The Italian Wars :: History

The Italian WarsItaly was the background for extraneous powers between the French invasion of 1494 and the accession of Francis 1 in 1515 for unalike minds.Between these years, the States of Italy were invaded on a number occasions by armies from France, Spain and some other countries. At this time, the Italian States were rattling vulnerable there were conflicts in Italy it ego, they had kayoed of date military equipment and Italy had insecure frontiers and unreliable allies That Italy failed to organise herself against invaders was ascribable to the selfish policies. This gave knocked out(p)side powers reason to use Italy as their field of operations. Italy was a very wealthy country, showing this wealth, a Florentine Historian, Guicciardini said Italy has never enjoyed such(prenominal) prosperity or known so favourable a side Also, because the Pope lived in Italy, it gave enemies more(prenominal) incentive to fight in Italy as opposed to any other country. A nonher r eason for Italy organism the battleground was that foreign powers felt they had dynastic claims to certain states and therefore felt get to fight for them.I feel the most important reason why outside powers chose Italy to fight in was basically because they could. Italy was divided, unstable and disunited there were even civil disputes e.g. when Venice and its neighbour Ferrara went to war. It was hard to keep foreign powers out of their country because they werent working together each state was not strong enough to protect Italy on its own. The Papacy also didnt help in keeping enemies out there was always kitchen range for dissension between them (Orsini and Colonna) and while they re principal(prenominal)ed armed before the very look of the pontiff, they kept the papacy weak and insecure. Also, it was playing its usual game of self interest. Pope Leo X in 1513 set about promoting the interests of himself and his family. He was prepared to negotiate for French aid to further his ambitions this lead to more foreign powers (especially France), being able to easily use Italy as the main battleground. It can be disputed that the most important reason for Italy being the battle ground was that it was wealthy, but I feel that even though it was wealthy, there were certainly other wealthy states which could have been the battleground, had Italy not been such an easy target, with certain assets other countries did not have.This leads me to the next important reason why Italy was the battle ground wealth.