ABSTRACT
The French invasion of Italy under Charles VIII has acquired a special reputation as the start of a new era in Italian politics after the forty-year settlement that supposedly followed the Peace of Lodi in 1454.1 The idea that this period was one of harmony and co-operation in the Italian peninsula has long been discounted; and yet the sense that Charles VIII's invasion was different in character and scale to previous French intervention in Italy has persisted, under the influence of Guicciardini's insistence that 1494 marked the beginning of an unending Italian tragedy, continuing through the reigns of Louis XII and Francis I of France and of Ferdinand II and Charles I of Spain. This collection of studies seeks to question such an assumption. It will be apparent that a clearer understanding of Charles' policies can only be gained by looking more closely at the intricate politics of the Italian states in the half century before the arrival of the French king. Particular emphasis has to be placed on the role of the kingdom of Naples and southern Italy (technically known as the Regnum Sicilie citra Farum, that is, the 'Kingdom of Sicily this side of the straits of Messina' or simply the Regno, the Kingdom par excellence); this kingdom, after all, was the first target of Charles VIII's armies, even though he aimed also to validate the traditional claim of the kings of Naples to Jerusalem by leading a crusade eastwards. Milan too, the source of an invitation to Charles VIII to enter Italy (as if any were needed), figures prominently in this volume; its relations with Naples are not merely particularly well documented, but they also were of signal importance in maintaining a rough balance within the peninsula in the late fifteenth century. These attempts to secure peace within Italy, though always to the best advantage of one's own state, were
placed at risk by the intervention of outsiders. In particular, the career of the ruler of Anjou, Provence and Lorraine, le bon roi Rene, was punctuated by serious attempts to lay claim to the Regno and then to wrest it from its Aragonese rulers; Rene failed to understand that his own ambitions threatened to unsettle delicate power relations within Italy.z By stressing the antecedents, it becomes easier to answer the question why this invasion succeeded when earlier attempts by Rene's family to gain control of southern Italy failed.
