The Scramble for Italy: Continuity and Change in the Italian Wars, 1494-1559 2020040486, 2020040487, 9780815382256, 9781351208871

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of figures
Preface
Introduction: Continuity and change in the Italian Wars
1. Knighthood and chivalry transformed?
Knighthood and the chivalric ethos in the sixteenth century
Knights, nobles, and chivalry in the battlefields of the Italian
Wars
2. Professional soldiers, unprofessional institutions
Military professionalism and the rise of the “state”
Vague identities
Organizational incompetence
3. “When war comes, they want to flee”: Was Machiavelli right?
Mixed reviews
Mostly for material gain?
The bloody battlefields
4. New weapons in a zealously traditional world
Apprehension, rejection, and acceptance
A real or dubious threat?
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

The Scramble for Italy

The Scramble for Italy offers fresh insights on the set of conflicts known as the Italian Wars of 1494–1559. The aim of this book is to explore the trends of continuity and change that characterized the sixteenth century in order to demonstrate the significance of the Italian Wars as an especially intense period of warfare that drove forward several important social, political, and especially military developments. Employing myriad primary and secondary sources, this book illustrates how the European nobility, still very much steeped in knightly and chivalric ideals, was fashioning the Italian Wars into an essentially traditional aristocratic war, while the rise of military professionalization and privatization, accompanied by the processes of centralization and consolidation of political power, were rapidly changing their world. Moreover, the book attempts to demonstrate that although the debate on a supposed military revolution in late medieval and early modern Europe still rages, sixteenth-century soldiers and intellectuals were quite certain, and anxious, about the potential effects of gunpowder weapons and novel tactics and strategy on their world. Scholars and general readers who are interested in the political and military history of late medieval and early modern Europe should find this study especially instructive. Idan Sherer is Lecturer at the Ben Gurion University of the Negev. His research focuses on medieval and early modern European military history, and on the history of medieval and early modern Spain and Italy.

Routledge Research in Early Modern History

The English Exorcist John Darrell and the Shaping of Early Modern English Protestant Demonology Brendan C. Walsh Voices in the Legal Archives in the French Colonial World “The King is Listening” Edited by Nancy Christie, Michael Gauvreau, and Matthew Gerber The Political Discourse of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Concepts and Ideas Anna Grześkowiak-Krwawicz Manila, 1645 Pedro Luengo The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth History, Memory, Legacy Edited by Andrzej Chwalba and Krzysztof Zamorski German Imperial Knights Noble Misfits Between Princely Authority and the Crown, 1479-1648 Richard J. Ninness The Scramble for Italy Continuity and Change in the Italian Wars, 1494-1559 Idan Sherer Artistic and Political Patronage in Early Stuart England The Career of William Herbert, Third Earl of Pembroke, 1580-1630 Brian O’Farrell For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge. com/Routledge-Research-in-Early-Modern-History/book-series/RREMH

The Scramble for Italy Continuity and Change in the Italian Wars, 1494–1559

Idan Sherer

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Idan Sherer The right of Idan Sherer to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Sherer, Idan, author. Title: The scramble for Italy : continuity and change in the Italian wars, 1494-1559 / Idan Sherer. Other titles: Continuity and change in the Italian wars, 1494-1559 Description: London ; New York, NY : Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group, 2021. | Series: Routledge research in early modern history | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020040486 (print) | LCCN 2020040487 (ebook) | ISBN 9780815382256 (hardback) | ISBN 9781351208871 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Italy--History--1492-1559. | Italy--History, Military--1268-1559. | Italy--Politics and government--1268-1559. | Italy--Foreign relations--1492-1559. | Europe--History, Military--1492-1648. | War and society--Italy--History--To 1500. | War and society--Italy--History--16th century. Classification: LCC DG541 .S54 2021 (print) | LCC DG541 (ebook) | DDC 945/.06–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020040486 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020040487 ISBN: 978-0-8153-8225-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-351-20887-1 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Taylor & Francis Books

Contents

List of figures Preface Introduction: Continuity and change in the Italian Wars 1

Knighthood and chivalry transformed?

vi vii 1 11

Knighthood and the chivalric ethos in the sixteenth century 12 Knights, nobles, and chivalry in the battlefields of the Italian Wars 27 2

Professional soldiers, unprofessional institutions

44

Military professionalism and the rise of the “state” 46 Vague identities 52 Organizational incompetence 57 3

“When war comes, they want to flee”: Was Machiavelli right?

80

Mixed reviews 81 Mostly for material gain? 88 The bloody battlefields 106 4

New weapons in a zealously traditional world

116

Apprehension, rejection, and acceptance 117 A real or dubious threat? 120 Conclusion

137

Bibliography Index

143 154

Figures

Map 1 Italy in 1494 Map 2 Western Europe at the abdication of Charles V, c.1556 1.1 Francis I captured in the Battle of Pavia in 1525 in a tapestry by Bernard van Orley 1.2 Gustav II Adolf, King of Sweden, in the Battle of Breitenfeld in 1631 by Johann Walter, painted 1632 3.1 Swiss soldiers fleeing the field of battle in Pavia in 1525 3.2 Woodcut by Urs Graf from 1521 of a Swiss standard-bearer from Unterwalden 4.1 Bernard van Orley tapestry of the Battle of Pavia 4.2 Battle of Pavia in 1525, painting by Rupert Heller

xi xii 12 13 83 101 123 124

Preface

My interest in the Italian Wars began during an MA seminar about Machiavelli and a reading of Il principe and Dell’arte della guerra. Machiavelli’s harsh words about the soldiers of the armies that paraded through Italy beginning with Charles VIII’s invasion in 1494 struck a chord with me; were they really as brutal, avaricious, and undependable as the famous Florentine statesman and historian portrayed them? My research since then has brought me to the conclusion that the reality was, as usual, far more intricate and complex. Rummaging through printed and archival primary sources and some of the main scholarly work, it was apparent that the Italian Wars and the soldiers who fought in them constituted a crucial phase in a significant transformation of war as it was perceived and fought in late medieval Europe. It was also clear that much of our idea of war, soldiers, and soldiering in early modern Europe is affected by modern social, political, and moral perceptions. Having first concentrated mainly on the experience of the Spanish infantry soldiers, I encountered more questions than answers on the military history of the Italian Wars. It mainly seemed that the Italian Wars did not receive their deserved attention in recent scholarly work as a separate and distinct struggle, but were rather seen as a preliminary phase which set the stage for later and more comprehensive developments in the history of Europe. While my inclination was to simply move on and keep concentrating on the Spanish military experience in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the attempt to further contribute to the discussion on the Italian Wars seemed more important. This book is, therefore, a reflection on, and reconsideration of, several key topics concerning the significance of the Italian Wars as a conduit for widespread and deep changes and developments in the art of war and the interconnected social and political transformations in sixteenth-century Europe. As always, the production of this work would have been impossible without the advice and support of a large group of people and institutions. I’d like to thank Prof. David J.B. Trim for driving me to explore and write about the military history of the Italian Wars and, finally, produce this work. The wonderful faculty of the History Department and School of History at the University of Haifa, and especially Prof. Joseph Ziegler, Prof. Eran Shalev, Prof. Zur Shalev, Prof. Gur Elroy, and Yifat Mizrachi, all provided me with a

viii

Preface

hospitable and highly professional work environment with the Spinoza Postdoctoral Fellowship. Much of this work was already brewing during this wonderful period. I am grateful to my esteemed colleagues in the General History Department of the Ben Gurion University of the Negev—who recently chose to make me one of their own—for their support and confidence in my work: Prof. Hillay Zmora, Prof. Ruth Ginio, Prof. Yulia Ustinova, Prof. Guy Beiner, Dr. Hanan Yoran, Dr. Uri Shachar, Dr. Merav Haklai, Dr. Nathan Markus, and Luba Ahundov. I’d also like to thank Prof. Yuval Noah Harari, who, as my PhD instructor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, offered extraordinary support and advice. Working alongside him for the past decade taught me important lessons in historical research. A special mention is owed to Prof. Mark Charles Fissel who has accompanied me for the last three years, giving advice, reading typescripts and, in general, offering professional assistance with commendable patience and real interest. His insights and advice were crucial for the finalization of this work, and any inaccuracies, mistakes, and omissions are solely my own. Last—but definitely not least—I’d like to thank my family (the Sherers and Orens) for supporting me without any (or at least very few) questions and doubts and offering endless love and motivation. And most of all, to my wife and partner Noa Oren, who guided my hand through the difficult and often frustrating periods of research and (until recently) unstable academic career. Among many other reasons, I love her for reminding me how much I love my profession.

Map 1 Italy in 1494.

Map 2 Western Europe at the abdication of Charles V, c.1556.

Introduction Continuity and change in the Italian Wars

The treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis of 1559 was concluded “after so many and great wars” that placed Italy at the center of a great power struggle between France and Spain over control of the Kingdom of Naples and the Duchy of Milan.1 Many historians would concur with the statement that “[t]he Italian Wars were a watershed in the history of Italy, of Europe and of Warfare.”2 More recently, Gregory Hanlon opined that “[b]y their duration and their scale, these Italian Wars … inaugurated a new period in European military history and spurred a number of innovations whose effects would play out over the entire world for centuries.”3 From the perspective of Italians, the clash of Europe’s giants on Italian soil was justifiably perceived as a dramatic and, to some extent, traumatic experience. It is no wonder that Francesco Guicciardini’s magnum opus, the Storia d’Italia, composed toward the end of the 1530s, begins in the climactic events that led to the French invasion of 1494. During these six decades of conflict, tens of thousands of soldiers from all over Europe flocked to the Italian Peninsula to take part in some of the most spectacular battles, sieges, sacks, and devastations that had occurred in Italy for centuries and that resounded throughout Europe for years to come. The Italian Wars raged, for the most part, on grounds of dynastic struggles. The invasion of Charles VIII in 1494 was inflamed by his apparent claim to the crown of Naples, now governed by an Aragonese king, as a descendant and relative of the last Angevin king of Naples. His successor, Louis XII (r. 1498–1515), kept his predecessor’s claim and added his own Visconti heritage as a rightful claim to the Duchy of Milan. The invasions of both French monarchs could not but stir the already unstable balance of power in Europe and draw other powers that wanted to cater to their own interests. Thus, the united kingdoms of Castile and Aragon and the Holy Roman Empire were drawn to Naples and gladly participated in the clashes in Lombardy and around the spreading Venetian holdings. The clashes between the powers became even more dramatic as Charles V (1500–1558) became both emperor and King of Spain in 1519, leading to large-scale clashes in and around Italy between his armies and those of the ambitious King Francis I of France (r. 1515–1547). It was only when their immediate successors, Felipe II of Spain (r. 1554–1598) and Henry II of France (r. 1547–1559), acknowledged their financial and military exhaustion that the peace of Cateau-Cambrésis was signed,

2

Introduction

which left both Naples and Milan in Spanish hands in return for Spanish concessions in Burgundy and the Low Countries. Both sides were now free to deal with brewing rebellions and civil wars that would occupy them for decades to come. Despite the apparent significance of these clashes in and around Italy, very few monographs were written on the Italian Wars and most are mainly grand narratives of the main events with few attempts to delve into specific themes in the realms of politics, diplomacy, and military history. The latest and highly valued contribution is doubtlessly Michael Mallett and Christine Shaw’s The Italian Wars: War State and Society in Early Modern Europe, first published in 2012, which provides a refreshing and much needed narrative history in English of the Italian Wars as a separate and well-defined struggle, rather than a part of a larger consideration of late medieval and early modern European political and military history. Marco Pellegrini’s Le guerre d’Italia, 1494–1530 chronicles the struggle from the French invasion to the coronation of Charles V by Pope Clement VII in Bologna in 1530 and considers the second part of the struggle as less dramatic and significant than its first three decades.4 Henry Lemonnier’s book Charles VIII, Louis XII, Francois Ier et les guerres d’Italie (1492–1547) mostly deals with the effects of the war on the political, religious, and intellectual history of sixteenth-century France.5 Various other studies examine specific periods and developments in the Italian Wars and naturally focus on the historical context that seems most appropriate.6 From the perspective of military history, the Italian Wars are accurately described as a turning point between medieval and early modern military history but mainly as a part of a larger consideration of late medieval and early modern European political and military history.7 Although several studies did examine the Italian Wars as a distinct military struggle that was extensive enough to merit a separate monographic study, some of these studies, although still significant and instructive, are either outdated or require a stylistic and methodological re-examination.8 The purpose of this study, then, is to provide a fresh examination of the Italian Wars as a separate and significant struggle that manifested aspects of both continuity and change in the way that military history could and did influence and was influenced by the social, cultural, and political history of sixteenth-century Europe. First, the Italian Wars are often also viewed as a turning point in the status and influence of European nobility on warfare and, as a result, a gradual change in the perception of the role of the nobility in European society. The discernible presence of knightly and chivalric ideals in the princely courts of Western Europe in the sixteenth century received some scholarly attention and demonstrate that European elites were still highly influenced by the basic social constraints and expectations of their medieval predecessors.9 However, this study offers a reconsideration of the belief that the Italian Wars were a turning point in the significance of knighthood and the chivalric ethos in sixteenth-century warfare. On the one hand, one can certainly recognize the changes that curtailed the social and military significance of the heavy knights and their accompanying ethos.10 The advent of gunpowder weapons and the effective utilization of infantry tactics

Introduction 3 in the sixteenth century were only the last nail in a symbolic coffin that was already taking shape in the battlefields of Crécy (1346), Poitiers (1356), and Agincourt (1415), where countless arrows of the English longbows left thousands of French knights dead or seriously wounded. The consolidation of power in the hands of kings and proto-states (however anachronistic this concept may seem in sixteenth-century Europe) brought about massive changes in the ability of both reputable and would-be knights to live according to the spirit of the knighterrant. The feverish Don Quixote’s charging windmills as if they were giants was a harsh reminder that their world was changing, whether they admitted it or not. On the other hand, this study attempts to emphasize that the Italian Wars, although often appropriately presented as a turning point in the history of European warfare, were still steeped with knightly, chivalric, and wholly medieval political and military ideals. Kings and princes went to war to preserve or resurrect their familial rights, and still commanded their armies and fought each other under many of the same military ideals as their ancestors, and were accompanied by their nobles, many of whom proudly flaunted their knightly and chivalric personae. Acknowledging the understandable lamenting of men (as they always do) who saw their precious world changing before their eyes, the battlefields of the Italian Wars confirm that in many respects war remained much the same as it had been in late medieval Europe, encompassed and enveloped by an “aristocratic” perception of warfare. The discussion about continuity and change in the chivalric ethos in medieval and early modern Europe naturally entails some methodological problems. First, the extent to which chivalric literature represented actual chivalric ideals and reality is debatable. Often produced by people who did not take direct (or any) part in the potentially turbulent and violent life of princes, knights, and squires, these literary works were mostly works of fiction that, at best, brought to the fore the concepts and basic beliefs of the culture that produced them.11 Second, the biographies, memoirs, and chronicles that potentially offer more reliable information are, naturally, often steeped in the world of chivalric ideals and influences, as in the case, for example, of the chronicler Jean Froissart or the French knight Pierre du Terrail, seigneur de Bayard.12 Third, the question remains of the intended audience of these works. While during the high middle ages only a small portion of the population encountered these works, either directly or through media of entertainment, the advent of print made chivalric literature available for wider audiences. The already ambiguous line between the embedding and demonstration of ideals and pure entertainment was becoming even less clear. It seems that the only way to present a satisfactory analysis of the chivalric ethos and ideals throughout medieval and early modern Europe is by combining and contextualizing a variety of sources. While many works, and especially romances and chansons de geste, were intended for the combined purpose of instruction and entertainment, other works, such as memoirs, biographies, and chronicles, were imbued with intellectual, social, and political motivations. As will be demonstrated, the combination of these sources and other types, with

4

Introduction

the aid of an exceptional body of work on medieval chivalry by modern historians, can assist in providing instructive insights into the changing world of knighthood in early modern Europe. A second subject of interest is a careful reconsideration of the men who joined sixteenth-century armies and the way others perceived them and how they saw themselves. The Italian Wars are acknowledged as a turning point in the way armies were formed and deployed and are seen as a link between waning medieval methods of recruitment and deployment and the rise of military entrepreneurship and privatization that culminated in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.13 Human beings are accustomed to function under the influence of conflicting ideas and beliefs. When it came to the perception of early modern warfare and armies, sixteenth-century princes and intellectuals were no different. Deep into the sixteenth century, Europeans were still mesmerized by the abilities and achievements of the ancients and dreamed of a world that was all but gone. The Roman legions were still thought of as the epitome of soldiering and fighting, and both soldiers and historians were still employing the experiences and sayings of Roman generals and politicians to exemplify the ideal methods of managing armies in battle and in general. Nevertheless, this admiration did not mean that sixteenth-century political leaders, soldiers, and intellectuals were not aware of, or lacked respect for, the de facto abilities of their own soldiers, regardless of any deeply entrenched and unattainable ideals. The apparent perceptual conflict and contradictions produced a fascinating mixture of appreciation and aversion toward sixteenth-century soldiers that was possible only under the social, financial, and political circumstances of the period. Beginning with Charles VIII’s invasion in 1494, Italians throughout the Peninsula watched their country being ravaged by foreigners and felt that they could do very little to oppose them. The Italian condottieri, many of whom were accomplished military leaders, rarely united to defeat the invaders, nor did they have good soldiers and a competent military system to do so. As people tend to do, Italians projected their frustration by fantasizing about a time when Roman citizens fought for their “country” (the quote marks simply attest to the anachronistic use of the word) with a highly organized, capable, and experienced war machine. Yes, failures abounded, but the Roman Empire stood its ground for centuries and could have avoided total destruction by strengthening and maintaining its institutions. Some Italians believed that dedicated soldiers and generals of a united Italy could have easily withstood the rush of foreign mercenaries. The most obvious examples for this sort of all-consuming admiration can doubtlessly be found in the works of Machiavelli. With even the most realist of the realists more often than not ignoring some of the political and military trends of his time, Machiavelli attempted to promote this humanist ideal both intellectually and factually. From his Il principe to the Discorsi and especially in Dell’arte de la guerra, Machiavelli disparaged the disappearance of many of the martial ideals of Rome and the degeneration of his compatriots, only to be replaced with hordes of mercenaries, both of which left many Italians with little

Introduction 5 or no understanding of warfare and soldiers fighting poorly and merely for money.14 Many of Machiavelli’s contemporaries agreed with him when they pinpointed these disadvantages as the main reasons for the collapse of Italy when faced with the “barbarians” from France and Spain. The previously mentioned choice made by some of the most important sixteenth-century historians to begin their histories of Italy in the 1490s was not a coincidence. This was the point when all the historical circumstances came together to create an unprecedented crisis that was the cause of political and military decline. The third subject that deserves reconsideration is strongly linked to sixteenthcentury beliefs about the soldiers who joined the army. Many of the same cultural perceptions that find the mere concept of hiring mercenary soldiers to achieve national interests suspicious and even unbearable greatly contributed to the early modern and present distrust of these forces where combat effectiveness is concerned. To be sure, some of these suspicions are well founded, especially when it pertains to the soldiers’ sense of duty. Modern armies, at least since the revolutions of the end of the eighteenth century in North America and France, became to some extent a forceful bond between many newly termed “citizens” and their “nations.” Serving in these relatively novel national armies brought about potentially significant rewards in civilian life. In the most obvious and blunt forms, conscripts and, to a larger extent, officers could convert military service for professional, political, financial, and, in general, social gains in societies that transformed the citizen soldier into an ideal.15 These phenomena became deeply entrenched, especially in Western democracies when confronting enemies that constituted what appeared to be their opposites. From the legendary Nicolas Chauvin during the Napoleonic Wars to the soldiers of democracy fighting against their fascist enemies in World War II, the citizen soldier, committed to the cause of his nation, family, and self, still remains, to a certain and shaky extent, idealized, praised, and preferred. Combined with the upheavals of two horrific world wars, the constraints of globalized capitalist economies and the reaction of most Western societies to swift social and cultural changes had and still have significant influence on the composition of armies. While, in every corner of the globe, modern armies remain national and are subjected to central governments, these same armies become more professionalized as conscription becomes less comprehensive and, in many cases, completely discarded, leaving only a few countries that still struggle to maintain the traditional system of general conscription.16 While some states are still attempting to find the balance between a voluntary professional army and conscription, the path remains clear toward the resurgence of professional fighting forces around the world. The reality remains extremely volatile when it comes to actual mercenary forces, namely private contractors that provide security and consultation services for other private companies or even for countries around world. Companies such as the South African Executive Outcomes and its successes in Angola and Sierra Leone in the 1990s and the American company Blackwater and its deployment in Iraq in the early 2000s are only the most conspicuous.17 Even under the visible,

6

Introduction

albeit reluctant, scrutiny of the members of the United Nations, private companies employ hundreds of thousands of retired military men and women around the world to provide myriad services that hover up and down the vague spectrum of the term warfare. Any comparison between the rise of professionalism in early modern Europe and the twentieth and twenty-first centuries is doomed to be labeled anachronistic, and rightly so. Nevertheless, no real comparison is required when attempting to delineate the problems that polities faced during these two periods. Since World War II, countries have had to deal with the changing attitudes of their citizens when it comes to mass conscriptions and a general deterrence from compulsory military service and war in general. The slow and somewhat laborious consolidation of power by proto-states in Western Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries did not yet permit the maintenance of permanent and capable standing armies. Some proto-states were forced (with others choosing willingly) to replace the feudal levies and other existing methods of enlistment with an increasing number of professionals and mercenaries to secure their growing control over traditional local political and social powers. Considering the significance of the Italian Wars to changes and developments in methods of recruitment and maintenance of armies, the aim of this study is to demonstrate that, contrary to prevailing perceptions that linger to this day, the professionals and mercenaries of the first half of the sixteenth century, although prone to brutal violence and disobedience, were not the “scum of the earth” and could (and did) demonstrate high levels of combat efficiency. Although the utilization of primary sources and their examination through modern prisms and notions of what constitute ideal reliability and effectiveness did provide instructive conclusions in the past, a re-examination of the primary sources under more appropriate and accurate prisms can enhance our understanding of the reality of this period of transition. Finally, the position and role of the Italian Wars in the debate about the military revolution in early modern Europe remain debatable. Michael Roberts, who was first to raise the main questions concerning dramatic changes in warfare in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, focused on the second half of the sixteenth and first half of the seventeenth centuries and most especially on Sweden.18 His conclusions became the basis for a fierce, albeit polite, discussion on matters ranging from the applicability of the main concept of “revolution” to the periodization and range of Continental and even global influence.19 Throughout this debate and to this day, the clashes between the main European powers in and around Italy in the first half of the sixteenth century continue to raise instructive and fascinating questions about what most scholars would agree on as significant changes and developments in the way war was fought on both land and sea in early modern Europe. The aim of the concluding part of the study is not to present yet another evaluation of the role of the Italian Wars and the sixteenth century in general in the “revolution: yes or no” debate. It seems that, as the third decade of the twenty-first century begins, scholars still disagree on some of the most

Introduction 7 fundamental concepts and processes, but the amount of analysis provides substantial evidence for changes that were significant enough to become a matter of fierce debate. In a spirit of continuity and change, in Chapter 4 I would rather present the way that these changes were perceived, handled, and challenged by contemporaries who, like all people throughout history, had to contend with transitions, innovations, and alterations in the way war was fought and with the closely associated potential social and cultural effects. We modern scholars naturally retain the pleasure and advantage of hindsight when attempting to analyze these seemingly dramatic changes in the world of warfare and may attempt to reconstruct their unfolding over decades and centuries. Yet the soldiers and intellectuals of the first half of the sixteenth century had to contend with these changes because they influenced their actual everyday military, political, and social experiences. Most scholars would agree that the concentration of political and military interests of Europe’s greatest powers in and around Italy beginning in 1494 contributed to (1) a more rapid acceleration of the implementation of gunpowder weapons on both land and sea, which went hand in hand with, affected, and was affected by (2) a very noticeable shift toward infantry tactics and the development of what would become pike-and-shot tactics, and, of course, (3) the developments in artillery production and efficiency that made the Italian Wars a crucial testing ground for further developments in fortification, culminating in the now well-known trace italienne and the later and more intricate star-shaped fortresses that spread all over Europe. Other substantial developments and changes, such as drill and fully developed pike-and-shot tactics, considerable increase in the size of armies, full and comprehensive standardization and high efficacy of gunpowder weapons, and the rise of standing armies and military bureaucracy—all of which culminated in the rise of Western Europe as a global power center—are usually retained for later dates and especially to the end of the sixteenth century.20 Only a few scholars point their finger specifically to the Italian Wars as the fundamental stage for an actual “revolution” in early modern Europe.21 As soldiers from all over Europe clashed in Italy in the first half of the sixteenth century, the rush of new technologies and tactics created a similar and natural rush of responses. Most of the responses came, as was usual, from the same people who had the ability and legitimacy to publish them in the first place. Many of these men demonstrated an expected conservative—or rather reluctant and sluggish progressivist—reaction in the face of many of these changes because they threatened to alter their social and political reality. It has already been shown how medieval beliefs, as they appeared through the prisms of nobility, chivalry, and feudalism, were still highly influential throughout much of the sixteenth century, but it was also stressed that these changes could not be ignored. The lamentations, grudging disparagement, and even actual fear of many of these voices are far from extraordinary and were (and remain) a natural part of human anxiety when facing potentially dramatic changes in reality.

8

Introduction

This study employs various primary sources and both recent and classic studies on the subject of the political and military history of the sixteenth century. By exploring written (i.e., chronicles, memoirs, biographies, and correspondence) and visual (e.g., paintings, woodcuts, and tapestries) materials, this study attempts to explore the extent to which the Italian Wars constituted a breaking point in the perception of the military status and significance of European nobility, especially the place of the chivalric ethos, and the extent to which these struggles changed the way soldiers were recruited, deployed, and perceived in early modern Europe against the background of consequential developments in military technology and momentous political and religious upheavals.

