Battle of Fornovo
An Italian league army intercepted Charles VIII of France at Fornovo on 6 July 1495 as he withdrew from Naples, and the engagement lasted about an hour. Charles had marched the length of Italy the previous year with 25,000 men and a siege train, taken Naples almost without fighting, and found the whole peninsula organised against him while he sat in it. The League of Venice — Milan, Venice, the Papacy, Spain and the Emperor — was formed in March 1495, and he started home before it closed the passes. Francesco Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, commanded the league force of perhaps 20,000 against a French army of around 10,000 in a river valley below the Apennines. Heavy rain the night before had swollen the Taro and turned the ground. The Italian cavalry crossed and attacked the French flank; a substantial part of the force then stopped to plunder the enormous baggage train carrying the loot of Naples, and left the attack unsupported. The Swiss and French infantry held, and Charles fought in person. Both sides claimed the victory, and both had a case: the Italians held the field and took the baggage, and the French got through with their army, which was the only thing that mattered. Around 3,500 died, most of them Italian, in a single hour — which contemporaries found shocking after a century of condottiere warfare fought largely for ransom. Gonzaga commissioned a votive church from Mantegna and was for a time the most celebrated soldier in Italy.
- Year: 1495 CE
- Category: War
