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By Root 1555 0

the Savoyard quarrel. His mission was the start of a major thrust over the next two years to install Clement in Rome and the French in the Papal States, transformed into a Kingdom of Adria. Both efforts turned upon the cooperation of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, whose concern in the venture was not so much the fate of the papacy as the expansion of Milan. Although personally religious, he seems to have had no strong feelings about one Pope or another, nor about the schism except to use it in his own interests. His object was to break the power of Florence and Bologna by drawing France into Italy in alliance with Milan.

Introspective, intelligent, rich, and melancholy, Gian Galeazzo was the master of realpolitik in Italy. His grasp had reached across the north, absorbing Verona, Padua, Mantua, and Ferrara, and probed down into Tuscany and the Papal States. He may have been aiming at a Kingdom of Lombardy, perhaps even of a united Italy, or he may have been playing the game for power’s sake. In the politics of the schism, he ran a tortuous course between his Milanese subjects, who were loyal to the Roman Pope, and partnership with France, which meant opting for Clement. How he intended to sail through these straits was not clear. It was he, however, who had revived the idea that France should resume pursuit of the Kingdom of Adria, with his son-in-law Louis of Orléans as beneficiary. This scheme—which was now the object of Coucy’s mission—had been argued with fervor and finesse by Visconti’s seventy-year-old ambassador in Paris, Niccolo Spinelli, one of the ablest diplomats of the day. The Papal States, Spinelli argued, had earned nothing but hatred for the Holy See. In the thousand years since they had been given to the papacy, the most violent wars had been waged on their account, “yet the priests neither possess them in peace nor ever will be able to possess them.” It would be better that they should renounce temporal lordship entirely “as a burden not only for themselves but for all Christians, especially Italians.”

The French needed no persuasion to assume the burden, but they wanted the kingdom officially bestowed on Louis as a papal fief before they attempted its physical conquest. The Pope, however, wanted to have the Papal States in hand before he gave them away. Coucy, as the supreme persuader and the Frenchman best acquainted with the labyrinth of Italian politics, was charged with the task of convincing Clement to make the commitment in advance of conquest. He was accompanied on the mission by the Bishop of Noyon, a fellow member of the Royal Council known for his oratorical talants, and by the King’s secretary, Jean de Sains, to keep the record. In “eloquent discourse,” Coucy and the Bishop told the Pope that, failing a miracle, only the intervention of France could end the schism; alone Clement could do nothing. By enfeoffing Louis with the Kingdom of Adria, the Pope would regain a firm annual income from the patrimony, which had never been under papal control since the removal to Avignon. The King of France, the envoys said, recommended his brother as the person best fitted to undertake the conquest because “he is young and can work hard” and will have the aid of the Lord of Milan.

Clement balked on the grounds that he did not want to be known as the “liquidator of the papal heritage.” That had not bothered him ten years before when he had given the Bull of Enfeoffment to the Duc d’Anjou, but he was no longer so sure of French capacity. Three French cardinals were called in for advice, including Jean de La Grange, Cardinal of Amiens, he who had once frightened Charles VI by his supposed intercourse with a familiar demon. He wanted some hard answers: how much money, how many men would France commit to the campaign, and how long would they be maintained in Italy? He wanted a promise of 2,000 men-at-arms led by substantial captains and nobles and supported by 600,000 francs a year for three years. The embarrassed envoys could not reply; their instructions of no less than seventeen “items” had contained nothing about