ABSTRACT
In August 1494, before the king of France had crossed the Alps, the bon mot was circulating in Milan: 'el non e ni savio ni matto che intendi la guerra dil novantaquattro'.t The following month Charles VID's expedition departed, but in the Sforza duchy it generated neither apocalytic expectations nor hopes of renewal. Indeed, in the years that followed the Lombards were never quite sure where to place these events in the context of other significant changes that came to a head around this time. In fact, of all the expedition's aspects, that concerned with the attitude it generated in the different regions of Italy, whether analysed from a political, diplomatic or cultural angle, remains one of the most open issues, best known through the negative myth of the 'ruin of Italy' recorded by Guicciardini. Not just the local context but the cultural level of the observer are crucial factors in determining that observer's outlook. Interacting with such approaches and attitudes is a whole 'popular' level of responses, of fears and expectations, fed by the Messianic predictions of local preachers or the tales purveyed by rhyming narrators, to which historians have access through the widespread popular prints of the time, through songs in ottava rima and through the text of prophecies.2 A notary of Piacenza, Marco Antonio Gatti, inserted among some blank pages of his acts dating between 1473 and 1501 some brief notes on the passage of Charles VID through his city, but alongside them he also
t So indicates Marin Sanudo, La spedizione di Carlo VIII in ltalia, ed. R. Fulin (Venice, 1873).
