Duchy of Milan

The Duchy of Milan was a state in Northern Italy created in 1395. Its founder was Gian Galeazzo Visconti, the lord of Milan and a member of the Visconti family, which had ruled the city since 1277.

At its founding, the duchy contained twenty-six towns and the extensive rural area of the middle Padan Plain east of the hills of Montferrat. For much of its history, it was positioned between Savoy to the west, the Republic of Venice to the east, the Swiss Confederacy to the north, and the Republic of Genoa to the south, which separated it from the Mediterranean. The duchy reached its greatest extent at the start of the 15th century, covering nearly all of modern Lombardy and parts of what are now Piedmont, Veneto, Tuscany, and Emilia-Romagna.

Under the House of Sforza, the duchy enjoyed great prosperity, notably through the introduction of the silk industry, making it one of the wealthiest states of the Renaissance. From the late 15th century, the Duchy of Milan was fought over by the Habsburg Monarchy and the Kingdom of France.

End of the Duchy

It came under Habsburg Spanish rule in 1556 and passed to Habsburg Austria in 1707 during the War of the Spanish Succession. The duchy remained Austrian until 1796, when a French army under Napoleon Bonaparte captured it during the War of the First Coalition. It ceased to exist the following year under the Treaty of Campo Formio, when Austria ceded it to the new Cisalpine Republic.

After Napoleon’s defeat, the Congress of Vienna in 1815 restored many other Italian states he had dissolved, but not the Duchy of Milan. Its former territory instead became part of the Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia, with the Emperor of Austria as its king. In 1859, Lombardy was ceded to the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, which became the new Kingdom of Italy in 1861.