control over the mainland. Between 1403 and 1405 it took over Verona, Vicenza, and Padua. Between 1411 and 1420 the city seized the wide territories of the ecclesiastical prince, the patriarch of Aquileia in Friuli. In 1426 it conquered Brescia and in 1428 Bergamo in Lombardy. These acquisitions proved immensely profitable. It was calculated in 1440 that taxes from the new possessions yielded 306,000 ducats, as against 180,000 from the colonial possessions (which were at the same time much more expensive to defend). The “Veneto,” as it came to be known, was rich, populous, and fertile—and a good market for the city’s trade. In the newly subjected towns the old civic oligarchies continued to hold a measure of local power, though now under the supervision of Venetian podestas and captains. Below them, peasants and urban workers acquiesced in a system that imposed some external check upon exploitation by the town patriciates.

Venetian expansion had taken place through an alliance with its fellow republic, Florence, against Milan. Yet this entente, in part through the Venetians’ very success, was shortly to disappear. On the death of Filippo Maria Visconti without male heirs (August 1447), some prominent citizens proclaimed Milan a republic. But they proved incapable of maintaining order in the state, which in 1450 surrendered to Filippo Maria’s son-in-law, the powerful condottiere Francesco Sforza. Francesco was swift to proclaim himself duke. This revolution soon led to a revolution in the diplomatic alignments of the peninsula, with Florence then and for more than 40 years afterward adhering to Milan as its principal ally in its search to maintain the status quo and its own power. Following the collapse of the Revolt of the Ciompi, Florence itself had come under the rule of a narrow oligarchic government under the personal domination of Maso degli Albizzi (1382–1417) and then of his son, Rinaldo (until 1434). The Albizzi regime successfully resisted the Visconti and then a temporary threat from King Ladislas of Naples in the years 1408–14, and it also contributed to Florence’s expansion over Tuscany, which since the mid-14th century had transformed the city-state into a territorial state like Milan and Venice. The city had absorbed Volterra in 1361 and Arezzo in 1384; now it went on to conquer Pisa, with its port, in 1406 and to purchase Livorno from Genoa in 1421. Seeking further expansion, however, it failed to conquer Lucca in a war fought between 1429 and 1433.

That failure was largely responsible for the fall of the oligarchy dominated by the Albizzi and its replacement with an oligarchy subordinate to Cosimo de’ Medici. Cosimo, who attained an unofficial personal dominance over the state in 1434, was to hold it until his death in 1464 and then pass it on to his descendants. Cosimo was the principal architect of an alliance with the Sforza of Milan that culminated in the Peace of Lodi (1454). By this pact Milan, Florence, Venice, and (in 1455) King Alfonso of Aragon and Naples and Pope Nicholas V bound themselves together in an “Italian League” against any power, Italian or foreign, that should disturb the existing balance of power. At the same time, the treaty established special machinery for the peaceful settlement of any disputes that might arise among the states. Despite some local conflicts, the creation of the Italian League brought about a much more peaceful era in the second half of the century. Peace was assisted, above all, by a general exhaustion among most of the major powers, whose economies and societies could no longer support the strains imposed upon them by wars.