AH challenge: Surviving Ambrosian republic

What it says in the title, how can the Milanese ambrosian republic surive attack from its rivals and not be seized like how the Sforza did IOTL?
 
Well for one don't have Sforza create a Duchy of Milan :rolleyes:
I would say more military success and a quick end to its conflicts giving time for the supporters to set don their power structures.
 
Well, we Venetians attacked the Republic hoping to annex large swathes, if not all,of its territory. Let the Doge propose an alliance / federation and voilà !
 
Well, we Venetians attacked the Republic hoping to annex large swathes, if not all,of its territory. Let the Doge propose an alliance / federation and voilà !

and IOTL Venice proposed an alliance. Pity the proposal came a bit late, when most of the game had been played and the Milanese were pretty pissed off with the Venetians.

The key is obviously Venice not becoming too greedy and dreaming of annexing all of Lombardy in 1447; if the Serenissima can look into the future and accept that Venice cannot become Mistress of all northern Italy...but then all of the Venetian strategic decisions in the first half of the XV century were wrong ones, and mostly motivated by hubris.

It was a waste of a great opportunity: the HRE was weak, the pope was in Avignon, and the Great Schism was taking away most of his influence, Milan went from the zenith of its power to a weak regency after the untimely death of Gian Galeazzo. It should have been Venice's finest hour, but they completely mismanaged their strategy both in Italy (where they only managed to create hostile alliances from nothing) and in the Aegean, where the Republic grossly underestimated the rising Ottoman power, and was unable/unwilling to look for an alternative to the markets of Costantinople after the fall of the City.

My apologies for being completely OT. To go back to the topic, the Golden Ambrosian Republic can only survive as a Venetian ally, but Venice must accept that it is an alliance and not a protectorate.
 
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