Battle of Fornovo

League of Italian states band together to send the French army home

A 19th century painting of Charles VIII
of France (left) at the Battle of Fornovo

The first major open battle of the Italian Wars took place on this day in 1495 in Fornovo di Taro in the province of Parma in the region of Emilia-Romagna.

A French army took to the battlefield against combined troops from Venice, Milan, and Mantua. Soldiers were killed and wounded on both the French and the Italian sides, but the smaller French army claimed victory afterwards. However, it was also later celebrated as a victory against the French by Venice and Mantua.

After the battle, the French army were able to leave Italy safely, but they had to give up all the territory and valuables they had taken while they had been occupying the Italian peninsula.

It was just the start of a series of conflicts that were to take place in different parts of the peninsula between 1494 and 1559 between France, Spain, and the Holy Roman Empire, with various Italian states joining in on both sides. There was also some involvement from England, Switzerland, and the Ottoman Empire during the 150 years that the Italian Wars lasted.

The young King of France, Charles VIII, wanted to be a hero for the Christians in Europe and put a stop to the power of the Ottoman Turks. He decided that he would need to control the south of Italy in order to be able to do this and so he set out to claim the Kingdom of Naples.

He made agreements with his neighbouring countries by giving money to Henry VII of England and land to Ferdinand II of Spain and the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian.

Helped by Swiss mercenaries, Charles VIII moved through Italy easily and entered Naples in February 1495.

However, worried by the speed of his advance, some Italian states formed a Holy League with Pope Alexander VI, the Holy Roman Emperor, and the Kings of England and Spain.

After receiving news about the League being formed against him, Charles VIII left some of his troops behind to guard Naples, and marched north again with the rest of his army. 

A depiction of Charles VIII leading his
army into Florence in 1494

Meanwhile the Venetians and their allies set up camp near Fornovo di Taro in June and waited for the French army to arrive.

Knowing that his enemies were now growing in number and that he was running out of supplies, Charles decided on July 6 he would have to fight. 

The League was stationed on the right side of the Taro river with the French troops on the left bank.

The French started the battle near Parma on this day more than 500 years ago by firing their cannons to frighten their enemies and then sent their heavy cavalry to charge forward. After the French had managed to break through the Italian lines, Charles marched his troops into Lombardy and from there he was able to return to France safely.

Both sides said they had won the Battle of Fornovo after the event, and Francesco Gonzaga, the Marquess of Mantua, even commissioned a painting, Madonna della Vittoria, to commemorate the victory.

But the French had come up against a much larger army and had still been able to continue their march home.

King Ferdinand II returned to Naples with a Spanish fleet and quickly won back the city and Pope Alexander VI congratulated the Venetians on gaining ‘immortal fame’ by freeing Italy.

The main loser at the end of this battle was the Italian peninsula, because other countries in Europe now realised it was a rich land, divided into lots of small states that were easy to conquer. For the next 150 years, the peninsula was to become a battleground for the main European powers.

The Church of Santa Maria Assunta is the most
important religious building in Fornovo

Travel tip:

Fornovo di Taro is a town in the province of Parma, in the Italian region Emilia-Romagna, located about 100km (62 miles) west of Bologna and about 25km (16 miles) southwest of Parma.  It is situated where the Po Valley meets the Lunigiana Valley. Fornovo was an important stop in the Middle Ages on the pilgrims' road to Monte Bardone, along the Via Francigena. The town acquired a significant place in Italian military history for a second time in April, 1945 when it was liberated from Nazi occupation by soldiers from the Brazilian Expeditionary Force fighting with the Allies.  Under the command of General João Baptista Mascarenhas de Morais, the Brazilians marched into Fornovo at the conclusion of the four-day Battle of Collecchio. In the centre of the village one of the most important parish churches of the area, the church of Santa Maria Assunta, houses narrative friezes and sculptural pieces from the Antelami school.

Parma is the home of Parmigiano Reggiano, one
of Italy's most famous cheeses

Travel tip:

Parma is an historic city in the Emilia-Romagna region, famous for its Prosciutto di Parma ham and Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, the true ‘parmesan’. In 1545 the city was given as a duchy to the illegitimate son of Pope Paul III, whose descendants ruled Parma till 1731. The composer, Verdi, was born near Parma at Busseto and the city has a prestigious opera house, the Teatro Regio, and a conservatory named in honour of Arrigo Boito, who wrote the libretti for many of Verdi’s operas.  An elegant city with an air of prosperity common to much of Emilia-Romagna, Parma’s outstanding architecture includes an 11th century Romanesque cathedral and the octagonal 12th century baptistery that adjoins it, the church of San Giovanni Evangelista, which has a beautiful late Mannerist facade and bell tower, and the Palazzo della Pilotta. The palazzo houses the Academy of Fine Arts, the Palatine Library, the National Gallery and an archaeological museum.

Also on this day:

1849: The death of Goffredo Mameli, writer of the Italian national anthem

1942: The death of Sicilian Mafia-buster Cesare Mori

2002: The death of wrongly imprisoned bombing suspect Pietro Valpreda

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Liberation of Fornovo di Taro

How Brazilian soldiers hastened Nazi capitulation

The moment at which General Otto Fretter-Pico (second left)
formally surrendered to Brazilian forces in Fornovo di Taro

The town of Fornovo di Taro in Emilia-Romagna acquired a significant place in Italian military history for a second time on this day in 1945 when it was liberated from Nazi occupation by soldiers from the Brazilian Expeditionary Force fighting with the Allies.

