Of the Duchy of Milan it is not necessary to speak at any great length, although the wars between France and Spain were chiefly carried on for its possession.  It had been formed into a compact domain, of comparatively small extent, but of vast commercial and agricultural resources, by the two dynasties of Visconti and Sforza.  In 1494 Lodovico Sforza, surnamed Il Moro, ruled Milan for his nephew, the titular Duke, whom he kept in gilded captivity, and whom he eventually murdered.  In order to secure his usurped authority, this would-be Machiavelli thought it prudent to invite Charles VIII. into Italy.  Charles was to assert his right to the throne of Naples.  Lodovico was to be established in the Duchy of Milan.  All his subsequent troubles arose from this transaction.  Charles came, conquered, and returned to France, disturbing the political equilibrium of the Italian States, and founding a disastrous precedent for future foreign interference.  His successor in the French kingdom, Louis XII., believed he had a title to the Duchy of Milan through his grandmother Valentina, daughter of Gian Galeazzo Visconti.  The claim was not a legal one; for in the investiture of the Duchy females were excluded.  It sufficed, however, to inflame the cupidity of Louis; and while he was still but Duke of Orleans, with no sure prospect of inheriting the crown of France, he seems to have indulged the fancy of annexing Milan.  No sooner had he ascended the French throne than he began to act upon this ambition.  He descended into Lombardy, overran the Milanese, sent Lodovico Sforza to die in a French prison, and initiated the duel between Spain and France for mastery, which ended with the capture of Francis I. at Pavia, and his final cession of all rights over Italy to Charles V. by the Treaty of Cambray.

Of all the republics which had conferred luster upon Italy in its mediaeval period of prosperity Venice alone remained independent.  She never submitted to a tyrant; and her government, though growing yearly more closely oligarchical, was acknowledged to be just and liberal.  During the centuries of her greatest power Venice hardly ranked among Italian States.  It had been her policy to confine herself to the lagoons and to the extension of her dominion over the Levant.  In the fifteenth century, however, this policy was abandoned.  Venice first possessed herself of Padua, by exterminating the despotic House of Carrara; next of Verona, by destroying the Scala dynasty.  Subsequently, during the long dogeship of Francesco Foscari (1423-1457), she devoted herself in good earnest to the acquisition of territory upon the mainland.  Then she entered as a Power of the first magnitude into the system of purely Italian politics.  The Republic of S. Mark owned the sea coast of the Adriatic from Aquileia to the mouths of the Po; and her Lombard dependencies stretched as far as Bergamo westward.  Her Italian neighbors were, therefore, the Duchy of Milan, the little Marquisate of Mantua, and the Duchy