Historians of Savoy tend to pass over its history in the wake of the Burgundian
Wars until the accession of 1504 of Duke Charles II in dignified or embarrassed
silence. Savoy’s fortunes plunged into a trough lasting a generation, from which
Duke Charles II140 was only able to offer a temporary respite, until after a further
generation the duchy came close to extinction. Given his ghoulish fascination with
vanished kingdoms, it is perhaps surprising that Norman Davies, that most suave
of historians, should choose to devote barely a sentence to these seventy-five years
of agony.141 The explanation is simple: the sterling service in the wars between
France and the Spanish Habsburgs performed by Emmanuel Philibert (Duke
Charles II’s successor) in imperial armies and subsequently as Spanish governor of
the Netherlands led to the restoration of some (but not all) Savoyard lands lost
(or occupied) in 1536 and to the dawn of a revived duchy of Savoy, culminating in
the acquisition of the kingdom of Sardinia in the eighteenth and the installation
of the dynasty as kings of Italy after the Risorgimento in the nineteenth century.
In truth, the history of the house of Savoy before 1504 was hobbled by dynastic
misfortunes and by the consequences of Savoy’s outreach into Piedmont in the
mid-fifteenth century. Piedmont, where the dukes established their second capital
in Turin, brought economic benefits, but confronted the dukes with self-assertive
and self-confident Estates, whose representatives saw no need to doff their caps to
long-standing Savoy councillors in Chambéry. In some respects Savoy-Piedmont
came to resemble a pantomime horse, in which the hind end (Piedmont) was
perfectly capable of delivering painful kicks to the forequarters (Savoy). The fact
that Piedmont subsidized the dukes to an extent far in excess of what Savoy (and
the other constituent parts of the duchy) was ever willing or able to achieve soured
relations between the two territories still further.
But before we come to the political-administrative dissensions, we need to cast
a brief eye on the dynasty itself. There can have been few dynasties in European
history which in this period were so afflicted by minorities, premature deaths,
140 Duke Charles II [in reality Charles III] ruled from 1504 to 1553. Modern historiography pre-
fers to describe him as Charles II, since Charles II as a minor between 1490 and 1496 never actually
ruled.
141 Norman Davies, Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-Forgotten Europe (London, 2011),
- To state that ‘the ducal title passed smoothly by hereditary right through fourteen generations’ is
suavity taken to the point of vacuity.