Gian Galeazzo Sforza

Gian Galeazzo Sforza was the sixth duke of Milan in name from the age of seven, and never ruled it for a day. His father Galeazzo Maria was assassinated in Milan Cathedral in 1476, leaving the duchy to a child under the regency of his mother Bona of Savoy. His uncle Ludovico Sforza, called il Moro, took the regency from her within four years and kept it long after his nephew came of age. Gian Galeazzo was married to Isabella of Aragon, granddaughter of the king of Naples, and it was her complaints to her family about their treatment that gave the situation its diplomatic weight. Ludovico, needing a counterweight to Naples, encouraged Charles VIII of France to press his own claim to the Neapolitan throne. The French army crossed the Alps in 1494 and began the Italian Wars, which would run for sixty-five years and draw in every major power in Europe. Charles visited the young duke at Pavia on his way south and found him dying. Gian Galeazzo died days later, aged twenty-five, and Ludovico was proclaimed duke immediately. Poison was widely assumed at the time and cannot now be shown either way. His daughter Bona Sforza became queen of Poland. Leonardo da Vinci was in Ludovico's service throughout the period and designed pageantry for the young duke's wedding. Isabella outlived her husband by fifty years and spent much of that time pursuing the claim of their son Francesco, who was sent to France and died a monk. Ludovico's own reign lasted five years before the French took Milan and he died a prisoner in a French dungeon.

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