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The Fall of Italy
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While the Venetians retreated further into their own lands, the French forces in Brescia moved after them in sharp pursuit. Instead of fighting the Huguenot invaders, the doge of Venice decided to bring his armed forces (which had decreased extraordinarily much in strength after the first few battles) back to Venice itself. This left the rural areas of the Venetian domain open for the French onslaught and cut off the Most Serene Republic off from its hard needed supplies. There are many theories of why the doge of Venice decided to leave his country open for an assault. Of course he could have done so to save as many of his countrymen from certain death (as the French forces numbered so many men that a field victory would be almost impossible), but that wouldn’t fit very well with the Republic’s frequent use of mercenaries. Of the 3,000 men left to defend the ancient Republic, only one third was Italian. The rest were Slavic and German mercenaries from respectively the Dalmatian Coast and Austria. The more plausible reason would be that the doge’s advisors thought it likely for the Austrian Habsburgs to intervene if they saw Huguenot armies running wild in their close proximity. Never the less, the French Army of the East ran through Veneto like a fire through dry grass and had by the end of 1618 all of the Venetian mainland including the principality of Mantua in its hands.
As Venice was knocked out of the war, the Royal Army progressed south through Modena and entered the Papal province of Romagna. Just as in Veneto, the French took the castle nearly without a fight and secured the rich city of Ravenna[1] for the government of Sully. With Romagna and Avignon on French hands, the army of the Pope was in disarray and his fiancés destroyed. More bad news arrived in the Italian camp when news reached them that the Prince-Bishop in Liege had been forced into vassalage under the French crown. Catholic Christendom gasped at the horror of a Catholic Bishop acknowledging a Protestant king as his superior, which was probably exactly what Sully had expected when he let the Catholic lord keep his lands. The general in charge of the Royal army wanted to march directly into Rome and take some “holiness” away from the Pope, but Sully and Rohan objected to this. Entering and taking Rome would almost surely mean sacking Rome and that was an event the Catholic world could not tolerate. With the bulk of the French armed forces in Italy, the two marshals knew that it would be suicide to engage in such a three-front war with the Habsburgs and Italian states. Thus the army marched into Tuscany instead and besieged the many cities as the Tuscan forces had retreated into Rome. Even if Tuscany did fell, the war had already been won and it was time for the peace negotiations.
The Italian front at the ceasefire late 1618
As it became evident that France had no interest in obliterating the Papacy at the moment, the Italian princes eagerly cast themselves into another theatre of war, where they were well known; the negotiation tables. The war was ended by several treaties, the Treaty of Rome between France and the Papacy, the Treaty of Florence between Tuscany and France, Treaty of Mantua between said city and France, the Treaty of Palermo between the Sicilian Republic and France and lastly the Treaty of Ravenna between France and Venice.
The most important aspect of the conclusion of the first Bourbon-Papal War was that the papal domain of Avignon was surrendered to France. After centuries of Papal dominance Avignon now returned to France and the city was granted the same rights as all other French towns. As mentioned before Liege had been forced into vassalage under the French crown and with the peace of Rome (New Year’s Eve 1618) this was consolidated. From the Bay of Biscay to the North Sea the Protestant powers held sway and all of the Netherlands were assembled under the French hegemony. In Vienna and Madrid a sulky mood prevailed everywhere as the last inch of Emperor Charles V’s birthplace left the Habsburg dominance and went to France.
The Italian states of Mantua and Tuscany all had to pay ransoms for the fortresses captured by the French Army[2]. Sicily signed a separate peace where her previous affiliation with France saved the Sicilian Republic from paying reparations. Venice had to pay a large amount of gold before Sully agreed to return the taken territory, as de Bonne had rigorously argued for the annexation of at least Treviso and Verona. Furthermore Venice had to replace its doge with a council of Huguenot merchants brought in from the Swiss cantons for 8 years[3].
Geopolitical situation of France after the war
Sully had no intention of supporting the new regime in Venice and he knew with great certainty that the Huguenots would be cast out sooner or later, but it would hamper Austrian political manoeuvring when she had a Huguenot power on her southern flank.
But then something happened in the Habsburg motherland:
[1]The Papacy had build a CoT there some years ago.
[2]Tuscany: 250 ducats, Mantua: 75 ducats.
[3]Venice pays 300 ducats and converts to reformed
