ALFONSO THE MAGNANIMOUS AND THE FALL OF ANJOUvalley. Yet, even though his attention focused in the next
few years on the struggle of Charles VII against the English,
in which Rene served the French king loyally, the duke of
Anjou was incapable of forgetting his Italian ambitions.^7 What
marks out Rene's Italian campaign of 1438-42 from his
later campaigns is the increasing involvement of the French
monarchy in Rene's schemes, to the extent that it was some-
times the French king, rather than the titular king of Sicily,
who appears to have pushed hardest. In 1453 Rene won the
approval of Charles VII for another Italian expedition which
Charles saw as an opportunity to strengthen his ties with the
Sforza duke of Milan. Rene entrusted the management of
his campaign to his son Jean, titular duke of Calabria; the
fall of Genoa to the Angevins in 1458 provided Rene with
a bridgehead for another invasion of southern Italy.H Yet
the occupation of Genoa was a political calamity; Francesco
Sforza, ever subtle in his conduct of diplomacy, realised that
it was one thing to be able to call on the French for polit-
ical and military aid in a crisis, but quite another to have a
French presence on his doorstep, in a city over which Milan
too had claims. A general Italian peace had been patched
together following the Peace ofLodi in 1454-55, which guar-
anteed the security of the five major Italian powers, Milan,
Venice, Florence, the papacy and Naples. Thus Sforza lost
interest in Rene; Jean's own successes and final defeat in
southern Italy, at the hands of King Ferrante, between^1458
and 1465, will be examined shortly; but failure in Naples
resulted only in the rebellion of Genoa against the French
and thus in further humiliation for the house of Anjou.
That the foundations had been laid for the French de-
scent into Italy in 1494 is clear. Rene's close association with
Charles VII, and Charles VII's ambitions in Genoa, where
the French flag had fluttered periodically since the 1390s,
certainly resulted in the view within Italy that the 'Franzesi'
had become a menace and must be cleared out of the pen-
insula. It was not always easy to distinguish Jean de Calabre's
strategy for the conquest of southern Italy from wider French
hopes of hegemony in Italy.
- Lecoy de Ia Marche, Roi Rene, pp. 263-88.
- Ryder, 'Angevin bid', pp. 64-5; Lecoy de Ia Marche, Roi Rene, pp. 288-
95.