Una forteza tra vostra signoria e li allamani. I signori dei Grigioni e i loro rapporti politici con il ducato di Milano (XV secolo)

This essay investigates the political relations between the Duchy of Milan and the lords of the Grisons and surrounding areas in the second half of the 15th century, in the context of the multiple loyalties that also linked these lords to the Duke of Austria and the Swiss. The privileged source is the Carteggio sforzesco, a political correspondence which allows us to adopt a specific perspective, that is to observe local power not through its internal structures, but through its interactions with a neighboring state. The political analysis of the boundaries between the Italian regional state governed by the Sforza and a complex constitutional reality of autonomous lordships, imperial fiefdoms, and communities, loosely coordinated by a bishopric (Chur), intends first of all to contribute to the critical revision of pre-modern international relations. For some decades, in fact, we have interpreted international relations as a field of actions which many local subjects (and not just states) promoted. In this Alpine region we can confirm the effectiveness of local initiatives and the multiplicity of channels, formal and informal, through which international relations took place. In our case, marriage alliances, conflicts and especially feud practices, obligations of honor, and the autonomist initiatives of the great aristocracy all developed crucial international consequences. Secondly, this research has permitted us to investigate the reasons for the strengths and weaknesses of the lordship in the Grisons. On one hand, the lords exercised a considerable capacity for the military recruitment and political mediation between local societies and multiple state authorities, which were potentially competitive. On the other hand, they were weakened by the huge economic costs and political risks to which the maintenance of the role of domination was exposed, and by the erosion of consensus from below. In particular, when the sources allow us to go in depth into the political reality of some valleys and to understand the specific patterns of the local tensions there, we can grasp more concretely the development of communities and their elites, which were also able to intervene on the international scene and to obtain the legitimizing resources that would help them to promote new forms of political integration, based on territorial leagues.