Italy: Military History and Notable Events

1096 - 1099 - First Crusade (All Facts)

• Crusade during which Genoa, Venice, and Pisa; whose fleets had helped the Crusaders to capture ports south of Beirut, were rewarded with trading privileges after the Crusader victory

• Crusade during which

  • The Republics of Genoa, Venice, and Pisa and the Duchy of Amalfi

    • secured valuable commercial positions for its traders, leading to increased wealth and power, its people having

      • sent relief fleets during the First Crusade into the Holy Land, and were, in towns they conquered, rewarded with

        • Quarters

        • Warehouses

        • Markets

        • Churches

      • helped the Crusaders to capture ports in south Lebanon and were granted trading privileges as a result

      • helped the Christian Crusader fleets dominate the Mediterranean

      • attacked the Tunisian coast and extracted taxes from the Emir of Kairouan

      • gained wool and leather exports from the Muslims

• Crusade after which the scope of trade in Genoa, Venice, and Pisa steadily increased with imports of spices, cotton, silk, and fabric from the East balanced by exports of wool, flax, and hemp cloth as well as older-established provisions like corn, salt, oil, and wine

1122 - 1126 - Venetian Crusade (All Facts)

• Conflict in which the namesake fleet, in support of the Crusaders

  • Defeated the Egyptians and their fleet off Ascalon in 1123, in which they captured a large merchant convoy and drove the last Muslim ships from the Mediterranean

  • Pillaged Rhodes in 1125

  • Occupied Chios in 1125

  • Ravaged Samos and Lesbos in 1125

  • Occupied Cephalonia in 1125

1156 - Battle of Brindisi (All Facts)

• Battle in which King William of Sicily and his forces defeated the Byzantines, backed by Pope Hadrian IV, who capitulated at Benevento afterwards

1159 - 1160 - Siege of Crema (All Facts)

• Battle in which Frederick Barbarossa and the Holy Roman Empire attacked the namesake city, in which Barbarossa ordered

  • Prisoners, including children, to be tired to huge siege machines and hurled at the walls of the namesake city

  • The mass hanging of prisoners, only to see his own soldiers swinging from gallows

  • Child hostages to be brought to the front line

• Battle which ended the namesake city’s status as one of the many powerful independent Italian city-states at the time

  • When the namesake city opened its gates, its inhabitants watched as their city was razed to the ground

• Battle in which the namesake city’s inhabitants, shocked by the sight of the heads of decapitated prisoners being thrown around by Barbarossa’s troops, fiercely retaliated by tearing their prisoners literally limb from limb on the city walls

1176 - Battle of Legnano (All Facts)

• Battle in which the Lombard League defeated Frederick Barbarossa of the Holy Roman Empire and his forces to maintain control of Lombardy (in modern-day Italy)

• Battle whose terms of peace were completed between Pope Alexander III at Agnani and Frederick Barbarossa

• Battle after which Frederick Barbarossa acknowledged Pope Alexander III as the one and only true pontiff

  • Barbarossa finally succumbed to papal authority and accepted Pope Alexander III after he had kissed the feet of the pope as thousands watched him do so in St. Mark’s square

1183 - Peace of Constance (All Facts)

• Peace treaty which ended conflict between the Lombard League and Frederick Barbarossa and the Holy Roman Empire

1202 - 1204 - Fourth Crusade (All Facts)

• Crusade during which Venetian entrepreneurs backed the pillaging of Constantinople carried out by the French Catholic Crusaders, doing so in the name of religious unity

  • In fact, it was a short cut to repayment of a loan to fund the namesake conflict

  • The leader of this crusade, Boniface, the marquess of Montferrat, agreed to pay the Venetians for their efforts of support

• Crusade after which the leaders of the Republic of Venice formed a commission to allot some of the old empire to the new emperor and other shares to the Venetian Crusaders

  • By this means, they collected the Adriatic east coast, both shores of the Gulf of Corinth, islands such as Andros, and swathes of Albania

1260 - Battle of Montaperti (All Facts)

• Battle in which the Ghibellines and Republic of Siena defeated the Guelphs and Republic of Florence

1261 - Treaty of Nymphaeum (All Facts)

• Treaty between the Republic of Genoa and Michael VIII Palaeologus and the Byzantine Empire, which promised the Republic of Genoa all the trading privileges within the empire already enjoyed by the Republic of Venice

1263 - Battle of Settepozzi (All Facts)

• Battle in which the Venetians defeated the Genoese during the War of St. Sabas

1266 - Battle of Benevento (All Facts)

• Battle in which Charles of Anjou of Sicily and the Guelphs defeated King Manfred of Sicily and the Ghibellines

• Battle after which Charles of Anjou assumed the kingship of Sicily, succeeding King Manfred of Sicily

1268 - Battle of Tagliacozzo (All Facts)

