Italic League

{{Short description|International defense agreement}} {{Infobox treaty | name = Italic League | long_name = | image = Italy 1494 AD.png | image_alt = Map of Italy in the late 15th century, in Italian, showing the major powers of Florence, Milan, Naples, the Papal States and Venice, plus the more-minor powers such a Genoa, Modena–Ferrara, Mantua, Sienna and Lucca. | caption = Italy in 1494, showing the borders that were broadly stabilised by the treaty 40 years earlier | type = | context = Treaty of Lodi, after the Wars in Lombardy | date_drafted = | date_signed = {{Start date|1454|8|30}} | location_signed = Venice, Republic of Venice | date_expiry = {{End date|1494}} | negotiators =  | signatories = * {{flag|Papal States|old}} * 22px|border Republic of Venice * 22px|border Duchy of Milan * 22px|border Republic of Florence * 22px|border Kingdom of Naples | | wikisource =  | wikisource1 =  }} The '''Italic League''' or '''Most Holy League''' was an international agreement concluded in Venice on 30 August 1454, between the Papal States, the Republic of Venice, the Duchy of Milan, the Republic of Florence, and the Kingdom of Naples, following the Treaty of Lodi a few months previously.<ref name="Sarti: League">{{cite encyclopedia|author=Roland Sarti|title=Italic League|encyclopedia=Italy|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xhoLorFC1iwC&pg=PA342|page=342|publisher=Infobase Publishing|year=2004|isbn=978-0816-07474-7}}</ref><ref name="Starn 86-90">{{cite book|author=Randolph Starn|title=Contrary Commonwealth: The Theme of Exile in Medieval and Renaissance Italy|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jj_w3HUBW8AC&pg=PA86|pages=86–90|publisher=University of California Press|year=1982|isbn=978-0520-04615-3}}</ref> The next forty years were marked by peace and economic expansion based on a balance of power within Italy. The decline of the League brought about the Italian Wars.

==Background== In the first half of the 15th century, the larger Italian powers had been consolidating their territories, with Savoy expanding towards the Ligurian Coast, Venice focusing on ''{{lang|vec|Terraferma}}'' while the ''{{lang|vec|Stato da Màr}}'' was threatened by Turkish expansion, Milan expanding southwards (and, even after the dismembering of the empire after Gian Galeazzo Visconti's death, retaining the bulk of Lombardy), the Florentines having gained most of Tuscany and the Papal States having begun an expansion in central Italy that would continue into the next century, while King Alfonso V of Aragon expanded from Sicily into the Kingdom of Naples.<ref name="Starn 86-90"/>

Solemnly proclaimed on 2 March 1455 with the accession of Pope Nicholas V (1447–1455), King Alfonso, and other small states to the League (excluding Malatestine Rimini, at Alfonso's insistence),<ref name="Rogers">{{cite book|title=The Oxford Encyclopedia of Medieval Warfare and Military Technology|author=Clifford Rogers|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mzwpq6bLHhMC&pg=RA1-PA558|page=558|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=2010|isbn=978-0195-33403-6}}</ref> it established a mutual defense agreement and a 25-year truce between the Italian powers, forbidding separate alliances and treaties while committing to maintenance of the established boundaries.<ref name="Sarti: League"/> The other Italian states acknowledged the ''{{lang|it|condottiero}}'' Francesco Sforza as successor to the last of the Visconti of Milan, after having married the only daughter of Filippo Maria Visconti. The relative peace and stability resulting from Lodi and the League, promoted by Sforza, allowed him to consolidate his rule over Milan.<ref name="Sarti: Sforza">{{cite encyclopedia|author=Roland Sarti|title=Sforza, Francesco (1401–1466)|encyclopedia=Italy|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xhoLorFC1iwC&pg=PA558|page=558|publisher=Infobase Publishing|year=2004|isbn=978-0816-07474-7}}</ref> It was Cosimo de' Medici's most important foreign policy decision to end the traditional rivalry between his Florence and Sforza's Milan.<ref name="Sarti: de' Medici">{{cite encyclopedia|author=Roland Sarti|title=de' Medici, Cosimo (1389–1464)|encyclopedia=Italy|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xhoLorFC1iwC&pg=PA401|page=401|publisher=Infobase Publishing|year=2004|isbn=978-0816-07474-7}}</ref>

