ABSTRACT

THE END OF THE fifteenth century brought a major change in European diplomacy and warfare. France (finally restored to vigor after the extenuation of the plague and the Hundred Years' War), Aragon (still an independent kingdom despite the momentous marriage of its monarch, Ferdinand, with Isabella of Castile), and Venice (then a fearsome maritime power with domains scattered from the Adriatic and the Mediterranean to the Black Sea) began bidding for positions on the Italian mainland. At the same time, dealing with the expansive Ottoman Empire preoccupied an increasing number of European potentates. General wars, furthermore, resumed with increasingly expensive artillery, fortifications, and mercenary armies. The rulers of Italian city-states, who for a century had been free to cut each other's throats without vigorous, visible external intervention, found themselves contending continuously with Europe's great powers.