• Battle in which Charles of Anjou of Sicily and the Guelphs defeated King Conradin of Sicily (of the Hohenstaufen Dynasty) and the Ghibellines, successfully defending Italy from them

1282 - 1302 - War of the Sicilian Vespers (All Facts)

• Series of conflicts waged by several medieval European kingdoms over control of the Kingdom of Sicily, in which their rulers fought over competing dynastic claims to the throne of Sicily

  • These competing political entities included the

    • Kingdom of France

    • Kingdom of Aragon

    • Kingdom of Naples

    • Papacy

  • The native population of Sicily was encouraged to rebel against Charles of Anjou and their French overlords by

    • the previous Hohenstaufen rulers

    • King Peter III of Aragon (who was married to a Hohenstaufen)

    • the Ghibellines (which lost the conflict against Charles of Anjou and the Guelphs)

    • Emperor Michael VIII Palaeologus of the Byzantine Empire

• Series of conflicts which began with the namesake revolt in Sicily by the Sicilians against their French overlords following the death of King Charles of Anjou of Sicily and his being succeeded by King Peter III of Aragon

• Series of conflicts which came to an end when Charles of Valois of France invaded the Kingdom of Sicily, with the papacy’s permission, and got King Frederick III of Sicily to agree to Charles of Valois of France’s terms, thus ending the namesake war

1282 - Sicilian Vespers (All Facts)

• Revolt involving massacres which have claimed the lives of several thousand French men, women, and children

  • Revolt in which friars were dragged from Dominican and Franciscan monasteries and put to death if they could not pronounce the Sicilian word “ciciri”

• Revolt whose bloodshed began on Easter Monday, outside the Church of the Holy Spirit in Palermo in the Kingdom of Sicily

  • A crowd was waiting to go inside the church when a group of French officials started insulting the local women there

  • When one French sergeant began to molest a Sicilian woman, her husband drew a knife and stabbed him to death

  • As the bells began to toll for the namesake church service, the other Sicilians fell upon the French officials and butchered them

  • From there, messengers ran from the church square of the Church of the Holy Spirit through Palermo and out into the towns and villages, where the Sicilians rose up, killing their French overlords and proclaiming themselves independent of the Kingdom of France

• Revolt which allowed the Sicilian rebels, that were already planning to rebel against Charles of Anjou and their French overlords, to not wait any longer

  • The native population of Sicily was encouraged to rebel against Charles of Anjou and their French overlords by

    • the previous Hohenstaufen rulers

    • King Peter III of Aragon (who was married to a Hohenstaufen)

    • the Ghibellines (which lost the conflict against Charles of Anjou and the Guelphs)

    • Emperor Michael VIII Palaeologus of the Byzantine Empire

• Revolt in which Messina was the last city to hold out against it, but it too had its French fleet in its harbor eventually destroyed by the rioters

1284 - Battle of Meloria (All Facts)

• Battle in which the the Republic of Genoa destroyed the Republic of Pisa off the coast of Italy during the Genoese-Pisan Wars

• Battle in which the Republic of Pisa lost its hold on Sardinia

• Battle after which the Republic of Genoa was the main rival to the Republic of Venice

1310 - Tiepolo Conspiracy (All Facts)

• Failed plot to overthrow Doge Pietro Gradenigo and his government of the Republic of Venice

• In response, Venice became governed more by a narrow oligarchy of merchants who consolidated their power after suppressing the namesake plot

1378 - 1381 - War of Chioggia (All Facts)

• War in which the Republic of Venice defeated its longtime rival, the Republic of Genoa, in which the Genoese / Republic of Genoa unconditionally surrendered to the Venetians / Republic of Venice

• Although its peace conference at Turin had left the two exhausted belligerents politically where they were before the fighting, the Venetians / Republic of Venice had set about making a speedy economic recovery and thus bolstered its trading power in its victory in the war

• War which was the culmination of over a hundred years of squabbling between the two dominant maritime trading republics of Italy

• War which saw the Genoese / Republic of Genoa spoiling for a fight with the Venetians / Republic of Venice and found one in the namesake lagoon in which their fleet was trapped by concrete-filled blockships and later sunk by their enemies

1380 - Battle of Chioggia (All Facts)

• Battle in which the Republic of Venice defeated the Republic of Genoa during the War of the namesake, thus defeating its long-standing rival and remaining the supreme maritime republic and city-state of Renaissance Italy

1378 - 1382 - Ciompi Revolt (All Facts)

• Revolt of politically unrepresented laborers in the Republic of Florence in Tuscany, Italy who did not belong to any guilds and were therefore unable to participate in the Florentine government

• Revolt whose goal was to make it so that only citizens who had actually worked for a living - either at trades or in business, would be able to hold office in the commune that would be Florence

• Revolt that emerged out of the Black Death, which considerably lessened the number of men in the cloth industry, regarding a conflict between the magnates or “Hats” and workers or “Cloaks”

