Lombardy

Lombardy is the central test case for the book’s theory of newly acquired territories: its conquest briefly made Louis XII of France the dominant power in Italy, but his failure to secure local allies and restrain the Roman Catholic Church turned that success into repeated loss. The province illustrates the political costs of relying on external partnerships while neglecting the institutions, interests, and rival powers that determine whether conquest can endure.

Conquest and Political Opening

Lombardy entered the book’s argument through the ambition of the Venetians. They brought Louis XII of France into Italy because they hoped to obtain half of the province for themselves. Louis had no established friends in Italy: the conduct of Charles VIII of France had left every door closed to him, so accepting Venetian assistance was a reasonable way to gain a foothold. The initial arrangement therefore joined territorial opportunity to a dangerous dependency, since the alliance that enabled French expansion also gave the Venetians an interest in directing its results.

The recovery of Lombardy immediately restored the political credit that Charles VIII of France had lost. Genoa submitted, while Florence came to terms. The Marquis of Mantua, the Duke of Ferrara, the Bentivogli, the Countess of Forlì, the Lords of Faenza, Pesaro, Rimini, Camerino, and Piombino, and the citizens of Lucca, Pisa, and Siena all offered friendship. The Venetians, who had made the French King master of two-thirds of Italy in exchange for only a couple of towns in Lombardy, were forced to recognize the scale of the advantage they had helped create.

Louis XII’s Failure to Consolidate

The province could have been the foundation of a durable Italian position. Louis XII of France possessed numerous potential allies among weak or fearful powers, including factions connected with the Roman Catholic Church and Venice. By protecting these friends rather than alienating them, he might have formed a broad defensive network capable of resisting any single powerful state. The opportunity was therefore not absent; the failure lay in the choice of policy after the conquest.

Once in Milan, Louis XII of France did the opposite. He helped Pope Alexander VI occupy Romagna, thereby enlarging the temporal power of the Roman Catholic Church while weakening himself. The allies who had placed themselves under French protection now had reason to fear the expansion of another power. Louis did not perceive that strengthening the Church added substantial territorial authority to an institution that already possessed immense spiritual authority. His first error forced further errors: eventually he had to enter Italy himself to restrain Pope Alexander VI and prevent him from becoming master of Tuscany.

The book presents this sequence as a general political law. A ruler who makes another power great eventually prepares his own ruin, because the newly strengthened power will distrust the patron who enabled its rise and will possess the means to challenge him. Lombardy thus shows that conquest is not secured by acquisition alone. The conqueror must consider which allies become unnecessary, which rivals become stronger, and whether assistance in one campaign is creating a future competitor.

Repeated Loss and the Problem of Foreign Rule

Louis XII of France gained Milan rapidly and lost it just as rapidly on the first occasion. The people who had opened the gates to the French King had expected future benefits; when those expectations proved false, they could not tolerate the insolence of the new ruler. Their rebellion made the initial French hold vulnerable, and Ludovico Sforza was able to recover Milan with his own forces alone.

After a state has rebelled and been reconquered, the book argues, it is less easily lost because the ruler can use the rebellion to punish the guilty, bring suspected opponents to trial, and strengthen weak points in the government. That pattern explains the difference between the first and second French losses of Lombardy. The first recovery required only Ludovico Sforza to raise alarms on the frontiers; the second required the world to be ranged against France, with French armies destroyed and driven out of Italy. Yet even after such a large effort, Lombardy was lost to Louis XII again. The province therefore demonstrates both the increasing difficulty of reconquest and the deeper danger created by an initial failure to govern newly acquired subjects.

The broader lesson concerns composite rule. States joined to an existing dominion are easier to retain when they share language and customs with the conqueror’s hereditary lands. In such cases, the old ruling line may be destroyed while laws and taxes remain substantially unchanged, allowing the new acquisition to become incorporated into the hereditary state. The book contrasts this relative ease with territories divided by different languages, usages, and laws, where a ruler needs exceptional fortune and skill. Lombardy’s importance lies in the way its possession exposes the practical gap between winning a province and integrating it securely.

Military Dependence and Reputation

Lombardy also belongs to the book’s indictment of military dependence. The foundations of every state are described as good laws and good arms, but the discussion of arms distinguishes between a ruler’s own subjects, mercenaries, auxiliaries, and mixed forces. Mercenaries are disunited, ambitious, insubordinate, treacherous, insolent toward friends, and cowardly before enemies; they fight for pay rather than for a political bond and may disappear when war begins. The book attributes Italy’s contemporary ruin to its long reliance on such troops and identifies foreign military weakness as the reason Charles VIII of France was allowed to conquer Italy with scarcely any resistance.

The danger is not limited to ordinary soldiers. A capable mercenary captain cannot be trusted because he may seek his own advancement by overthrowing his employer or acting against the employer’s wishes. An incapable captain brings ruin through incompetence. The examples connected with Francesco Sforza and the Milanese show how a commander hired to defend Milan could defeat its enemies and then combine with them against the city that had paid him. Lombardy consequently becomes part of a larger pattern in which military agency slips from the ruler’s hands and turns the instruments of defense into instruments of seizure.

The same principle clarifies the contrast with Cesare Borgia. He entered Romagna with French auxiliary troops and captured Imola and Forlì, but he later judged those forces unreliable. He replaced them first with mercenaries from the Orsini and Vitelli, found those troops fickle and treacherous as well, and finally relied on forces of his own raising. His reputation increased as he became master of his own military resources. Against this example, Lombardy represents the French failure to convert temporary external assistance into independent power: the province was won through alliance and held without the strategic discipline needed to make that alliance serve French interests.

Historical and Thematic Significance

Lombardy is not merely a setting or a territorial possession; it is the book’s most concentrated demonstration of political cause and effect. France’s intervention gave Louis XII of France authority, restored the prestige lost under Charles VIII of France, and drew a wide circle of Italian states toward friendship. Yet the same French intervention enlarged the Roman Catholic Church and Spain in Italy, while France itself supplied the conditions of its eventual ruin. The province makes visible the paradox that a conqueror may lose not because opportunity was lacking, but because success was used to empower the wrong partners.

The province also anchors the book’s final appeal for an Italian deliverer. Italy is described as devastated by the plunder of Lombardy, the exactions imposed on Naples and Tuscany, disunity, and the absence of a commanding head. The wounds of the country have become lasting sores, while its people are ready to follow any standard raised for their rescue. In this concluding perspective, Lombardy is both a casualty of foreign intervention and a measure of the failure of Italian political leadership. Its repeated conquest and loss supply the historical evidence behind the demand for a new ruler who can unite military force, political judgment, and durable control rather than merely achieve a brilliant initial victory.