The French Descent into Renaissance Italy: 1494-95, Antecedents and Effects.

David Abulafia, ed. The French Descent into Renaissance Italy, 1494-95: Antecedents and Effects. Aldershot, Hampshire: Variorum, 1995. 10 illus. + xiv + 496 pp. $91.95. ISBN: 0-86078-550-5.

David Abulafia's collection of nineteen essays aims at providing both an introduction to the machinations of Italian diplomacy and a presentation of fresh research into political as well as cultural and institutional history. Special emphasis is placed on Milan and Naples, with Abulafia's introduction masterfully organizing the details of the Italian peninsula's political convulsions after the 1454 Peace of Lodi, during Ferrante's contested Neapolitan succession and reign (1458-94). This reevaluation of the interaction between despots and diplomats questions Guicciardini's characterization of the 1494 French invasion and makes it part of a deeper and wider crisis for the Italian state system in the fifteenth century.

Part one's eight essays on antecedents to the 1494 invasion begin with two surveys of the long-standing French involvement in medieval Italian politics (George Peyronnet) and the Angevin claims and challenges to Aragonese rule in Naples (Alan Ryder). Three essays emphasize the critical relationship between Naples and Milan: how Ferrante's success depended upon the Milanese alliance (Abulafia); how the deteriorating relationship with Galeazzo Maria Sforza (1466-76) undermined the Milan-Naples axis with its intrigues, counter-intrigues, and betrayals (Ilardi); and how the Milanese princess, Ippolita Maria Sforza, lived beyond the expected female norms of piety and decorum at the Neapolitan court and strained, rather than aided international relations (Evelyn Welch). Three essays take up the wider Italian theater with a microhistory of the failed Sienese exiles' plot of May 1495 (Humfrey Butters), a review of Italian exiles in France advising Charles VIII (Michael Mallett), and an analysis of the 1494-95 list of the over 500 individuals who served Ercole d'Este's court at Ferrara (Trevor Dean).

Part two examines six diplomatic efforts or military campaigns during the fateful year of 1494. A study of military action in the Romagna dramatizes the nature of Italian military ineptitude (Cecil Clough); an examination of the trumpeted legend of Francesco II Gonzaga, marquis of Mantua, and his role leading the Italian forces at Fornovo debunks this so-called "Liberator of Italy" (David Chambers); and Ferrarese diplomatic correspondence reconstructs Italy's influence on the political thought and literary efforts behind Philippe de Commynes Memoires (Joel Blanchard). From the Italian South, a detailed review of the planning, plotting, and negotiations for the defense of Rome shows how little the Roman barons actually did and why the French army was able to advance unabated (Christine Shaw); a narrative account of siege warfare argues that the military revolution in Italian fortifications caused by the improved French artillery derived from the French artillery's efficiency, ruthlessness, and determination rather than cannon's actual ability to destroy fortresses (Simon Pepper); and the example of Venetian, French, and Spanish presence in the Apulian ports finds no permanent legacy by the end of the French invasions in 1529 (Carol Kidwell).

Part three concludes with five essays on the reactions and effects of 1494. The effects on the French Renaissance of Charles VIII's expedition are found to be as limited culturally as politically (A.V. Antonovics); "institutional and social continuation" in the Kingdom of Naples is traced from 1443 to 1528 (Eleni Sakellariou); and Machiavelli's response to 1494 is seen as playing a pivotal role in shaping his political outlook (David Laven). Finally, two essays on Milan conclude the volume: Lombard sources on the Italian wars up to mid-century reveal that the Milanese failed to understand when their ruin began, which contributed to their institutional retardation (Paolo Margaroli); and a reflection on the Milanese dilemma "between the crisis of the state and the affirmation of urban autonomy" from the 1470s to 1535 highlights the strengths and weaknesses of Milan's political institutions (Giorgio Chittolini). Appended is an invaluable research tool, a seventy-nine page guide to Vincent Ilardi's collection of almost two million documents (1,856 microfilm reels) on Renaissance diplomacy, c. 1450-1500, available from Yale University's Sterling Memorial Library.

JOHN A. MARINO University of California, San Diego