Italian War of 1494–1495

A conflict that began with Charles VIII of France’s invasion of Italy in 1494 and ended with the League of Venice forcing French forces from the peninsula in 1495.

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Charles VIII of France: King of France from 1483 to 1498, who invaded Italy in 1494 to claim the Kingdom of Naples. His campaign began the conflict and brought a French army across the Alps.
Treaty of Barcelona (1493): An agreement in which France and Spain settled disputes over Roussillon and Cerdagne before Charles VIII’s Italian campaign. The settlement freed Charles to concentrate on his ambitions in Italy.
Pope Alexander VI: The head of the Catholic Church from 1492 to 1503, born Rodrigo Borgia, who navigated the rival claims on Naples. His shifting diplomacy connected the papacy to the conflict’s competing coalitions.
French invasion of Italy (1494): The crossing of the Alps by Charles VIII’s army in 1494, beginning the Italian campaign. Its rapid success revealed the vulnerability of Italy’s fragmented states.
Kingdom of Naples: A southern Italian kingdom ruled by the House of Aragon during the invasion of 1494. Charles VIII’s claim to this kingdom supplied the invasion’s immediate objective.
Treaty of Senlis: The 1493 treaty that ended a French-Habsburg dispute over the Burgundian inheritance. It reduced one obstacle to Charles VIII’s planned expedition south.
Ferdinand II of Aragon: King of Aragon from 1479 to 1516, who joined the League of Venice against French expansion in Italy. He helped organize resistance and defend the Aragonese claim to Naples.
Treaty of Granada (1500): A secret agreement between France and Spain to divide the Kingdom of Naples, preceding their conflict over its partition. Charles’s failed conquest did not end French claims, which resurfaced in a later invasion.
League of Venice: An alliance formed in 1495 by Venice, the papacy, Milan, Spain, and the Holy Roman Empire against France. Its formation turned resistance into a coalition that forced French forces from Italy.
Pazzi conspiracy: A failed 1478 plot by Florentine rivals to kill Lorenzo de’ Medici and seize power in Florence. The ensuing Medici-Papal tensions helped shape the political alignments Charles exploited.