Notes 1 A copy of the treaty in Spanish can be found in Archivo Histórico Nacional, Estado, leg. 2776, exp. 7, fol. 1v: “después de tantas y tan grandes guerras.” 2 Michael Mallet and Christine Shaw, The Italian Wars, 1494–1559: War, State and Society in Early Modern Europe (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2014), 1. 3 Gregory Hanlon, European Military Rivalry, 1500–1750: Fierce Pageant (London and New York: Routledge, 2020), 3. 4 Marco Pellegrini, Le guerre d’Italia, 1494–1530 (Bologna: Il mulino, 2009). 5 Henry Lemonnier, Charles VIII, Louis XII, Francois Ier et les guerres d’Italie, 1492–1547 (Paris: Tallandier, 1983). 6 To be sure, there is a large number of books, both academic and popular in nature, that explore various themes and events of the Italian Wars in French, Italian, German, and English. The list is far too long for this kind of publication, but several noteworthy examples are Robert Finlay, Venice Besieged: Politics and Diplomacy in the Italian Wars, 1494–1534 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008); Christine Shaw, ed., Italy and the European Powers: The Impact of War (Leiden: Brill, 2006); David Abulafia, ed., The French Descent into Renaissance Italy, 1494–95: Antecedents and Effects (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1995); Stephen D. Bowd, Renaissance Mass Murder: Civilians and Soldiers during the Italian Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018); and Maurizio Arfaioli, The Black Bands of Giovanni: Infantry and Diplomacy during the Italian Wars (1526–1528) (Pisa: Edizioni Plus, 2005). 7 See more below as part of the discussion on military revolution. 8 Some of the classics remain F.L. Taylor, The Art of War in Italy, 1494–1529 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1921) and Charles Oman, A History of the Art of War in the Sixteenth-Century (London: Methuen & Co., 1937). One must mention, of course, Piero Pieri, Il rinascimento e la crisi militare italiana, 2nd ed. (Torino: G. Einaudi, 1971), first published in 1952. 9 From a literary perspective, see, for example, Daniel Gutiérrez Trápaga, Rewritings, Sequels and Cycles in Sixteenth-Century Castilian Romances of Chivalry (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2017). A few good general examples include Jeanice Brooks, Courtly Song in Late Sixteenth-Century France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000); Katie Stevenson, Chivalry and Knighthood in Scotland, 1424–1513 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2006); Alex Davis, Chivalry and Romance in the English Renaissance (Cambridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2003); Braden K. Frieder, Chivalry and the Perfect Prince: Tournaments, Art and Armor in the Spanish Habsburg Court (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2008). 10 There are many studies on the history and practice of chivalry and knighthood. The classic study remains Maurice Keen, Chivalry (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984). The studies by Richard W. Kaeuper, Chivalry and Violence in Medieval

Introduction 9

11 12 13 14 15

16

17 18 19

Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), and especially the more general survey Medieval Chivalry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016) are more recent classics. Another general study is Richard Barber and Juliet Barker, Tournaments, Jousts, Chivalry and Pageants in the Middle Ages (Rochester, NY: Boydell & Brewer, 2008). There are various studies that are geographically specific, such as Craig Taylor, Chivalry and the Ideals of Knighthood in France during the Hundred Years War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Nigel Saul, Chivalry in Medieval England (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011); and Benjamin Arnold, German Knighthood, 1050–1300 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985). For a recent general discussion on this problem, see Kaeuper, Medieval Chivalry, 7–24. Bayard will be discussed below. For Froissart, see Taylor, Chivalry and the Ideals of Knighthood in France during the Hundred Years War. See especially David Parrott, The Business of War: Military Enterprise and Military Revolution in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). Niccolò Machiavelli, Il principe, ed. Giuseppe Liso (Firenze: Sansoni, 1964), 135–7. Although the discussion on these developments seems awkwardly placed here, it is important for the understanding of shifting historical perceptions of military professionalism and mercenary forces. For important studies on these processes, see especially Meyer Kestnbaum, “Citizen-Soldiers, National Service and the Mass Army: The Birth of Conscription in Revolutionary Europe and North America,” in The Comparative Study of Conscription in the Armed Forces, eds. Lars Mjoset and Stephen Van Holde (Amsterdam: JAI, 2002), 117–44; Morris Janowitz, “Military Institutions and Citizenship in Western Societies,” Armed Forces & Society 2:2 (1976): 185–203; Yagil Levy, “Convertible Sacrifice: A Conceptual Proposition,” Sociological Perspectives 56:3 (2013): 439–63. As in the previous note, it must be stressed that the discussion on these modern developments is important to the understanding of the ways in which the perception of military professionalism can be affected by political and ideological, rather than solely military, developments. And indeed, the globalized market economy was forcing the hands of armies around the world to become more efficient and adjusted to its demands, especially since World War II. See Martin Shaw, Post-Military Society: Militarism, Demilitarization and War at the End of the Twentieth Century (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1991). As Ryan M. Zimmerman, Overcoming the Cultural Barriers to TQM in the Army (Carlisle Barracks: Army War College, 1992) demonstrates, military organizations had to respond by adapting methods and concepts from the economic and business world. As early as the end of the 1970s and following the replacement of the draft by an all-volunteer army in the US, the reputable military sociologist Charles Moskos demonstrated in his “From Institutions to Occupation: Trends in Military Organization,” Armed Forces and Society 4:1 (1977): 41–50 how the demands of the market economy influenced the composition of the United States Army. A good survey and analysis are provided by P.W. Singer, Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008). Michael Roberts, The Military Revolution, 1560–1660 (Belfast, 1956). The main supporter and contributor to the “military revolution” theory is doubtlessly Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500–1800, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). As Parker acknowledges in ibid., 155–76 (in a chapter titled “Afterword: In Defense of the Military Revolution”), several studies raised doubts concerning some of the basic concepts and ideas that surfaced since Roberts’ publication, mainly in Bert Hall and Kelly DeVries, “The ‘Military Revolution’ Revisited,” Technology and Culture 31 (1990): 500–7; Clifford J. Rogers, “The Military Revolutions of the Hundred Years War,” Journal of Military History 57:2 (1993): 242; Jeremy Black, “A Military Revolution? A 1660–1792 Perspective,” in The Military Revolution Debate: Readings

10

Introduction

on the Military Transformation of Early Modern Europe, ed. Clifford J. Rogers (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), 98. 20 As presented in Parker, Military Revolution, 6–44, and stressed again by Parrott, Business of War, 14–17, 75, 98. 21 For example, David Eltis, The Military Revolution in Sixteenth Century Europe (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995).

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Knighthood and chivalry transformed?

One of the most dramatic images in Bernard van Orley’s magnificent tapestry of the Battle of Pavia in 1525 is that of King Francis I of France falling from his horse into the hands of his captors (see Fig 1.1). The king, like most knights portrayed in the tapestry, is covered in heavy armor from head to toe and can barely move after falling, injured, from his horse. The arquebus, depicted in the bottom left of the scene, may have been added to convey the sad state of affairs in which a proud knight, heavily armored and riding his warhorse to battle, was beaten to the ground by a devastating and relatively novel technology. About a century later, another warrior prince, King Gustav Adolph of Sweden, was depicted by the German painter Johann Walter with the image of his incredible triumph in Breitenfeld in 1631 behind him (see Fig 1.2). Compared to Francis, the Swedish king is, as most of the cavalrymen behind him are, lightly armored and mainly protected by a flexible cuirass and leather clothes. While both artworks may have exaggerated their tone for dramatic effect, the change is nevertheless apparent: during the hundred years or so between the battles of Pavia and Breitenfeld, the heavy knight had all but disappeared from the battlefields of Europe. Yet the apparent change went even deeper than tactics and armor, and throughout the second half of the sixteenth century contemporaries were very aware of the fact that the link between nobility, knighthood, and the chivalric ethos was at stake. Experienced soldiers were especially furious. A famous quote often used by historians is that of the maréchal de France Blaise de Monluc (d. 1577), who lamented about “so many brave and valiant men” who died “for the most part by the most cowardly and pitiful [men], who wouldn’t dare to look at the face of the one who from far away they knock to the ground with their miserable bullets.”1 The Italian condottiere Paolo Vitelli (d. 1499) was known to mutilate gunners and arquebusiers for the damage done to honorable knights from a cowardly distance.2 Both intellectuals and soldiers were not only dismayed and somewhat discouraged by the tactical and technological changes that were obviously occurring in sixteenth-century battlefields, but also deeply lamented what they saw as a swift decline in the significance of the same men who still attempted to embed chivalric ideals in sixteenth-century warfare. Ludovico Ariosto bemoans these changes with fiercer animosity in his Orlando Furioso, when he excitedly mentions gunpowder weapons:

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Figure 1.1 Francis I captured in the Battle of Pavia in 1525 in a tapestry by Bernard van Orley. The king and other knights around him are heavily armored and resemble their medieval predecessors. Source: Museo di Capodimonte, Naples, Campania, Italy/Bridgeman Images.

And what this means is that anyone, high or low, is the equal of anyone else. It has done away with rank and order, and honor, and valor, too, and the rabble are just the same as me and you. The bad are on an equal footing with the good, and the raw recruit is a match in skill to the best of the maîtres d’armes. All those things that you’d expect to be rewarded in a test of chivalry are fallen in desuetude. Many brave lords and knights will find their rest in the wholesale carnage of this new era in fighting, so bloody and disgusting, but not exciting.3 It seems that the very essence of nobility, knighthood, and chivalry was at stake and many contemporaries were still unwilling to allow further tremors in the foundations.

Knighthood and the chivalric ethos in the sixteenth century The chivalric ethos appeared somewhat established during the eleventh century. Nobles throughout Europe preferred to present themselves as “knights” (or

Knighthood and chivalry transformed?

13

Figure 1.2 Gustav II Adolf, King of Sweden, in the Battle of Breitenfeld in 1631 by Johann Walter, painted 1632. The king and the cavalry in the background are better equipped and armored to perform more swiftly and dynamically in a battlefield characterized by the widespread use of gunpowder weapons and tight infantry formations. Source: Musées de la ville de Strasbourg.

chevaliers and caballeros) riding a warhorse and armed with heavy armor and a lance, sword, and shield. The knight was a fighting man, and, beginning in infancy, his life was dedicated to deeds of arms, unless other circumstances drove him to ecclesiastical or intellectual pursuits. Throughout Western Europe, knighthood and chivalry went hand in hand. Having been knighted by an already established knight, one should have adhered to a chivalric way of life: protecting the poor and helpless; maintaining oneself ready for war at all times; and serving one’s lord loyally and, most importantly, honorably. The chivalric ethos and the knights that made it their way of life remain some of the most famous legacies of medieval Europe. The vast chasm that separated ideals from reality will be discussed later. First, one must stress that both medieval and sixteenth-century knights maintained one basic and deeply influential obsession: the augmentation of their honor and reputation by the exhibition of their prowess and martial abilities, preferably on the battlefield.4 This obsession was deeply entrenched in the chivalric ethos, and the ideals were often presented and discussed by some of the most central historical figures of medieval Europe. A young would-be or even an accomplished knight could not

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possibly brush aside the instructions of such figures as the reputable French knight Geoffroi de Charny (d. 1356), who wrote in his Livre de chevalerie that “you should love, value, praise and honor all those whom God by his grace had granted several good days on the battlefield, when they win great credit and renown for their exploits; for it is from good battles that great honors arise and are increased, for good fighting men prove themselves in good battles.”5 If battlefields are nowhere to be found, tournaments can be as instrumental since “they earn men praise and esteem, for they require a great deal of wealth, equipment and expenditure, physical hardship, crushing and wounding, and sometimes danger of death.”6 One cannot exaggerate the importance of honneur and renommée for these men; much more than another paragraph in a person’s curriculum vitae, they perceived honor and reputation as crucial, significant, and inseparable parts of their social, cultural, and political identity. Honor and reputation were to be accumulated by exhibiting prowess in feats of arms, and young knights and aspirants were seeking them everywhere. With feats of arms came the accompanying brutality and violence. Throughout the heyday of chivalric literary production, readers encountered a straightforward and intense depiction of the potential horrors of the battlefield. In La Chanson de Roland, perhaps the earliest serious example of a chanson de geste from the twelfth century, when Roland and his men were fighting the Saracen King Marsil, “Roland went back to the field, and holding [his sword] Durendal as a true warrior, he cut Faldrun de Pui at his waist and with him twenty-four of his noble men.”7 Oliver, Roland’s companion and brother-in-arms, was injured during the fight: “And Oliver knew that he was mortally wounded, and his will for revenge was insatiable. He charges and smashes into the great mob, breaking spears and slashes shields, cutting hands and legs, spines and saddles. Whoever watches him dismember the Saracens, creating a heap of the dead, may be able to remember that good knight.”8 In the Iberian Peninsula, the Reconquista produced similar undisguised depictions of these potential feats of arms. In El Cantar de mio Cid, the famous early Castilian poem from around the beginning of the thirteenth century, when the renowned and fearsome El Cid, the Castilian Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar (d. 1099), assaults Alcozer, “You saw so many lances, raised and lowered, so many shields pierced and torn, so many cuirasses torn and slashed, so many standards painted in red … And [El Cid’s knight] Minaya Albar Fañez rode well and killed thirty-four of the Moors; he chops with the blade of his sword, blood trickles down his arm, drops falling from his elbow to the ground.”9 Stressing the prowess of knights through realistic depictions of violence was also customary and prevalent in memoirs and biographies, many of which were steeped with chivalric ideals. That was the case with the Castilian knight Pero Niño (d. 1453), who, fighting alongside King Enrique III of Castile against the incursions of King Joao I of Portugal during the closing years of the fourteenth century, fought almost alone against a host of enemy soldiers in Pontevedra, Galicia, in 1397. Withstanding the onslaught of the enemy on the bridge leading to the castle, Niño “was hit by an arrow in the neck. But this wound he

Knighthood and chivalry transformed?

15

received in the beginning of the battle, and the arrow sewed his gorget to his neck. And his will to finish what he started was so great, that he felt little or no pain from the wound, although it did hinder him from moving his neck.”10 It seems, then, that whether in the lists or in actual battlefields, violence and the blood, gore, and pain that came with it were not to be feared but rather sought after and tested. As is often the case, a great chasm separated the ideals from the true nature of warfare, as the knight Jean de Beaumont states in The Vows of the Heron in the middle of the fourteenth century: When we are in the tavern drinking strong wines, and the ladies pass and look at us with those white throats and tight bodices, those sparkling eyes resplendent with smiling beauty: then nature urges us to have a desiring heart. Then we could overcome Yaumont and Agolant, and the others could conquer Oliver and Roland. But when we are on campaign on our trotting chargers, our bucklers round our necks and our lances lowered, and the great cold is congealing us together, and our limbs are crushed before and behind and our enemies are approaching us, then we would wish to be in a cellar so large that we might never be seen by any means.11 However, this fear and potential mental exhaustion, as presented here, usually remain hidden behind a deep admiration of violence and its immediate repercussions. This was still not the time for soldiers to inspect their inner experiences and enlightenments produced by the horrors of war. This stress of violence was not only intended for purposes of entertainment, although readers and listeners were overjoyed by these exciting and often highly exaggerated bouts of action, very much like consumers of entertainment throughout history. To the knights and many other warriors who were affected by the chivalric ethos, however, this violent action was also an extravagant and blunt reminder of their role in society, namely, the legitimacy, right, and duty to carry arms and use them in certain circumstances. This was what they should have expected to encounter in the field of battle, and, therefore, the exposure of young and inexperienced potential warriors to both literary and visual depictions of battle was almost natural considering their way of life. War and suffering were very rarely presented as anything but the culmination of a true (i.e., noble) warrior who knew very well that his social and political status might be at stake in a complex social system that was highly dependent on visibility in certain, and mostly military, contexts.12 While changes in the political and military conventions of Western Europe were brewing by the beginning of the sixteenth century, nevertheless it is apparent from the literary production by and about many sixteenth-century knights and soldiers that the perception of war and knighthood through the prism of the chivalric ethos was alive and well. Countless knights from all over Europe were flocking to tournaments and battlefields to acquire honor and reputation, with the Italian Wars offering an endless number of skirmishes,

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battles, sieges, and other opportunities for outstanding feats of arms and displays of prowess in the presence of some of the greatest noblemen and princes of Europe. The prevalence of the chivalric ethos among European nobles and knights went hand in hand with the still ubiquitous and deeply entrenched influence of feudalism. The princes of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries went to war for many of the same reasons and political motives of their medieval ancestors. Charles VIII was motivated to invade Naples for myriad reasons—youthful and adventurous mind, religious zeal, and pressure from his hawkish advisers—but the official reason was, of course, his rightful claim to the throne as part of the historic Angevin claim.13 Louis XII and Francis I employed the same rationale for their claim to Naples and, beginning with Louis XII’s claim, the Duchy of Milan.14 The official casus belli in the sixteenth century was formulated in feudal terms. To be sure, not much had changed long into the seventeenth century. The conflict in Bohemia in 1618 that brought about the long and brutal conflict in Germany known as the Thirty Years’ War was inflamed by deep religious tensions and disagreements, but Emperor Ferdinand II was mostly infuriated by the threat to his position as the feudal lord of Bohemia by one of his vassals, Friedrich V, Elector of the Palatine. According to the emperor, his subjects “were not exempt of the oaths and homages” they owed him as King of Bohemia. Friedrich was about to “take possession of [the emperor’s] hereditary lands and ask [the emperor’s] subjects to swear a new oath.” To bring Bohemia back into the fold, Ferdinand would employ all the means that were available to him according to his “feudal and imperial right.”15 The emperor’s feudal claims were still considered as strong and highly influential as they had been for hundreds of years throughout Europe. Similar to the still widespread feudal jargon and perception of politics, chivalric ideals, terminology, and practices remained crucial to late fifteenth- and sixteenth-century nobles, soldiers, and intellectuals. The ceremony of knighting in the battlefield, for example, remained deeply embedded in the mind of contemporaries. As was the custom before, during, and following many battles in medieval Europe, Commynes testifies to have encountered Charles VIII, during the heat of battle in Fornovo in 1495, standing near the vanguard “knighting some people.”16 Much of the ceremonies remained essentially the same into the sixteenth century, including the highly symbolic conferring of the spurs; the employment of the sword; and the position of the horse as the symbolic carrier of the noble knight, whose main duty remained the defense of the Church and society as a whole.17 One can only imagine the excitement of a young noble being knighted by the king during the already adrenaline-packed experience of battle. Long into the sixteenth century, these ceremonies remained highly valuable and sought after, even if they often conveyed a symbolic, rather than an actual practical objective. The memoirs of Martin du Bellay, sieur de Langey (d. 1559), of the wars in Italy present a world still deeply obsessed with the accumulation of deeds of arms and the honor that follows them. When the French captain and later

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17

maréchal de France Anne de Montmorency (1493–1567) led 8,000 Swiss soldiers to Italy in 1522, he was also accompanied by “many noble knights” who were there “for their pleasure and for acquiring honor.”18 In skirmishes between French and local and English troops on the borders of Hainault in April 1523, one could find “all the lords [from beyond the border], every one wanting to take part in the honor and booty.”19 When Odet de Foix, Vicomte de Lautrec, asked Francis I for more men and money for the siege of Naples in 1528, the king sent Charles d’Albert, brother of King Henry II of Navarre, “accompanied with a small amount of men, the majority of whom were young noblemen joining for their pleasure and for acquiring honor.”20 The sickness that plagued the French camp during the siege brought about the death of many common soldiers “and an infinite number of other good men and soldiers and noblemen who came there to acquire honor and without wages.”21 During the siege of Hesdin in northern France in April 1537, [t]he fact that the King [Francis I] was there in person to oversee the battery, was cause for every young nobleman coveting honor and reputation, seeing the king being present, a witness and remunerator of a good deed and virtue of every one, to march with great impetuosity to the top of the breach without waiting for the commencement of the assault and before the order was given, not minding if anyone followed them; but they were gathered together less vigorously than they assaulted, some dying in the breach, others returning badly injured.22 During the first stages of the 1542 war in Italy, the company of Anne de Montmorency was led to Luxemburg by “seigneur Guiche and other captains and knights furnished with knowledge, prowess and experience.”23 David Potter has already shown how chivalric ideals were widespread among sixteenth-century French knights and nobles,24 but, while France remained the pinnacle of knighthood in Europe, Spain and Italy could still boast of as much chivalric zeal. Beginning in the twelfth century, the Reconquista in the Iberian Peninsula was headed by the military orders of Santiago, Alcántara, and Calatrava (being the most famous and reputable), all of which attempted to fuse knighthood and its chivalric ethos with monastic discipline and religious zeal, to a varying level of success.25 Taking their example from the Knights Templar and Knights Hospitaller, the Iberian military orders became a model for military and religious zeal in the fight against the “infidels.” The military orders lost much of their military function following the fall of Nasrid Granada and the end of the Reconquista in 1492, but their legacy remained strong. Caballeros and hidalgos were taking part in the political and military enterprises of Spain long into the sixteenth century. Not surprisingly, one of the most influential literary works produced in the genre of chivalric romance, Amadis de Gaula, was published in Spain at the beginning of the sixteenth century by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo. Young nobles and hidalgos could marvel at Amadis’s knighting ceremony by his true

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father, King Perion: “and he placed the spur in his right foot and said: ‘now you are a knight and you may carry a sword.’ And the king took the sword and gave it to him, and the Child of the Sea girded it very handsomely.”26 They were excited to read how Amadis de Gaula charged a rival knight named Galpano to avenge a poor damsel and how “they struck each other with their lances and broke their shields and armor. And the steel was driven through flesh and bodies, shields and helmets clashed with such force that both men fell to the ground … And many pieces were torn from the shields and armor, and the helmets were dented and broken, to such a degree that the ground upon which they fought was stained with blood.”27 They were awed by Perion and his sons Florestán and Amadis as they “drew their swords and rode through the first battalion cutting down many [of the enemy] and then smashed into the second battalion. And seen in the middle of these battalions, you could see the great wonders that they did with their swords.”28 At the very least, Amadis de Gaula and similar works ignited the imagination of sixteenth-century readers and adventurers, with the conquistador Bernal Díaz del Castillo being one of the more famous.29 In Italy, knighthood and chivalry were molded according to the distinctive political and social circumstances, and while feudalism, as it appeared in other parts of Europe, took different forms in the Italian city-states and even the southern Kingdom of Naples, Italian nobles, among them the famous condottieri, were influenced to some extent by the transalpine political and military culture. The Italian nobles who led the armies of their own city-states or the armies of Spain and France were well versed in chivalric culture. It is no wonder that it was Ludovico Ariosto, an Italian, who published Orlando Furioso, one of the most influential and magnificent examples of chivalric literature. Young and adventurous Italian nobles could marvel at the same amount of militarism, violence, and chivalric ideals in Orlando Furioso as one could find in the Chanson de Roland and El Cantar de mio Cid. Fighting in a tournament, organized to test his virtue by King Alzirdo of Tremisen: Lances, arrows, sword, and a mace or two assail him, banging upon his breastplate and his shield from the front and the side. The angry crew swarms around him and in every hand is a lethal weapon. And what does Orlando do? He wields Durindana and lets it have a grande bouffe of blood. There are corpses all around in piles two and three deep that litter the ground. No armor, nor any garment of quilted cloth, no matter how thick or how many times bound around the head could protect these soldiers. Both to left and right, he smites them, inflicting a wound of lethal effect as he cuts a bloody swath through their astonished ranks with a squishy sound. Heads are lopped off, and arms, and they fly in the air as if Death himself had come to visit there.30 The members of the Medici, Este, Gonzaga, and Pescara families, to name only a few, considered themselves an inseparable part of the cultural milieu of the nobility of Europe. This is easily visible in many of their portraits and images

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that present them, on the one hand, as nobles dressed in fine and fashionable clothes and, on the other, as men of war, armored and armed and often in battle. Such was the case with some of the more prominent figures of the Italian Wars, such as Ercole I d’Este, duca di Ferrara, and his son Alfonso I d’Este; Federico II Gonzaga, duca di Mantua; Cosimo I de’ Medici, duca di Firenze; and Alfonso d’Avalos, marchese del Vasto, all of whom took a direct part in the tumultuous political and military events of their times. Throughout Europe, nobility had gone hand in hand with knighthood and chivalry since at least the eleventh century. Nobles perceived themselves as both the political and social elite but also as the armed and dexterous protectors of the Church and the common people. As the Lady of the Lake instructed the young prince and would-be knight Lancelot concerning the accessories of the knight, “[w]ith one edge, the sword strikes those who are enemies of Our Lord and His people, and mock His faith. With the other, it has the task of taking vengeance on those who try to shatter human fellowship, that is, those that rob one another and those that kill one another.” To assist him with this task, “[t] he horse that the knight sits on and that takes him wherever he needs to go signifies the common people, for the people must likewise bear the knight and attend to his needs.” The hierarchy is evident and clear: “The knight sits astride the common people, for, just as the knight spurs his horse and guides it toward the goal he chooses, he has the task of guiding the people according to his will and in legitimate subjection; indeed, the people are under him and that is where they are meant to be.”31 These ideas were deeply entrenched in European society long after they emerged by the end of the early Middle Ages and are clearly observable in many of the sources, regardless of their authors. After his long description of the Battle of Pavia in his biography of Fernando d’Avalos, marchese di Pescara, Paolo Giovio goes on to enumerate the number of casualties and almost exclusively highlights the names of the most important captains and nobles on both sides.32 The Spanish soldier Martín García Cerezeda, who fought in the battle, added to his description of the battle two additional segments that name “the lords that were taken prisoners in this battle” and “the lords that were killed in this battle,” focusing solely on the most important persons who were caught or killed.33 The choice to almost exclusively incorporate the names of important captains or lords was not (only) for lack of space and information but rather a lack of deep interest, in the case of Giovio, and a genuine reverence, in the case of Cerezeda. The common soldiers were mostly mentioned as nameless masses, unless some of them acted in an especially heroic or extraordinary manner. The field of battle usually only deepened and emphasized the social chasm that existed outside it. The image of the extraordinary knight who was held in very high regard for his chivalric behavior and achievements was powerful during the Italian Wars and long into the sixteenth century, and it “seems almost to have been a competition to find the contemporary equivalent of an Arthurian hero fighting in the Italian Wars.”34 That equivalent was doubtlessly Pierre du Terrail, seigneur

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de Bayard (d. 1524), le chevalier sans peur et sans reproche, who became one of the most reputable knights of the sixteenth century. Following his victory over the Swiss in Marignano in 1515, the young King Francis I, “wishing to honor [Bayard], received the order of knighthood by his hand. And [the king] did it with reason, for no one better could confer it upon him.”35 Bayard’s death from an arquebus round in 1524 was a sorrowful scene to allies and enemies alike. The Spanish soldier Cerezeda described the death scene of this “noble knight.” Although Bayard was an enemy of Spain, Cerezeda was prompted to write, “truly, both the nobles and the rest of us who were there could not deter our hearts from bringing tears to our eyes.”36 These were not exaggerations; Bayard was a heroic figure in the eyes of both the King of France and common Spanish soldiers and conveyed an image of ideal knighthood to the king and ideal nobility to the soldiers. These perceptions of the noble knight and his social responsibilities and martial duties remained deeply embedded in the minds of the nobility throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In a meeting of the Estates General in Tours in 1484, a French knight defended the “fiscal privileges” of the nobility by claiming that “[t]he distinction of the estates and of those concerned with the public good is well known to everyone, according to which it is prescribed that the Church should pray for others, give counsel and exhortation; that the nobility should protect others by the exercise of arms, and that the people should nourish and support them by paying taxes and by tilling the soil.”37 Similarly, the French general Guillaume du Bellay (1491–1543), brother of Martin du Bellay, wrote that in his youth he began his military career “as is the custom and the usual vocation of the nobility of France, and by which my forefathers and ancestors in times past achieved reputation and high degree.”38 Monluc wrote, “you who were born noblemen, whom God has brought to this world to carry arms to serve your prince and not to hunt a hare or make love.”39 Like their ancestors, all of these men were very much aware of the actual and horrific nature of warfare, but they still believed in and relied heavily on the social formula that equated social and political status with gaining honor in war. The English poet and soldier George Gascoigne (d. 1577), who fought in the Low Countries in the beginning of the 1570s, acknowledged, “The mangled corps, the lamed limbes at last / The shortend yeares by fret of fevers foyle / The smoothest skinne with skabbes and skarres disgrast / The frolicke favour founst and foule defast / The broken sleepes, the dreadfull dreames, the woe / Which wonne with warre and cannot from him goe.” War could truly be horrific and haunting to the point that one would assume that Gascoigne would go on to undermine its worth. Nevertheless, war provides the best opportunity for acquiring honor and fame, and “losse of fame or slaundred so to be / That makes my wittes to breake above their brimme / And frettes my harte, and lames me every lime / For Noble minds their honour more esteeme / Than worldly wights, or wealth, or life can deeme.”40 Gascoigne would have easily agreed with his European medieval ancestors that honor was the most important thing that one can have and accumulate, and nothing that could enhance it should be considered unworthy.

