Chapter 22: The Italian Campaign (January - March, 1528)
Fernando Álvarez de Toledo y Pimentel, 3rd Duke of Alba landed in Naples in November 1527 and spent the next two months preparing the campaign. Then, on late January 1528, he left Gaeta and moved south, towards Naples. On the way he found Giovanni de' Medici and his Black Bands near the Bolla Aqueduct (February 2, 1528). The Bands had grown from a 4,000 strong mercenary company to almost 15,000, with a mixture of Italian soldiers, English renegades and European mercenaries, including a great number of arquebusiers—including Europe's first mounted arquebusiers. Medici commenced the attack, himself leading the main division, forcing Alba's right wing to retreat across the road. However, the Hispanic cavalry, which had remained in the rearguard, as a mobile strike force, was released from his position by Alba and landed with all its might against Medici's division, which simply dissolved. The rest of the army, unaware of this, attempted an encirclement of the Hispanic left wing, but the Hispanic tercios kept their ground and brough the attack to a halt. By then Medici's division was in full flight in spite of the attempts of its commander to reorganize its force. In this situation he was when he was attacked by several German mercenaries who, unaware of who he was, killed him in their rush to press after the fleeing enemy, with the hope of reaching their camp in order to plunder it. As the news of Medici's death were known among the Black Band, it began to withdraw, but Alba did not allow them to withdraw and their plight soon became a rout. By the end of the day, the Black Band had been utterly destroyed and the mercenary force dissolved as the English renegades fled north, to join Lautrec's main force while most of the mercenaries simply changed sides.
Lautrec had problems of his own, as Francis de Bourbon, Duke of Estouteville took 18,000 men with him (half of Lautrec's force) and marched south to meet Alba, only after berating Lautrec for what Bourbon thought it was "despicable cowardice". In fact, Lautrec had some troubles moving his 36,000 men, as he had some difficulties with the supply of such a force. Eventually, Bourbon's departure with half of the army, the supply situation was quite eased. Bourbon, on his part, was hit by a very bad luck strike. When his force met Alba at Frosinone (February 17, 1528), they fortified themselves and waited for the enemy to attack them. Then, the few French arquebusiers were ineffective in their reply to the Hispanic fire and the Swiss infantry launched a fearsome pike charge but the more nimble Hispanic arquebusiers did not attempt to stand up to them; instead, they moved out of the way to reformi on their flanks; then they resumed their fire. Bourbon, in despair, led a heavy cavalry charge but he was killed by an arquebus shot. Alba, worried by an unconfirmed report that Lautrec was moving with the rest of the French army and could appear to his rear, withdrew from Frosinone just as the enemy force collapsed without its commander.
Alba, back in Naples, rested and reorganized his army after the arrival of reinforcements from the Peninsula and resumed his advance in March, 1528. After some small skirmishes around Frosinone, Lautrec, who had been heavily reinforced and now outnumbered Alba, attacked head on and the two armies inconclusively clashed near Casalvieri (March 28, 1528), but Alba counter-attacked on the following day. The battle began with a thunderous volley of the Hispanic arquebusiers that brought havoc among the enemy ranks. Again, their French counterpart proved to be less effective than their rivals and, following the discharge, Alba, instead of attacking, allowed his men to fire several additional volleys before Lautrec charged to escape from the murderous fire that decimated the ranks of his army. The armies and the numerically inferior Hispanic army was forced to give ground and retreat, but the French left wing, which had suffered great losses by the enemy fire, had less momentum than the rest of its formation, breaking the French line of battle. After three hours of fighting, this breach allowed Alba to break the enemy in two and, with the French line breaking up, the advantage shited to the Hispanic as the French began fleeing for their lives.
With Naples thus secure, Eduardo began to consider expanding the campaign. Lautrec, on his part, decided to cut losses and withdrew north, hoping to join the promised reinforcements that Francis had sent. Instead, he met in Rome a ragtag army, a mixture of some 14,000 Landsknechte under Georg von Frundsberg; some Italian infantry and cavalry under the command of Ferdinando Gonzaga. All in all, included Lautrec's men, there were 34,000 soldiers in Rome. Numerous bandits, along with the Lautrec's deserters, joined the army during its march. What happened then has been reported in many ways, but there is some kind of agreement about placing the blame on Gonzaga's undisciplined Italians beginning a riot on the streets of Rome. The riots soon became a wild sack of the city that was only stopped by the timel,y intervention of von Frundsberg's Landsckenechte, while Lautrec berated Gonzaga for his lack of control over his men. Even if the Eternal City suffered little damage, Clement VII was shocked by the vision of his Itaian allies sacking the city just to be cut down by his German allies (some of them, apparently, also joined the sacking on his own). And then, with the divided army of the Holy League on the point of fighthing each other, Alba's army appeared on the horizon. At once the deserters, the criminals and the muntinieers fled. Lautrec, von Frundsberg and Gonzaga attempted to reorganize their forces to defend the city just to be berated by the Pope, who demanded them to leave Rome alone. Thus, the allied army simply left the city to Viterbo. There met Lautrecand von Frundsberg as Gonzaga managed to get captured by Alba's patrols when he was leaving Rome. To the despair of the two commanders, they had hardly 6,000 men with them. Agreeing that they had no choice to withdraw north, they departed to Milan on April 30. In less than a month the army of the Holy League had dissolved itself without Alba having to rise a finger.
Meanwhile, the Hispanic commander was having a few words with his Holiness at Rome. Clement VII, without the military or financial resources to keep fighting and to avert more warfare, adopted a conciliatory policy toward Edward and Eduardo while trying to have them exerting more control over the Church and Italy. In what regards the former, he was to be complete successful. In the latter, he would only managed to keep Eduardo out of the Papal States as the Hispanic armies marched through Italy, breaking the Papal attempt to become the temporal overlord of Italy.
Meanwhile, the French colonies in the Caribe came to a sad end. In the summer of 1527 the English fleet launched several raids against the French settlements in Fort St. Jean-Baptiste (OTL Puerto Rico) and Fort Toulouse (OTL Punta Cana). There, the English attackers were supported with some hundreds of Aztec mercenaries, that attacked the French with gusto. Both outposts were razed to the ground. Some other settlements were also attacked, even with not such a violence, but the fear caused by the attacks and the extreme cruelty of the Aztec warriors made most of the settlers to return in panic to France. The French fleet in America was hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned and was reduced to provide some protection to the scattered ships that returned to France. Thus the French empire in America came to a temporary end. while the English settlers in America rose frmo 6,000 to 20,000, most of them in New Albion (OTL Hispaniola) but also in Yorkstown and Saint Edward (In OTL Dominican Republic), in St Matthew Islands( and Bahamas), New Norfolk (OTL Newfoundland) and Richardstown (OTL Panama City).
The Hispanic settlement in America paled in comparison, as it was limited to several colonies in the shores of OTL Venezuela and the exploration of the shores of Braizil, where a settlement was built, San José (OTL Fortaleza), as the main effort was being directed in the exploration of the Birú, of Peru, with the first contact with the Inca Empire. As we have seen, it would take twenty years and a lucky strike for the Hispanic to barely control the north of the Empire.
