ABSTRACT
The alliance between the papacy and Naples linked the Borgia family with the house of Aragon, and attached to them were assignments of grand titles and lands in the deep south of Italy. The arrival of French armies was the start of a series of calamities that transformed Italy from its 'happy state' of peace under Lorenzo and his contemporaries, into a battleground of foreign armies. The French invasion of Italy represented a reversion, after the pragmatic policies of Louis XI, to the Angevin dream of acquiring control not merely of southern Italy but of the tide to Jerusalem as well. It coincided with a period of weakness in Italy, following the death of both Lorenzo de'Medici and Ferrante d'Aragona. Neither Alfonso II of Naples nor Piero de'Medici had the backbone to withstand the French armies. Thus, a force already present in the Italian islands now took charge of southern Italy, which was to remain for centuries a Spanish dominion.