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Nobles of all statures and social distinctions lamented any attempt to dilute their idea of military function with anyone they deemed unworthy. The part biography and part memoir of Bayard provides a historical narrative as seen through a thick prism of chivalric and noble perspective. During the Siege of Padua in 1509, by the combined forces of the Empire and France as part of the war against Venice, the Emperor Maximilian I apparently expected the French knights to dismount and charge the walls of the city side by side with his German landsknechts. According to the narrative, Bayard approached his fellow gens d’armes and lamented that “all of you, sires, are great lords of great lands and so are most of our knights [gens d’armes]. Does the emperor think it reasonable to place such nobility at risk and peril with foot-soldiers of which one is a shoemaker, another a blacksmith and another a baker, mechanical laborers who are not as calculating about their honor as noble knights?”41 The French knights agreed to charge the walls only when they were certain that the landsknechts were placed behind them. From Bayard and his companions’ vantage point, acquiring honor was possible only when everyone could watch and see it being garnered through feats of arms and prowess. There was no place in this bloody exhibition for men who, according to Bayard, did not care about their honor in the first place. Surely, the fact that this event is clearly mentioned in Bayard’s biography should not be considered as mere boastful extravagance; Bayard did not pay lip service. Very much like his immediate medieval ancestors, Bayard truly believed that the rules of nobility and chivalry applied solely to him and his peers. Others, who constituted the vast majority of society and could not boast of noble blood and heritage, could not and should not take part in the contest for prowess, honor, and fame; this was not their game, nor could they truly comprehend the rules. Although, in many other cases, it was perfectly appropriate to fight alongside infantry soldiers, especially in positions of command, Bayard’s biographer demonstrates to both contemporary and modern readers that, as Richard Kaeuper summarized, “[T]here is an overwhelming sense that the world is the fighting class’s playing field, a place for a man to enforce his rights and prove his prowess.”42 If we take Bayard to be one of the most obvious, albeit very much explicit, examples of the still strong presence of the chivalric ethos in the sixteenth century, other examples from his biography are as informative. The description in Bayard’s biography of the siege and sack of Brescia in 1512 is already telling of what sixteenth-century knights were interested in. The assault, “where the good knight without fear and without reproach acquired great honor,” ended up in one of the most horrific massacres and sacks of the Italian Wars. The biographer’s description of the results is laconic: “It was suitable to diligently carry the dead corpses out of the city for fear of spreading of disease, which has taken three entire days, and there were found 22,000 and more.”43 While this number is considerably exaggerated—around 10,000 were probably killed—it reveals the main interests of contemporaries who viewed the world through a chivalric and noble prism. This becomes more pronounced several lines before,

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where Bayard’s biographer spends much more time and takes more effort to describe a local noblewoman’s entreaties to Bayard, who was wounded and placed in her house. The noblewoman asks to place guards to protect her daughters from pillagers and marauders, to which Bayard replies: “Lady, I do not know if I am able to recover from my wounds, but while I am still alive, nothing worse will happen to you or your daughters than what should happen to me.”44 Other examples abound. During the War of the League of Cambrai, as French and imperial armies fought together against the Venetians, a “pitiful event” occurred near the town of Longaro, near Vicenza. Aware that enemy soldiers were arriving, the people of the town, about 2,000, escaped to a nearby cave with very few supplies and no weapons. Soldiers from the French camp, “who are volunteers, accustomed to go out to pillage,” attempted to break inside the cave but were unable to do so as easily as they thought. They apparently decided to close off the entrance to the cave with wood and lit a fire to suffocate the men, women, and children who were trapped inside. Having succeeded in killing almost everyone, they entered and took as much of the booty as they could. Bayard and his noble companions were displeased and even became irate when they found out that “there were many noblemen and noblewomen” who suffocated from the smoke.45 Bayard demanded that the culprits be found, and he watched while they were strangled and killed for their crime. Even if vague and somewhat anecdotal, the prism through which these stories are told is very instructive. The knights and nobles fighting in the armies of the Italian Wars could indeed lament death and destruction and show mercy, but, unless the demands were clearly defined and required, the underlying perception of social distinction was strong enough to prevent many of these men from truly caring what happened to uninvolved men, women, and children. Bayard paid close attention and made an effort when his fellow nobles were offended or under threat of being killed by commoners. It seems as relevant in the sixteenth century as it was before that time that “medieval conventions, like the laws of arms, were basically made by and for the gens d’armes and operated within the group, among fighters whose interactions over technical points about honors and profits of war took place in tense and violent circumstances.”46 Any changes and developments in the worlds of politics and war did not affect—at least not in any dramatic fashion—the consciousness of sixteenth-century nobles regarding their special status and prerogatives. Moreover, when considering the fact that these men still constituted the social and military elites of their nations, their word had to be taken seriously. As will be mentioned subsequently, the Emperor Maximilian I could not have been too surprised or even annoyed by this. This was also the case with men of more modest ancestry. The Spanish army, for example, became an acceptable destination for many lesser nobles of the hidalguía who flocked to acquire honor and status but also wages, booty, and adventure. For these hidalgos, nobility did not necessarily (or even rarely) entail financial security and well-being, and many sought military service as a respectable option. Nevertheless, nobles and hidalgos who, like Alonso

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Enríqeuz de Guzmán, resorted to military service and marched side by side with “the other soldiers, with a pike on the shoulder,” could easily consider themselves different and even separate, to a certain extent, from soldiers of common birth.47 Their military function may have been the unfortunate result of not having enough money to purchase and maintain horses and squires, but it did not mean in any way that they thought of themselves as socially and culturally equal to the rest of the common soldiery.48 The hidalgo Diego Nuñez Alba joined the army to fight in the Schmalkaldic War in 1546–1547. Like many of his contemporaries and social equals, he was very aware of his status, despite the fact that he was fighting as an infantry soldier. Lamenting the current realities of military service that prevented him from acquiring money and honor, Alba deeply resented the hordes of commoners who filled the ranks of the army, at least as he perceived it. The army camps had drawn so many of these “useless” men that “some began to arrive to the war not to live honorably or gain honor in it but to collect some money with which to return home. These began to belittle the camp because they lived according to their design.” Especially during the then recent campaign against the Protestant princes in Germany, “the most contemptible came back richer and those who served the king the least of all came back well dressed.”49 Writing his Diálogos soon after the war and dedicating them to Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, the third Duke of Alba (1507–1582), Alba sought assistance for the financial and personal misfortunes that characterized many veteran soldiers in early modern Europe, but his belief in his entitlement as part of the nobility was still apparent.50 Whether in France or Spain, nobles of all sorts still saw themselves as the true—and preferably only—warriors and demanded precedence when it came to the social function of the armed guardians of society. The link between knighthood, chivalry, and violence remained as strong as it appeared in sixteenth-century romances and chansons de geste. And, while modern autobiographies and memoirs highlight the violence and gore mainly to convey the shocking realities of the modern battlefield, sixteenth-century writers, as their medieval predecessors, were highlighting them to quantify the amount of honor and prowess that a person could expect to acquire from a certain feat of arms. Bayard’s biographer mentions a duel between two Spaniards—Santa Cruz and Azevedo—in the city of Ferrara, in front of the young French general Gaston de-Foix, duc de Nemours (d. 1512). When Azevedo’s rapier descended on Santa Cruz, “it cut through his upper thigh all the way to the bone, and a great amount of blood gushes out of the wound.”51 Santa Cruz refused to surrender, even as the life was draining out of him, and gave up his arms to the neutral Bayard only on the brink of certain death.52 In another explicit description, Bayard, upon encountering de Foix, who “was covered with the blood and brains of one of his men who was swept away by an artillery round, said: ‘are you injured my lord?’ ‘No,’ said the duke, ‘but I’ve injured many others.’”53 In both cases, the purpose was clear: whether it was the Spaniard Santa Cruz or the noble de Foix, both acquired honor under the brutal conditions of battle.

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Throughout the sixteenth century, knights were still seeking the honor, reputation, and even the potential prizes that could be gained in the jousting grounds and lists of the tournaments. The language concerning damsels, violence, and the pursuit of honor during tournaments, as described in the memoirs of William Marshal (d. 1219), for example, is clearly still present in Bayard.54 As Charles VIII was advancing to Lyon in March 1494, the Neapolitan noble Galeazzo di Sanseverino, who strongly supported the French king’s bid for the crown of Naples, arrived to see him, “and he brought a large number of beautiful and fine horses with the proper harnessing for jousting. And [Sanseverino] jousted and jousted well, for he is a young and noble knight.”55 The conclusion of the Italian Wars was famously celebrated in a tournament in the Place de Vosges in Paris in 1559. King Henry II of France “was dressed in black and white to honor Diane de Poitiers, ‘the lady that he served,’” who was notorious for being one of his mistresses.56 Jousting was nothing new to Henry, who, when confronted by ominous predictions concerning his death in a duel made by Luc Gauier, the astrologer of his wife, Catherine de Medici, and even by the more famous seer Nostradamus, responded that “[i]t does not bother me to die at the hand of someone provided he be brave and valiant and gloire remain to me.”57 In one of his jousting bouts, Henry was gravely injured by large splinters from his opponent’s broken lance and died several days later.58 Whether it was in France, Spain, or Italy, tournaments were still highly enticing to young nobles and knights whose main desire was to rub shoulders with and display their abilities in front of some of the most reputable men of their times.59 To be sure, not all contemporaries vied with these entrenched ideals of a time long past. Humanist historians in Italy, Spain, and France would appreciate Jean Froissart for his chronicling of the events of the Hundred Years’ War, but would not necessarily adhere to the conveying of chivalric ideals in what they saw as a very different method of historical writing. Jan Huizinga asserted that Froissart wrote with “the fiction that chivalry ruled the world” and that “in his writing he passes back and forth between the worlds of reality and fantasy; perhaps they never were in fact for him entirely separated from each other.”60 The humanist historians of the sixteenth century were not free of their share of cultural and intellectual shackles, but they perceived themselves as being more attuned to fact than fiction. Commenting on the success of Amadís de Gaula in the preface to his own translation of Cicero’s speeches against Catilina, the Spanish humanist Andrés Laguna (d. c.1559) lamented that: If men read more of the classics, they would not be reading so much about Esplandián, so much about Gayferos or so much about Amadis of Gaul, corrupting their time and ruining and destroying real ingenuity. They could rather occupy themselves in pious or sacred reading, or in the reading of histories which are truthful and full of doctrine and singular examples; but they rather consume themselves in fictions, lies, jokes and vanities, which, in the end, the reader would not profit anything but pain and regret for having wasted his hours in such a way.61

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These harsh words represent a deep disdain, at least from some humanists, for the rebirth of a literary genre that many believed to be a remnant of the past. Sixteenth-century readers could still encounter classic medieval chivalric works, but the effects of Amadís de Gaula and its immediate successors were detrimental to the survival of the chivalric ethos in European society for much of the remaining century after its publication. Nevertheless, other writers remained attuned to their target audiences, many of whom ended up fighting on the various fronts of the Italian Wars or even leading the nations that took part in them. In the prologue to his 1533 edition of Amadís de Gaula, printed in Venice, the Spanish writer and editor Francisco Delgado (or Delicado; d. c.1535) used the same terms that could be found in almost every chivalric text from the twelfth century onward: loyalty, gentility, courtesy, love, pride, fame, an invincible heart, justice, piety, and good manners. Such terms comprised a standard list of everything that was ideally expected from a true knight and chivalry.62 Even a stauncher humanist such as the Spanish Juan Calvete de Estrella (d. 1593) incorporated the spirit of chivalry into his work on King Felipe II of Spain.63 It seems then that even the humanist literary output was not exempt from the influence of chivalric literary style and practices long into the sixteenth century, nor should it be surprising, considering the amount of interest in large portions of society or at least the ones who were able to read or hear such works. This deep interest in and fascination with everything chivalric trickled from above, as sixteenth-century princes were, for the most part, captivated by the literary and aesthetic world of chivalry. One of the most obvious examples was, of course, the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I, whose life and political and military career were highly influenced by his perception of chivalric ideals and aesthetics. Emperor Maximilian’s cenotaph in the Hofkirche in Innsbruck remains surrounded by statues sculpted by some of the most important, mostly German, artists of the sixteenth century. The identities of the men and women who surround the emperor are telling and include mainly historical figures, ranging from Clovis I, king of the Franks, and Theodoric the Great, king of the Ostrogoths, to his own son, Philip of Burgundy (d. 1506), who at one time acted as King of Castile through his marriage to Juana of Castile (d. 1555). Among these figures stands a statue of King Arthur, depicted anachronistically with sixteenth-century armor and weapons. The mere presence of this ahistorical figure—one of the most recognizable knights in European mythology—suggests that, besides the emperor’s real and deep bias toward chivalric ideals and mythology, European political and cultural elites were still very attentive to chivalric symbolism along with its political and historic repercussions.64 And indeed, Maximilian I made great efforts and ultimately succeeded in establishing himself as “the last knight,” combining a taste for clothes, armor, and weaponry that coincided with his attempt to link himself with a proud chivalric past with literary and artistic production to strengthen the cultural and intellectual foundations of his legacy. The emperor commissioned a verse romance, known as Theuerdanck, which was published in 1517; another epic

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titled Freydal, which was not completed before the emperor’s death in 1519; and the Weißkunig, all of which portray in various ways the life and achievements of the emperor combined with magnificent illustrations and woodcuts that depict the emperor as a knight taking part in adventures and tournaments.65 It is clear, then, that the emperor did not only have politics on his mind when commissioning and supervising these works. Like many of his contemporaries, the emperor was truly immersed in the chivalric renaissance of the beginning of the sixteenth century and attempted to shape his milieu accordingly. Maximilian’s immediate successors were also highly influenced by the strong link between the house of Habsburg and chivalric culture. Charles V and his son, Felipe, found no problems in combining their admiration for both neoclassical and chivalric aesthetic ideals. Leone Leoni’s bronze masterpieces of the emperor presented the latter in poses reminiscent of the Roman emperors to strengthen the historical link and continuity between ancient Rome and the Habsburgs. The resemblance between Titian’s magnificent portrait of the aging Charles on horseback during the victory in Mühlberg in 1547 over the Protestant League and the famous representation of Emperor Marcus Aurelius in the Musei Capitolini is no coincidence and was most likely an attempt to highlight Charles V’s military and intellectual prowess.66 These artworks did not prevent nor contradict the emperor’s desire to present his deeds in a more straightforward and traditional way, as demonstrated, for example, in the famous tapestry titled La revista de las tropas en Barcelona (“the muster of the troops in Barcelona”), which remains in the Palacio Real de Madrid. The work by Willem de Pannemaker, from a drawing by Jan Cornelisz Vermeyen and Pieter Coecke van Aelst, portrays the emperor surveying his knights and men-at-arms before embarking on the conquest of Tunis in May 1535. The image relays a deep sense of nobility and chivalry as ostentatious riders—some of them important contemporary figures—pass through the inspection in full armor and on exquisitely decorated horses. Among them and very prominent is the Infante Don Luis of Portugal (1506–1555), whose appearance and demeanor would not shame the greatest and most exemplary knights of medieval Europe. It appears that there was nothing wrong with combining a zeal for both classical and medieval aesthetic ideals to convey a political, military, and cultural message. One could safely portray himself as both a mythical Breton king and a Roman emperor to splendidly glamorize his achievements and consolidate authority. The influence of chivalric culture also remained strong in France. Pierre Bontemps’s bas-reliefs on Francis I’s tomb depict the French victories in Marignano over the Swiss in 1515 and in Ceresole in 1544 over the imperial army and convey a deep sense of admiration for knighthood and chivalry. In both reliefs, the king himself and his knights are portrayed in full knightly armor and pageantry, charging the enemy with their lances and smashing into the enemy infantry forces. It is clear, then, that Francis I did not only want his greatest victories to be remembered for posterity but also that his own image (although he did not take part in Ceresole) should be associated with the martial ideals of

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chivalry. And indeed, both the symbolism and realism in his and his knights’ images would have been perfectly recognizable and obvious to medieval observers. Long into the sixteenth century, then, monarchs, princes, and nobles throughout Europe were still reluctant to dispose of their ancestors’ cultural baggage and made sure to incorporate chivalric culture into their everyday lives and legacies, regardless of changes and developments that were already apparent in the battlefields of Europe.

Knights, nobles, and chivalry in the battlefields of the Italian Wars The maintenance of a strong link between nobility, knighthood, and chivalry during the sixteenth century had more than cultural and social implications. French, Spanish, and Italian nobles took part in a shared militaristic culture, but, like their ancestors, they were also believed to be the natural leaders of armies. As Mallett and Shaw stressed, it was mainly “soldiers,” or rather men already skilled in warfare and the art of war, who held responsibility for military and political leadership during the Italian Wars.67 Nevertheless, only very rarely were these soldiers—maréchals, condottieri, and other military generals—drawn from obscure and small noble European houses. Experienced soldiers of common descent could become high-ranking officers and bask in the glory of the wars—with Pedro Navarro, who fought for both Spain and France during the wars, emerging as one of the most noteworthy examples—but that was all they could expect. Generalship was mostly reserved for the true nobility. This was certainly the case with most French generals of the first half of the sixteenth century. Jean d’Auton (d. 1528), one of Louis XII’s chroniclers, described the death of Louis d’Armagnac, duc de Nemours, in the Battle of Cerignola in 1503 in a familiar tone: “What should be said of this good commander, who wanted to die honorably in order to loyally serve his master, if not that his name should dwell in perpetual fame, his deeds flourish in eternal memory, his life in praiseworthy recommendation and his death as a spectacle of honor and an example of virtue?”68 Highlighting honor, loyalty, fame, and virtue, d’Auton clearly describes d’Armagnac through a thick prism of chivalric cultural influence and in terms that any French noble and knight would have recognized and understood during most of the high Middle Ages. An example of the armies of Charles V is more instructive. While the Catholic Monarchs depended on the Spaniards Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba (d. 1515) and later Ramón de Cardona (d. 1522) to secure their interests in Italy, the pan-European empire of Charles V brought nobles, such as Charles de Lannoy (d. 1527) and Philibert de Chalon, Prince of Orange (d. 1530), from the Low Countries; the Italians Fernando d’Avalos, marchese di Pescara (d. 1525), and his nephew Alfonso d’Avalos, marchese del Vasto (d. 1546); and even the French renegade Charles III, duc de Bourbon (d. 1527), to positions of supreme command of the Spanish imperial armies. The battlefields of Europe were changing and becoming increasingly dangerous for the noble knight, but social status, mostly paired with some military experience, generally remained the

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main concern for kings and princes when appointing their generals. The time had yet to come for generalship or even service in other high-ranking offices to be acquired mostly (or at least also) through merit and climbing the ladder of command. The link between nobility, chivalry, and military leadership was further stressed by changes in the way war was fought at the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries. As was previously mentioned, it is generally agreed that, since Charles Oman’s 1937 publication, The Art of War in the Sixteenth Century, and to this day, the dramatic events of the Italian Wars, especially the fact that many of Europe’s greatest powers invested a substantial amount of financial, military, and human resources, brought about significant changes to the world of warfare. The Italian Wars also produced enough evidence and examples to suggest that European warfare and, to some extent, politics were beginning to go through processes of rationalization and modernization and were acting as a noticeable separating line between the medieval and modern, or at least early modern, worlds of warfare. As will be discussed later in more detail, during the Italian Wars, such things as the trench warfare of the Gran Capitán Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba and the formation of the tercios, the attempts of the French monarchs to create standing armies while enhancing the significance of professional mercenary forces, the transition to and rise of infantry tactics, and the rapid implementation of gunpowder weapons brought about changes that could not be undone. These general assessments also pertain to the effects on knighthood and chivalry. In his El soldado gentilhombre, Raffaele Puddu maintains that the medieval chivalric prowess, bordering on rashness and displaying disregard for tactical considerations, had to be abandoned, or severe and bloody consequences would follow. And while the Spaniards formed their own chivalric ethos during countless years of frontier war among themselves and against the Muslim forces of the Iberian Peninsula, they too had to change their perspective of war. Guerilla warfare, with its ambushes, deception, and surprise attacks by Spanish generals, remained relevant, especially in the early phases of the Italian Wars, but it too had to be adjusted to the new realities.69 According to the more recent The Italian Wars by Mallett and Shaw, contrary to medieval tactics, “[i]n the first thirty years of the Italian Wars … battle was sought and accepted with a greater sense of purpose and with the necessary preparation.” More permanent armies and more infantry soldiers slowed the pace of war and “tended to add weight to the decision to risk battle; it reduced the uncertainties and gave time for careful preparation. Defensive positions could be prepared, and trenches dug to give shelter from artillery fire.”70 Generals recognized these changes and followed suit, acknowledging that the strategies and tactics of medieval warfare had to comply with these new trends or certain defeat would ensue, with great costs in manpower and territory. With this in mind, it seems, though, that the drama of the Italian Wars and our thirst for categorizations and delineations end up obscuring what was probably a more gradual, subtle, and difficult transition. Not only was the

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chivalric ethos alive and well in European culture and society, the sources demonstrate that the Italian Wars provided many of Europe’s nobles, knights, and countless adventurers endless opportunities to bring much of this ethos and its accompanying ideals to life. War was truly changing, but it would require several decades before we notice deep and comprehensive changes in the beliefs and practices of the men who commanded and fought in armies in the first half of the sixteenth century. The clear contrast between Francis I and Gustav Adolph, as it appears in the opening paragraph of this chapter, was just beginning to brew in the first half of the sixteenth century. First, the heavy man-at-arms remained significant throughout the Italian Wars and long into the second half of the sixteenth century. Armies still comprised large contingents of men-at-arms, most of whom were still armed and expected to perform in the same ways as their ancestors had. Battles were still decided by the effectiveness and discipline of heavy knights and other units of heavy cavalry, and, even when these forces failed to achieve their objectives, they were still deemed indispensable. The Battle of Ceresole in April 1544 is remembered mostly for the wholesale slaughter that followed the clash of Swiss, German, and Spanish pikemen and arquebusiers in the center of the battlefield, but heavy cavalry played a central and important part in the French victory over the imperial army. Martin du Bellay, who witnessed the events, describes the ferocious last stand of the imperial landsknechts, during which, “with the help of the French men-at-arms, led by [Guigues Guiffrey], seigneur Boutières, all the imperial German [infantry] was shattered.”71 Boutières’ assault against the flank of the imperial landsknechts with a few dozen men-atarms seems to have decided the battle. Nevertheless, north of the main events, a mixed Spanish and German force was able to break an enemy squadron of Italian infantry but ended up encountering the gens d’armes under the command of the captain general of the French army, François de Bourbon, comte d’Enghien. Blaise de Monluc deemed d’Enghien’s decision to charge the infantry squadron as emanating from “bad advice,” and the count indeed could not break the Spanish and German squadron, even after two furious charges. After the first charge, “many nobles and princes were killed and injured … and then more on the second charge.”72 Monluc did not appreciate d’Enghien’s rash decision to charge a squadron of 5,000 experienced infantry soldiers by himself, but he did not see the failure as anything deeper or more comprehensive than bad decision making and a lost opportunity. Second, many of the lamentations of contemporaries regarding the decline in the role of the heavy man-at-arms in the field of battle appear in works that were written during the second half of the sixteenth century. Whether it was a soldier’s perspective, such as that of Blaise de Monluc, or that of a historian such as Paolo Giovio,73 it is clear that, at the very least, conservative perceptions were beginning to form in the 1550s and 1560s when the processes of decline were beginning to take more concrete shape and men-at-arms were beginning to be replaced by the cuirassier, which was quickly becoming a much

