The March of Folly_ From Troy to Vietnam - Barbara Wertheim Tuchman [49]
Negotiations between the conquerors and the Papacy were pressed hard. Though forced to abandon Naples and hand over Prince Djem (who shortly died in French custody), Alexander held firm against two demands: he refused to deliver Castel Sant’ Angelo into French hands, or formally to invest Charles with the crown of Naples. Beleaguered as Alexander was, this took strength of mind, even if he had to give the French the right of passage to Naples through papal territory. The one subject that was not at issue during all the sessions was reform. Despite constant prodding by Cardinal della Rovere and his party, the frayed, fumbling French King was no man to shoulder a Council, sponsor reform or depose a Pope. That cup passed from Alexander; he was left in place. The French moved out and on to Naples without meeting combat; the only violence was their own sack and brutality in places seized along the way. King Alfonso avoided the crisis by abdicating and entering a monastery; his son Ferrante II threw away his sword and fled.
The reality of French presence in southern Italy galvanized at last a union of resistance, initiated by Spain. Determined not to allow French control of Naples, which Spain wanted for herself, King Ferdinand induced the Emperor Maximilian, who already feared French expansion, to join him, offering as inducement his daughter Joanna in a marriage of fateful consequence to Maximilian’s son Philip. With Spain and the Empire as allies, the Papacy and Milan could now safely turn against France. When even Venice joined, a combination called the League of Venice, later called the Holy League, came into being in 1495, causing the French, who had made themselves hated in Naples, to fear being cut off in the Italian boot. They marched for home and, after fighting at Fornovo in Lombardy on their way out, the only battle of the campaign, a scrambled combat without decisive effect, made their way back to France. Alfonso and his son promptly reappeared to resume the rule of Naples.
Although no one, least of all France, emerged with profit from this momentous if senseless adventure, the powers, undeterred by empty result, returned again and again to the same arena to compete over Italy’s body. From this time on, wars, leagues, battles, tangled diplomacy, fluid and shifting alignments succeeded one another until they were to culminate in ferocious climax—the Sack of Rome in 1527 by Spanish and Imperial troops. Every twist and maneuver of the Italian wars of these 33 years has been devotedly followed and exhaustively recorded in the history books far beyond the general interest they can sustain today. The significance of the particulars in history’s permanent annals is virtually nil except as a study in the human capacity for conflict. There were certain historic consequences, some important, some minor but memorable: the Florentines, outraged by Piero’s surrender, rose against him, threw out the Medici and declared a republic; the Spanish-Hapsburg marriage produced in the future Emperor Charles V the controlling factor of the next century; Ludovico il Moro, the hotspur of Milan, paid for his folly in a French prison, where he died; at Pavia in the most famous battle of the wars, a King of France, Francis I, was captured and grasped immortality in the quotation books with “All is lost save honor.”
Otherwise, the Italian wars are significant for their effect in further politicizing and debasing the Papacy. Taking the same part as any secular state, treating and dealing, raising armies and fighting, it became entirely absorbed in the things that are Caesar’s, with the result that it was perceived as no better than secular—a factor that was to make possible the Sack of Rome. In proportion to their absorption in the realm of Caesar, the popes had less time or concern for the things of God. Continually engaged in the quid pro quos of one alliance or another, they neglected more than ever the