RM, France, King Louis XII, Milan, Naples, Machiavelli, porcupine

Description: This medal is a part of my French medals offer Visit my page with the offers, please. You will find many interesting items related to this subject. If you are interested in other medals, related to this subject, click here, France, related to Enlightenment Science This medal has been minted in France commemorate the French king LOUIS XII, 1462 - 1515. This medal has been designed by the anonyme medalist. This medal is a restrike of the Paris Mint. Louis XII (27 June 1462 – 1 January 1515) was a monarch of the House of Valois who ruled as King of France from 1498 to 1515 and King of Naples from 1501 to 1504. The son of Charles, Duke of Orléans, and Maria of Cleves, he succeeded his cousin Charles VIII, who died without a closer heir in 1498. Before his accession to the throne of France, he was known as Louis of Orléans and was compelled to be married to his handicapped and supposedly sterile cousin Joan by his uncle, king Louis XI. By doing so, Louis XI hoped to extinguish the Orléans cadet branch of the House of Valois. The Indian crested porcupine (Hystrix indica), or Indian porcupine, is a member of the Old World porcupines. It is quite an adaptable rodent, found throughout southern Asia and the Middle East. It is tolerant of several different habitats: mountains, tropical and subtropical grasslands, scrublands, and forests. It is a large rodent, growing more than 0.9 m (3 ft) long and weighing 14.5 kg (32 lb). av; The French King Louis XII rv. The Indian porcupine under the crown diameter – 37 mm (ca 1½“) weight – 19.90 gr, (0.02 oz) metal – bronze, beautiful patina Governance Although he came late (and unexpectedly) to power, Louis acted with vigour, reforming the French legal system, reducing taxes and improving government much like his contemporary Henry VII did in England. To meet his budget after having reduced taxes, Louis XII reduced the pensions for the nobility and for foreign princes. In religious policy, Louis XII reinstituted the Practical Sanction which established the Roman Catholic Church in France as a "Gallic Church" with most of the power of appointment in the hands of the King or other French officials. As noted above, these reforms had been proposed at the meeting of the Estates General in 1484. Louis was also skilled in managing his nobility, including the powerful Bourbon faction, by which he greatly contributed to the stability of French government. In the Ordinance of Blois of 1499 and the Ordinance of Lyon issued in June of 1510 he extended the powers of royal judges and made efforts to curb corruption in the law. Highly complex French customary law was codified and ratified by the royal proclamation of the Ordinance of Blois of 1499. The Ordinance of Lyon tightened up the tax collection system requiring, for instance, that tax collectors forward all money to the government within eight days after they collected it from the people. Fines and loss of office were prescribed for violations of this ordinance. The Early Wars The French Kingdom's military involvement in Italy dates from 1494 and began with Charles VIII's invasion of Italy to protect the Duchy of Milan from the threats of the Republic of Venice. At the time, the Duchy of Milan was one of the most prosperous regions of Europe. Louis, the current Duke of Orleans and future King Louis XII, joined Charles VIII in this invasion of Italy. The French Kingdom was responding to an appeal for assistance from Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan. France's response to this appeal set off a series of wars that would last from 1494 until 1559 and would become known in history as the "Italian Wars". The first war in that series of wars resulted from, directly, Charles VIII's invasion, and is known as the First Italian War (1494–1498) or "King Charles' War". In 1495, however, Ludovico Sforza betrayed the French by changing sides in the war and joining the anti-French League of Venice (sometimes called the "Holy League"). This left Louis, the Duke of Orleans, in an awkward and inferior military position at the Battle of Fornovo on July 6, 1495. As a result, Louis had come to hate Ludovico Sforza. Accordingly, even before he became King of France, Louis began to claim the Duchy of Milan as his own inheritance which should have come to his by right of his paternal grandmother Valentina Visconti. After becoming king in 1499, Louis XII pursued his ambition to claim Milan in what is known as the "Great Italian War" (1499–1504) or "King Louis XII's War", the second war in the series known as the "Italian Wars". However, before initiating any war, King Louis XII needed to deal with the international threats that he faced. Thus, in August of 1498, Louis XII signed a peace treaty with the Emperor Maximillian I of the Holy Roman Empire. With Maxillian I neutralized, Louis wanted to turn his attention to King Henry VII of England. However, Henry was then pursuing a marriage between his eldest son, Arthur, and Catherine of Aragon, the Infanta of Spain. Thus he needed to detach Spain from its close relations with England, before he could deal with Henry VII. Furthermore, Spain was then a member of the anti-French League of Venice. Ferdinand of Aragon, king of the newly unified Spain, who