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more agile, fast, and efficient form of heavy cavalry that would remain relevant for centuries to come. Despite the apparent successes of artillery and proto– pike-and-shot tactics against the heavy knight during the first half of the sixteenth century, changes were taking place slowly, as they always had been. It seems, then, that despite the apparent technological developments and tactical arrangements that went with them, war was still fought under many of the same medieval conventions and militaristic ideals and especially from the perspective of those who led soldiers and armies in the sixteenth century. Contrary to the prevailing perceptions about medieval warfare, it seems that the exhibition of courage and prowess to the point of rashness by knights and especially generals was often not the case in medieval battlefields. The wave after wave of French knights persistently smashing into the English positions under a relentless and continuous storm of arrows during the battles of Crécy, Poitiers, and Agincourt may seem unreasonable and were frequently presented as a demonstration of an irrational and detached sense of prowess. However, the main chroniclers of these battles did not seem to disparage the English for situating themselves in wait for the French assault and winning the battles by employing thousands of archers protected by knights and other infantrymen.74 Courage and honor were vital, but battles had to be won. Knights could well have been furious and chagrined by their inability to win through sheer brute force, but very few could blame the Flemish rebels in the Battle of the Golden Spurs (1302) or Robert the Bruce in the Battle of Bannockburn (1314) for employing whatever tactics they could to defeat the French and English knights, respectively.75 Henry V’s tactical arrangements in the Battle of Agincourt in 1415 were considered rational and realistic, considering his army’s inferior numbers and the fact that he was fighting far away from home. His superb victory was and remains resounding, regardless of his defensive stance, and very few, if any, of his contemporaries thought otherwise.76 Henry was as chivalrous as any of the French nobles who died while fiercely and, some might say, recklessly charging against his lines. Nor were stratagems, tricks, and realist approaches to tactics and strategy considered shameful in any way. Some of the most reputable and exemplary medieval knights knew quite well when honorable behavior simply becomes absurd and nonsensical and the opposite could benefit them in certain ways. During the endless scuffles between King Henry II of England and King Philip II of France at the end of the twelfth century, the celebrated knight William Marshal advised the English king: “Hear me, sire: the king of France has dismissed his army: they’ve gone their various ways. I suggest you do the same, but secretly tell your men to return to us without fail on a specified day. Then launch a campaign into the king of France’s domain, so bold, concerted and fierce that he suffers far more damage than we have with our elm! It’ll be fine revenge indeed!” The English king answered: “That’s splendid advice from a worthy counsellor! We’ll do just that!”77 The Siete Partidas requires knights to be “cunning and crafty” and “allow[s] them to seek ways to better and more safely accomplish their objectives.” Furthermore, “cunning allows them to be

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able to win when outnumbered and how to escape great dangers that befall them.”78 When the reputable knight Geoffroi de Charny ambushed an English force in 1351, he did so scrupulously and to take back Calais for his lord, the king of France.79 Bayard, for example, had no problem ambushing (embuscher) enemy forces, even if only for loot,80 and his actions did not entail any stains of shame and ill repute. In general then, employing feats and actions that modern perceptions of chivalry might consider dishonorable or unbecoming was widespread in the world of medieval knights, and, much like soldiers throughout history, all of them were very much aware of the need to vanquish their enemy. Although he remained a prime example of the strong prevalence of noble and chivalric ideals, looking back, Monluc was very aware of the dangers in over-thetop displays of prowess that could easily lead to defeat: “You should always seek to be accompanied by brave men with whom you will keep gaining honor and reputation. And if instead you are unlucky from the beginning, be it by your mistake or because of cowardice, and all the good men had run away, and all that remains are men of little value, then with these men, even if you are the bravest man in the world, you would not be able to gain anything other than bad reputation.”81 Monluc also calls for moderation during the critical stages of a battle: “You, future generals, make yourselves wise by learning from so many others, and do not let yourselves be overjoyed by a battle won … [and] do not allow the enemy enough leisure to restore his strength.”82 As was already mentioned, during the Battle of Ceresole in 1544, d’Enghien, the commanding general of the French army, had to watch the flight of his Italian and Swiss left flank and the death of its commander Sieur Descroz. According to Monluc, who commanded the infantry, d’Enghien “could not succor him, because almost all of his cavalry were injured in these two furious, but reckless, charges.”83 Like their medieval predecessors, sixteenth-century nobles and knights, already experienced in warfare, were very aware of the need to maintain self-control and moderation to win a battle. Flashy, flamboyant, or reckless behavior was reserved for young and enthusiastic soldiers, such as d’Enghien, or the lists and jousting grounds of the tournaments. The ability of military leaders to take advantage of geography and avoid reckless behavior in the battlefield became a hallmark of the Spanish and, later, imperial armies in Italy. The Gran Capitán learned his lesson during his first campaigns in the Kingdom of Naples in 1495–1496 and especially in the Battle of Seminara, where his infantry and light cavalry were no match for the Swiss pikemen and French heavy cavalry.84 Therefore, when threatened by the French army under Louis d’Armagnac near Cerignola in 1503, the Spanish general placed his infantry “in a vineyard [which was] an advantageous and well-fortified position encircled by deep trenches, and stationed them there with his artillery, which was placed on the edge of the trench, and with a number of light cavalry [jinetes].”85 D’Auton goes on to describe the great courage and sacrifice of the French as they attempted to climb out of the trench and engage the enemy, but he never really considers Córdoba’s actions to be dishonorable or in any way unacceptable, despite his clear bias toward the French.86

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There was also nothing wrong with Ramón de Cardona’s plan (executed by Pedro Navarro) to fortify his position between the Ronco River and the army of Gaston de Foix before the Battle of Ravenna. Both Bayard and Robert de la Marck, seigneur de Fleuranges (d. 1536), who participated in the battle, describe in some detail the fortifications, which apparently comprised carts with protruding halberds and pikes and heavy arquebusiers and artillery pieces interspersed between them, all above a trench. None of them, even the chivalrous Bayard, gives any indication that they find these tactics and methods inappropriate or dishonorable in any way.87 Both men also praise the fierce defense of the Spaniards and their hopeless stand against all odds, regardless of the fact that they fortified themselves behind these and other obstacles.88 Cardona’s army was outnumbered and outgunned, and the French successes in northern Italy had to be halted. About a decade later, there was nothing dishonorable in Prospero Colonna’s attempt to fortify his army near Bicocca against the approaching French army under Lautrec by having “raised [the walls of the] trenches and flanked them with large platforms equipped with artillery.”89 The slaughter that ensued, with thousands of Swiss infantry soldiers smashing into the trench and ramparts, made the imperial-Spanish victory all the more resounding. Destroying one’s army for honor was deemed reckless at best, and a retreat was acceptable when it was done right. Monluc attested that “there is no less honor in a fine retreat than in going into battle.”90 When the Spaniards retreated from the fortified position in the final stages of the Battle of Ravenna, most chroniclers and witnesses lauded their ability to do so in an orderly fashion, instead of a panicked flight.91 Nobles and knights, especially those who led armies into battle, were very much aware of the dramatic chasm that separated the often outlandish heroism of the ideal knights of the romances and chronicles from actual battlefield circumstances. Many would have easily stood by Oliver as he pressured Roland to blow the horn and summon Charlemagne to assist them and would not have understood Roland’s decision to postpone the decision to a later time when all seemed to be lost.92 Medieval and early modern readers and listeners could make the same distinctions between fact and fiction when it came to actual repercussions. One may claim that the Spaniards did have a somewhat different idea of chivalry compared to other parts north of the Pyrenees, especially when compared to that of the French, as hundreds of years of frontier warfare during the Reconquista brought about a more dynamic understanding of tactics and behavior on the battlefield; the Castilian El Cid employed guerilla tactics and ruses that would have seemed morally and honorably questionable to the semimythical Frankish Roland as they were described in their respective poems.93 Nevertheless, Spaniards and French were clashing in and around the Pyrenees throughout the Middle Ages and could easily display many similar cultural and martial traits. Any such differences in their cultural perception of chivalry and knighthood did not prevent Spanish and French men-at-arms from spending their time in violent clashes against each other in the form of organized melees

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during the less exciting periods of the war in Naples in 1503. When events escalated into actual warfare near the Garigliano by the end of that year, Bayard’s biographer felt the need to stress that “[i]t has to be understood that if there are virtuous and strong captains on the French side, the same could also be found among the Spaniards, and among others the Great Captain Gonzalo Fernández, a wise and vigilant man.”95 Knights recognized their status and merits, regardless of national affiliations. It seems, then, that the separating line between the nobility’s perception of chivalry in warfare in medieval Europe and in the Italian Wars is, to some extent, more obscure than is usually thought. Moreover, one could also still clearly recognize events where soldiers and generals took part in military actions that were both tactically and strategically insignificant and rather symbolic in nature. The famous case of the small battle in Barletta in February 1503, in which 13 Italian knights fought and defeated 13 French knights in a prepared match of prowess and fighting ability between the two nations, could have easily been a scene from a chivalric romance or chanson de geste. The engagement was important and interesting enough to be mentioned in contemporary correspondence in some detail, but most sixteenth-century historians provided more detailed descriptions of the engagement and the events that led to it.96 What appeared to be a fiery exchange between a French knight, Charles de la Motte, who remained in Barletta as a prisoner of the Spaniards, and an Italian knight, Ettore Fieramosca, who fought alongside the Spaniards and against the French, quickly became an announcement of a duel between the two sides “to preserve the honor of each nation.”97 The jargon was centered on honor, prowess, and virtue; the French blamed the Italians, who “being accustomed to fight with tricks and scams, they gladly became idle spectators of other men’s danger.”98 On the other side, the Gran Capitán himself inflamed his Italian allies who were preparing for the battle by saying that “they were the disciples of the most famous captains of Italy, continually nourished under arms, and each of them having made honorable examples of their virtue on several occasions.”99 Fieramosca, from Capua and “born of a most bellicose blood,”100 even took the offense personally and directly, claiming that “in Italy and in Lombardy there were men-at-arms as good as there were in France who would rather die than see their honor placed underneath that of the French.”101 After the place and time for the battle had been agreed and judges selected, the knights from both sides approached the field of battle with as much splendor and beauty as one might expect to see in a tournament or jousting spectacle. Giovio, claiming that he spoke to some of the participants, described how the condottiere Prospero Colonna prepared his compatriots for the fight and mentioned that “the horses were covered with glittering frontlets made of iron, neck armor, and gilded and painted armor of boiled leather, which the ancients called clibani, and comfortably covered the back and behind [of the horse].”102 The French knights were just as splendid and “went out to the field dressed with very beautiful crimson tunics and golden brocades.”103

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Both the French historian Jean d’Auton and the Italian Giovio left us with dramatic descriptions of the actual fighting, none of which can be considered unfit for a medieval chanson or chivalric romance. According to d’Auton, the knights charged “one group against the other at full speed, with lowered lances, and clashed so harshly that all their lances … were shattered and smashed to pieces, whereby they drew their swords and having mixed together they exchanged blows with great lust.”104 Giovio writes, “In this clash, some were thrown from the saddle, lances were shattered and a great havoc was created by the clashing horses. Then the men drew their maces and swords; but the Italians handled themselves so marvelously with their axes, smashing with heavy and great blows the visors of their enemies’ helmets and their back armor and even removed their swords from their hands.”105 The now famous disfida di Barletta was indeed won by the Italians. D’Auton blamed Charles de la Motte for wrongfully inciting the French to fight in what should have remained his own drunken brawl.106 Because the defeated French could not immediately afford to pay the predetermined amount of 100 ducats to the winners, they were escorted to Barletta to await their ransoming. As was the custom, Córdoba received them with open arms and consoling words but, according to Giovio, also added an instructive lesson: “In the future [the French] should hold their tongue, because honorable and valorous men, who want to be perceived as worthy of the honor of chivalry, do not underestimate anyone if not in battle and never glorify themselves anywhere, and are accustomed to acquire reputation not with words of bravery but with valorous deeds.”107 While the duel had little effect on the actual strategy and tactics of the remaining stages of the campaign, the French were somewhat embarrassed, and the Italians were encouraged by this much needed display of Italian prowess. At times, chivalric ideals could potentially influence large-scale decision making and strategic thinking in ways unimaginable in later centuries. This was certainly the case with Charles V and Francis I, who were both deeply immersed in sixteenth-century chivalric culture. Francis I was famously taken prisoner in the final stages of the Battle of Pavia and transported to Spain, where he was visited by the emperor. In the Treaty of Madrid of January 1526, Francis I agreed to relinquish his main claims to lands in Italy, Flanders, and Burgundy and send his two sons as ransom in exchange for his freedom. The French king was released in March and immediately, with the support of Pope Clement VII, refused to abide by the treaty and went on to take part in the League of Cognac, created to prevent further imperial expansion and holdings in Italy. When the delegates from the League arrived to entreat with the emperor, the French ambassador requested that the French princes, still being held in Spain, be released in exchange for a generous payment. The emperor, still furious over the (somewhat expected) turn of events, employed a language that would have seemed familiar to any medieval prince or knight and told the ambassador that the actions of the French king were not made “by a good knight, nor by a good nobleman” and that “it would please the Lord that these differences would be discussed [or rather, ‘fought’] between the one and the

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other, person to person, in order to prevent the death of so many Christians, for [the emperor] believed that God would demonstrate his justice.”108 In this, of course, the emperor challenged the French king to a duel to solve all their differences and difficulties by implying the latter’s lack of honor for not abiding by the treaty. The League of Cognac could not prevent the imperial army from sacking Rome and humiliating Clement VII. The ambassadors who arrived to see the emperor in the beginning of 1528 came with a formal declaration of war in case the emperor refused to restore Milan to the Sforzas and let his French captives go in exchange for a payment, to which they received a fiery reply. The French ambassador was apparently taken aside and told that “Since [Francis I] has neither abided by nor honoured the oaths he gave me, he should prepare to fight a duel with me. And tell him on my behalf, using the following words: He should look to his honour—that is, if he has any left.”109 The emperor was furious and, claiming that, “since we have been challenged, we cannot but uphold our honor and reputation, and preserve and protect our subjects and states as we are obliged to do,” he began preparing for an economic and military confrontation.110 These words were especially blunt and struck a chord with the French king, who could not stand for his honor to be smeared in such a way, so he responded in a similar manner, conjuring up much of the same chivalric wording: In order to defend our honor, which was in this case excessively and untruthfully burdened … and which we want to defend and are defending, God willing, unto death, we make it known to you that if you wanted or want to blame us not only for our faith and deliverance, but also for the fact that we never acted nobly, as one who wishes to secure his honor is supposed to act, we say to you that you are impudently lying, and that you lie each time you say it, as we are deliberate to defend our honor until our last breath … And from now on do not write anything to us before you decide where we should meet, and we will carry arms, protesting that if following this declaration, you shall write or say words that are against my honor, that the shame of delay in giving battle will be yours, seeing that arriving to the battle will be the end of all writings.111 Despite the fiery exchange and to the detriment of the emperor, an actual duel seemed doubtful, especially considering that the French king’s position seemed better in the beginning of 1528. This was not the end, of course. When Charles V headed the campaign to take Tunis in 1535, Francis made use of the emperor’s distance and invaded the Duchy of Savoy. The emperor returned and declared that he was going to invade France, which he of course did in the autumn of 1536, only to return with little more than half his army and without any noticeable achievement. Nevertheless, before his departure, the emperor proclaimed, in front of the College of Cardinals and Pope Paul III, that he would cancel his invasion in

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case “[t]he king of France wishes to meet me in person on a field of honor, either fully armed or in our shirts with only a sword and dagger, on land or sea, on a bridge or an island, in a designated space or in front of our armies, or wherever and however he wants. I will say no more, except that I give him 20 days to make up his mind.”112 Paolo Giovio, who might have been present during the actual speech, adds that the emperor, “moved by Christian piety, thought it better and much more fruitful to Christianity, that he and King Francis [fight] in a single combat and resolve their differences with swords and daggers.”113 The French king did not accept the offer. Nor did most of the listeners think it to be truly serious and effective, and the invasion commenced as planned. We may never know whether these threats and promises made by the two most powerful European monarchs of their times could actually lead to a duel, for these declarations were not uncommon in medieval and early modern Europe,114 but the choice of language is instructive, especially when considering the fact that much of it was embedded in serious diplomatic and political exchanges. It would seem that neither monarch felt it at all strange to bicker over personal honor to the point of offering an actual duel, an event that was extremely rare among medieval monarchs and princes, many of whom considered these methods of problem solving to be disruptive and harmful to the general peace. Stronger kings, such as Louis IX of France, went as far as banning judicial duels between knights and nobles, to the displeasure of many of the latter.115 It may even be argued that these boastful and irrational threats were only nostalgic shadows of a time long gone made by powerful men who refused to accept the obvious changes. Nevertheless, actual duels or, at least, threats to employ them, were still occurring, demonstrating that the high echelons of European nobility were also still perceiving their world using the concepts and ideals of their chivalrous predecessors. Paolo Giovio describes the fall of his hometown Como in 1521 to an imperial force under the command of the marchese di Pescara. Having witnessed the event, Giovio lamented Pescara’s inability to control his Spanish soldiers, who were determined to sack the city. Even worse, they were determined to enter the city, despite the fact that Pescara gave his word to the commander of the French garrison, Jean de Chabannes, seigneur de Vendenesse, that he and his men would be able to leave the city unharmed and the city would be spared since the imperial army did not have to take it by force. Here, Giovio goes on to describe the events by employing separate language for the deeds of the high nobility. Pescara attempted to pacify Chabannes, “an indignant and menacing man of highest nobility and great spirit, knowing full well that he would perceive it as highly insulting to have lost faith, even if by the hands of others [i.e., the Spanish soldiers].”116 But Chabannes would hear none of it: “not being able to contain that affront, he challenged Pescara to a duel, sending to him and proclaiming it with a trumpet, calling [Pescara] a violator of public and private trust for having offensively allowed [his soldiers] to violate him and assassinate the French with all sorts of injuries.”117 Pescara, “thirsty for honor, and religiously seeking fame with an honorable name of gravity and

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justice,” nevertheless settled for returning many of the lost items to the French soldiers.118 Interestingly, when Chabannes believed that his sense of honor and the credibility of his word as a noble and a soldier were in danger, both men turned to the familiar exchanges of concepts from their particular and shared world of European nobility, despite being of different national origins. Another episode in Bayard’s biography, which could well have appeared in a chanson de geste or romance, presents many of the same elements as the clash between Chabannes and Pescara and demonstrates how these duels could have ended violently. During the skirmishes between the French and Spaniards in the Kingdom of Naples in the beginning of the sixteenth century, a Spanish captain, Alonso de Sotomayor, was apparently taken prisoner by Bayard and his men following a small-scale skirmish. The Spaniard was finally released but went on to complain that Bayard’s hospitality was far from appropriate. Here, again, concepts of honor, reputation, and prowess were brought to the fore, as Bayard demands that Sotomayor retract his erroneous proclamations. “And if you refuse,” Bayard continues in his letter, “I am resolved to force you to retract your words, in single combat to the death, be it on foot or on horseback.” Sotomayor receives Bayard’s threat and responds that he accepts the offer of battle.119 When the two finally meet, Sotomayor demands of Bayard, “‘Sir Bayard, what do you want from me?’ To which Bayard responded in his language: ‘I want to defend my honor.’”120 Bayard goes on to win the battle and kills Sotomayor but restores the body to the Spaniards. It is difficult, if not impossible, to corroborate this event, although it seems overall very plausible and its mere inclusion is instructive enough. From kings and emperors to nobles and knights, even when the thick layers of chivalric literary idealism are peeled off, one can recognize a deep sense of conformity to the ideals of nobility and violence and their link to clear concepts of honor and reputation, which seem to be deeply embedded in the minds of sixteenth-century nobles and soldiers. It may be that these concepts were steeped in the usual nostalgic musings on times long past, as evident in the lamentations of Giovio and Monluc, and that works such as Amadís de Gaula inspired kings and lowly knights alike to preserve many of the ideals of these times. But it also seems that, at least throughout the Italian Wars, these kings, nobles, and knights were still truly grasping a deep, albeit somewhat detached, link between themselves and their medieval political and military predecessors. It is also important to state that this should not be seen as an attempt to undermine any general and well-founded view concerning the dating and importance of the period in question. The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were a period of significant changes in the political, social, and military infrastructure of Western Europe. The second half of the fifteenth century brought about significant changes in the political and social constructions in the kingdoms of Western Europe. France, England, and Spain experienced processes of centralization in the hands of strong monarchs and the emergence of protostates that became the foundation for later developments. The Renaissance brought about significant changes in Europe’s perception of its own history and

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created an intellectual foundation for further widespread changes. As will subsequently be discussed in detail, the battlefields of Europe were also swiftly changing. Gunpowder weapons, professionalization, and privatization were reshaping the basic methods of warfare and creating long-lasting effects on the basic political and social structures in Europe. Change, then, was perceptible and unequivocal. The perception of change was nevertheless somewhat more complex when one considers the cultural milieu of the nobility of Europe. Throughout the sixteenth century, and definitely during its first half, war in Europe remained deeply aristocratic. It is obvious that sixteenth-century nobles were very aware of the fact that the world around them was changing, but attempts to present these changes as swift, deep, widespread, and all-encompassing may be somewhat exaggerated. Princes, nobles, and knights, both eminent and lowly, in Western Europe were still heavily influenced by many of the same political, social, cultural, and military ideals created and maintained by their medieval ancestors. These ideals were still maintained and heralded by the nobles of Europe, even in the background of an obviously changing world. From the perspective of these nobles and knights, a clear, although constantly narrowing, separating line remained between the conservative notion of their world and the actual changes they experienced. These men remained the political and military elite in Europe but required some time to board the symbolic train that was clearly leaving the station without them. From their perspective, what we now see as processes of modernization and rationalization of war were at best vague and reversible and would remain so for years to come.

Notes 1 Blaise de Monluc, Commentaires et lettres de Blaise de Monluc Maréchal de France, vol. 1 (Paris: Renouard, 1864), 52. 2 Jacopo Nardi, “Istorie della città di Firenze,” in Opere di Jacopo Nerdi, ed. Agenore Gelli, vol. 1 (Florence: Felice le Monnier, 1844), 144; Paolo Giovio, Gli elogi: vite brevemente scritte d’huomini illustri (Venice: Francesco Lorenzini da Turino, 1559), 148v. 3 Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, trans. David R. Slavitt (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2009), 209. 4 As summarized in Richard W. Kaeuper, Medieval Chivalry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 33: “although we will see that many traits made up chivalry, a core formed around prowess exercised in the pursuit and defense of honor.” 5 Geoffroi de Charny, A Knight’s Own Book of Chivalry, trans. Elspeth Kennedy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 91. 6 Ibid., 87. 7 Léon Gautier, ed., La chanson de Roland: Texte critique (Tours: Alfred Mame et Fils, 1920), 180–1 (lines 1869–73). 8 Ibid., 188–9 (lines 1965–72). 9 Ramón Menéndez Pidal, ed., Poema de mio Cid (Madrid: La Lectura, 1913), 173, 177. 10 Gutiere Díaz de Games, El Victorial, ed. Rafael Beltrán Llavador (Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad Salamanca, 1997), 350.