== Consequences ==

The Italic League played an essential part in the balance of power subsequently pursued by the Florentine ruler Lorenzo de' Medici (1449–1492); its only cracks{{citation needed|date=July 2012}} were the Pazzi conspiracy, the Barons' conspiracy, and the Salt War. The League provided enough stability to allow the peninsular economy to recover from the population loss and economic depression caused by the Black Death and its aftermath, leading to an economic expansion that endured until the first part of the 17th century.<ref name="Brady et al">{{cite news|editor1=Thomas A. Brady|editor2=Heiko Augustinus Oberman|editor3=James D. Tracy|title=Handbook of European History, 1400–1600: Visions, Programs and outcomes|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Y84wAgaXxo4C&pg=PA331|pages=331–333|publisher=Brill|year=1994|isbn=978-9004-09760-5}}</ref> The League also enabled the creation of the first permanent embassies amongst the states of the Italian peninsula,<ref name="Starn 93">{{cite book|author=Randolph Starn|title=Contrary Commonwealth: The Theme of Exile in Medieval and Renaissance Italy|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jj_w3HUBW8AC&pg=PA93|pages=93|publisher=University of California Press|year=1982|isbn=978-0520-04615-3}}</ref> in order to monitor compliance with the terms prohibiting supporting exiled dissidents,<ref name="Muir">{{cite book|title=Mad Blood Stirring: Vendetta in Renaissance Italy|author=Edward Muir|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IKzedYh-5Z4C&pg=PA35|page=35|publisher=JHU Press|year=1998|isbn=978-0801-85849-9}}</ref> with ''De Officio Legati'' — what seems to be the first treatise on ambassadorship — written by Ermolao Barbaro in Venice in 1490, after he had served the ''{{lang|vec|Serenìsima}}'' in Burgundy and Milan.<ref name="Starn 93"/>

The death of Lorenzo de' Medici in 1492 marked the decline of the League. He had been one of its greatest supporters<ref name="Colombo">{{cite book|title=Who's Who in Italy, Volume 2|author=Giancarlo Colombo|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hB5pAAAAMAAJ&q=%22Italic+League%22|publisher=Who's Who in Italy SRL|year=2007|isbn=978-8885-24662-1|quote=The death of Lorenzo (1492) marked not only the end of Florentine power but also that of the Italic League, of which he had been one of the supporters.}}</ref> and prime maintainer,<ref name="Nigro">{{cite book|chapter=Chapter 14: Theory and Practice of Modern Diplomacy: Origins and Development to 1914|author=Louis J. Nigro, Jr.|url=http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Digital-Library/Publications/Detail/?id=119466 |title=The US Army War College Guide to National Security Issues, Vol. 1|editor=J Boone Bartholomees Jr|chapter-url=http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Digital-Library/Publications/Detail/?id=119502|page=197 (page 3 of the chapter)|publisher=Strategic Studies Institute of the United States Army War College|year=2010|quote=In 1455, most of the five powers and other smaller ones signed a mutual security agreement, the Italic League, which guaranteed the existence of signatory states and called for common action against outsiders. These arrangements led to nearly 50 years of peace on the peninsula. Managing the peace was largely the work of Lorenzo "the Magnificent", the Medici ruler of Florence who believed that maintaining a balance among the five powers was better policy than trying to eliminate enemies. This was the first conscious balance of power policy in a post-medieval state system.}}</ref> recognising the advantage of maintaining a balance among the five powers as opposed to trying to eliminate his enemies.<ref name="Nigro"/> Whilst the League failed to prevent the French invasion in 1494 that began the Italian Wars,{{clarify|date=December 2015}} it did enable (as the League of Venice) the creation of the army that repelled Charles VIII's army after its sack of Naples.<ref name="Sarti: League"/> The League army engaged the French at Fornovo and retained control of the battlefield but failed to prevent an orderly French retreat.<ref name="Sarti: League"/> The Venetian alliance with France and Spain against Milan and Naples in the Italian Wars of 1499–1504, however, sounded the death knell for the League.<ref name="Lopez">{{cite book|title=The three ages of the Italian Renaissance|author=Robert Lopez|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=y2BoAAAAMAAJ&q=%22Italic+League%22|page=36|publisher=University Press of Virginia|year=1970|isbn=978-0813-90270-8|quote=Not Charles, who died three years later, but Louis XII, his successor, crossed the Alps again in 1499; and his first victim was the duke of Milan. The revengeful Venetians joined the French in the kill; the Italic League was gone beyond recall.}}</ref>

As a result of the ''détente'',{{citation needed|date=July 2012}} unlike France, Spain, and England, Italy did not coalesce into a single monarchy in the Middle Ages, and was consequently left vulnerable to invasion from more powerful neighbours. Several factors have been considered causes of this; Francesco Guicciardini blamed particularism,{{citation needed|date=July 2012}} for example, while Niccolò Machiavelli believed it resulted from the moral and civil decay of institutions and morals and in papal policy,{{citation needed|date=July 2012}} for centuries aimed at avoiding the formation of a unified Italy. It should be borne in mind, however, that Machiavelli's great work ''The Prince'' was a reflection of the political equilibrium resulting from the League's existence.<ref>{{cite book|title=Machiavelli in hell|author=Sebastian de Grazia|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Cr7ZAAAAMAAJ&q=%22Italic+League%22|page=152|publisher=Princeton University Press|year=1989|isbn=978-0691-05538-1}}</ref>

== References == {{reflist}}

Category:1454 establishments in Europe Category:15th-century military alliances Category:Treaties of the Republic of Venice Category:Treaties of the Republic of Florence Category:Treaties of the Duchy of Milan Category:15th century in the Republic of Florence Category:15th century in the Republic of Venice Category:15th century in the Kingdom of Naples Category:15th century in the Papal States