directed all relations between Spain and the French on be half of himself and his queen—Isabella I of Castile —was so hostile to France that he had founded the anti-French League of Venice in 1495. In August 1498, Louis XII succeeded in signing a treaty with Spain that ignored all the territorial disputes between France and Spain and merely pledged mutual friendship and non-aggression. This allowed enough freedom for Louis XII to start negotiating with Scotland, for an alliance. Actually, Louis was merely seeking to reinstitute an old alliance between France and Scotland which had been in existence since King Philippe IV of France first recognised Robert the Bruce (1306–1329) as "King of Scotland in 1309. In early 1499, the old alliance between Scotland and France was renewed and the attentions of England were drawn northward toward Scotland rather that directed southward toward continental Europe. With the major powers preoccupied or pledged to peace with France, King Louis XII could attend to two other neighbors right on his border: the Swiss Confederation and the Duchy of Savoy. In March 1499, Louis signed an agreement with the Swiss Confederation that promised 20,000₰ as annual subsidy for simply allowing the French to recruit an unspecified number of troops in the Confederation. In exchange, Louis promised to protect the Confederation from any aggression from Maximillian and the Holy Roman Empire. Louis opened negotiations with the Duchy of Savoy and by May 1499 had hammered out an agreement that allowed French troops to cross Savoy to reach the Duchy of Milan. The agreement with Savoy also allowed France to purchase supplies and to recruit troops in Savoy. Finally, Louis was ready to march into Italy. The French army had been a potent force in 1494 when Charles VIII had first invaded Italy. However, during the remainder of Charles VIII's reign, the army had been allowed to deteriorate through neglect. Ever since becoming king, Louis XII had been rebuilding the French army. Now he could put it to use. On August 10, 1499, after marching across Savoy and through the town of Asti, the French army crossed the border into the Duchy of Milan. Contrary to the wishes of the Second Estate (the nobles and royalty of France) expressed at the Estates General in 1484 (see above), this French army was being led by a non-Frenchman—Gian Giacomo Trivulzio. Marshall Trivulzio had been in the service of the French throne since the reign of Louis XI. However, he had been born and raised in Milan. The French army that Marshal Trivulzio now commanded consisted of 27,000 men of which 10,000 were mounted. The French army was also supplied with 5,000 Swiss mercenaries. In the campaign of 1499, the French army surrounded the fortified town of Rocca di Arazzo in the western part of the Duchy of Milan. After five hours of bombardment by the French artillery batteries, the walls of Rocca di Arazzo were breached and the town was taken by the French. Louis XII had ordered his army to massacre the garrison and many civilians as a message to the other towns in the Duchy of Milan against resistance to the French army. The legal rationale for the massacre at Rocca di Arazzo was that defenders of the town were traitors because they had risen up in arms against their rightful lord—Louis XII of France. The French army repeated the episode at Annone, the next fortified town on the road to the City of Milan. This time the massacre had the desired effect, as three more fortified towns in the Duchy of Milan surrendered without a fight. Marshall Trivulzio then brought the French Army up to the gates of town of Alessandro and his batteries began battering the walls of the town on August 25, 1499. At first, a vigorous defense was mounted by the garrison, but on August 29, 1499, the city gave up and the garrison and the governor of the city slipped out of town before dawn. Marshal Trivulzio now became aware the Venician army, allies of the Duchy of Milan, were crossing into the Duchy of Milan from the east in an attempt to aid the Milanese army before it was too late. Accordingly, Marshal Trivulzio marched his army to Pavia, the last fortified town in the Duchy of Milan. With French troops already near Pavia a short distance to the west of the city of Milan, Lodovico Sforza determined that it useless to continue resisting the French. Accordingly, on the night of September 2, 1499, Sforza and a band of cavalry fled Milan, heading northward to the Holy Roman Empire. Louis XII, himself, staying in Lyon, France, heard about the surrender of Milan on September 17, 1499. He immediately left Lyon and on October 6, 1499, King Louis XII made his triumphant entry into Milan. Marshal Trevulzio presented King Louis with the key to the city of Milan. Marshal Trivulzio was appointed the temporary French governor of Milan. Later, King Louis appointed Georges d' Amboise as the permanent governor of Milan. In attempt to win popularity with the public in Milan, King Louis lowered the old Sforza taxes in Milan by as much as one-third. Meanwhile, Ludovico Sforza had been gathering an army, mainly among the Swiss, to take Milan back. In mid-January 1500, Sforza's army crossed the border into the Duchy of Milan and marched toward the city of Milan. Upon hearing the news of Sforza's return, some of