ALFONSO THE MAGNANIMOUS AND THE FALL OF ANJOUTaking Milan and Venice as allies, he focused his attention
on Florence, partly in the hope of asserting his own rule
over the Tuscan coast around Pisa, though his first war with
Florence ended in 1448 with defeat at Piombino, and his
second ( 1452-54) did not long outlast the abandonment of
his cause by his Venetian allies. For the years after 1454
were a period in which the search for stability within the
peninsula was being actively promoted not just for its own
sake, but in order to fend off the Turkish threat. The fall of
Constantinople to the Turk in May 1453, an unthinkable
event, prompted Venice and Milan to negotiate the Peace
of Lodi in 1454, to which Florence soon adhered, then the
papacy, and finally, in January 1455, the king of Naples.^2 ~
Such an agreement had the added attraction of confirming
both the Sforza dominion over Milan and the Aragonese
dominion over Naples. A number of minor lords and cities
were drawn in as well, such as Alfonso's close ally and milit-
ary commander Federigo da Montefeltro, count of Urbino;
Genoa adhered as an associate of Milan, but Alfonso still
reserved the right to attack this outpost of Angevin preten-
sions. All this seemed to have been stabilised by the election
in April 1455 of Alonso Borja, a subject of Alfonso V's from
Valencia, as Pope Calixtus III; the Borgia pope was an old
associate of Alfonso, but his surprising decision to refuse to
confirm the rights of succession of the bastard Ferrante in
Naples led to a rapid breach between king and pope; the
effects of this will be examined more closely later. Within
the papal states, there was considerable upheaval as a result
of the attempts by the mercenary captain Jacopo Piccinino
to challenge the power of Sigismondo Malatesta, the much
feared lord of Rimini, and to establish a power base in sup-
posedly papal Assisi; Piccinino's associate in this enterprise,
Federigo of Urbino, was one of Alfonso's closes allies, and
it was clear that he did not mind making trouble for the
papacy.^26 The Peace of Lodi and the Italian League that
emerged from it did not guarantee the tranquillity of Italy;
yet the Peace remained a fundamental point of reference in
Italian politics, a principle to which allies (as they had rapidly
- Ryder, Alfonso, pp. 289-90.
- For this alliance, see C.H. Clough, 'Federico da Montefeltro and
the kings of Naples: a study in fifteenth-century survival', Renaissance
Studies, 6 (1992), pp. 113-72.