WI: Charles VIII Wins at Fornovo

Charles VIII marched through Italy very quickly and was crowned the King of Naples and Pope Alexander and other Italian states formed the Venetian League to defend against him. WI at Fornovo Charles does no lose but instead routs the Allied Italian army? Because of his wars and ambition he left France in heavy debt. What significant changes would Charles' victory have caused for the Italian peninsula and the French kingdom.
 

Flubber

Banned
How do you propose handling the syphilis epidemic? The French army left Naples and marched home to France more due to that epidemic than anything the League of Venice did.
 
Thats understandable that was the "official" reason for his invasion but what I really wanted to know was would the political lines of Italy be redrawn. The Pope and Venice were obviously no friends to Charles. I just wanted to know if anyone else believed that he would have plans for the other Italian states. Possibly even an invasion of Aragon. After he was defeated at Fornovo the Aragonese captured all of the cities with French garrisons and supported the Venetian League.
 

Flubber

Banned
I just wanted to know if anyone else believed that he would have plans for the other Italian states.


I always thought he was making a claim on Naples in order to use it as a base to launch another crusade? I don't think he had any other designs in Italy or on Aragon for that matter.
 
Honestly I know very little about the Italian Wars or Charles VIII but it just seemed to me that the Battle of Fornovo could have been a pretty big deal. Was he interested in launching a new crusade? Still has he won and be able to maintain his position in Italy as the King of Naples how would that have affected the course of Italian history?

Edit: Why was syphilis such a rampant cause for the French Army to retreat? Surely not so many of them could have been affected that Chalres' Army had to retreat.
 

Flubber

Banned
Honestly I know very little about the Italian Wars or Charles VIII...


Oh, okay.

... but it just seemed to me that the Battle of Fornovo could have been a pretty big deal.

It's one of those battles that both sides can claim to have won. (That and the fact that a nice mix of Renaissance units were present make it a perennial favorite among war gamers.)

Venice and some others supported Charles' claim to Naples. For various reasons he seemed a better choice to them than Ferdinand of Spain. Charles invades, reaches Naples in months instead of bogging down, his army and artillery train scare the hell out of the Italians, they unite for the first time in centuries, even rope Spain and England into a coalition, and start attacking the garrisons Charles left along his route to Naples.

Charles then heads back to France. He's got Spain and England possible worry about and a killer plague is ravaging Naples. It's a good time to away. The Italians manage to get an army across his army's route outside of Parma and we've got a battle.

The Italians' won a tactical victory. They inflicted more casualties and grabbed part of the French baggage train. The French won a strategic victory. They killed almost as many as they lost and marched away with no pursuit.

Was he interested in launching a new crusade?

That was his claimed rationale for wanting the throne of Naples.

Still has he won and be able to maintain his position in Italy as the King of Naples how would that have affected the course of Italian history?

You need to understand, the battle was fought after Charles decided to leave Italy. He was leaving whether he won the battle or not. He also wasn't after all of Italy. He'd initially invaded with the support of Venice and others.

Edit: Why was syphilis such a rampant cause for the French Army to retreat? Surely not so many of them could have been affected that Chalres' Army had to retreat.

Syphilis is one of the few diseases in the Columbian Exchange which effected Europe. Different strains of syphilis existed on both sides of the Atlantic and those strains had "settled down" within their respective populations. That is they were endemic and took a long time to kill. When the two strains "met" a "super" strain was the result. It killed in days and the first outbreak in Europe was in Naples while Charles and his army was there.
 
Ahhhh I understand now. I have another question if I'm not being too much of a bother. Was Charles planning a further invasion before he died in 1498?
 

Flubber

Banned
I have another question if I'm not being too much of a bother. Was Charles planning a further invasion before he died in 1498?


No bother.

I don't think anyone knows what Charles was planning. France was heavily in debt, a big part of Charles' army had been German and Swiss mercenaries. The alliance put together to hustle him out of Italy included Spain and England, so he had other "fronts" to worry about.

I do know that Charles' successor, Louis XII, invaded Italy again in 1499 to assert his claims to Naples.

Charles' invasion was a long term disaster for Italy. Wars between the city-states had been fought by mercenaries, the infamous condottieri, for far too long. The condottieri were more interested in wars of maneuver and surrender rather than actual fighting. When Charles' army crossed the Alps, it actually fought battles and killed people. It was that attitude, plus the artillery train, that allowed Charles to kick ass and captured cities all the way to Naples while hardly breaking a sweat. The ease of Charles march to Naples, and back to France, at showed the rest of Europe that Italy was A) rich and B) unable to defend itself.

If you want to know more about the condottieri, read Machiavelli's The Prince.
 
