THE FRENCH INVASION OF ITALY, 1494-95It was on these sentiments that Ludovico Sforza could play,
in trying to defend himself against the imagined threat to his
authority posed by the Aragonese in Naples. Yet it is a moot
point whether Ludovico had in mind the massive expedition
that actually reached Italy in 1494. Attuned to subtle diplo-
matic bargaining, Ludovico was in the first place seeking to
use Charles as a mighty counterweight against his enemies
in Italy, to secure his dubious claims to authority over Milan,
and to enable Milan to withstand regional threats. There is
no reason to suppose that he sought to make France the
true master of Italy.
There is some reflection of these priorities in a grandi-
loquent speech that Guicciardini put into the mouth of
Ludovico's ambassador to Charles; all the emphasis is placed
on the glory that will accrue to Charles from a war against
Naples, which will surely be far easier to accomplish than the
wars of Rene of Anjou and Jean de Calabre, who had lacked
resources and yet always came perilously near to destroying
the Aragonese dynasty in Naples. But now 'it is God who leads
you with such wonderful opportunities', while it is a matter
of law that the house of France, as successor to that of Anjou,
has ajust claim to Naples, and a duty to remove from it the
Catalan tyrants who oppress Charles's south Italian subjects.^8
This is thus a just war of liberation, whether of the victims
of despotism in southern Italy or of the Church itself which
has lost control of the holy places in the East. Yet the sub-
text is plain: 'Ludovico would gain nothing but a just revenge
against the intrigues and offenses of the Catalans.' By insist-
ing how little direct benefit this campaign would supposedly
bring to the master of Milan, Ludovico's ambassador was
attempting to by-pass Ludovico's real concern to establish
himself more securely in Milan. And not surprisingly opinion
at the French court was sharply divided. The longstanding
presence of south Italian exiles at court helped stimulate
belief in the justice of the enterprise. Was Ludovico any more
to be trusted than the other Italian princes? The reality was
that the rulers of Milan had shifted back and forth in and
out of friendship with Naples, while the expedition would
undoubtedly cost a vast fortune. How would the conquered
- History of Italy, Book 1, cap. 4.