Duchy of Milan

Duchy of Milan Ducatus Mediolani (Latin) Ducato di Milano (Italian) Ducaa de Milan (Lombard)
1395–1447 1450–1796
Flag Coat of arms (1395–1535)
Duchy of Milan in 1499
The Duchy of Milan in its period of greatest expansion, between the end of the 14th century and the beginning of the 15th century.
Capital	Milan
Common languages	Lombard Italian
Religion	Roman Catholicism
Demonym(s)	Milanese
Government	Princely hereditary monarchy
Duke
• 1395–1402	Gian Galeazzo Visconti (first)
• 1792–1796	Francis II (last)
Historical era	Early modern
• Imperial diploma of Wenceslaus of Bohemia	1 May 1395
• Ambrosian Republic	1447–1450
• French occupation	1499–1512, 1515–1522 and 1524–1525
• Protectorate of the Swiss Confederacy	1512–1515
• Habsburg rule	1535–1796
• Spanish rule	1556–1707
• Austrian rule	1707–1796
• Annexation to the Transpadane Republic	15 November 1796
Population
• Estimate	750,000 in the 17th century
Currency	Milanese scudo, lira and soldo
Preceded by Succeeded by Lordship of Milan Golden Ambrosian Republic Golden Ambrosian Republic Transpadane Republic County of Guastalla Austrian Empire Old Swiss Confederacy
Today part of	Italy Switzerland

The Duchy of Milan (Italian: Ducato di Milano; Lombard: Ducaa de Milan) was a state in Northern Italy, created in 1395 by Gian Galeazzo Visconti, then the lord of Milan, and a member of the important Visconti family, which had been ruling the city since 1277.^[1][2]

At that time, it included twenty-six towns and the wide rural area of the middle Padan Plain east of the hills of Montferrat. During much of its existence, it was wedged between Savoy to the west, Venice to the east, the Swiss Confederacy to the north, and separated from the Mediterranean by Genoa to the south. The duchy was at its largest at the beginning of the 15th century, at which time it included almost all of what is now Lombardy and parts of what are now Piedmont, Veneto, Tuscany, and Emilia-Romagna.^[2]

Under the House of Sforza, Milan experienced a period of great prosperity with the introduction of the silk industry, becoming one of the wealthiest states during the Renaissance.^[3]

From the late 15th century, the Duchy of Milan was contested between the forces of the Holy Roman Empire and the Kingdom of France. It was ruled by Habsburg Spain from 1556 and it passed to Habsburg Austria in 1707 during the War of the Spanish Succession as a vacant Imperial fief.^[4] The duchy remained an Austrian possession until 1796 when a French army under Napoleon Bonaparte conquered it, and it ceased to exist a year later as a result of the Treaty of Campo Formio, when Austria ceded it to the new Cisalpine Republic.^[5]

After the defeat of Napoleon, the Congress of Vienna of 1815 restored many other states which he had destroyed, but not the Duchy of Milan. Instead, its former territory 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 Kingdom of Italy in 1861.