"The First & Second Italian Wars 1494-1504 Review" Topic

"The first two Italian Wars marked the start of nearly seventy years of wartime across the full length of the Italian peninsula. Although the wars were triggered by a French attempt to conquer Naples, the main winners were the Hapburgs, who ended up as Dukes of Milan and king of Naples. The big losers were the independent Italian powers most of which disappear during this period, and the French ended up with nothing to show for their efforts.

At the start of these wars Italy was divided into a series of independent states, mostly ruled by Italian noble families or republics, with Milan in the north-west ruled by the Sforza, Florence and Venice by Republics, the Papal States by a mix of church figures and various Italian nobles. In the south the Kingdom of Naples was ruled by an offshoot of the ruling house of Aragon, but it was a combination of the rivalry between the kings of Naples and the regent to the young duke of Milan, and the ambitions of Charles VIII of France that triggered the wars. At the end of these wars most of the independent Italian powers were gone – Milan and Naples were both Hapsburg possessions, the Florentine Republic had gone, and Italy would remain divided and mainly in foreign hands until the 19th century…"

Review here
link

Book
link

Amicalement
Armand

From the Military History Encyclopedia on the Web website.

Don't think of the old recycled maps, and only three of them?

Thanks. Missed that one. Just ordered myself a copy :-)

As in many other times, the innovative role of the army of Gonzalo de Córdoba, the Great Captain, is underestimated in this book. The campaings of the Spanish army in this phase of the Italian wars were trascendent. It was the first time that the Swiss pikemen were defeated, after the character of invencible that acquired after the Burgundian and Swabian wars. It was also the first time that a concentrated group of handguns had a key role in the course of a battle. The use of light cavalry, the genitors and stradiots, was also very important in a terrain dominated until then by the French gendarmes. And from a political point of view, the campaigns of Gonzalo had a deeper impact in the history of Italy than the French "descent" or the adventures of Cesare Borgia, as the Kingdom of Naples was annexed to the Spanish Crown were stayed for more than two hundred years. That a pictoresque character as Cesare Borgia, interesting but with no trascendence in the evolution of the art of war or the future of Italy, fill so many pages and dedicate only a fistful of pages to Gonzalo´s army at the end of the book, is nosense for me. In my own opinion, a very disapointing book.

Thanks!

Amicalement
Armand