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A couple of days ago, I read the chapter of Pietro Verri's History of Milan concerning the years between Filippo Maria Visconti's death in 1447 and Francesco Sforza's coronation in 1450, a brief period I'm writing my graduation thesis about. Verri is not the most accurate nor the most impartial historian - he was a man of his time after all, and he wrote his History of Milan in 1783 - but: what if the condottiero, having been physically incapacitated by illness or by wounds sustained in battle (it wouldn't be hard at all for some well placed butterflies to make it happen) agreed to the terms of the peace treaty between the republics of Milan and Venice, instead of waging war against both states as in OTL and becoming the new Duke of Milan?

According to the peace treaty, the former lands of the Duchy of Milan would have been partitioned between Venice (whose de facto sovereignty over the Lombard territories east of the Adda river would've been recognized by Milan), the young Golden Ambrosian Republic (that would've retained the lands comprised between the Adda, Po and Ticino rivers, with the exception of the city of Pavia north of the Po) and Francesco Sforza himself (that would've become the ruler of Pavia and a "strip" of territories going from Novara to Parma).

Edit: fail visual representation of the partition.

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