The return of the Sienese exiles, 1530-1531

• Main Author: Christine Shaw
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: École Normale Supérieure de Lyon Editions 2014-11-01
• Series: Laboratoire Italien
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/laboratoireitalien/764

The Sienese exiles driven from their city as the losers in bitter struggles between rival political factions in the 1520s, and claiming to be the nobility of Siena persecuted by a popular regime, succeeded in obtaining the support of Charles V, who ordered the commander of his army in Italy to help them return home. The arguments advanced by the exiles and by the Sienese regime that resisted their return, and by the agents of Charles V in their efforts to negotiate the reinstatement of the exiles or to justify the use of force when negotiations failed, raised questions of justice and equality in government, of property rights (determination not to restore the exiles’ confiscated property was one of the strongest motives behind the regime’s refusal to accept them back), and of the rights and powers of the emperor in intervening in and imposing reform on the government of the Sienese republic. For the Imperial agents, the restoration of the exiles became an excuse to take and hold a strategically useful city by force, but they failed to convince the emperor that this was justifiable or expedient.