Ferrara War Begins

1482

Pope Sixtus IV and Venice attacked Ferrara, aiming to redistribute its territory. Naples, Florence, and Milan formed a counter-alliance. The ensuing conflict dragged the Italian peninsula's great powers into two years of inconclusive campaigning. The Peace of Lodi's forty-year stability was finally fracturing, and French intervention loomed. The war exposed the Peace of Lodi's fragility and revealed papal willingness to use military force for territorial expansion.