Charles’s opportunity to go to war was presented to him by Lodovico Sforza, il Moro, uncle of the Duke of Milan. The Duke, Gian Galeazzo, had come of age in 1490, but il Moro had subsequently shown no inclination to give up the powers of Regent which he had assumed. This did not much concern Gian Galeazzo himself, for he was a lazy young fellow, interested more in dogs, horses and food than in his Duchy and disinclined to assert his rights even had he dared to do so. His wife Isabella, however, was a far more positive character. Repeatedly she complained to her grandfather, King Ferrante of Naples, asking him to put her husband’s uncle and his domineering wife in their proper places. King Ferrante at first seemed reluctant to do so, but eventually agreed to do what he could to help.
To forestall any trouble he might have with Naples and any move that might be made against him from elsewhere in Italy, il Moro decided to suggest to Charles VIII that he should reassert the Angevin claim to Naples and, when the claim was denied, lead an expeditionary force into Italy. The Duchy of Milan would lend him its support. Il Moro himself would raise in Italy any loan that might be required, and he did, in fact, succeed in borrowing 100,000 francs from a Genoese bank at fourteen per cent interest.
Charles needed little persuasion, and when King Ferrante died in January 1494 his mind was made up. Announcing his claim to the Kingdom of Naples, and to the Kingdom of Jerusalem which went with it, he prepared to invade Italy and to push Ferrante’s successor, Alfonso II, off his throne. In September the invasion began. A huge army, over thirty thousand strong, marching behind white silk banners embroidered with the arms of France and the words ‘Voluntas Dei’, crossed the Alps and lumbered down into Lombardy where its vanguard was warmly welcomed by il Moro. King Charles then moved on to Pavia to pay his respects to his cousin, the ineffectual Duke Gian Galeazzo, whom he found ill in bed suffering from some mysterious disease which his doctors could not diagnose. The Duchess knelt tearfully at the French King’s feet, begging him not to take his army on to Naples – but Charles had no mind to turn back now. Nor had il Moro. As Charles left Pavia, marching south towards Piacenza, the Duke’s illness took a sudden turn for the worse, a relapse which was naturally attributed to poison. A few days later, he was dead. Immediately his widow and their four children were arrested and imprisoned, and il Moro proclaimed himself Duke of Milan.
The immense French army and its straggling train of camp-followers, cooks, grooms, muleteers, farriers, musicians, sutlers, prostitutes and courtiers continued their ponderous advance unopposed. No efforts to halt it were made in the Papal States; Venice announced her neutrality. Charles drew nearer to the Tuscan frontier, sending envoys on to Florence to ask Piero de’ Medici to acknowledge the justice of the Angevin claim and to allow his army to march through Tuscany. After keeping the envoys waiting for his answer for five days, during which he promised the King of Naples his unqualified support, Piero declared that Florence would remain neutral. The French, however, would not allow Florence to remain neutral. They needed fortresses in Tuscany to give security to their rear while advancing further south. So, protesting grave displeasure at the discourteous way in which his envoys had been treated, Charles advanced on the Tuscan fortress of Fivizzano, sacked it and massacred the entire garrison with alarming brutality.
Suddenly displaying an energy that surprised his fellow citizens, Piero aroused himself to make what arrangements he could to prevent Charles advancing any further into Tuscany. Mercenaries were sent to the frontier forts; condottieri were summoned; Piero’s brother-in-law, Paolo Orsini, was sent to Sarzana with reinforcements; Piero himself prepared to leave for Pietrasanta. His own energy was not matched, however, by any comparable determination on the part of most other leading citizens in Florence. While Savonarola gave vent to further prophecies, seeming to take a gloomy satisfaction in the verification of his predictions, a sense of fatality descended upon the city. ‘A Dominican Friar has so terrified all the Florentines that they are wholly given up to piety,’ the Mantuan envoy in Florence wrote to his master. ‘Three days in the week they fast on bread and water, and two more on wine and bread. All the girls and many of the wives have taken refuge in convents so that only men and youths and old women are now to be seen in the streets.’
‘Behold!’ cried Savonarola,
the Sword has descended; the scourge has fallen; the prophecies are being fulfilled. Behold, it is the Lord God who is leading on these armies… Behold, I shall unloose waters over the earth… It is not I but God who foretold it. Now it is coining. It has come!
Listening to his voice in the Cathedral, Pico della Mirandola felt a cold shiver run through him and his hair stand on end. Lorenzo Lenzi, the rich diplomat, soon to be appointed ambassador to France, was equally alarmed. When Piero de’ Medici asked for more money for the defence of Florence, Lenzi protested that the city would be ruined; resistance was useless. Piero’s cousins thought so too; and, anxious to dissociate themselves from his anticipated defeat, Lorenzo and Giovanni di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici dispatched messages to the French camp assuring King Charles that, far from supporting Piero’s actions, they were completely in sympathy with the French invasion. They would lend their influence to promote a sympathetic attitude towards it in Florence and would, if required, advance money to support it. Their message being intercepted, the brothers were arrested and confined in Medici villas – Lorenzo at Cafaggiolo and Giovanni at Castello. Both, however, soon escaped and joined Charles’s headquarters at Vigetano where they assured him that if Piero were to be disposed of, the Florentines would readily join the French against the Neapolitans.
By the end of October Piero, deserted by most of the Medicean party, had himself accepted the hopelessness of his position. No help was to be expected from the Pope or from Venice or from Naples, part of whose army had already been routed in the Romagna by the left wing of the invading forces under the Due de Montpensier. The French right wing, having bypassed Sarzana, were within a few miles of Pisa. So, without troubling to consult the Signoria, Piero left for King Charles’s camp at San Stefano, believing his only chance of saving Florence lay in endeavouring to win his friendship by offering his humble submission. No doubt he hoped to score the same sort of diplomatic triumph that his father had achieved in Naples during the Pazzi war. He sent back to Florence a letter modelled on that which his father had written on the road to Pisa.