sourced story
1494 CEReputable source · 2 sourcesWell documented

Charles VIII Invades Italy and Starts Six Decades of Foreign War

A French king's claim on Naples drags Italy's independent city-states into a Habsburg-Valois struggle

On the timeline · around 1494 CE · Renaissance and Foreign RuleMedieval Italy and the City-StatesRenaissance and Foreign RuleCharles VIII Invades Italy and Starts Six Decades of Foreign War130014001450150015501600

Quick facts

Invasion begins
1494 CE, Charles VIII of France
War span
1494-1559 CE
Sack of Rome
May 6, 1527 CE
Emperor whose troops sacked Rome
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor (r. 1519-1556)

What happened

In 1494, King Charles VIII of France invaded the Italian peninsula to press a dynastic claim on the Kingdom of Naples, marching an army equipped with modern siege artillery through territory that Italy's independent city-states and kingdoms had never had to defend against a single unified foreign power. The invasion opened what became known as the Italian Wars, a nearly continuous conflict lasting until 1559 in which France and the Habsburg rulers of Spain and the Holy Roman Empire fought each other for control of Italian territory, with Italian states shifting alliances between the two sides. The wars reached their most traumatic single moment on May 6, 1527, when mutinous, unpaid troops serving Emperor Charles V, led by the renegade French noble the Duke of Bourbon, stormed Rome itself. The Swiss Guard fought to allow Pope Clement VII to escape to the Castel Sant'Angelo while the city was subjected to days of killing and looting; the artist Benvenuto Cellini, present during the sack, later claimed to have shot and killed the Duke of Bourbon during the assault.

Why it matters

The Italian Wars ended the era in which Florence, Venice, Milan, and the other communes could set their own foreign policy, and by the peace settlements of the 1550s most of Italy had fallen under direct or indirect Spanish Habsburg control, a domination that lasted, with Austrian Habsburgs eventually replacing Spanish ones, until Napoleon's invasion nearly three centuries later. The Sack of Rome in particular marked the end of the high Renaissance papacy's confidence and wealth.

How we know

The Italian Wars and the 1527 Sack of Rome are documented in contemporary diplomatic correspondence and chronicles from multiple Italian states, and Benvenuto Cellini's own account of the sack survives in his autobiography, cross-checked against independent narrative sources describing the same siege.

Sources

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Part of a timelineHistory of Italy27 events · A peninsula that fractured into rival kingdoms and city-states after Rome fell, then spent thirteen centuries putting itself back together as one countryView all →