I will read the Prince. Thank you. I had just been reading through text books at school and was interested to if the Battle of Fornovo had been won by Charles what effects it would have had. I was thinking it could have been a not so cliche POD for a TL but now I see what mattered more was the the syphilis harmed Charles' army more then the fighting.
 

Artaxerxes

Banned
No bother.
The condottieri were more interested in wars of maneuver and surrender rather than actual fighting.=

Sorry but this is slander by Machievelli, this argument is thoroughly debunked in books about the subject matter such as the Osprey series, Mercenaries and their Masters among others.

The failings were mainly political and to do with wealth, the city-states could not keep up with advances in artillery and the improved emphasis on central command structures assisted the French greatly.

While the Italians did have an advanced army structure it was just to small, the army of Fornovo consisted of a number of different alliances between city-states which led to a much more hazy picture.
 

Flubber

Banned
Sorry but this is slander by Machievelli...


While Machiavelli did over-egg his pudding, he was not alone in his generally poor assessment of the condottieri.

... this argument is thoroughly debunked in books about the subject matter such as the Osprey series...

The Osprey series? Seriously? A series of figure painting guides masquerading as history books? The series that featured a radio direction finding loop on an American Civil War cotton-clad river ram? That Osprey series?

Sure, whatever. :rolleyes:

When you're able, find some actual histories of the period. Marcotti's classic biography of Hawkwood, for example, has been recently re-released. As you note, Mercenaries and their Master is also a fine book on the subject, but I'm surprised to read that you believe Mallet holds a good opinion of the condottieri.

The failings were mainly political and to do with wealth...

When you're busily paying mercenaries it's hard to save money.

... the city-states could not keep up with advances in artillery...

Odd considering how the warring city-states were all fortified. Then again, maybe someone didn't want all those petty wars to end, someone who was making money off the situation...

... and the improved emphasis on central command structures assisted the French greatly.

Again, when someone else is doing all your fighting it's hard to keep up with any advances.

While the Italians did have an advanced army structure it was just to small, the army of Fornovo consisted of a number of different alliances between city-states which led to a much more hazy picture.

Fornovo was, as I already explained, a battle in which both sides could and did claim victory with good cause.

The decline of the condottieri system began in 1494 when Charles VIII's invasion showed the Italian states and their preferred military system could no longer defend the peninsular. For the next sixty years, foreign armies, most of which also included mercenaries, slapped around the locals with ease no matter whether they were allied with the invaders or not.
 

Artaxerxes

Banned
The Osprey series? Seriously? A series of figure painting guides masquerading as history books? The series that featured a radio direction finding loop on an American Civil War cotton-clad river ram? That Osprey series?

Sure, whatever. :rolleyes:

You realise they have different authors right? The Fornovo and Condotierre books are excellent.

When you're able, find some actual histories of the period. Marcotti's classic biography of Hawkwood, for example, has been recently re-released. As you note, Mercenaries and their Master is also a fine book on the subject, but I'm surprised to read that you believe Mallet holds a good opinion of the condottieri.

From the Introduction "Mallet took a cautiously revisionist approach arguing that the gap between Italian practice and elsewhere was more illusionary than real"

The book tends to focus on the structure of the armies rather than the individual Condottieri. It paints a picture of a fairly advanced system that while it had poor leaders and bad leaders was structurally fairly advanced and prompted ideas that filtered down into France and other countries.

I've read a fair number of Italian history books but these are the ones I actually keep at home btw and I do not have a good memory for book titles.

When you're busily paying mercenaries it's hard to save money.
All states had problems paying for troops, they also had few standing troops. As other countries grew the tradition and amount of troops they could afford grew. Because Italy was a mess of states they lagged behind. There was also the ever delightful wild card of the Papacy who by turns invited people in, told them to bugger off and generally caused more problems than they solved thanks to the whims of the Popes


Odd considering how the warring city-states were all fortified. Then again, maybe someone didn't want all those petty wars to end, someone who was making money off the situation...

Taking any city is always difficult, it requires money and time, money the city-states would rather spend on the Condottiere actually doing something. The habit of encouraging them to despoil the country and live of the loot as part of payment also encouraged a fluid warfare rather than static offence.

There were sieges though, Pisa in 1406 the siege lasted 8 months for example.

Again, when someone else is doing all your fighting it's hard to keep up with any advances.

The Condottieri were often fighting abroad, they didnt exist in a vacuum, commanders often served abroad like Sigismondo Malatesta or Pippo Spano (Greece/Hungary respectively) as did contingents of troops, Genoese crossbowmen were renowned. Speaking of Genoa both they and Venice spent an awful lot of time empire building.



