The Oligarchic Republic of Tuscany’s Doge came into office with promises of expanding the republic’s economic supremacy over their Italian neighbors and expanding their borders. He signs an allies with the northern Kingdoms of Savoy and Milan 1444. He immediately start expanding the navy and increasing the army size from 9,000 to 13,000 as he plan his invasion of the state of Urbino. In the end of the year Genoa entered a mutual defense pact with them and only months later a powerful Tuscanese noble family married into the Milanese royal family. The powerful Kingdom of Hungary request an alliance with Tuscany, something the Doge was more than willing to accept. Royal marriages with Savoy and Hungary strengthened their relationship.
Doge Cosimo de Medici force through radical reforms of the merchants of the republic that the people takes with enthusiasm although it destabilized the nation’s economy and internal stability.
On the 26th December 1445 de Medici declared war upon Urbino and invaded with an army three times the Urbino forces size. Within a week they sieged the capital and after two years the city surrendered and Urbino was annexed into the republic. De Medici led the army himself to prove his strategic genius to command. The long siege didn’t do much for his reputation and he realized he needed to continue expanding the Tuscany Republic’s borders as the peasants who was dying in the war start to lose faith in him. He was unable to live up to the military genius he painted himself out to be.
In 1448 De Medici declared war on Siena, a neighboring republic with only a few thousand men to defend themselves against the 13,000 large Armata di Firenze (Army of Firenze). Once again he led the army into battle. But attacking a far weaker nation-and a fellow republic at that- gave him very little prestige and outraged merchants and the high nobility back home.
Tuscany began improving relations with Castile in hopes of a future alliance. Perhaps they can divide the Mediterranean between them. In the elections of 1448 De Medici just barely managed to stay in office.
In the end of 1448 Siena was annexed and De Medici attacked Modena to the north immediately. But Modena was a vassal of Ferrara who joined against Tuscany and its allies Savoy, Hungary and Genoa. Milan decided to honor its alliance with Ferrara instead of the alliance with Tuscany. The First North Italian War had begun. Tuscany’s army crushed both Modena and Ferrara’s quickly but De Medici have burnt through his countries manpower from the two previous wars and only minor reserves of men was behind him. He could only replace one of every fourth man who die. 1450 the Milanese province of Parma was given to Tuscany in the peace deal and Modena was annexed. Ferrara paid war reparations to the Grand Republic for the next ten years. De Medici wasn’t very popular because of the high casualties Tuscany had taken in the three conflicts.
Tuscany allied Venice the next year and De Medici tried working on his own propaganda to be reelected in the next election that was coming up in only two years.
De Medici declared war upon the Papal State and the pope himself in the years end and hoped for a glorious victory. The first battle was won in Romagna but with high Tuscanese casualties as the noble cavalry was almost wiped out. The war had already backfired on him. In the election of 1452’s beginning De Medici heard the news during his siege of Rome, the eternal city itself that he had been voted out of office. Doge and General Raniero Chigi took to his horse and rode out to Romagna to end the siege. The main part what got fifty-three year old military commander into office was his outspoken attitude towards De Medici from even before his popularity fell after he took office 1444. Chigi quickly ended the war but left Rome in the hands of the pope. Nothing else would be tolerated by Catholic Europe.
Instead of going to war directly as De Medici did over and over again, Doge Chigi started improving the economy and expand the merchant fleet in the hunt for pirates.
In 1453 doge Chigo died of a heart attack and Commander Constantino Terreni assumed the offices. He had fought in the war against Siena for the first time in career. During The First North Italian War he stood out after a great victory against a Modena force in the opening month. He was now thirty-one years old, making him the youngest Doge yet. In 1454 Constantino made plans to establish a colony in West Africa in either 1455 or 1456. The work began 1455 during the same month Tuscany allied Castile. The colonial expeditionary force took heavy losses against local warrior tribes in Arguin. Doge Constantino kept his nation at peace for years as he built up the trade power. 1457 he ordered his trade advisers to start justifying a trade conflict with Tunisia. He ordered the military to prepare for an invasion on North Africa. The same year he was reelected with a 95 % majority vote.
The colonial expeditionary force finally defeated the tribal warriors around the colony in 1458 after thousands of dead Tuscanese men and tens of thousands of dead tribesmen.
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