the Sforza's partisans in the city rose up. On February 1, 1500, Marshal Trivulzio decided that he could not hold the city and the French retreated from the city, itself, to the fortresses west of the city. Sorzfa was welcomed back into the city by a joyous crowd of his supporters on February 5, 1500. King Louis XII raised another army under Louis de La Trémoille and sent him off to recapture Milan. By the time that Trémoille reached the forts west of Milan where Marshal Trivulzio and his force was holding out, the French army had swollen to 30,000 men by recruitment along the way to Milan. Many of these new recruits in the French army were Swiss mercenaries. The government of the Swiss Confederation heard about the coming battle and forbade any Swiss soldier from fighting against a fellow Swiss, which effectively subtracted all the Swiss from both sides for this particular battle. These troops then started to march back home to Switzerland. This had a much more damaging effect on Sforza's army, because his army was composed of a larger proportion of Swiss than the French army under La Trémoille. Faced with the return of the French and his own greatly reduced force, Sforza decided to slip out of Milan as he had done previously. This time, however, Sforza was captured and spent the rest of his life in a French prison. Despite Milan's openly warm welcome of Sforza (which King Louis XII regarded as "treasonous"), Louis XII was very generous to the city in victory. While Sforza had been in charge of Milan, the export of grain had been forbidden. Now the French reopened the trade in grain. This set off a decade of prosperity in Milan. Milan was to remain a French stronghold in Italy for twelve years. Using Milan as his firmly established base, King Louis XII began to turn his attention to other parts of Italy. The City of Genoa agreed to the appointment of Philip of Cleves, a cousin of King Louis XII, as the new governor of Genoa. Additionally, the French king now began to espouse his claim to the Kingdom of Naples. The legal rationale for Louis' claim to Kingdom of Naples was weaker than his claim to Milan. His claim stemmed only from his position as the successor to Charles VIII. Nonetheless, Louis XII pursued the claim with vigor. The presence of several French garrisons in southern Italy, the remnants of King Charles VIII's first invasion of Italy, provided King Louis XII with a toehold in southern Italy from which he hoped to regain his claim to the Kingdom of Naples. However, before Louis could act on his to the Kingdom of Naples, Louis XII had to deal with a recurring problem in northern Italy. In 1406, the city of Pisa was conquered by Florence. However, Pisa had been in constant revolt almost ever since 1406. In 1494, the Pisans successfully overthrew the Florentine government of Pisa. The Florentines requested aid from the French to recapture Pisa. The city of Florence had long been an ally of France in Italian affairs. However, King Louis and his advisers were miffed at Florence because in the recent fight against Sforza, Florence had chosen to abandon France and remain strictly neutral. However, the French knew that they would need Florence in the coming campaign in the Kingdom of Naples—French troops would need to cross Florentine territory on their way to Naples and they would need Florentine agreement to do so. Accordingly, a French army including 600 knights and 6,000 Swiss infantrymen under the command of Sire de Beaumont was sent to Pisa. On June 29, 1500, a combined French and Florentine force laid siege to Pisa and set up batteries around the town. Within a day of opening fire, the French batteries had knocked down 100 feet of the old medieval walls surrounding Pisa. However, even with the breach in their walls, the Pisans put up such a determined resistance that Beaumont despaired of ever taking Pisa. On July 11, 1500, the French broke camp and retreated north. The diversion to Pisa and his failure there emboldened the French opponents in Italy. Pursuing his claim to the Kingdom of Naples had become politically impossible until some of the opponents were neutralized. One opponent in particular was Spain. It was at this point, in 1500, that King Louis XII pursued the claim of his immediate predecessor to the Kingdom of Naples with Ferdinand II, the King of Aragon and with Queen Isabel of Castile, ruler of Spain. On November 11, 1500, Ferdinand II and Louis XII signed the Treaty of Granada, which brought Spain into Italian politics in a big way for the first time. Louis XII was severely criticized by contemporary historians including Nicolo Machiavelli; Machiavelli's criticism of Louis XII is contained in Machiavelli's work The Prince. Legacy At the end of his reign the crown deficit was no greater than it had been when he succeeded Charles VIII in 1498, despite several expensive military campaigns in Italy. His fiscal reforms of 1504 and 1508 tightened and improved procedures for the collection of taxes. In spite of his military and diplomatic failures, Louis proved to be a popular king. He duly earned the title of Father of the People ("Le Père du Peuple") conferred upon him by the Estates in 1506.

Price: 64.9 USD

Location: Sliema,

End Time: 2024-04-05T13:22:11.000Z

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