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11 Maurice Keen, Chivalry (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984), 223. Originally from the fourteenth-century verse known as “The Vow of the Heron.” See Thomas Wright, ed., Political Poems and Songs Relating to English History, vol. 1 (London: Longman, Green, Longman and Roberts, 1859), 21. 12 This dread of one’s deeds remaining unseen is why Geoffroi de Charny’s Book of Chivalry contains titles such as “Sacrifices Made by Men-at Arms Whose Deeds Remain Unknown” in Charny, Book of Chivalry, 54. 13 For a general discussion on Charles VIII’s motivations for the Italian adventure, see Ivan Cloulas, Charles VIII et le mirage italien (Paris: Albin Michel, 1986). 14 For Louis XII’s claim and Francis’s inheritance, Robert J. Knecht, The Valois: Kings of France, 1328–1589 (New York and London: Hambledon Continuum, 2004), 126–36. 15 Tryntje Helfferich, ed., The Thirty Years War: A Documentary History (Indianapolis, IN and Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 2009), 44. 16 Philippe de Commynes, Mémoires, ed. Emilie Dupont, vol. 2 (Paris: Renouard, 1843), 530. 17 For the knighting ceremony, see Keen, Chivalry, 64–82. 18 V.L. Bourrilly and F. Vindry, Mémoires de Martin et Guillaume du Bellay, vol. 1 (Paris: Renouard, 1908), 227: “pour leur plaisir et pour acquerir honneur.” 19 Ibid., 253: “voulant chacun avoir part à l’honneur et au butin.” 20 Ibid, vol. 2, 83: “pour leur plaisir, et pour aquerir honneur.” 21 Ibid., 89: “pour acquerir honneur et sans solde.” 22 Ibid., vol. 3, 356: “fut cause qu’aucuns jeunes gentilshommes convoiteux d’honneur et de reputation.” 23 Ibid., vol. 4, 64: “scavoir, de prouesse et d’experience.” 24 David Potter, Renaissance France at War: Armies, Culture and Society, c.1480–1560 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2008), 88–94. 25 Although according to Sam Zeno Conedera, Ecclesiastical Knights: The Military Orders in Castile, 1150–1330 (New York: Fordham University Press, 2015), 143, it appears that the Iberian military orders were less monastic in nature and were more attuned to the general trends of Iberian nobility. 26 Amadís de Gaula: historia de este invencible caballero, el la cual se tartan sus altos hechos de armas y caballerías, vol. 1 (Barcelona: Juan Olivares, 1847), 14. 27 Ibid., 28. 28 Ibid., vol. 3, 55. 29 Bernal Díaz del Castillo, Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España, vol. 1 (Mexico: Editorial Pedro Robredo, 1939), 308. Admiring the scenery and population, Castillo mentions: “we were astonished and we said that it looked like the enchantments that appear in the book of Amadis.” 30 Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, 242–3. 31 Norris J. Lacy, ed., The Lancelot-Grail Reader (New York, London: Garland, 2000), 98–9. 32 Paolo Giovio, La vita del signor don Fernando d’Avalo marchese di Pescara (Venice: Giovanni de Rossi, 1557), 119r–120r. 33 Martín García Cerezeda, Tratado de las campañas y otros acontecimientos de los ejércitos del emperador Carlos V en Italia, Francia, Austria, Berbería y Grecia desde 1521 hasta 1545, vol. 1 (Madrid, 1873), 127–9. 34 Stephen D. Bowd, Renaissance Mass Murder: Civilians and Soldiers during the Italian Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 130. 35 Le loyal serviteur, La très joyeuse et très plaisante histoire du gentil seigneur de Bayart (Paris: Renouard, 1878), 385–6. 36 Cerezeda, Tratado de las campañas, vol. 1, 69. 37 Philippe Contamine, “The French Nobility and the War,” in The Hundred Years War, ed. Kenneth Fowler (London: Macmillan, 1971), 135.

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38 Bourrilly and Vindry, Mémoires de Martin et Guillaume du Bellay, vol. 4, 362. Also in David Potter, “Chivalry and Professionalism in the French Armies of the Renaissance,” in The Chivalric Ethos and the Development of Military Professionalism, ed. D.J.B. Trim (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 152. 39 Monluc, Commentaires, vol. 1, 431. Also in Potter, “Chivalry and Professionalism,” 152. 40 George Gascoigne, “Dulce bellum inexpertis,” in The Complete Works of George Gascoigne, ed. John W. Cunliffe, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1907), 149, 179. Also in Yuval N. Harari, “Martial Illusions: War and Disillusionment in Twentieth-Century and Renaissance Military Memoirs,” Journal of Military History 69 (2005): 52–3. 41 Le loyal serviteur, La très joyeuse et très plaisante histoire, 182. 42 Kaeuper, Medieval Chivalry, 163. 43 Le loyal serviteur, La très joyeuse et très plaisante histoire, 287. 44 Ibid., 286. 45 Ibid., 207. 46 Kaeuper, Medieval Chivalry, 185. 47 Alonso Enríquez de Guzmán, Libro de la vida y costumbres de Alonzo Enríquez de Guzmán (Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1960), 10. 48 As many as 15 percent of the recruits to the Spanish armies in the sixteenth century might have been hidalgos. See Idan Sherer, Warriors for a Living: The Experience of the Spanish Infantry in the Italian Wars, 1494–1559 (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 21. 49 Diego Núñez Alba, Diálogos de la vida del soldado (Madrid: Fernando Fe, 1890), 8. 50 For Alba’s predicaments as an example of a wider phenomenon, see Idan Sherer, “‘¿Qué te parece Cliterio? ¿Quieres todavía ser soldado?’: Diego Núñez Alba’s Diálogos de la Vida del Soldado (1552) and Soldiering in Early Modern Spain,” Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies 19:4 (2018): 393–406. 51 Le loyal serviteur, La très joyeuse et très plaisante histoire, 254. 52 Ibid. 53 Ibid., 322. 54 Ibid., 46–54. For the tournament in Joigny in 1180 as it is described in William Marshal’s biography, see Nigel Bryant, ed., The History of William Marshal (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2016), 63–4. 55 Commynes, Mémoires, vol. 2, 452. 56 Frederic J. Baumgartner, Henry II, King of France 1547–1559 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996), 249. 57 Ibid., 250. 58 Ibid., 251–2. 59 For tournaments in general, and jousting in particular, in Spain, see Noel Fallows, Jousting in Medieval and Renaissance Iberia (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2010). 60 Joseph M. Levine, Humanism and History: Origins of Modern English Historiography (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 1987), 40. 61 Jaime Moll, “Amberes y el mundo hispano del libro,” in Encuentros en Flandes, eds. Werner Thomas and Robert A. Verdonk (Louvain: Leuven University Press, 2000), 125. 62 Francisco Delicado, ed., Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo, Los cuatro libros de Amadis d’Gaula (Venice, 1533), proemio. 63 The original work was printed in Antwerp in the middle of the sixteenth century: Juan Calvete de Estrella, El felicissimo viaje del muy alto y muy poderoso Príncipe don Phelippe (Antwerp: Martín Nucio, 1552). 64 This is not the place for an exhaustive bibliographical list of sources about Maximilian I’s arms and armors. For a magnificent and recent survey, including a substantial number of images, see Pierre Terjanian, ed., The Last Knight: The Art, Armor and Ambition of Maximilian I (New Haven, CT and London: Yale

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85 86

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University Press, 2019). An appropriately exhaustive bibliography can be found in ibid., 314–32. Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly, “Chivalry and Professionalism in Electoral Saxony in the Mid-Sixteenth Century,” in The Chivalric Ethos and the Development of Military Professionalism, ed. David J.B. Trim (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 226–7. Luba Freedman, Titian’s Portraits through Aretino’s Lens (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), 128. Michael Mallet and Christine Shaw, The Italian Wars, 1494–1559: War, State and Society in Early Modern Europe (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2014), 191–2. Jean d’Auton, Chroniques de Louis XII, vol. 3 (Paris: Librairie Renouard, 1893), 175. Raffaele Puddu, El soldado gentilhombre (Barcelona: Argos Vergara, 1984), 95–101. Mallett and Shaw, The Italian Wars, 190–1. Bourrilly and Vindry, Mémoires de Martin et Guillaume du Bellay, vol. 4, 89. Monluc, Commentaires, vol. 1, 274. Giovio’s massive Historiarum sui temporis was written throughout the first half of the sixteenth century and first published between 1550 and 1552. Many of his celebrated Vitae were published by the end of the 1540s: T.C. Price Zimmermann, Paolo Giovio: The Historian and the Crisis of Sixteenth-Century Italy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), 287, 289–90. Monluc wrote his memoires in the winter and spring of 1570–1571: Blaise de Monluc, The Habsburg-Valois Wars and the French Wars of Religion, ed. Ian Roy (London: Longman, 1971), 10. For Crecy, see Jean le Bel, Chronique (Paris: Renouard, 1905), vol. 2, 102–3; for Agincourt, see Enguerran de Monstrelet, Chronique (Paris: Renouard, 1859), 103–12. For the defeat of the French knights in the battle of the Golden Spurs, see, for example, Frantz Funck-Brentano, Annales gandenses (Paris: Alphonse Picard et Fils, 1896), 31–2; for the Scottish schiltrons in Bannockburn and the use of the natural features of the land, see Thomas Gray, Scalacronica (Edinburgh: Maitland Club, 1836), 141–3. Henry kept some of his archers hidden in the trees so that they might fire into the flank of the advancing men-at-arms while many of his other archers were sheltered behind large wooden stakes. None of the accounts seems to have commented negatively on this employment of subterfuge. See Anne Curry, Agincourt: A New History (Stroud: History Press, 2010). Bryant, William Marshal, 109. Las siete partidas del Rey Don Alfonso el Sabio, vol. 2 (Madrid: Imprenta Real, 1807), 203. From partida 2, title XXI, law VIII: “que los caballeros deben ser arteros y mañosos.” Charny, A Knight’s Own Book of Chivalry, 10. Le loyal serviteur, La très joyeuse et très plaisante histoire, 115. Monluc, Commentaires, vol. 1, 62–3. Ibid., 467. Ibid., 275. Biblioteca Nacional de España, MS/20211/1, Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba to the Catholic Monarchs, Reggio, July 2, 1495. Córdoba acknowledges the “great advantage” (gran ventaja) of the French in deploying their Swiss infantry. Paolo Giovio, La vita di Consalvo Fernando di Cordova detto il Gran Capitano (Florence, 1552), 48–51 provides a description of the battle. The same volume contains two more biographies in Spanish of Córdoba, the second of which is an anonymous source who also provides a complete account of the battle of Seminara: the “Crónica Manuscrita,” in Crónicas del Gran Capitán, ed. Antonio Rodríguez Villa (Madrid: Bailly-Bailliere, 1908). d’Auton, Chroniques de Louis XII, vol. 3, 169. Ibid., 172–3.

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87 Le loyal serviteur, La très joyeuse et très plaisante histoire, 318–19; Robert III de La Mark, Seigneur de Fleuranges, Mémoires du Maréchal de Florange, eds. Robert Goubaux and P. André Lemoisne, vol. 1 (Paris: Renouard, 1913), 88–9. 88 Le loyal serviteur, La très joyeuse et très plaisante histoire, 322; Fleuranges, Mémoires, 89. 89 Bourrilly and Vindry, Mémoires de Martin et Guillaume du Bellay, vol. 1, 225. 90 Monluc, Mémoires, vol. 1, 61. 91 Francesco Guicciardini, Storia d’Italia, vol. 2 (Milan: Garzanti, 2006), 1131; Luigi da Porto to Battista da Porto, Venice, April 30, 1512, in Lettere storiche di Luigi da Porto, ed. Bartolommeo Bressan (Florence: Felice Le Monnier, 1857), 310; Pedro Mexía, Historia del imperador Carlos V (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1945), 52. 92 Gautier, La chanson de Roland, 102–4 (lines 1049–93). 93 The taking of Alcócer as it is described in El Cantar de mio Cid might appear strangely unchivalric to the usual readers of other poems such as the Chanson de Roland. See Juan Victorio, ed., El Cantar de Mío Cid: Estudio y edición crítica (Madrid: Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, 2012), 81–2. 94 Le loyal serviteur, La très joyeuse et très plaisante histoire, 110–13. 95 Ibid., 119. 96 According to Marino Sanuto, I diarii, vol. 4 (Venice: Fratelli Visentini Tipografi Editori, 1880), 777, the engagement was a result of “the French saying that the Italians were traitors like the Spaniards.” The battle was fought “on horseback, for three hours, and all [of the knights] remained on foot with sword in hand, and the Italians remained victorious.” For a more laconic description, see ibid., 783. 97 The quote in Guicciardini, Storia d’Italia, vol. 1, 566. Guicciardini does not mention this personal feud, which can be found in the narrative of d’Auton, Chroniques de Louis XII, vol. 3, 128. 98 Guicciardini, Storia d’Italia, vol. 1, 566. 99 Ibid., 567. 100 Giovio, La vita di Consalvo Fernando di Cordova, 116. 101 d’Auton, Chroniques de Louis XII, vol. 3, 128. 102 Giovio, La vita di Consalvo Fernando di Cordova, 117. 103 Ibid. 104 d’Auton, Chroniques de Louis XII, 132. 105 Giovio, La vita di Consalvo Fernando di Cordova, 119. 106 d’Auton, Chroniques de Louis XII, 133. 107 Giovio, La vita di Consalvo Fernando di Cordova, 119. 108 Pierantonio Serassi, ed., Delle lettere del conte Baldessar Castiglione, vol. 2 (Padua: Giuseppe Comino, 1771), 77–8. A shorter quote appears in Geoffrey Parker, Emperor: A New Life of Charles V (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2019), 169. 109 Parker, Emperor, 176. 110 Ibid., 177. 111 Francis I to Charles V, in C. Weiss, ed., Papiers d’État du Cardinal de Granvelle, vol. 1 (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1841), 372–4. Shorter quotes also appear in Parker, Emperor, 178. 112 Parker, Emperor, 252. 113 Paolo Giovio, La seconda parte dell’istoria del suo tempo (Venice, 1560), 400. 114 For the threat of duels between princes as an attempt to secure a high moral ground prior to battle, see for example, Jan Willem Honig, “Reappraising Late Medieval Strategy: The Example of the 1415 Agincourt Campaign,” War in History 19:2 (2012): 123–51. Honig demonstrates how both Henry V and the Dauphin Louis, son of Charles VII, King of France, maneuvered relentlessly and exchanged challenges for duels in order to achieve the high moral ground while attempting to

Knighthood and chivalry transformed?

115 116 117 118 119 120

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avoid battle for fear of the conveyance of God’s final judgment on the case of the English claim to the French throne. Kaeuper, Medieval Chivalry, 258. Giovio, La vita del signor don Fernando d’Avalo, 40r. Ibid., 40v. Ibid. Le loyal serviteur, La très joyeuse et très plaisante histoire, 102. Ibid., 106–7.

2

Professional soldiers, unprofessional institutions

While knighthood and chivalry remained deeply entrenched in the psyche of sixteenth-century Europeans, the intensity of the Italian Wars highlighted the significant changes in composition and recruitment methods of armies. Early modern intellectuals had very little, if anything, good to say about the soldiers of their day. The Italians, having witnessed Italy torn apart by hordes of “barbarians” from across the Alps and, more often than not, having direct contact with these armies, were naturally biased. Machiavelli, who presided over Florence’s campaign to subject Pisa and came in direct contact with German mercenaries, believed that the people who chose to make war a way of living were “lurid, idle, unrestrained, godless, who escaped their father’s authority, blasphemers, gamblers and in every way badly educated.”1 Francesco Guicciardini, who commanded the papal forces during the campaign around Rome in 1526–1527, described them as “blasphemers, murderers and thieves.”2 Paolo Giovio, having witnessed the brutal sack of his native city of Como in 1521, claimed that the infantry forces were made of the most “servile and base” people.3 No one expected any kind words from the strongly pacifist Desiderius Erasmus, who described the soldiers of his time as “an unruly and ungodly kind of people, lawless, reckless and hasty in wrong-doing, selling their life and soul for cash, with all their pleasure and delight in seizing and robbing others, fierce, presumptuous and licentious.”4 In his Institutio principis Christiani, Erasmus advises the prince to weigh his options before he goes to war since “he must call in a barbarian rabble, made up of all the worst scoundrels, and, if you want to be thought more of a man than the rival prince, you have to flatter and defer to these mercenaries, even after paying them, although there is no class of men more abject and indeed more damnable.”5 German writers and artists could be highly critical of those who became landsknechts (more on the complexity of the term “German” following). The Lutheran theologian Johann Eberlin von Günzburg (d. 1553) was as scathing as the previously mentioned writers when considering his contemporary German mercenaries: A great amount of money was made in the wars of the Emperor Maximilian in the Low Countries, Hungary, Italy and France and during his

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time a new type of heartless people arose, named lantsknecht, who have no regard for honor or glory, travelling to places where they can hope to receive a salary and offer their services while endangering their souls and damaging common honesty and good customs. And there they learn and obtain all kinds of vices, abuses, blasphemies, curses and more. They learn whoring, adultery, violation, gluttony, inebriation and beastly manners such as theft, robbery and murder. They make these their daily bread, targeting poor people who did them no wrong. In brief, they are completely bound by the power of the devil, who throws them wherever he wills.6 In a darkly humorous engraving and text by Erhard Schön (d. 1542) from around 1535, a landsknecht is presented as cocky and potentially drunk and violent: “I am called Valentine Scarface / in Denmark, I thought highly of myself / I caroused day and night / In the tavern or in the campground / And whoever annoyed me / Promptly had to fight me.”7 The dark tone deepens when the always hovering danger of death is mentioned. In an anonymous wood carving from the beginning of the sixteenth century, a landsknecht encounters Death, who proclaims, “However bold and strong and tall you may be / and however many men have suffered your violence / you must nevertheless give in to me. / I have long denounced your pride. / Your halberd has no longer the power to cut; / your feathers and your daggers must fall / since I intend throwing them into the grave. / Your fashionable beard and great deeds / will not help you now / All your battles have come to an end / Quickly, away from here and be smart about it.”8 The frightened soldier responds: “Oh grim Death, what are you doing here? / I did not believe you existed anymore / Until I saw your gruesome face / I had eliminated all fear / Many great trials I withstood on Italian and on German soil / However, my brave weapons are of no use to me now / I shall call upon my heavenly lord / And throw away my dagger and my halberd / to wait upon the grace of God and Mary.”9 It is no wonder that the image of Death was present in many contemporary woodcuts and paintings, considering the link between soldiering and violence. The perception of the soldiers’ tendency for immoral behavior was highlighted in the omnipresence of camp followers of all kinds and especially prostitutes, who were always accompanying early modern armies, regardless of national affinity. A woodcut from Nuremberg from about 1560 presents an image of a prostitute accompanied by the following text: “If you’re not into gluttony and boozing / I don’t want to follow you for long / If I stay near you for any length of time / I’ll certainly let you have the ‘French disease’ / You’ll wish you have stayed home / And have never set forth.”10 The link between soldiering, prostitution, and the infamous “French disease” (syphilis), which began spreading during the earlier phases of the Italian Wars in southern Italy, is obvious here, as it is obvious in many contemporary sources. The Swiss (more on the problems with the term “Swiss” following) provided a clear example of the uncomfortably mixed feelings of sixteenth-century

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intellectuals when discussing the virtues required of “real” men of war. The mercenaries of the Swiss cantons were considered the best infantry soldiers for more than a century. Their victories against the Burgundians in the last quarter of the fifteenth century helped them to build and maintain a legacy of prowess and furious efficiency. It is no wonder that both Machiavelli and Guicciardini identified the advantages of these “rough” people when compared to the more “gentle” Italians. The somewhat simplistic perception of the Swiss as mostly rough and resilient peasants was pervasive in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europe and became one of the basic explanations for their military efficiency in the eyes of some sixteenth-century writers. Guicciardini commented that “the unity and glory of arms of these rough and uncultured people have made them reputable.”11 Machiavelli added that “being poor and wanting to live free, they needed to fight against the ambition of the [Holy Roman Empire’s] princes, who, being wealthy, could feed horses, which was an impossible task for the Swiss on account of their poverty.”12 When out of earshot, highly prominent individuals conveyed many of the same ideas about early modern soldiery. During his siege of Metz in 1552, Emperor Charles V himself could be heard saying, according to the reputable physician Ambroise Paré (c. 1510–1590), that “it was no matter if [the soldiers] did die, comparing them to caterpillars, grass-hoppers and cockchafers which eat the buds and other good things of the earth, and that if they were men of worth they would not be in his camp for six livres a month, and therefore there was no harm if they died.”13 These harsh words may have been uttered in times of great distress and physical and mental exhaustion, but they can be seen as supporting the highly generalized convictions regarding early modern armies and the “brutal mercenaries” that fought in them. Pierre de Bourdeille, seigneur de Brantôme (d. 1614), mentioned, for example, in his Discours sur les colonels de l’infanterie de France that the landsknechts were “extravagant, difficult to control, great ravagers and squanderers.”14 These views should come as no surprise when one considers the still deeply hierarchical society in which both the commentators and soldiers lived. The road for these “commoners” to become the deeply idealized “citizen soldiers” was still long and arduous.

Military professionalism and the rise of the “state” In the background of these discussions on mercenary forces, experiments in the creation of standing professional armies were already under way in the fifteenth century. The compagnies d’ordonnance and francs archers were a result of Charles VII’s and other contemporaries’ apprehension that their dependence on current systems of feudal levies and arrière-ban proved to be at best insufficient when it came to confronting the devastation caused by incessant war and efficient chevauchée by English armies and free companies. Like many of his contemporaries, the French soldier and author Philippe de Mézières (d. 1405) was aware of the disadvantages of these systems, even when considering the relative success of King Charles V of France (r. 1364–1380) in turning the tide against

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England and the maintenance of a strong French army. In Mézières’ famous Songe du vieil pèlerin from 1389, the writer suggests that “you should avoid employing the royal decree known as the arrière ban, on account of which much harm will follow … You should remember, my son, that a good amount of excellent gens d’armes, [fighting alongside] your valiant and royal majesty … will give you more victories than hordes of your subjects, some arriving voluntarily and others through the arrière ban, but all lacking discipline.” These soldiers will “remain alert at their dwellings, awaiting the order to accompany you to battle.”16 Throughout the fourteenth century, French kings lacked the political leverage to bring about significant changes in the still highly conservative military establishments. In 1448, and with the tide of war now clearly on the side of the French, Charles VII was well aware that it was “expedient and appropriate that we establish and order in our kingdom a certain number of men for its defense which will be able to assist and serve in the wars without the need for us to make use of others that are not our subjects.”17 This decree for the creation of the previously mentioned francs archers signified the king’s belief that dramatic changes were needed. Francis I may have been as frustrated as his fifteenthcentury predecessors when he ordered, in July 1534, “to raise and create a force of infantry soldiers for the protection and defense of his realm in the form of ‘legions’ to serve and aid when required.”18 With past and future attempts at change lurking about, Charles VIII’s invading host of 1494 was made up of thousands of men-at-arms, which constituted a significant part of the king’s army. The thousands of Swiss mercenaries became a spectacle when the king entered Florence,19 but his army was still reminiscent of, even if somewhat different from, the armies of his immediate ancestors during the last phases of the Hundred Years’ War, which mostly comprised the king’s vassals as the main fighting force. The armies of Francis I were indeed different in scope and composition, with the bulk of the forces made up of German, Swiss, and Italian mercenaries, accompanied by the still prevalent and tactically important French gens d’armes. That was also the case with the armies of Charles V, which comprised a nucleus of Spanish recruits surrounded by large contingents of mercenaries from Germany and Italy. The hosts of the kings of France and Spain from the 1510s onward were becoming quite different from those of their ancestors from the second half of the fifteenth century and especially in their national composition. Spain, or rather the crowns of Castile and Aragon, pioneered the professionalization of its main fighting forces as a direct result of the War of Granada in 1492. Making use of the psyche of “a society organized for war,” as Elena Lourie described the effects of the Reconquista on medieval Spain’s experience,20 Fernando and Isabel, the Catholic Monarchs, managed to consolidate their power and organize and maintain what became, in the beginning of the sixteenth century, a standing professional fighting force. The first test of these Spanish forces, at least in their embryonic form, was in the wars in Naples from 1495 under the Gran Capitán. 21 In the first decades of the sixteenth

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century, the main force of the Spanish army was made of several coronelías, commanded by coroneles, which were regiments of infantry and cavalry recruited, paid, supplied, and deployed solely by the Spanish monarchy. Spanish soldiers fought as mercenaries in Italy, Germany, and even England, but the soldiers of the Spanish crown were not mercenaries and, as will be seen later, perceived themselves as professionals. The Catholic Monarchs had the early privilege of counting on an efficient and relatively loyal and supervised native force. When the young Charles of Burgundy became King Carlos I of Castile and Aragon in 1516 and was then elected as Holy Roman Emperor Karl V in 1519, he could make use of a vast number of human resources in both Germany and Spain. Following a disastrous invasion of Provence in the summer and autumn of 1536, the emperor ordered that his remaining Spanish forces in Italy be divided into three main units known as tercios. The name was perhaps given to each regiment to differentiate it as a “third” of the entire force, but, whatever the reason was for their naming, these forces retained that name for more than two centuries. The first three tercios became the core of a Spanish professional force to which the Spanish monarchs could add large contingents of mercenary (mainly German) and other forces. This first model was later used to create more tercios comprising both Spanish and foreign troops, with the Spanish tercios remaining the core of, for example, the Army of Flanders. The Italian Wars became the crucible for the creation of a Spanish standing “professional” army, as much as any institution could be called such in the beginning of the sixteenth century. The dependency of the Italian states on local and foreign condottieri from the fourteenth to well into the sixteenth centuries meant that none of them could organize a real standing army and they all had to contend with some of these same condottieri when it came to defending Italy from the invading French, Germans, and Spanish. It seems that Machiavelli’s attempt to create a standing militia in Florence, only to witness its complete destruction during and after the siege of Prato in 1512 and the following surrender of the Florentine republic, retains its dubious legacy only because of its creator’s fame.22 While Italy’s local powers did attempt to confront the foreign invaders with whatever they could muster, these attempts ended either indecisively, as in the example of Fornovo in 1495, or in complete defeat, as in the example of Agnadello in 1509. In the case of the Battle of Creazzo in 1513 between the forces of the League of Cambrai and Venice, Paolo Giovio described Bartolomeo d’Alviano, the Venetian captain general, who “did not want to confront the enemy without a tactical advantage, since he dreaded the veteran Spanish and German infantry, which were accustomed to fighting in a condensed phalanx, [and] to which Italian forces and discipline were inferior.”23 Regardless of whether Giovio’s assessment could really be measured in any satisfactory way, it seems that the Italians were quite aware of their inability to take more than a secondary role in the military history of the sixteenth century. It is certainly true that some of the most important military figures of the Italian Wars were Italians, with the Colonna, Gonzaga, Pescara, and d’Este