Under the command of General João Baptista Mascarenhas de Morais, the Brazilians marched into Fornovo, which is situated about 25km (16 miles) south-west of Parma on the east bank of the Taro river, at the conclusion of the four-day Battle of Collecchio.

It was in Fornovo that the 148th Infantry Division of the German army under the leadership of General Otto Fretter-Pico offered their surrender, along with soldiers from the 90th Panzergrenadier Division and the 1st Bersaglieri and 4th Mountain Divisions of the Fascist National Republican Army.

In total, 14,779 German and Italian troops laid down their arms after Fretter-Pico concluded that, with the Brazilians surrounding the town, aided by two American tank divisions and one company of Italian partisans, there was no hope of escape.

Although the total capitulation of the German and Fascist armies in Italy was not officially announced until May 2 in Turin, the surrender in Fornovo effectively brought the war in the peninsula to an end.

Italian citizens hailed the Brazilians as heroes

It represented a successful conclusion to an eight-month campaign in Italy by the Brazilian Expeditionary Force, which numbered 25,700 army and air force personnel, representing the only independent South American country to send ground troops to fight overseas during the whole of the Second World War.

Brazil, traditionally isolationist, had initially remained neutral in the global conflict, although it allowed the United States to set up bases on Brazilian soil.  But, in 1942, Brazil’s decision to sever diplomatic relations with the Axis countries of Germany, Japan and Italy prompted Germany to send submarines to the south Atlantic to attack Brazilian merchant ships.

During the month of July 1942, 13 Brazilian ships were sunk, at a cost of more than 100 lives, mainly crew members.  The country’s leaders still refused to be drawn into the conflict but the attacks continued and in the space of just two days in August, a single German U-boat sank five ships, causing more than 600 deaths, many of them civilians travelling on passenger vessels.

Faced with rioting on the streets as German businesses in the capital Rio de Janeiro were attacked, Brazil’s president, Getúlio Vargas, had no option but declare war on Germany and its allies.

It took two years to convert Brazil’s obsolete army into a force that was anywhere near equipped to fight effectively in Europe but in July 1944 the first 5,000 Brazilian troops disembarked in Naples.  Others arrived later.

The tunic badge

Such had been the scepticism in Brazil about any of their countrymen ever seeing action, they acquired the nickname ‘the smoking snakes’ – so called because Brazilians would joke with one another, using an expression with a similar meaning to 'pigs might fly' in the English language, that it was more likely that ‘a snake would smoke a pipe’ than the BEF would go to the front and fight.  They wore a badge on their tunics depicting a smoking snake.

Yet between September 1944 and the German surrender they achieved success in 17 battles across the north of Italy. Deployed to replace the French and US troops that had been diverted to help in the Allied invasion of German-occupied France, they attracted praise in particular for the part they played in the battles for Monte Castello and Castelnuovo in the Northern Apennines, as well as in the Battle of Collecchio.

Although the Italian Front was not as important as the Eastern Front in bringing the Nazis to their knees, the hastening of the German defeat in the peninsula, coming at the same time as the Red Army captured Berlin and news spread of the death of Adolf Hitler, helped bring the Second World War to a quicker end than might otherwise have been the case. The Fascist leader Benito Mussolini had been executed by Italian partisans only 24 hours before Fornovo witnessed its historic moment.

Overall, the Brazilian Expeditionary Force suffered 443 losses over the eight months but against that took 20,573 Axis prisoners.

For Fornovo, the battle fought in the surrounding countryside prompted historians to recall that the town had witnessed a major military confrontation once before in its history as the site of the Battle of Fornovo, fought between the Italian Holy League and the French forces of Charles VIII at the start of the Italian Wars in July 1495.

Parma's baptistry

Travel tip:

Fornovo and Collecchio are within a short distance of Parma, one of the most attractive cities of the Emilia-Romagna region. The home of prosciutto di parma, parmigiano reggiano and Sangiovese wine, it is a food-lover’s paradise but also a city with a rich cultural heritage, the home of composers Giuseppe Verdi and Niccolò Paganini, the conductor Arturo Toscanini, the film director Bernardo Bertolucci, the writer Giovanni Guareschi and a host of painters, headed by Francesco Mazzola, better known as Il Parmigiano.  The city has much fine architecture, too, including a striking Romanesque cathedral and neighbouring baptistry, several other churches and palaces and notable modern buildings such as the Niccolò Paganini Auditorium, designed by Renzo Piano.

Piazza San Prospero in Reggio Emilia

Travel tip:

Reggio Emilia, the next city on from Parma along the route of the Via Emilia – the Roman road that linked Piacenza, south-east of Milan, with the Adriatic resort of Rimini – lacks the cultural wealth of Parma and tends to be given little attention as a result. Yet it is an attractive city, neat and well organised, retaining its historical centre, which has a hexagonal layout based on its old walls, but with a modern and forward-thinking attitude.  There are many fine restaurants, elegant squares and interesting palaces and churches, and its roll call of famous citizens ranges from the poet Ludovico Ariosto to the former prime minister Romano Prodi and the football coach Carlo Ancelotti.




More reading:

How Mussolini was captured and killed by Italian partisans

Annual celebration of Festa della Liberazione

The moment Italy entered the Second World War

Also on this day:

1675: The birth of painter Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini

1987: The birth of tennis champion Sara Errani


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