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Article: The treaty of Lyons January 31st, 1504.(Months Past)
- Article from:
- History Today
- Article date:
- January 1, 2004
- Author:
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THE POLITICAL kaleidoscope of Italy in 1500 involved shifting combinations of alliance and hostility among the city states of Venice, Milan and Florence, the Papal States under the Borgia pope, Alexander VI, and his son Cesare, and the kingdom of Naples under a branch of the Spanish royal house of Aragon, while Sicily was ruled by Ferdinand II of Aragon himself (the husband of Isabella of Castile, Columbus's backer). Others with their fingers in the pie were the Habsburg Emperor, Maximilian I, and Louis XII of France, who had succeeded to the Italian policy of his predecessor, Charles VIII, and had his eye on Naples.
Naples and Sicily had been ruled as one kingdom ...