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families being the most conspicuous. It is also true that thousands of Italians, from Piedmont and Milan in the north to Naples and Sicily in the south, joined the armies of France and Spain and took part in the reshaping of the geopolitical reality. Nevertheless, none of the locals were able to become the primus inter pares that the Italians longed for; when several Italian powers urged Fernando d’Avalos, marchese di Pescara, to convert his military and political success following the Battle of Pavia into becoming the king of Italy, he utterly refused and alerted the emperor. Although the term “state” is anachronistic when it comes to sixteenth-century politics, it nevertheless seems that historical circumstances did lead to the consolidation of stronger monarchies in France and Spain by the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries. Both monarchies were consolidated (as was often the case) following dramatic events—the repercussions of the Hundred Years’ War in France and the semi-union of Castile and Aragon under Fernando and Isabel from the 1470s—which allowed strong, talented, and able monarchs (some more than others) to seize power and authority from traditional feudal and religious institutions. This was the case with Fernando and Isabel’s efficient power grabs from the strong noble houses and families (grandes, formerly known as ricos hombres), especially in the southern lands of what was Al-Andalus, the military orders, the large cities, and even the Church.24 This was also the case with Louis XI (r. 1461–1483), Louis XII (r. 1498–1515), and Francis I (r. 1515–1547) of France, all of whom could successfully quell rebellions at home and further consolidate the power of the French monarchy.25 Regardless of how strong they were becoming, fifteenth- and sixteenth-century monarchs could not sustain standing armies to the extent that they could trust these forces to cover even most of their strategic and tactical requirements. Charles V amassed a massive army of about 80,000 men to defend Vienna in 1529, an extraordinary number for an ad hoc army and in general.26 Considering the size of Charles V’s empire during most of his reign as emperor, even these numbers could barely suffice to keep his lands safe, nor could they be maintained for long periods of time. Early modern financial, administrative, and military institutions were very cumbersome and lacked much of what a modern state would expect in terms of order, efficiency, and comprehensiveness. Money was always in short supply, and monarchs had to borrow substantial amounts of it, often pawning their future incomes from taxes and regular subsidies to secure short-term loans with extraordinarily high interest rates.27 As will be shown later, logistical limitations made the final conversion of money into real supplies and wages even more precarious. Considering the fact that even twenty-first-century armies still encounter considerable hindrances when it comes to the smooth operation of their administrative, logistical, and financial institutions, and especially in times of war, it should come as no surprise that the reality was considerably more precarious in early modern Europe. In a more general sense, these limitations meant that sixteenth-century monarchs found themselves somewhat trapped. Immersed in humanist fantasies of well-trained and committed citizen militias, as they were most famously

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presented in Machiavelli’s Dell’arte della guerra, the monarchs remained as committed in the first half of the sixteenth century as they had been in the fifteenth to the previously mentioned experiments in the creation of standing professional fighting forces. Some militias, as were the first three Spanish tercios created by Charles V, became and remained highly successful, while others, such as Francis I’s “legions,” were significantly less successful.28 It was only reasonable for both monarchs, exhausted from endless fighting and their dependence on mercenaries, to push for the creation of these forces in the middle of the 1530s. Nevertheless, even when the creation of these proto-standing armies proved to be successful and long lasting, Spanish, French, and other European princes of varying power could hardly depend solely on these forces, efficient and committed as they might have been. Besides the fact that the general behavior of these standing armies was still highly volatile and unpredictable (more on that following), the combination of almost constant military campaigning and the administrative and financial limitations of sixteenth-century “governments” led to a desperate and sustained need for an endless flow of troops on top of and conjoined to these relatively permanent forces. Monarchs could feel powerful enough to secure more and more of the medieval decentralized legitimacy for violence, but they still had to create large enough forces to fight on several fronts. That seems to be a plausible reason for the appearance of the hybrid armies of the Italian Wars, many of which were made of core “native” units surrounded by other, and often larger, mercenary and other kinds of hard-to-define peripheral forces. On the one hand, the use of mercenaries and professionals in Europe throughout the Middle Ages was far from extraordinary. While the Italian kingdoms and city-states had become the most (in)famous in their habit of contracting condottieri to handle their brawls before and even after the peace of Lodi of 1454, other powers in Europe had no trouble with hiring supplementary forces to augment their armies.29 Feudal levies and general calls for men, such as the infamous arrière-ban in France, could often fail to sustain actual needs for men, arms, and supplies, and princes and generals had to privatize (as much as this term is relevant to medieval Europe) at least some of the fighting. It was, therefore, perfectly acceptable, even if not always preferable, to hire soldiers to perform the tasks for which the prince’s vassals were insufficient. On the other hand, the first half of the sixteenth century ushered in a different perception of the composition and maintenance of European armies. As David Parrott has already concluded, the formation of the modern state going hand in hand with the rise of the standing army (whether conscripted or professional) was not necessarily deterministic and all encompassing, as demonstrated in the private contractors and mercenary armies of seventeenth-century Europe.30 The market for mercenaries was booming during the second half of the sixteenth century and especially during the Thirty Years’ War, but it seems that the Italian Wars and their more peripheral conflicts did promote a change in the abilities of European princes to maintain large and able military forces.

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Throughout the Italian Wars, the emperors Maximilian I and Charles V and the French kings Louis XII and Francis I found themselves highly dependent on the flow of mercenaries from the lands of the Holy Roman Empire. In some cases, especially those involving the imperial armies, the German landsknechts accounted for more than half of the entire army fielded by the emperor. About half of the emperor’s army of 40,000 infantry soldiers, which made its way into Provence in the summer and fall of 1536, was made up of German recruits, and the other half made up of Spaniards and Italians.31 The landsknechts proved their worth repeatedly, often under incredible circumstances and especially after Lutheranism began spreading in the Holy Roman Empire and affecting the common populace, from which many of these soldiers were hired to serve their Catholic monarchs (more on that later). Mercenaries from the Holy Roman Empire and the German lands went on to serve in Spanish and French armies throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and, at least in the case of the Spanish tercios, German landsknechts constituted a significant part of the armies that fought in the Low Countries during the Eighty Years’ War.32 As is already obvious, a large number of the soldiers who took part in the Italian Wars were mercenaries. Kings and emperors transferred money to captains whose duty was to go out and recruit soldiers to fight for one side or the other. Throughout the sixteenth century and even more conspicuously during the seventeenth century, the vast majority of armies were heterogeneous hordes of separate regiments and companies of different geographic and ethnic origins. From Scotland to the Balkans, countless men and horses were recruited and sent to fight the wars of others. The armies that fought in Pavia in 1525 were as diverse as those that fought in Breitenfeld in 1631. One should be more careful, then, when addressing the armies of sixteenthcentury Europe with the general term “mercenary.” Fighting for pay does not necessarily make a soldier mercenary. The Spanish coronelías of the 1510s and 1520s, as much as the first tercios, were mainly composed of men from the Iberian Peninsula who were recruited by Spanish captains, who were themselves nominated and paid by the Spanish monarchy. Although individuals and groups of Spaniards served as mercenaries in European armies,33 no Spanish tercio would leave and hire its services for the highest bidder. This was also the case with the soldiers of the French legions and the French soldiers in general. Added to these core forces were large contingents of nobles, who, as has already been discussed, were still immersed in fantasies of honor and glory on the battlefield, and with them countless other knights, gens d’armes, hidalgos, cavalieri, and adventurers who came for many of the same motivations.34 These “native” forces were more often than not augmented by soldiers who could be more aptly described as mercenary, hiring themselves to paying customers en masse and according to well-defined contracts. This view of mercenary forces was most apparent in the case of the Swiss cantons, which were able to create a sustainable and relatively trustworthy business of recruiting and dispatching thousands of troops, mainly to the aid of France. Both the Swiss and the

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soldiers of the Spanish tercios deemed themselves professional, but only the Swiss could also be safely termed mercenaries. David Parrott has already raised the difficulties with the perception of mercenaries since the Renaissance and in general. Focusing on the second half of the sixteenth century and the entire seventeenth century and the military entrepreneurs who hired their services to European princes, Parrott convincingly suggests that the main reasons for general contempt, distrust, and fear of mercenary forces stem from fluctuating and changing cultural beliefs, rather than a realistic analysis of their actual capabilities. Deeply mesmerized by the military history of the Roman Republic, fifteenth- and sixteenth-century generals and intellectuals were motivated by “[a] humanist-inspired enthusiasm for an idealized republic in which a propertied class of citizens express their civic virtue through unpaid military service.”35 The twilight of the Renaissance could not brighten the image of mercenary soldiers, especially considering the devastation of the Thirty Years’ War, including horrific scenes of sacks, massacres, and bloody battlefields throughout Europe. As was already established in the introduction to this study, the rise of the sovereign state, first under strong monarchs and later as republics or hybrid forms of governments, contributed to the idealization of the citizen soldier, who joined the army, often involuntarily, but fought to preserve his and his nation’s interests and ideals. The mercenary soldier, who was, so it was believed and consciously disseminated, fighting solely for the selfish interest of engorging himself with money and violence, could not (and still cannot) match these idealized images of the citizen soldiers of the Roman Republic and those of the French Revolution alike. Political and social processes that had been brewing since the end of World War II brought to the fore the significance of professionalization and the furthering of a compatibility between military institutions and the constraints of a free-market global economy, but the mere idea of mercenaries in the form of both public and private enterprises is still dreaded and, for the most part, derided, regardless of any real assessment of efficiency and success.

Vague identities The mere generalization of the terms used to describe these soldiers is instructive. The soldiers of the Italian Wars were usually identified in contemporary writings by their national and geographic origins—they were Spanish, German, Swiss, or Italian. This was indeed convenient and often well understood, considering the fact that many of these contemporary (and modernday) writers, whether soldiers, historians, or generals, had no inclination or need to present the far more complicated reality. With very few real national identities, the terms “Spanish,” “German,” “Swiss,” and especially “Italian” were geographic, rather than ethnic, national, or personal identifications. The political and religious realities of sixteenth-century Europe produced more complex circumstances for sixteenth-century armies.

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French kings could not depend solely on their immediate subjects for efficient fighting forces. Kings could still rely on the compagnies d’ordonnance and the French nobility in general for their cavalry units, but the French could not or would not create a standing infantry force. Crossbowmen from Gascony were considered the best French troops of the sixteenth century, and Francis I’s legions, first created in 1534, produced decent infantry contingents. But these and other infantry units could not sustain the French monarchs in the long campaigns in Italy and on other fronts.36 These general disadvantages meant that France had to contend with massive levies of mercenary soldiers, mainly from the Swiss cantons and the Holy Roman Empire. The Swiss infantry gained its reputation after the victory in the Burgundian Wars in 1474–1477.37 Charles VIII and Louis XII were already recruiting thousands of Swiss soldiers for their campaigns, but it was Francis I who, following direct clashes between France and the cantons over Milan in 1513–1515, secured a strong political and economic relationship with the Confederacy from the 1520s. Providing mercenary soldiers for the French armies became one of the Swiss’s main financial enterprises, and Swiss regiments, often commanded by French nobles and generals, were present in most of the main battlefields of the Italian Wars, fighting exclusively for the French. Swiss infantry fought under French pay in Fornovo in 1495 and in Ceresole in 1544 and remained the main infantry force of the French army well into the 1560s.38 While the Swiss Confederacy did combine its forces to fight common enemies, as was the case in the Burgundian War and the clashes with France around Milan in 1513–1515, both the urban and rural Orten of the Confederacy became separate focal points for the recruitment of mercenaries. As Diebold Schilling’s illustration of the Battle of Grandson (1476) from c. 1515 demonstrates with sweeping splashes of the confederate red color, the white cross of the Confederacy was often supplanted with standards wielded by soldiers recruited from different Orten. The bear of Bern, the bull of Uri, the various white and blue of Zurich and Lucerne, and the small white cross over a red background of Schwyz, to name only a few examples, could be seen on different occasions. Local political and financial elites in both urban and rural Orten, many of whom demonstrated advanced institutional and administrative abilities, cultivated the expanding industry of mercenary recruitment, and many poor, zealous, and often already battle-hardened men found their way into the ranks of these mercenary units. Friction between the members of the Confederacy subsided by the end of the fifteenth century, but the individual Orten, and especially the urban Berne and Zurich and rural Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden, were very aware of the differences between them and their respective political and financial interests embedded in a long and complicated historical legacy.39 Philipe de Commynes mentioned that, when Charles VIII’s Swiss troops mutinied in 1495 following a treaty between the king and the Duke of Milan that ended hostilities, they “formed several assemblies, each according to his canton, played their drums, and formed rings (which is the form of the assembly),” planning to take the

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king prisoner.40 There were occasions when Swiss soldiers found themselves facing other mercenaries from the Confederacy and refused to fight each other,41 but they often chose to define themselves according to their respective specific origin, rather than simply as Swiss. Therefore, one must remember that the mention of the title “Swiss,” which is also employed in this work, encompasses a wide variety of people from around the Old Swiss Confederacy and, of course, from several areas of each specific Orte, from which potential soldiers could be assembled and recruited. Some were peasants from the rural communities to the east and south, whereas others were townsfolks and city dwellers from urban centers in Bern, Fribourg, Lucerne, and Zurich. The German landsknechts became the immediate successors of the Swiss infantry, especially during the latter’s slow decline beginning in the 1520s (mainly in the battles of Bicocca and Pavia).42 Acting as a general term for infantry soldiers from Germany, contingents of landsknechts from different geographic and political areas of the Holy Roman Empire fought for both France and the emperor and at times, in the Battle of Pavia, for example, could find themselves fighting against other Germans. Emperor Maximilian I created these mercenary forces, usually recruited from the rural areas of southwestern Germany in Alsace and Baden-Württemberg, for his campaigns in Bohemia at the end of the 1480s and beginning of the 1490s.43 By the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Holy Roman Empire had become a central recruiting ground for both France and the Empire, and Charles V’s armies were mostly made of regiments of landsknechts, especially since soldiers from the Swiss cantons were usually employed by the French. By the beginning of the sixteenth century, the clashes between Germans and Swiss had already created a prolonged grudge between these two nations.44 Regiments of mercenaries from Germany were usually recruited by an oblist, or a colonel, who could in turn nominate and command several fähnlein, or companies of several hundred men, each commanded by a captain, or hauptmann. These companies were divided into rotten, or platoons, of about ten men each. Regiments varied in size and composition, although these officers, accompanied by a large staff and several assistants, formed the basis for these units.45 France, the Holy Roman Empire, and, from the 1520s, Habsburg Spain (under Charles V and Felipe II) recruited large numbers of troops in various areas of the Empire. Colonels, such as Georg von Frundsberg (1473–1528), who fought alongside the Habsburgs for most of his adult life, could, when required, recruit between 10,000 and 20,000 landsknechts for the Spanish and imperial armies in the 1510s and 1520s.46 Nobles and private citizens of the Empire also provided French monarchs with a substantial number of soldiers recruited in different areas of Germany. Wilhelm von Fürstenberg (1491–1549), a Swabian noble, became one of the main figures recruiting soldiers for French service. In the 1530s, he could muster up to 10,000 troops for service in Piedmont. Recruiting soldiers for France in the Holy Roman Empire was intricate and complex, considering the long-standing enmity between France and the Empire.

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Men like Fürstenberg could easily find themselves crossing their traditional political allegiance to their lord, the emperor, with a financial allegiance to the French king and paying dearly. Francis I had to provide Fürstenberg with a steady pension after the emperor confiscated his lands in 1537.47 These and other potential threats did not prevent other princes of the Empire from enjoying the financial benefits of allowing France to recruit in their lands with their direct or indirect support and assistance, some of them standing by their right to do so regardless of their position and duties in the Empire.48 The soldiers recruited in the lands of the Empire were usually titled “Germans,” although early modern Germany was more of a geopolitical term with very little “national” centrality in the modern sense. Men recruited in the countryside of southwestern Germany and the upper Rhine shared only some cultural affinity to other men who were recruited from the plains of northern Germany and the lower Rhine. Unlike the soldiers recruited from the Swiss cantons, soldiers from different parts of the massive Empire had less trouble fighting on different sides of the battlefield. This was famously the case in the Battle of Pavia, where soldiers from Germany were besieged in Pavia under the command of the Spanish Captain Antonio de Leyva (d. 1536) and formed a part of the besieging army under Francis I and a part of the imperial relieving force under Charles de Lannoy, Viceroy of Naples (d. 1527).49 Many of these soldiers and their recruiters saw themselves as part of the Empire and the German “people,” and often had to contractually commit to fighting against the emperor if the need arose.50 Nevertheless, the complex political and cultural nature of the Empire allowed for a more flexible perception of loyalty and interests, especially when it came to steady employment from the perspective of the more impoverished population. In the case of the Spaniards, a yearly average of 6,000 soldiers were recruited in the Iberian Peninsula between the 1530s and 1620s. Combined with smaller troop numbers before that, it seems likely that about 200,000 soldiers were recruited in the Peninsula throughout the Italian Wars and sent to various frontiers in Europe and the Mediterranean.51 These troops, recruited by both the Trastámara and Habsburg monarchs, were generally called “Spanish” in sixteenth-century sources, mostly and understandably, for convenience’s sake. Men from all over Spain flocked to countless ad hoc recruiting posts erected by captains who received their rank and a formal permit to raise troops exclusively for the armies of the Spanish monarchs.52 Castile and Aragon were joined (though not united) under the rule of the Catholic Monarchs in 1474, but it was the War of Granada, beginning in 1482 and ending with the fall of the Nasrid Kingdom in 1492, that unified forces from all around Spain to fight a common enemy.53 While obviously imbued with nationalistic and religious propaganda, the Italian historian Pietro Martire d’Anghiera (1457–1526), who worked in and around the Spanish court for most of his professional career, pointed out, albeit exaggeratedly, his bewilderment in the face of this national unification:

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The Catalan humanist Cristòfor Despuig was well aware, as were most of his contemporaries, of the Castilian sense of self-importance, superiority, and centrality, believing that “they alone come from the Heavens, while all other men came out of the earth.”55 In a more anecdotal tone, the anonymous author of the “Crónica Manuscrita” emphasized the role of Galician soldiers in the surrendering of a tower to the French during the campaign in the Garigliano in 1503. The Galicians were immediately executed by their comrades because “there was nothing more insulting to a Spaniard than to surrender a place to the enemy while remaining alive.”56 Were people from Galicia not “Spaniards” in sixteenth-century Spain? As in the case of the Swiss and Germans, the cultural, geographic, and even lingual differences between the recruits did not generally hinder them from calling themselves “Spaniards.” The previously mentioned inner tensions are very rarely visible in chronicles and even in the memoirs of soldiers, who tend to provide more detailed information. During a mutiny in Sicily in the winter of 1538–1539, the Spanish troops wrote a letter to Ferrante Gonzaga, Viceroy of Sicily, and “implored [His Excellency the Viceroy of Sicily] to see that we are Spaniards, and we have to do what is suitable for the service of His Majesty [the emperor], and His Excellency.”57 The soldier Martín García Cerezeda mentions that the emperor led “10,000 Spanish infantry” into Provence in 1536.58 Inner tensions could arouse local tensions, but it seems that for the most part the soldiers did not think of themselves as Iberians of different local origin, but rather as Spaniards. The same was relevant for the Italians. The people of the Italian Peninsula were very aware of the difference between them and, as was famously exclaimed by Machiavelli, the trans-Alpine “barbarians.”59 Nevertheless, the Italians were as accustomed to fighting among themselves as they were in attempting to defend Italy from outsiders. The Peace of Lodi in 1454 put an end to war between the central powers in Italy, namely, the Duchy of Milan, the Kingdom of Naples, and Florence and Venice, but tensions remained high. As is already well known, Ludovico Sforza, de facto Duke of Milan, was the one who invited the French to invade and finally defeat Milan’s longtime enemies in Naples. When Charles VIII invaded, he had to halt in Florence to help manage the ongoing dispute between Florence and Pisa over the latter’s autonomy. In the middle of these tensions stood the pope, who had his own interests and enemies among some of Italy’s greatest powers and families, pulling most popes

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in the sixteenth century to the center of the power struggles and, as in the case of Julius II, to lead actual armies to the battlefield. Some of the final blows exchanged between France and Spain in the middle of the sixteenth century constituted a part of Florence’s successful attempt to subdue Siena in the 1550s. This reality was nothing new. As is well known, Italy became a lucrative hotbed for condottieri and hordes of mercenaries in the late Middle Ages, as the city-states had very little to depend on in terms of standing armies and militias. Leading condottieri could muster troops who had no trouble fighting against their fellow Italians.60 The traumatized generation of the first half of the sixteenth century called for unity and collaboration, but only when the threat of a foreign enemy and the loss of Italian freedom became a reality; Venice, the pope, and the Duchy of Ferrara were still clashing as late as the 1480s.61 As was already mentioned in a different context, when powerful forces in Italy asked the emperor’s leading Italian general (an instructive fact in itself when it comes to Italian unity), Fernando d’Avalos, marchese di Pescara, to become a king in order to expel the foreigners from Italy, Pescara refused and swiftly informed the emperor of the plot.62 Italian infighting and deep historic tensions prevented Italy from ever coming close to actual unity until centuries later. But the fact that Italian forces could not unite in the face of a foreign enemy did not prevent these foreigners from tapping into local human resources, each in its area of influence. While local powers, such as Venice and the Papal States, kept armies comprising local recruits, both France and Spain recruited thousands of soldiers from all around Italy. France maintained delicate relationships with Italian noble families, such as the Trivulzio of Milan, Fregoso of Genoa, and d’Este of Ferrara, which could and did supply the French armies with soldiers, artillery, and navies.63 Spain and the Empire could depend on nobles and soldiers from Naples and later from the Duchy of Milan to fight alongside the Spanish infantry and the landsknechts. 64 Alfonso I d’Este, duca di Ferrara, provided his artillery to the French in Ravenna in 1512 and later supported the imperial army during its march south to Rome in 1527.65 Italian soldiers fought on both sides of the battlefield in the Battle of Ceresole in 1544. On the French side were about 2,000 soldiers who were most likely recruited in the northwest of Italy, around the Duchy of Savoy and Provence. On the imperial side, the large force of Italians was made up of soldiers and captains from several places in Italy, and the Spanish soldier Cerezeda highlighted the Neapolitan soldiers as the best among them.66 In general then, men from all strata of society, from Milan in the north to Sicily in the south, found themselves embroiled in one way or another in the interests of foreign powers in Italy, regardless of the revulsion and shame of some contemporary intellectuals.

Organizational incompetence During the period of c. 1450–1550, princes and generals in Europe were very limited in their ability to field their ideal armies. They could not exclusively depend on standing armies composed of their own populace, but they also

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resented their growing dependence on mercenaries. Naturally, these hybrid and often greatly heterogeneous armies were very difficult to maintain and control and proved to be highly unpredictable and often unstable. This was nothing new; medieval armies were also tactically, nationally, and even ethnically heterogeneous and somewhat unpredictable, even if many of them were less dependent on various types of mercenary forces. Nevertheless, the rising dependence on the employment of mercenary forces did bring about several new difficulties and hindrances that corresponded to the noticeable rise of professionalization, especially, although indeed not exclusively, in France and Spain. We should attempt to explain the main reasons for these obvious and indisputable difficulties in maintaining and controlling these armies. While it would be easier and somewhat more comfortable to blame it on the sort of people who joined these armies in the first place and contrast them with any ideal we might hold or create, it would at best provide us with very superficial answers. A scan of the available information provides a far more complex image of what these soldiers had to contend with when considering the actual deficiencies and shortcomings of early modern administrative and logistical systems and the potentially horrific conditions of service. Only then would we be able to shed the thick prisms that might distort some of the perceptions regarding at least a few of these forces, whether mercenary or professional. Recent studies acknowledge the fact that the men who joined the armies of sixteenth-century Europe were not the “scum of the earth.”67 The fact that these men were responsible for shocking events of violence and brutality did not mean that they were necessarily criminals, sociopaths, or exceedingly brutal compared to the general population. It is also not surprising that the vast majority of testimonies about the men who joined these armies were uttered or written by the social and intellectual elites of Europe, all of whom lived in a strictly hierarchical society. In a modern world, where the citizen soldier or even the professional recruit fighting in a national army forms a significant part of the political and social experience and can even garner sincere admiration and a sense of idealization, one cannot grasp this sort of contempt for the common soldier. It is true and far from surprising that many of the men who joined the ranks of armies in early modern Europe did so because of personal, financial, or even professional troubles, rather than for any other normative motivation. Poverty and lack of employment remained the most significant motivations for joining the army in order to make an honest living, eat properly, and perhaps even acquire booty during campaigns. The youth whom Don Quixote encounters during his travels famously chants, “my necessity carried me to the wars / if I had money, I truly wouldn’t have gone.”68 Even poor nobles, and especially hidalgos, who could not afford the equipment required to serve as cavalrymen, found themselves serving in the ranks of the infantry as a necessity to escape poverty. A veteran and hidalgo, Diego Nuñez Alba wrote that “some began to arrive to the wars not to live a military life or gain honor in them, but to gather some money to return home with.”69 The noble Alonso Enríquez de Guzmán

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was completely destitute, “up to the point that I remained only with [my] pants and doublet, and was forced to take a pike and set out for war.”70 The possibility of escaping personal or financial misfortunes remained a prevalent motivation for joining the army throughout Europe. Commynes commented on the thousands of Swiss troops who arrived at the siege of Novara in 1495, claiming that many came motivated by “avarice and their great poverty.”71 Nevertheless, military service became especially attractive for thousands of Swiss men who found themselves unemployed and chose to volunteer or were called upon to serve by the central authorities, who themselves had to contend with lucrative contracts with the French monarchy.72 This was also the case in the lands of the Holy Roman Empire, where the economy could not sustain the steady population growth and drove many ablebodied men to join the army to make a living. Considering the fact that the potential wage of an infantry soldier could easily surpass that of a general laborer and generally amount to that of an artisan, it seems almost natural and plausible for men who could not find secure employment to seek a recruiter to the army.73 In a woodcut by Niklas Stör from the 1530s portraying a cobbler and tailor in some sort of conversation, the cobbler exclaims: “May shoemaking go to the Devil / I’ve had to suffer too long / Before making a week’s wage / However, things are different over there / I want to take up something else / And go wandering in a doublet and trousers / To see if I can’t earn some money in the war / I’ll leave this place like all the other good fellows.”74 The tailor answers: “Stay, good fellow, I want to go with you / What has happened to you is my fate too / I must sit long hours for little pay / With which I can hardly survive / Therefore I must take up something else / And start sewing with a hop pole / in the open field to the sound of pipes and drums / And see if I can’t earn a little money there.”75 In the economic and political climate of sixteenth-century Europe, there were more than enough socially “normative” men to fill the ranks of the armies. The unpredictability of sixteenth-century soldiers was a legitimate result of the potentially horrific conditions of service in early modern European armies, which remained generally similar to those of medieval armies. As was previously discussed, some of the men who sought military service and war in general did it for political and social gains and achievements. The perception of the strong link between war and social status could often affect strategic and tactical thinking. This was certainly the case in the English campaigns in France in the first half of the sixteenth century as part of the grand strategic treaties between Henry VIII and the emperor against their main rival, France: “Battle was the greatest test of honor. The dominance of pitched battles in European warfare between 1450 and 1530 sprang largely from dominance of chivalric aspirations in the military mind. This could give English strategy an appearance of aimlessness, as armies roamed France offering battle.”76 Nobles, knights, and adventurers of all nationalities sought war to enhance their reputation and honor and perhaps enjoy the more peripheral prizes of booty and money.

