THE \IV'ESTERN MEDITERRANEAN KINGDOMS 1200-1500area be secured in the long term? To opponents of the
scheme, the risks were overriding.
Nor were Ludovico's protestations of friendship towards
France fully supported by his actions. In his dealings with
Naples and Florence, Ludovico tried to present himself as
yet another potential victim of French aggression, arguing
that he had little choice but to appear to cooperate with
Charles VIII, in the light of the ancient alliance binding
France and Milan, and in view of his wish to hold on to
Genoa. At this time Ludovico's primary aim seems to have
been to secure his investiture as duke of Milan, setting his
nephew to one side, and this meant careful negotiation not
with the French king but with the Holy Roman Emperor
Maximilian. In other words, Ludovico's aims were not the
resolution of an Italian issue, the claim to Naples, but of his
own status as lord of Milan.
The pope too sought to play off the different sides, nego-
tiating with France and Naples, offering tentative promises,
though agreeing in secret that he would defend Naples if
Ferrante would defend the papal states. Having sanctioned
Alfonso's coronation, Alexander insisted that he would not
grant the kingdom of Naples to Charles until the legal rights
of the French king and his rivals had been properly investig-
ated, which was a neat way of evading the whole issue: since
Charles claimed the kingdom by right of inheritance, and
Alexander claimed the right to dispose of the kingdom as its
overlord, the pope had clearly resolved to wait to see what
the outcome of a French invasion would be. Still, it is hard
to escape from a sense of deja vu: there was a strong similar-
ity between what was happening in 1492-94 and what had
happened on many an occasion earlier in the fifteenth cen-
tury. Italy once again faced a French army, though this time
it was to be a royal army backed by substantially greater
resources than the Angevins had ever been able to mobilise.
Yet for Guicciardini, the arrival of French armies was the start
of a series of calamities that transformed Italy from its 'happy
state' of peace under Lorenzo and his contemporaries, into
a battleground of foreign armies.') The breakdown of this
peace made 1494 'a most unhappy year for Italy, and truly
the beginning of years of wretchedness, because it opened
- History of Italy, Book 1, cap. 1.