ABSTRACT
On 27 April 1522 French forces were defeated by imperial and papal troops at the battle of Bicocca. In his History of Italy, Francesco Guicciardini described the terms of the interim treaty that followed: Everything held by the French king in the duchy of Milan was to be surrendered except for the fortresses of Milan, Cremona and Novara. Fifteenth-century Lombardy had been a fertile period for historical writing of all kinds. The most ambitious contemporary narrative, Bernardino Corio's Storia di Milano or, as he called it, the Patria historia, traces the history of Milan from its origins to 1499, when Ludovico il Moro was forced out by the French. Provincial writers, such as the da Ripalta of Piacenza and the author of the Cronica gestorum from Parma, managed to take account of local sensitivities, while those who worked closely with the duke, such as Giovanni Simonetta and Bernardino Corio, skated round weaknesses in the Sforza title.