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But, for most of those who joined the army because of deeper financial, professional, and personal difficulties, it quickly became clear that they simply had made a bad deal. First, wages were always in arrears, and soldiers could very rarely expect to receive what they were owed. At times, the delays in payments were simply absurd. After the Battle of Pavia, the emperor owed his Spanish infantry companies more than a year’s worth of back pay, totaling a staggering amount of almost 200,000 ducats.77 Generals and officers had to turn to creative problem solving when their soldiers threatened to abandon the campaign. The imperial general Antonio de Leyva seized and melted golden artifacts from churches and monasteries to mint coins and pay his Spanish and German troops while they were besieged by a French army during the winter of 1524–1525.78 Leyva’s complaints to the emperor a decade later as he was attempting to hold his ground against French incursions in Lombardy with Spanish and German troops were characteristic of the vast majority of the correspondence between generals and the administrative centers of their employers: money was extremely scarce, and wages had to be paid.79 In February 1500, a Swiss force of 3,500 soldiers in Lombardy demanded “payment for a month which is owed to them; when they were refused, they said that there remained the payment of six weeks.”80 During skirmishes with French forces around Lugano in 1501, the Swiss did not want to confront the French, stressing that “they did not come to fight [King Louis XII], but only to demand their payment, which they were due from the time Charles VIII went on his voyage to Naples, to which they had to go without being paid, and now that [Ludovico Sforza] was caught, they were still owed the rest of the pay.”81 Soldiers in the sixteenth century were accustomed to not being paid for periods from weeks to months and even years. The soldiers were also expected to participate to some extent in the general expenses of supplies and lodgings. More often than not, they received their back pay only after some of these expenses had been deducted from the overall amount. The company of the Spanish soldier Martin García Cerezeda was stationed in Sicily in 1534, and its members received their back pay only after the expenses for food and lodgings had been deducted. Cerezeda lamented that “to say the truth, the commissioner [of the Viceroy of Sicily] sold [the] food very expensively.”82 Soldiers were quite aware that their wages did not always include daily expenses for supplies and that they would have to purchase them on their own, considering the general inability of the military system to provide them with these and other necessities. The soldiers were also helpless against fraudulent behavior on the part of their officers and especially during the musters. In a time when the ability to identify each and every soldier was difficult, especially during and after long campaigns that could bring about significant physical changes, some captains could make use of these limitations to secure funds for more soldiers than were actually available to them. During a muster in Asti in 1537, Alfonso d’Avalos, marchese del Vasto, captain general of the imperial army, warned his Spanish captains “not to pass in the muster neither young boys as soldiers, nor any kind of soldier other

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than those they had in their companies, for they will be gravely punished.” In 1538, del Vasto wrote to the emperor that some captains “continually seized many wages passing young boys, foreigners and men who were not permanent in the army, to have the wages for themselves, and this is widely known.”83 For even the most powerful European princes, the Italian Wars demanded that they stretch their logistical and financial capabilities and institutions over their limits. Although disease and hunger could and often did affect every man, woman, and child in medieval and early modern Europe, regardless of military service, these potential predicaments were further and more substantially highlighted in the ranks of the European armies. The hordes of soldiers who flocked to Italy to find financial relief were far more often than not greatly disappointed, considering that they might not even be able to survive the unbearable conditions of service. Indeed, military service can offer some of the harshest physical and mental hardships even in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The horrors of two world wars and many smaller conflicts throughout the second half of the twentieth century produced a cornucopia of horrific images of battlefield conditions of soldiers serving in the armies of the greatest military empires in history. Even smaller and more limited conflicts around the world could easily produce significant physical and mental burdens on combatants. Nevertheless, and unlike the vast majority of soldiers in armies during the past half century or so, soldiers in medieval and early modern Europe were threatened by death from disease and starvation to a far greater extent than actual fighting—a reality, one must admit, that remained relevant deep into the nineteenth century. The far more reliable statistics from the American Civil War and the Crimean War, to name only two of the more conspicuous examples, clearly demonstrate these potential dangers. Many of the soldiers of the Italian Wars could find themselves far from home, and, although they were troubled by many of the most mundane difficulties that have affected soldiers throughout history, they were also greatly affected by the usual presence of death long before pikes and guns were even deployed. The Spanish soldier Diego Nuñez Alba wrote: Only the miserable soldier arrives tired of having walked all day on foot and armed, at times being cooked by the summer sun, at others wallowing in the mud up to his knees with the rains, winds and snows of winter, and having no other shelter than a simple fabric, with which he has to construct and dismantle his home every day. Then, having nothing to eat, or even the time to look for food, he is ordered to freeze in sentry duty when he really should rest. On the one hand, the sudden alarms every hour cause him fear, and on the other hand, exhaustion wraps him in tiredness and puts his life and honor in danger. A year passes by without a single calm night and a month without being able to take off his clothes.84 In Don Quixote, Cervantes probably conveyed his own experience of soldiering when he wrote that “at times [the soldier’s] nakedness was so great, that a

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slashed jerkin served him as uniform and shirt, and in the middle of winter he is used to defending himself from the harshness of the climate, being out in the open, solely with the breath of his mouth, which as it comes out of an empty place, I have learned that it must come out cold, contrary to the law of nature.”85 Similar and more specific testimonies abound. In 1510, the Viceroy of Naples, Hugo de Moncada, reported to King Ferdinand that a group of Spanish soldiers returning from Africa to Sicily were in such horrific condition “that it was a pity to see them.”86 A force of about 2,000 Spaniards who were recruited in northern Spain and marched to Italy in 1528 were, according to Paolo Giovio, “recruited more by necessity and hastily, than with any diligence, and for the most part they were not only without arms, but a little less than naked, with a mean frock on and wearing shoes made of ropes.”87 Many modern soldiers could still understand and empathize with some of these memories and references. Nevertheless, conditions could become far harsher and often deadly. During the siege of Milan in 1521, the severe weather hit the besieging French army so hard that “such a great quantity of the thickest snow covered the [French] lodgings that not only the beasts but even the exhausted men died of the cold and of want of everything.”88 Unlike their modern counterparts, soldiers in early modern Europe could have easily found themselves in circumstances where a combination of bad climate and lack of clothing led to widespread mortality. As the desperate withdrawal of the French army from Russia in 1812 and a similar withdrawal of the German forces in 1941 clearly demonstrated, the effects of extreme weather remained relevant to some extent long after the sixteenth century.89 It seems, though, that the combination of extreme climate and an always looming lack of food and water had made these circumstances especially severe in early modern Europe. Even when they were in some of the most opulent lands in Europe, soldiers could easily find themselves with nothing to eat, and they often had to resort to extraordinary measures to avoid starvation. Foraging, theft, and resourcefulness were often the only ways to find anything to eat.90 On many occasions, the soldiers simply ate whatever they could find. Besieged in Lecco in 1528 by a French force, the Spanish soldiers experienced “very strict necessity and hunger, eating meat of horses, mice and cats, up to eating the meat of dogs.” The Spanish soldier Cerezeda felt obliged to stress that “certainly, I swear that I ate [meat] of other animals not used to be eaten.”91 Almost unimaginable to most of their modern counterparts, soldiers in the sixteenth century could literally and often quite easily starve to death. Adding to these already dangerous circumstances was the deadliest scourge of all, disease. Preceding the major developments in medicine during the twentieth century and especially the widespread use of antibiotics, cyclical episodes of mass deaths from disease were relatively common in Europe. Although, for the most part, modern historians find it difficult to accurately identify the exact causes of these episodes, it is most likely that medieval and early modern Europeans did not find the permanently impending disastrous effects of mass mortality from disease as conspicuous and to some extent unimaginable as most

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modern people do. Mostly left to fend for themselves with little effective external assistance, the immune systems of early modern soldiers had to endure the aggravating circumstances of starvation and the often appalling sanitary conditions of military camps and masses of men, which easily became advantageous breeding grounds for myriad highly contagious diseases. Each time the circumstances made it imperative for a military force to stop, the poor sanitary conditions, combined with rats, fleas, and lack of nutrition, would culminate in what contemporaries termed “plague” or simply “pestilence.” Dysentery, typhus, and typhoid fever were the most obvious culprits, although outbreaks of the actual bubonic plague could have been the main reason. The Sack of Rome in 1527 brought about a grim reality to the soldiers and inhabitants of the city, all of whom had to contend with the repercussions of the bloody massacre and lack of supplies needed to feed both soldiers and citizens.92 As time progressed, it was clear that the masses of dead bodies of humans and animals were “certainly bringing about the rise of the plague.”93 Jacopo Buonaparte, an adviser to Pope Clement VII, lamented that “[t]here was no street in Rome that wasn’t filled with plague-stricken dead or dying, and the sick who invoked a great cry for death to put them out of their suffering.”94 A few weeks after the initial conquest of the city, “the pestilence was so severe, that there [wasn’t] a day on which there [weren’t] nearly 200 dead.”95 Still, a few weeks later, the imperial soldiers were ready to leave the city, despite fears of a besieging papal army and loss of money and booty, “for every day an infinite [number] of them [were] dying, for the pestilence in this city is very great, that it is said that more than 700 and 800 men die of it each day, and by God it was said that on some days the number surpassed 1,000.”96 The German captain Sebastian Schertlin von Burtenbach mentioned that thousands of soldiers died of disease because all the bodies of the dead could not be buried.97 Even if exaggerated, these reports portray the grim reality of the consequences of a comprehensive sack. A careful examination of the available numbers demonstrates that between 25 and 40 percent of the imperial army led by Charles III, duc de Bourbon, to Rome in May died from hunger but more likely from disease.98 The French army, made of Swiss and French soldiers, that besieged the imperial army in Naples in 1528 under Odet de Foix, vicomte de Lautrec, was wiped out by disease. Lautrec’s attempt to divert the water supplies to the besieged city most likely created excellent marshy conditions for what appeared to be a dysentery or typhus outbreak. Having arrived in Naples in April, by July “the soldiers [laid] around half dead in their tents, all of them sick.”99 After Lautrec himself died of the pestilence, his army scattered, and groups of soldiers made their way north, harassed and assaulted by imperial soldiers and local inhabitants. Out of about 20,000 soldiers who arrived in April, fewer than a thousand found their way back to Rome. Lautrec’s massive army was almost completely decimated by disease, starvation, and violence.100 Charles V’s ambitious invasion of Provence in the summer of 1536 was just as calamitous. Amassing a force of about 40,000 soldiers, most of whom were German and the rest Spanish and Italian, he led the army from Italy in July

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only to return broken and decimated in October. Although Charles V managed to lead his army all the way to Marseille, difficulties in supplying the army and especially employing a French scorched earth policy led to hunger and disease from the outset. In August, the emperor himself acknowledged that “it was necessary to go far away and with considerable escort forces to search for supplies and it went so far that a good part of this army had no bread or meat to eat for a few days.”101 Even the emperor’s entourage suffered from the scarcity of supplies, one of them lamenting that “we entered [Provence] eating pheasants, and left gnawing roots.”102 The soldiers were, as usual, the most desperate. General mentions of their calamity appear in several works,103 but some of the French military officers gave more dramatic, albeit exaggerated, accounts of this calamity. Martin du Bellay wrote: From Aix to Frejus, where the Emperor, upon his arrival, had lodged his camp, all the roads were in all directions littered with sick and dead [soldiers], harnesses, lances, pikes, arquebuses and other weapons, and abandoned horses that could not sustain themselves. You would have seen men and horses all amass in a heap among each other, both the one and the other, [and] the dying lying among the dead, made such a horrible and pitiful spectacle, that it was miserable to the persistent and obstinate enemies; and anyone who has seen the desolation, could not reckon it to be lesser than that described by Josephus [Flavius] in the destruction of Jerusalem, and Thucydides in the Peloponnesian Wars.104 Blaise de Monluc and his troops managed to destroy several mills along the journey of the imperial army and “put the emperor’s camp in such a great necessity that they ate the wheat grounded as the Turks eat it. And the grapes that they ate put their camp in such a great disorder of sickness and mortality, especially among the Germans, that I think that not a thousand returned to their country.”105 The results were horrific, as only half of the massive army that left Italy in July returned to the vicinity of Genoa in October, without having fought a single pitched battle or taken part in any particularly long siege.106 This grim reality was further highlighted on sea voyages. Portuguese and Spanish excursions to the shores of Africa and later to the Americas revealed the new developments in seafaring and combat. Following long centuries of using the variety of dependable galleys for commerce and naval campaigns in and around the Mediterranean, Europeans were drawn to the Atlantic, first from Iberia and later from all around the Continent. The beginning of the Age of Sail brought to the fore multidecked ships, with massive masts and riggings that, compared to earlier ships, could more easily carry and handle gunpowder weapons and larger amounts of crew and cargo. The carracks, galleons, and caravels that were replacing the galleys and galleasses were far better equipped to withstand the requirements of oceanic travels to the New World and were also employed in the

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naval battlefields of early modern Europe, which saw considerable developments and changes in the appearance and overall abilities of ships.107 The one thing that did not significantly change was the experience of traveling in these new, massive ships. Even though the ships were sturdier than their predecessors, seafaring was still heavily dependent on the general climate and conditions of the sea, and whoever chose to send his soldiers and supplies by ship risked its unpredictability. The risk of disease and starvation aboard these ships was as high as it was on land, and traveling by ship could prove to be a terrifying and dangerous experience. For the unaccustomed traveler, these conditions could be unbearable: Primarily, the ship is a very narrow and strong prison from which no one can escape though he has no shackles and chains, and so cruel that it does not differentiate among the prisoners, equally treats and tightens everyone. The narrowness, the suffocation, and heat are extensive … In the ship there is much vomiting and bad temper … There is little appetite [and] the thirst one encounters is incredible, increased by meals of biscuits and salted things … There are countless lice eating the men and the clothes cannot be washed as the sea water ruins them. There is a bad odor … throughout the ship … These and other travails are very common in a ship, but we suffer more for being very unaccustomed to them.108 Plans always had to change, depending on the winds, and, more dangerously, the risk of getting lost at sea or losing one’s life in a wrecked ship was disturbingly high. In October 1535, a carrack carrying German soldiers was damaged as it approached land and finally smashed by the waves. Only 17 soldiers and 13 sailors out of hundreds were saved.109 These relatively small-scale and common accidents could become complete strategic disasters when entire fleets were involved. As a response to the excursions of Hayreddin Barbarossa to the Ionian and Aegean seas in 1537, Pope Paul III headed the creation of a Holy League, made up of Venice, Mantua, and Genoa, assisted by Spain and Portugal, to push these attempts back. The Christian fleet, commanded by the Genoese admiral Andrea d’Oria, was badly defeated near Preveza in September 1538, with dozens of ships lost or captured by the Ottomans, and thousands of Italian and Spanish infantry soldiers taken as prisoners or killed.110 The emperor himself learned a horrific lesson in his attempt to take Algiers in 1541. Rain, winds, and resistance by enemy forces lost the emperor almost a third of his fleet and men before he had to retreat.111 While these disasters were overshadowed to some extent by successes—from the great victory in Tunis in 1535 and the naval Battle of Lepanto in 1571—contemporaries were quite aware of the treacherous conditions of sea voyage and its potential dangers. The soldiers who did manage to survive these calamities often found themselves returning home with nothing to show for their travails. Diego Nuñez Alba mentions in his Diálogos that “many times I could have returned home prosperous and I never have, and now I return home poor.”112 As was already

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mentioned, Alba was lucky enough to be able to attempt to draw the attention of his social superiors to his plight as a poor veteran by publishing a book, but he was the exception to the rule. The soldier returning home with no more and often less than what he joined the army with was a common issue for the hordes of professional soldiers in the sixteenth century. The returning soldier in Urs Graf’s magnificent print has a small sack hanging from his sword that reads: “I have gambled all my money away” (“Al mein Gelt verspilt”). Both these testimonies attest to the fact that the soldiers were often responsible for their financial calamities when returning home. Adding to the fact that they received very little (if any) pay, had to participate in the purchasing of at least some of their supplies and ammunition, and had to contend with generally unsupervised officers and clerks, many of the soldiers spent their money on gambling, drinking, whoring, and at times the buying of fancy clothes and other garments. The Spanish maestre de campo Francisco de Valdéz claimed that “for the most part soldiers waste their time on gambling.”113 The moral and practical troubles with gambling also appeared in more formal decrees, as was the case with the 1503 Great Ordinance in which Fernando and Isabel were quite clear: “[W]e [the Catholic Monarchs] order that neither [soldiers] nor their servants are allowed to gamble for money, foul, meat, fish, wine nor any other thing, whether in small or large amount, with games of dice, tables and cards.”114 The soldiery’s tendency for overindulgence in gambling is also apparent in Jost Amman’s wonderful print of landsknechts playing cards and the potential violence that such activities could and did produce. German mercenaries and gambling went hand in hand to such an extent that Friedrich Blau, in his 1882 work on the landsknechts, stressed that there still was a certain kind of card game that is actually named “landsknecht,” or rather lansquenet according to the French pronunciation.115 Many of these men, finding themselves far away from home and under the physical and mental pressures of military life, exhibited very little personal and financial responsibility, earning much of their detractors’ bias. To be sure, the soldiers of the Italian Wars could find themselves with significant amounts of money and booty following the many potential orgies of violence and theft that constituted a natural part of medieval and early modern warfare. While the laws of war were never really codified in any meaningful way, traditional and unwritten rules did exist. The Spanish jurist Francisco de Vitoria discussed the issue of violence against enemies in his De Indiis relectio posterior, sive de iure belli, first published in 1557. According to Vitoria, “There is no doubt that everything taken in a just war … becomes [property] of the occupiers.”116 Discussing the fate of conquered cities, Vitoria added that “[the sacking of cities] is not in itself illicit if it is necessary for the waging of war, whether to strike terror into the enemy or to inflame the passions of the soldiers … It is likewise permissible to set fire to a city when there are reasonable grounds for doing so.”117 Where violence was concerned, Vitoria claimed that “[t]herefore, handing over a Christian city [to the troops] to plunder is unjust without it being absolutely necessary and with the greatest cause. But if,

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nevertheless, the necessity of war demands it, it is not unlawful, even if the soldiers will commit terrible acts.”118 While these conventions mostly pertained to the extraordinary circumstances that the Europeans encountered in the New World, many of them had already been common in Europe for centuries; a city that had to be taken by force was doomed to several days of violent sacking. And, indeed, for the generals who had to contend with the harsh conditions of their troops and their inability to provide them a constant supply of money and food, subjecting the local population to their troops was better than nothing. This was the case with the Spanish soldiers in Prato in 1512, to whom Ramón de Cardona “offered … two alternatives to choose from—either … to die of hunger and remain shameful, or, being the valiant men they are, to assault the city.”119 Even after his troops sacked Como in 1521, despite his order to avoid it, Pescara chose not to reprimand his already deprived soldiers, for whom he had no money to pay nor supplies to provide.120 Many blamed Bourbon for preventing his troops from scattering and mutinying by promising them the prizes of Florence and then Rome.121 The latter is perhaps an extreme example, but generals did tend to look the other way if it meant that their forces could maintain a semblance of an army during campaigns. Even when generals attempted to dissuade their troops from sacking a city because of strategic or political interests, they could find themselves dealing with violent insubordination. When Como surrendered to Pescara in 1521, his troops, “greedy for booty,” went on “lamenting with seditious words … that the city can still be easily taken and for that reason be sacked.”122 Should these soldiers, “half dead from want [of victuals] and hunger, and miserable from lack of pay, remain without some comfort of booty?”123 Regardless of Pescara’s orders, the Spaniards did storm and sack the city, Pescara having very limited leverage to prevent them from doing so. Considering the chronic lack of means to pay them and the generally harsh conditions of service, most generals could barely handle these hordes of soldiers who joined the army for the mere chance of returning home with some money in their pockets. The violent sacks often ended with many of the soldiers carrying significant amounts of booty and numbers of hostages for ransom. Following a sack, armies could appear as carnivalesque parades or festivals, rather than men taking part in military actions. For many of the soldiers, these events turned into markets of exchange where their hostages and their belongings became commodities to be bought and sold. Some of the images portrayed in contemporary sources are truly surreal. During the sack of Prato in 1512, “all those who remained alive were taken prisoners, men, women, laymen [and] churchmen.”124 The Spaniards’ work was surprisingly meticulous, and “whoever had personal property or inheritance was constrained to sell it to afford the ransom, and remained stripped and deprived of any asset, and was reduced to beg for money.”125 Some of the Spanish soldiers carried their booty to Florence in an attempt to sell their newly acquired spoils to the shocked Florentines, who were spared the same fate after surrendering.126 When the Spaniards left the city in September, they took with them a column of

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hundreds of miserable Pratese who could not ransom themselves and were exposed to further torture and even death.127 The extraordinary events in Rome in 1527 further highlight the soldiers’ perception of their sudden potential for enrichment. Nothing nor anyone was exempt from theft and violence: All the Spaniards and Germans who resided in Rome, whether they were prelates, officials or courtesans, were robbed and taken prisoners by the Spanish soldiers themselves, and even treated worse than the others; and even [Nicolas] Perrenot [de Granvelle], a secretary of the emperor and a man of the highest authority, was taken prisoner and ransomed for 2,000 ducats. In general, there is no house in Rome, neither of cardinals or others, no monasteries or churches, whether of Romans or of foreigners, neither big nor small, that was not sacked … Cardinals, bishops, priests, old friars … were all tortured in heinous methods.128 As Giovio’s earlier comment attests, the soldiers, while indeed brutally violent, found themselves suddenly in completely reversed circumstances, from starving, wretched, and underpaid to unimaginably rich (from their perspective, of course) and overindulgent. This sudden reversal of circumstances could have easily led to unnecessary overkill. It is not that these soldiers could not perform horrific displays of violence, regardless of any extreme conditions of service. As was recently examined by Stephen Bowd in his Renaissance Mass Murder, violence of soldiers toward the local population in Italy was as severe and widespread as ever.129 Nevertheless, we will never know whether better conditions of service or even regular payment of their wages could have prevented much of this violence committed by soldiers who had to suffer deprivation that could easily surpass that of the general population. When the imperial army marched toward Rome, a report to the emperor stated that, “if [the pope] would hand 300,000 ducats, this army would turn back, [but] would not go one step backwards for anything less than that.”130 While potentially brutal and overly anxious to commit atrocities, the soldiers could also be dissuaded by the most basic thing promised to and expected by them when joining the army: their deserved payment for their services. Under these often dramatic circumstances, it seems quite odd that we still perceive these soldiers as being generally unpredictable and unreliable simply because they were mercenaries or professionals. One can easily understand the frustration of their officers and generals who had to deal with impossibly unpredictable circumstances. Nevertheless, from the perspective of modern historians, it is obvious that the rise of professionalism between around 1450 and 1550 did not go hand in hand with the development of more efficient administrative institutions that could handle the demands of these “new” soldiers. Since the expectation for any sort of compensation, and especially the most basic one in the form of wages, was very often unrealistic, the soldiers of the Italian Wars

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had to resort to more dramatic actions to make their employers keep their side of the (obviously bad) bargain of joining the army in the first place. Insubordination in fighting forces was and is nothing new. When soldiers throughout history deemed their conditions of service, the tactical or strategic objectives, or even their mental state unacceptable, they refused to obey orders. Even the French citizen soldiers on the Western Front in 1917 had their limits.131 And, indeed, the soldiers of the Italian Wars spent a significant amount of their time taking part in some form of insubordination—from ad hoc reluctance to obey specific orders to all-out and widespread mutinies. The foremost of their grievances were also the most fundamental: lack of pay and harsh conditions of service. While many of the soldiers were probably aware of what they were getting themselves into, when conditions became too pressing, they often spoke up and acted on their grievances. Having performed their duty and tasks, they naturally demanded that their employers keep their side of the bargain. The sources present a similar pattern when describing these acts of insubordination. After the capture of Ludovico Sforza in 1500, some of Louis XII’s Swiss soldiers, apparently Grisons, “all wanted to be paid [what’s owed to them] in golden écus … and be paid one month in advance for the capturing of [Ludovico Sforza].”132 When the administrators told them that their demands were unreasonable and they would receive what was owed to them at a more appropriate time, the soldiers replied that “they will have that which they demand either by love or by force.”133 After that, a force of one hundred armed soldiers made their way to the lodgings of the bailli of Dijon, commander of the king’s Swiss guard, “with the intention of killing.”134 They could not be stopped by a force of other soldiers from the Schwyz canton, who chose to wait for their wages, and they assaulted the lodgings, attempting to force the door open “with kicks and halberds.”135 The frightened French who were locked in the lodgings attempted to flee, but, “at last, [the attackers] caught the bailli and gave him such a beating to the nose and to the head, that he fell down to the ground. In the end, it was conducted so badly and he was in such condition, that he barely had any hair left on his head.”136 Having no other choice, “the Swiss received their money, and, to keep them content, they were all paid with golden écus.”137 They could now proceed, “well paid, but [still] unhappy.”138 As surreal as these images would appear to a modern military man or woman, violent insubordination was pretty much the norm for the professional soldiers of the Italian Wars, regardless of national affiliation. On their way to Rome, under the command of the Duke of Bourbon, the imperial soldiers— mostly Germans and the rest Italians and Spaniards—were aware that the money owed to them for their wages would not come from their generals, so they threatened Pope Clement VII to pay them to avoid an assault on Rome. The threat did not have any appreciable effect, so they decided to take action. Georg von Frundsberg’s clerk Adam Reissner (d. c.1575), who published the German captain’s biography in 1568, was a witness: “[T]he Spaniards and Italians started a riot (Auffruhr) in the night in front of [Bourbon’s lodging]. They stood in order and together fired large shells with their cannon.”139 As respected

