The March of Folly_ From Troy to Vietnam - Barbara Wertheim Tuchman [48]
Reports coming out of France set the Italian states into a frantic commotion of combining and recombining in preparation to resist the foreigner—or, if necessary, join him. The great question for the papal and secular rulers was whether larger advantage could be gained by siding with Naples or with France. Ferrante of Naples, whose kingdom was the French objective, engaged in a blizzard of deals and counter-deals with the Pope and princes, but, as a life-long conspirator, he could not wean himself from secretly arranging to undercut his own alliances. He died of his efforts within a year, succeeded by his son Alfonso. Mutual mistrust governed his neighbors while they gave themselves over (as George Meredith wrote in a very different context) to “drifting into vanities, congregating in absurdities, planning short-sightedly, plotting dementedly.”
The move by Milan that precipitated the French invasion qualified in all these respects. It began with a complaint to Ferrante by his granddaughter Isabella, daughter of Alfonso and wife of the rightful heir to Milan, Gian Galeazzo Sforza, that she and her husband were deprived of their rightful place and made subordinate in everything to the regent, Ludovico il Moro, and his wife, the capable Beatrice d’Este. Ferrante responded with such furious menaces as to convince Ludovico that his regency, which he had no intention of resigning, would be safer if Ferrante and his house were deposed. Ludovico allied himself with the disaffected barons of Naples who shared this aim, and, to make sure of the outcome, he invited Charles VIII to enter Italy and establish his claim to the Neapolitan throne. This was taking a serious risk, because the French monarchy through the Orléans line had a stronger claim to Milan than to Naples, but Ludovico, an adventurer at heart, felt confident he could contain that threat. That was an error as events proved.
Out of such motives and calculations, Italy was opened to invasion, although at the last moment it almost failed to take place. Charles’ advisers, doubtful of the enterprise, caused the King so much worry by stressing the difficulties that lay ahead and the untrustworthiness of Ludovico and Italians in general that he halted his army when it was already on the march. The timely appearance of della Rovere, fervent in exhortation, rekindled his enthusiasm. In September 1494, a French army of 60,000 crossed the Alps carrying with them, in Guicciardini’s words, for once not exaggerated, “the seeds of innumerable calamities.”
At the outset, after swinging this way and that in something of a panic, Alexander joined a league of defense with Florence and Naples, which came apart as soon as made. Florence defected owing to a crisis of nerves on the part of Piero de’ Medici, eldest son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, who had died two years earlier. Suddenly fainthearted in the face of the enemy, Piero secretly arranged terms for opening his city to the French. From this triumph in Florence, Charles’ army moved on unresisted to Rome, where the Pope, after desperate twists to avoid receiving him, succumbed to superior might. The invaders’ armed parade on entering Rome took six hours to pass, in a train of cavalry and foot, archers and crossbowmen, Swiss mercenaries with halberds and lances, mailed knights, royal bodyguard carrying iron maces on their shoulders, all followed by the fearful rumble of 36 wheeled cannon drawn over the cobblestones. The city quaked under the huge influx. “Requisitions are fearful,” reported the envoy of Mantua,