The decline of the condottieri system began in 1494 when Charles VIII's invasion showed the Italian states and their preferred military system could no longer defend the peninsular. For the next sixty years, foreign armies, most of which also included mercenaries, slapped around the locals with ease no matter whether they were allied with the invaders or not.

Not disputing this at all, but the weakness was not the Condottieri fault, not entirely. A quick look at Italian history will show a country where as soon as any bugger tried to set himself or his family up in power a dozen conspiracies formed to keep him in check, so of course this meant most people could only rely on family, which made people more suspicious and so and and so on until the entire peninsula is one big argument (and still is)
 

Flubber

Banned
You realise they have different authors right? The Fornovo and Condotierre books are excellent.


As a long time war gamer, both miniatures and map/chit, I've been familiar with the Osprey line for decades. I'm also familiar with their many, many gaffes. While quality has improved in the last 15 years or so as they've transited from their figure painting origins to straight military history, their books are still more useful for the bibliographies they contain rather than the information on the pages.

From the Introduction "Mallet took a cautiously revisionist approach arguing that the gap between Italian practice and elsewhere was more illusionary than real"

The only gap that counts is the gap on the battlefield.

The book tends to focus on the structure of the armies rather than the individual Condottieri. It paints a picture of a fairly advanced system that while it had poor leaders and bad leaders was structurally fairly advanced and prompted ideas that filtered down into France and other countries.

The condottieri system came with a lot of mental baggage which prevented the Italian city-states from building on whatever potentials the system held.

The condottieri system was a beautiful hot house orchid. It bloomed gloriously within a very circumscribed environment and, when that environment changed, it died because it could not adapt.
 

Artaxerxes

Banned
The only gap that counts is the gap on the battlefield.
And that gap is not solely reliant on the army fighting on the battlefield, the army, politics, culture and administration all play a part in victory or defeat.

The condottieri system came with a lot of mental baggage which prevented the Italian city-states from building on whatever potentials the system held.

A lot of the mental baggage occurred after it had already died, writing from a position of defeat and relative obscurity it was only natural for Machiavelli and others to turn on what they saw as the people who should have been able to defeat external enemies.

You can't just blame the Condottieri for what happened in the Italian wars, the people who put them where they are in are also to blame.

It started with the English coming to fight and bit by bit the city-states relied more and more on people who had no loyalty to them to fight battles. As more and more external resources were brought to bear on the fight for Italy the squabbling states couldn't keep up or were paid off not to fight.
 
Charles VIII's "escapade" in Italy was the obvious outcome of a political crisis, not a military one: the death of Lorenzo de' Medici (and the subsequent ousting of the Medici from Florence) broke down the "Italian congress" (to borrow a definition from a few centuries after the fact) that had guaranteed almost half a century of relative stability in the peninsula. The spark was the succession crisis in the kingdom of Naples, but could have come from other happenstances (in particular from the greed of a number of popes that were more interested in grabbing lands in central Italy to set up a principality for their families. IMHO the real tragedy happened almost a century before Charles decided to go gallivanting into Italy: the sudden death of Gian Galeazzo Visconti when he was on the brink of consolidating a strong centralised state in Northern and Central Italy robbed Italy of the one true chance of setting up a strong state.

Coming back to the OP, I've always wondered what Charles was hoping to gain from this adventure, which was his strategy (assuming he had one, and was not just trying to go crusading to restore Jerusalem to Christianity: it would have been dumb and a relic of the past, but at least it would have been idealistic). As it was, he got to Naples: very easily, did not even have to fight. What would happen after taking Naples is a horse of another colour: the knig of France cannot stay too long away from France, and cannot keep an expeditionary army in the field forever. Too far away, and France does not have control of the central Mediterranean. Forget syphilis (which was an additional problem, but certainly not the major one): what is he going to do after taking Naples? He does not even control the hinterland of the kingdom: just the capital. So he'll leave a garrison, and start moving back toward France: however he does not have a single enemy who can be hopefully defeated in a decisive battle. His enemies are a legion, and their coffers are deeper than the coffer of France. Fornovo was a fluke, because the French army (or what remained of it) should have been annihilated. Charles was saved by luck (the Albanian cavalry in the pay of Venice leaving the attack to join in the sack of French baggage) and by the fact that his opponents were a coalition, not a single army. However - even assuming that he won and routed the coalition army (maybe routed is too strong a word: say he would manage to compel the coalition army to leave the field) he'd have done what he did OTL: march back to France.

A more interesting POD IMHO might have been the French army destroyed and the king taken prisoner. I'm not sure it would have made a bid difference either (most likely the coalition partners would start bickering among themselves), but just possibly it would have made future French kings more cautious and kept them out of 50 years of Italian wars to no profit.
 
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