9 - The wars

Summary

cambrai, ‘reconquista’ and retention 1509–1529

The aim of those who signed the aggression treaty of Cambrai in December 1508, or subsequently joined it, was to turn back the clock of Venetian history on the Terraferma by a century. France, through Louis XII's ‘right’ to Milan which had led him to invade Italy in 1499, was to recover cities filched from that duchy: Cremona, Crema and the Ghiaradadda, Brescia and Bergamo. Maximilian, on behalf of the Empire and of his own house of Austria, was after not only Verona, Vicenza and Padua but also Treviso and Friuli. The Marquis of Mantua wanted the towns – notably Peschiera, Asola and Lonato – his predecessors had been forced to cede in 1441; the Duke of Ferrara those he had surrendered in 1484, among which Rovigo was the largest. Further afield, Pope Julius II claimed the Romagnol towns of Faenza, Rimini, Ravenna and Cervia as the property of St Peter, and Ferdinand of Aragon the string of ports from Trani to Otranto as part of ‘his’ Kingdom of Naples.

The success of the initial pounce of this league of combatants was traumatic – defeat at the battle of Agnadello on 14 May 1509, and the consequent loss by Venice of the whole of its Italian possessions except Treviso and the villages on the fringe of the lagoon.

From 1509 to January 1517 Venice was chiefly engaged in the reconquista. The process was halting and subject to repeated reversals.