The
princes, for their part, tried to make use of France in a wholly
different way. When the Franco-English wars came to an end, when Louis
XI began to cast about his diplomatic nets on all sides, and Charles of
Burgundy to embark on his foolish adventures, the Italian Cabinets came
to meet them at every point. It became clear that the intervention of
France was only a question of time, even if the claims on Naples and
Milan had never existed, and that the old interference with Genoa and
Piedmont was only a type of what was to follow. The Venetians, in fact,
expected it as early as 1462. The mortal terror of the Duke Galeazzo
Maria of Milan during the Burgundian war, in which he was apparently
the ally of Charles as well as of Louis, and consequently had reason to
dread an attack from both, is strikingly shown in his correspondence.
The plan of an equilibrium of the four chief Italian powers, as
understood by Lorenzo the Magnificent, was but the assumption of a
cheerful optimistic spirit, which had outgrown both the recklessness of
an experimental policy and the superstitions of Florentine Guelphism,
and persisted in hoping for the best. When Louis XI offered him aid in
the war against Ferrante of Naples and Sixtus IV, he replied, 'I cannot
set my own advantage above the safety of all Italy; would to God it
never came into the mind of the French kings to try their strength in
this country! Should they ever do so, Italy is lost.
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