ABSTRACT
The second half of the fifteenth century saw the coming of Sforza dominion in Lombardy. This dominion did not, however, achieve its highest objective, that is, the creation of a strong and stable regime. In the 1470s Galeazzo Maria Sforza tried to set out a full programme of action, based on new energetic, centralising methods of government; but within a few years this programme had disintegrated as the result of a conspiracy, seen in the latest research not as the irrational gesture of a few people left on the margins, but as the product of a grander design supported by significant members of the Milanese aristocracy. Indeed, the plot must be placed in the wider context of the balance of power within Italy as a whole. Certainly it was a crucial moment, because it reveals in a dramatic way how difficult it really was for the Sforza dynasty to achieve recognition for its authority within a powerful principality and over the heads of the leading elements in Lombard society .I
These difficulties did not go away even when the crisis was at an end. 'Mirum fuit quod in toto dominio ducali nulla civitas, nulla terra, nullum castrum fecerit novitatem', as a chronicler commented in the weeks that followed.z In reality, though in secret, a long succession crisis began to unfold, which was only resolved some years later with the success of Ludovico il Moro, who even then felt obliged to affirm his power by appealing to higher authority
1 Cf. especially R. Fubini, 'Osservazioni e documenti sulla crisi del ducato di Milano nel 1477 e sulla riforma del Consiglio segreto ducale', in Essays presented to Myron P. Gilmore, ed. S. Bertelli and G. Ramakus, Florence, 1978, vol. 1, 47-103.
