ABSTRACT
That the 'crisi d'Italia' in 1494 and the following years was the result of the weakness of the Italian states and the rivalries amongst them, has been a historiographical commonplace since the accounts of Paolo Giovio and Francesco Guicciardini. Ludovico Sforza and Pope Alexander VI have usually been identified as the principal villains; but the vacillation of Florence, the selfserving neutrality of Venice and the blandishments of Neapolitan exiles and dissident Italian cardinals have also been identified in a general condemnation of the Italian political world. The military captains took as much, if not more, of the blame as the political elites, but they at least were confronted with an apparently invincible military juggernaut in fleeing before which they could find some justification,!
