The results of the politics of Fernando el Católico. Les Affaires d’Italie from the French perspective of Antoine Varillas

Abstract

Fernando el Católico’s foreign policy induced significant changes in international relations in the late Middle Ages and early modern period. His Italian policy, topic that will be examined in this essay, principally covers the period from 1492 to 1516, year in which this monarch died. A time frame similar to that which comprises Antonio Varillas’s controversial and hardly examined work La Politique de Ferdinand le Catholique. With an impact probably unexpected for his author, the book is really interesting as historic document. It was first published in Amsterdam, in 1688, so that there is reasonable cause to suspect that the volume might be used beyond the French interpretative framework within which the specific quarrel between the Spanish and French monarchies —which so profoundly affected power relations in the early 16th century— was interpreted.