• Revolt in which the “Cloaks” cried “Death to the Hats and long live to the Cloaks!” while they turned the tables on the aristocrats of Florence and rioted and burned throughout the city

  • In the inter-communal slanging match that grew and in response, the “Hats” shouted “Go back to your cloth-making” and “go and grind the pepper (to druggists)” and one aristocrat who lumped the workers together as a crowd of “robbers, traitors, murderers, assassins, gluttons, and malefactors”

  • This shouting match ended in violence in which traders, skilled artisans, and the poor joined together to force their way into the palace and take over the city of Florence

• Revolt which was brutally suppressed

1432 - Battle of San Romano (All Facts)

• Battle in which the Republic of Florence defeated the Republic of Siena during the Wars in Lombardy

1454 - Treaty of Lodi (All Facts)

• Peace Treaty signed between the Republic of Florence and the Duchy of Milan, along with the Republic of Venice and Kingdom of Naples, presided over by Pope Nicholas V and Rome, which thus ended the Wars in Lombardy

• Treaty whose significance lies in having guaranteed Italy 40 years of stable peace, consequently favoring the artistic and literary flowering representative of the Italian Renaissance

• Treaty after which formed the Italic League, which lasted until the onset of the Italian Wars

1463 - 1479 - First Ottoman-Venetian War (All Facts)

• Series of conflicts in which the Ottoman Turks fought over control of the Mediterranean Sea with the Republic of Venice

1478 - Pazzi Conspiracy (All Facts)

• Plot by the namesake family to displace (rule in the place of) the Medici family in Florence

• Plot involving the murder of Giuliano de Medici and the attempted assassination of his brother Lorenzo de Medici

• Plot in which the members of the namesake rival banking family and their confederates, including the archbishop of Pisa, walked Giuliano de Medici arm-in-arm for High Mass attended by a cardinal from Rome who was believed to have been in on and encouraged the namesake plot, and then, during the Mass, the namesake plotters plunged their daggers into Giuliano de Medici 19 times while two priests attempted to stab Lorenzo de Medici

  • Lorenzo de Medici escaped, gashed in the neck, and ran to the sacristy for safety

  • In the stampede from the cathedral the assassins escaped

• Plot in which the people of Florence turned against the namesake family and hunted them and their friend down

• Plot after which the palaces of Florence were festooned with corpses of the namesake rebels hanged from their windows, at least 70 in total

1494 - 1559 - Italian Wars (All Facts)

• Series of conflicts between the Valois (France) and the Habsburgs (Spain and Holy Roman Empire) that began with the First Italian War and ended with the Ninth Italian War and mostly took place in (Northern) Italy

1494 - 1498 - First Italian War (All Facts)

• Conflict in which the Habsburgs (Spain), with support from the Papacy and League of Venice, defeated the Valois (France)

• Conflict that began with King Charles VIII of France’s invasion of the Kingdom of Naples

• Conflict in which King Charles VIII and his army infected the Kingdom of Naples with the “French Pox” disease

• Conflict in which King Charles VIII and his army was forced to retreat from Italy, thus halting French expansion and preventing France from securing a permanent foothold in the Kingdom of Naples

1495 - Battle of Fornovo (All Facts)

• Battle in which King Charles VIII of France and his forces were defeated by the Italians and Swiss

• Battle which left the French army exhausted, emaciated, and riddled with disease, limping its way home to France after its defeat

1499 - 1501 - Second Italian War (All Facts)

• Conflict in which the Valois (France), with support from the Papacy, Venice, Florence, and Switzerland, defeated the Habsburgs (Spain)

• Conflict in which King Louis XII of France, with the help of Gian Giacomo Trivulzio and his Italian forces, seized and conquered the Duchy of Milan

• Conflict after which Ludovico Sforza fled from the Duchy of Milan

• Conflict in which the Milanese rebelled against Gian Giacomo Trivulzio and his Italian forces and the French, thus Sforza returned and took advantage of the revolt and attacked the French back

  • He was eventually deserted by his troops, however, and handed over to the enemy and imprisoned by the French

1500 - Battle of Novara (All Facts)

• Battle in which King Louis XII and his forces defeated Ludovico Sforza and his Italian (Milanese) forces during the Second Italian War

• Battle which began when Ludovico Sforza, after having fled Milan, returned and corralled his troops and took advantage of the prior revolt against Gian Giacomo Trivulzio and the French and attacked the French

• Battle which ended when Ludovico Sforza’s troops deserted him and he was sent by Milan to be imprisoned in France

1502 - 1504 - Third Italian War (All Facts)

• Conflict in which King Ferdinand and the Habsburgs (Spain) defeated the King Louis XII and the Valois (France)

• Conflict in which King Ferdinand and the Habsburgs (Spain) took back the Kingdom of Naples from King Louis XII and France