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as Bourbon was, the soldiers disregarded his military and social status as “they ran through his lodgings and plundered all his clothes and whatever he had, killing a fine servant of his, and wanted to receive all of their wages.”140 Actions of this sort would usually spread like wildfire, and “[t]he Spaniards also motivated the Germans to join the riot, [and] they all ran, shouted and said that they will not go further without wages.”141 Greatly affected by prolonged bitterness and inflamed by the events, the Germans “sought to beat their colonels and captains to death.”142 The entreaties of their captains and of Frundsberg himself seemed to be the only reason that Bourbon was not harmed. Regardless of Reissner’s apparent attempt to shift the blame to the Spaniards, the German landsknechts proved to be as eager for violence as any other nation in the face of extreme necessity. The imperial soldiers marching to Rome in 1527 were no victims and indeed were ready and willing to wreak havoc on their way from Lombardy, but, regardless of the pillage and theft that apparently took place, the imperial and Spanish military administrations could not provide this force of about 20,000 men with even basic conditions for military service. When this army arrived at the walls of Rome in May 1527, the men were starving, ragged, and severely underpaid.143 As previously mentioned, the only way Bourbon and his accompanying generals were able to maintain this army intact was with clear promises for further prizes in Florence and, when that plan could not be implemented, in Rome. Even during the height of the inflamed violence, all these soldiers wanted was their owed wages. The Spanish soldiers were as prone to mutiny as any other nation in the armies of the Italian Wars. Wages were almost always the main grievance or at least the main reason presented as the cause for the mutiny. In Lombardy in 1538, “all the [Spanish] infantry soldiers … gathered together after hearing about the truce [in Nice in 1538] to demand the wages that were owed to them.”144 The same happened in Sicily a few months later as the deprived Spaniards addressed the Viceroy of Naples, Ferrante Gonzaga, and wrote that “we are determined in wanting to die rather than consent to such great evil, whereby all of us in one voice say that the first thing we demand is to be paid what’s owed to us.”145 As in the case of their Swiss and German counterparts, violence quickly became part of the action. In Lombardy in 1538, “living off plunder, [the soldiers] shamelessly and cruelly spoiled the lands of this most fertile and pleasant region, molesting and robbing the peasants.”146 A messenger who was sent to the mutineers in Sicily in 1538 to ask them to return to the main camp was violently assaulted and killed.147 The Spanish soldiers were pacified only after having received at least a part of their owed wages. The soldiers’ perception of their professionalism was not always manifested in insubordination. Often, they simply acted in a way reminiscent of contracted laborers who expected to receive what they were owed, even at times when their employer was unsatisfied with their performance or circumstances prevented them from completing their mission. During an attempt to reduce the castle of Puente de la Reyna in the Kingdom of Navarre in 1512 in the face of

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Castilian aggression, Pierre de Terrail, seigneur de Bayard, was entrusted with a mission alongside Englishman Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, who was captain general of several thousand landsknechts in French employment. Having breached the wall, Bayard ordered his troops to charge the castle, but the Germans demanded, as per their contracts, double pay for such an assault. Bayard, knowing of no such regulation but seeking a swift termination of the affair, promised the soldiers payment after the assault. The soldiers were reluctant to agree, so Bayard took the castle with other forces that were available to him. Following the successful assault and taking of the town, Bayard was amazed to encounter messengers from the German infantry soldiers demanding their double pay since the castle had been taken; the fact that Bayard could not come to terms with them and that they did not participate in the assault did not interest them one bit. Bayard’s personal mounted guards were the only thing capable of quieting the furious Germans, who were eventually pacified.148 The description of the event in Bayard’s biography conveys the deep sense of disbelief of Bayard and his men in the face of such audacity and what they saw as sheer insolence. How could one sustain a military campaign under these circumstances? Generals simply had no choice but to deal with these violent outbursts, regardless of how frustrated or helpless they were. With only the most basic forms of standing armies, accompanied by hordes of mercenaries to support them, and with very limited institutional abilities to maintain them in any satisfactory way, the conditions of instability and unpredictability became the only possible reality. As is apparent in the previously cited examples, the generals, colonels, and captains (the latter being prone to taking direct part in these actions) had to negotiate with the mutineers to persuade them to return to service, knowing quite well that they were unable to force them back or punish them all.149 This helplessness became even more pronounced when, more often than not, the veterans—the most important part of these armies—were the ones igniting and leading the mutinies.150 Unimaginable in modern military systems, which employ “formal codifications imposed through a military hierarchy,” the emerging professional armies of the sixteenth century viewed the dynamics of insubordination in a much more fluid and dynamic way. This did not mean that everyday discipline could not be draconian and brutal; soldiers were always exposed to potentially horrific corporal punishments and even execution.151 These peculiar circumstances did, however, give different meaning to acts of mutiny and insubordination. The Swiss, German, Spanish, and Italian soldiers of the Italian Wars did not mutiny in any modern sense of the word. Although these soldiers did not take part in any truly professional military systems that were maintained by fully integrated states, the idea of a basic bargain was conveyed through centuries of employment of mercenary forces throughout Europe. The main difference was that now, in the first half of the sixteenth century, the majority of soldiers were professionals and mercenaries, rather than feudal levies of any kind. With very limited abilities to maintain such forces, what would appear to a modern viewer as a blatant disregard for military conventions and hierarchies was seen by the soldiers themselves

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as something more reminiscent of a modern strike. Many of them joined the army for regular wages, many of them seldom received all of their deserved wages in full and on time, and many of them felt the injustice embedded in the conducting of the “business of war.” Therefore, when push came to shove and conditions became unbearable or unreasonable, they simply refused to provide more labor for little or no compensation. They had no revolutionary objectives, nor did they pose any serious threat to the military system and its conventions. More similar to modern labor unions than any military force, the soldiers wanted their employers to keep their side of the bargain and perhaps, although more rarely, to provide better conditions of service. Once a new “bargain” had been struck, the soldiers returned to “work,” until the next frustrated eruption. Sixteenth-century generals perceived these events quite differently from the way modern generals would. Modern military officers, who take part in highly organized and institutionalized military systems, would see these mass acts of insubordination as being shocking and perhaps creating irreversible damage to the strictly hierarchical systems under their command. In contrast, sixteenthcentury generals, while greatly annoyed and frustrated, considered these acts as yet another barely surmountable difficulty in the already extraordinarily unpredictable circumstances of early modern warfare and the transitional systems that accompanied it. While the generals could certainly choose to punish the ringleaders of these mutinies, the vast majority of these events ended up with the soldiers’ grievances being accommodated to a certain extent and the campaign continuing as planned. To be sure, mutinies of generally and relatively small groups of soldiers did and still do occur in even the most professional modern armies and for myriad reasons. Nevertheless, today, one can only imagine the political, social, and military implications of a mutiny of significant parts of entire armies, events that usually end up in revolutions or coups d’état whereby the armed forces pick sides and take control of the state or its leaders. These mass acts of insubordination were indeed accompanied by violence against officers, generals, and the local population. Unlike most modern professional strikes, the soldiers rarely settled for theatrical demonstrations accompanied by low-intensity violence; they could and did rob, injure, kill, and destroy to gain leverage but also simply because they could. On the one hand, they were certainly not the classically portrayed poor laborers fighting solely for their rights against corporate greed and injustice. Most of the violence that occurred was overkill and completely unnecessary to achieve any of their aims. On the other hand, these men were not the morally corrupt, brutish, and lowly “scum of the earth” who wreaked havoc only because they could, as many contemporary and modern scholars portray them. The view of these men as a “necessary evil” could certainly emerge through the prisms of early modern humanist and modern republican ideals, but such portrayals manage only to obscure what appeared to be circumstances that are far more complex and fascinating. These perceptions become even more instructive when the actual martial abilities of these soldiers are taken into consideration.

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Notes 1 Niccolò Machiavelli, Arte della guerra e scritti politici minori, ed. Sergio Bertelli (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1961), 344. 2 Francesco Guicciardini, Storia d’Italia (Milan: Garzanti, 2006), vol. 3, 1577. 3 Paolo Giovio, La vita di Consalvo Fernando di Cordova detto il Gran Capitano (Venice: Lodovico di Avanzi, 1557), 17. 4 David Kunzle, From Criminal to Courtier: The Soldier in Netherlandish Art, 1550–1672 (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 47. 5 A.H.T. Levi, ed., Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 27 (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1986), 282–3. 6 Ludwig Enders, ed., Johann Eberlin von Günzburg: Sämtliche Schriften, vol. 3 (Halle a.S: Max Niemeyer, 1902), 150. 7 Keith Moxey, “Mercenary Warriors and the ‘Rod of God,’” in Peasants, Warriors and Wives: Popular Imagery in the Reformation, ed. Keith Moxey (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1989), 93. 8 Ibid., 83, 86. 9 Ibid., 86–7. 10 Ibid., 81–2. 11 Francesco Guicciardini, Storia d’Italia, vol. 2 (Milan: Garzanti, 2006), 1078. 12 Machiavelli, Arte della Guerra, 82. 13 Francis R. Packard, Life and Times of Ambroise Paré (1510–1590) (New York: Paul B. Hoeber, 1921), 203. 14 Pierre Bourdeille, seigneur de Brantôm, Oeuvres complètes, ed. Ludovic Lalanne, vol. 6 (Paris: Renouard, 1873), 224. 15 For Charles V’s reforms, see Philippe Contamine, Guerre, état et société à la fin du moyen âge: Études sur les armées des rois de France, 1337–1494 (Paris: Mouton, 1972), 135–206. 16 Philippe de Mézières, Le songe du vieil pèlerin, ed. G.W. Coopland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 383. Mézières was an experienced soldier and wrote in the context of French successes under Charles V following the difficult first two decades of the Hundred Years’ War. 17 Louis-Georges de Bréquigny, ed., Ordonnances des rois de France de la troisième race, vol. 14 (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1790), 1. 18 Emile Levasseur, ed., Ordonnances des rois de France, règne de Francois Ier, vol. 7 (Paris: Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques, 1902), 137–8. 19 Paolo Giovio, La prima parte delle historie del suo tempo di Mons. Paolo Giovio Vescovo di Nocera (Venice: Domenico de’ Farri, 1555): “si stupi veggendo i battaglioni de gli Suizzeri.” 20 Elena Lourie, “A Society Organized for War: Medieval Spain,” Past & Present 35 (1966): 54–76. Lourie closes her argument by claiming that “it was this prolonged and complex conditioning which made it almost inevitable that, once America had been discovered, it should be a handful of Castilians who would undertake the conquest of the New World.” 21 Paul Stewart, “The Santa Hermandad and the First Italian Campaign of Gonzalo de Córdoba, 1495–1498,” Renaissance Quarterly 28:1 (1975): 29–37. The Catholic Monarchs went on to disperse the militias of the Santa Hermandad as part of their continuing efforts to consolidate royal power. 22 More on the sack of Prato in 1512 below. 23 Paolo Giovio, La vita del signor don Fernando d’Avalo marchese di Pescara (Venice: Giovanni de Rossi, 1557), 19v. 24 A comprehensive bibliography on the consolidation of power by the Catholic Monarchs beginning in the 1470s is unnecessary here. General classic studies include John Huxtable Elliot, Imperial Spain, 1469–1716 (London: Penguin, 1990);

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Professional soldiers Henry Arthur Francis Kamen, Spain, 1469–1714: A Society in Conflict (London: Longman, 1983); John Edwards, The Spain of the Catholic Monarchs, 1474–1520 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000). As in the previous note, a comprehensive bibliography seems unnecessary. For general studies on the reigns of these French monarchs, see Paul Murray Kendall, Louis XI: The Universal Spider (London: Cardinal, 1974); Frederic J. Baumgartner, Louis XII (New York: St. Martin Press, 1994); Robert J. Knecht, Francis I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). James D. Tracy, Emperor Charles V, Impresario of War: Campaign Strategy, International Finance and Domestic Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 140. Charles V was perhaps the best example for massive loaning and financial difficulties. See Tracy, Charles V, 50–108. For Henry VIII’s financial difficulties during his 1544 invasion of France, see Mark Charles Fissel, English Warfare, 1511–1642 (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), 14. For the tercios, see especially René Quatrefages, La revolución militar moderna: el crisol español (Madrid: Ministerio de Defensa, 1983), 311–28. For the legions, see David Potter, Renaissance France at War: Armies, Culture and Society, c.1480–1560 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2008), 112–17. For general surveys of mercenaries in medieval armies, see Kenneth Fowler, Medieval Mercenaries: The Great Companies (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001) and specifically for Italy, the reputable Michael E. Mallett, Mercenaries and Their Masters: Warfare in Renaissance Italy (Totowa: Rowman and Littlefield, 1974). See also John France, ed., Mercenaries and Paid Men: The Mercenary Identity in the Middle Ages: Proceedings of a Conference Held at University of Wales, Swansea, 7th-9th July 2005 (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2008). David Parrott, The Business of War: Military Enterprise and Military Revolution in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 8–14. Martín Garcia Cerezeda, Tratado de las campañas y otros acontecimientos de los ejercitos del emperador Carlos V en Italia, Francia, Austria, Berbería y Grecia desde 1521 hasta 1545, vol. 2 (Madrid, 1873), 139–40. Cerezeda took part in this campaign and provides an almost daily itinerary for the movements of the imperial force. See figure in Geoffrey Parker, The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road, 1567–1659, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 24. Others soldiers originated from the Netherlands, Burgundy, Italy, and even the British Isles. As was the case, for example, in Henry VIII’s armies: Fissel, English Warfare, 18. In 1544 Henry paid the Emperor Charles V 20,000 crowns for the service of a thousand Spanish arquebusiers in Scotland. For the nobility in the French armies, see Potter, Renaissance France at War, 67–92. For the nobility in the Spanish armies, see Idan Sherer, Warriors for a Living: The Experience of the Spanish Infantry in the Italian Wars (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 21–2. As many as 15 percent of the Spanish infantry soldiers were poor and adventurous hidalgos who came in search of a livelihood and a way to enhance their reputation. Parrott, The Business of War, 29. Potter, Renaissance France at War, 112–17. The original plan was the creation of seven legions of 6,000 men each commanded by French nobles. They were first employed in the 1536–1537 campaigns in Piedmont, and did so quite well, but their reputation soon faded. For the development of the Swiss military organization and experience, see Carl von Elgger, Kriegswesen und Kriegskunst der schwizerischen Eidgenossen im XIV., XV., und XVI Jahrhundret (Luzern: Solothum, 1873); Walter Schaulfelberger, Der alte Schweizer und sein Krieg: Studien zur Kriegführung, vornehmlich im 15. Jahrhundert (Zürich: Europa Verlag, 1952); Christian Padrutt, Staat und Krieg im Alten Bünden: Studien zur Beziehung zwischen Obrigkeit und Kriegertum in den

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38 39

40 41 42

43 44 45 46

47 48 49 50 51

52 53

54 55

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Drei Bünden vornehmlich im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert (Zürich: Fretz & Wasmuth, 1965); Albert Sennhauser, Hauptmann und Führung im Schweizerkrieg des Mittelalters (Zürich: Fretz & Wasmuth, 1965). Potter, Renaissance France at War, 131. For a short and informative survey of the history of the Swiss cantons in the late Middle Ages, see Roger Sablonier, “The Swiss Confederation,” in The New Cambridge Medieval History, ed. Christopher Allmand, vol. 7 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 645–70. Philipe de Commynes, Mémoires, ed. Émilie Dupont, vol. 2 (Paris: Renouard, 1843), 528. Also referenced in Potter, Renaissance France at War, 125–6. Potter, Renaissance France at War, 127. There is no comprehensive study in English on the landsknechts. For general studies in German, see Hans-Michael Möller, Das Regiment der Landsknechte: Untersuchungen zu Verfassung, Recht und Selbstverstandis in deutchen Söldnerheeren des 16. Jahrhunderts (Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1976); Georg Ortenburg, Waffe und Waffengebrauch im Zeitalter der Landsknechte (Koblenz: Bernard & Graefe Verlag, 1984); Siegfried Fiedler, Kriegswesen und Kriegführung im Zeitalter der Landsknechte (Koblenz: Bernard & Graefe Verlag, 1985); Reinhard Baumann, Landsknechte: ihre Geschichte und Kultur vom späten Mittelalter bis zum Dreißigjährigen Krieg (München: Beck, 1994). For a general survey, see Wilhelm Erben, “Maximilian I. und die Landsknechte,” Historische Zeitschrift 116 (1916): 48–68. Potter, Renaissance France at War, 132. Möller, Das Regiment der Landsknechte, 21–31. From July to December 1526 news had spread throughout northern Italy that Frundsberg was arriving with a massive force—reports varied between 10,000 and 20,000, or 36 and 54 companies—recruited in Germany to relieve the imperial force in Milan. Many mentions of Frundsberg and this force can be found in Marino Sanuto, I diarii, vol. 42 (Venice: Visentini Tipografi Editori, 1895), 24, 121, 131–2, 200, 251, 694, 707; and ibid., vol. 43, 62, 82, 103, 114, 126, 136, 144, 147–8, 156, 158, 171, 199, 200, 203–4, 209, 211, 247, 273. The imperial force under Charles III, duc de Bourbon, had to evacuate the city and began its march to Rome and joined Frundsberg and his soldiers during January and March of 1527. See Sherer, Warriors for a Living, 60. For a general survey of Frundsberg’s career, see Reinhard Baumann, Georg von Frundsberg: Vater der Landsknechte (München: Strumberger, 1991). Potter, Renaissance France at War, 139. Ibid., 136–7. V.L. Bourrilly and F. Vindry, ed., Mémoires de Martin et Guillaume du Bellay, vol. 1 (Paris: Renouard, 1908), 354. Potter, Renaissance France at War, 146. I.A.A. Thompson, “El soldado del imperio: una aproximación al perfil del recluta español en el Siglo de Oro,” Manuscrits: Revista d’Historia Moderna 21 (2003): 24. Thompson suggests that during these nine decades one of every 40 men of the age of 20 served in the army. For this process, see Sherer, Warriors for a Living, 26–37. In the final siege of the city of Granada in 1491, the Catholic Monarchs may have deployed up to 80,000 troops. See Weston F. Cook, “The Cannon Conquest of Nasrid Spain and the End of the Reconquista,” Journal of Military History 57:1 (1993): 68. Jacobo Stuart Fitz-James y Falcó Alba et al., eds., Documentos inéditos para la historia de España, vol. 9 (Madrid: Tip. De Archivos, 1953), 123, Pedto Martir de Angleria to Juan Arcimboldi, archbishop of Milan, August 12, 1489. Cristòfor Despuig, Los col-loquis de la insigne ciutat de Tortosa, ed. Fidel Fita (Barcelona: La Renaixensa, 1877), 46.

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56 “Crónica Manuscrita,” in Crónicas del Gran Capitán, ed. Antonio Rodríguez Villa (Madrid: Bailly-Bailliere, 1908), 402. 57 Sherer, Warriors for a Living, 40. 58 Cerezeda, Tratado de las campañas, vol. 2, 139–40. 59 Especially chapter 26 in The Prince: Niccolò Machiavelli, Il principe, ed. Giuseppe Liso (Florence: Sansoni, 1964), 141–6. 60 As is clear in Mallett, Mercenaries and Their Masters. The campaigns of Venice in the fifteenth century that culminated in the creation and maintenance of the Terra Firma saw the employment of many condottieri, many of whom remained in Venetian employment long after the Peace of Lodi in 1454. See the seminal work, Michael E. Mallett and John R. Hale, The Military Organization of a Renaissance State: Venice c.1400 to 1617 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). 61 During the War of Ferrara of 1482–1484: Thomas Tuohy, Herculean Ferrara: Ercole D’Este (1471–1505) and the Invention of Ducal Capital (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 80. 62 T.C. Price Zimmermann, Paolo Giovio: The Historian and the Crisis of SixteenthCentury Italy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), 76. Pescara, of Spanish descent but born and raised in Italy, refused the offer and informed the emperor, causing the collapse of the affair before it could be initiated. 63 Potter, Renaissance France at War, 146–8. 64 As was already mentioned, the campaign in Provence in 1536 included a large contingent of Italian soldiers. 65 Fernando Marin to Charles V, near Bologna, March 28, 1527, Antonio Rodríguez Villa, ed., Memorias del saco de Roma: el relato documental del asalto y saqueo de Roma en 1527 (Córdoba: Editorial Almuzara, 2011), 60. 66 Not surprising, considering Spanish domination in the Kingdom of Naples: Cerezeda, Tratado de las campañas, vol. 3, 189. 67 Quite recently in Lauro Martines, Furies: War in Europe, 1450–1700 (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013), esp. chapter 2. 68 Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quijote de la Mancha (Madrid: Algaba Ediciones, 2004), 698. 69 Diego Núñez Alba, Diálogos de la vida del soldado (Madrid: Fernando Fe, 1890), 8. As far as is known, Alba fought only in the Schmalkaldic War in 1546–1547 in the lands of the Holy Roman Empire. 70 Alonso Enríquez de Guzmán, Libro de la vida y costumbres de Alonzo Enríquez de Guzmán (Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1960), 28. 71 Commynes, Mémoires, 524. 72 Parrott, Business of War, 48–51. 73 Fiedler, Kriegswesen und Kriegführung, 57–8; Stephen D. Bowd, Renaissance Mass Murder: Civilians and Soldiers during the Italian Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 73. 74 Moxey, “Mercenary Warriors and the ‘Rod of God,’” 89. 75 Ibid., 89–90. 76 Fissell, English Warfare, 13, originally from Steven Gunn, “The French Wars of Henry VIII,” in The Origins of War in Early Modern Europe, ed. Jeremy Black (Edinburgh: J. Donald, 1987), 36. 77 Sherer, Warriors for a Living, 43. 78 Giovio, La vita di Pescara, 92v. 79 Sherer, Warriors for a Living, 43. 80 Jean d’Auton, Chroniques de Louis XII, vol. 1 (Paris: Librairie Renouard, 1893), 195–6. 81 Ibid., vol. 2, 125. 82 Cerezeda, Tratado de las camapañas, vol. 1, 445.

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83 Sherer, Warriors for a Living, 45. This problem remained widespread throughout early modern Europe and was always considered one of the most troubling aspects of military finance. 84 Alba, Diálogos de la vida del soldado, 16–17. 85 Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quijote, 394. 86 Hugo de Moncada to Ferdinand the Catholic, Palermo, November 14, 1510: José Pidal, Manuel Pando Fernandez de Pinedo, and Miguel Salvá, eds., Colección de documentos inéditos para la historia de España, vol. 24 (Madrid: Viuda de Calero, 1854), 91. 87 Paolo Giovio, La seconda parte dell’istoria del suo tempo (Venice, 1560), 102. 88 Giovio, La vita di Pescara, 66r. 89 Napoleon’s army, made up of about 665,000 men, crossed the Vistula in the summer of 1812. Only about 93,000 returned to the river in the winter: Michael Clodfelter, Warfare and Armed Conflicts: A Statistical Encyclopedia of Casualty and Other Figures, 1492–2015, 4th ed. (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2017), 164. The German high command in Operation Barbarossa was well aware that “The prospect of spending the winter bogged down in Russia, while its frozen army continued to shed men and equipment in a violent war of attrition, was tantamount to losing World War II”: David Stahl, Operation Barbarossa and Germany’s Defeat in the East (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 360. 90 Giovio, La seconda parte dell’istoria del suo temp, 52, 60, 408; Cerezeda, Tratado de las campañas, vol. 1, 378–9. 91 Cerezeda, Tratado de las campañas, vol. 1, 220. 92 Constituting one of the most significant events of the Italian Wars, the sack of Rome has received a lot of research attention. Some of the most important include Silvio Maurano, Il sacco di Roma (Milan: Ceschina, 1967); Vicente de Cadenas y Vicent, El saco de Roma de 1527 por el ejército de Carlos V (Madrid: Hidalguia, 1974); Maria Ludovica Lenzi, Il sacco di Roma del 1527 (Florence: La nuova Italia, 1978); E.R. Chamberlin, The Sack of Rome (London: B.T. Batsford, 1979); Giovanna Solari, Il sacco di Roma (Milan: Mondadori, 1980); Andre Chastel, The Sack of Rome, 1527 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983); Francesco Mazzei, Il sacco di Roma (Milan: Rusconi, 1986); Augustin Redondo, ed., Les discours sur le sac de Rome de 1527: pouvoir et littérature (Paris: Presses de la Sorbonne nouvelle, 1999); Antonio di Pierro, Il sacco di Roma: 6 maggio 1527: l’assalto dei lanzichenecchi (Milan: O. Mondadori, 2003); Judith Hook, The Sack of Rome (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004); Pier Paolo Piergentili, Gianni Venditti, and Lelio della Valle, Scorribande, lanzichenecchi e soldati ai tempi del sacco di Roma: Papato e Colonna in un inedito epistolario dall’archivio della valledel Bufalo (1526–1527) (Rome: Gangemi, 2009); Giulia Ponsiglione, La ruina di Roma: il sacco del 1527 e la memoria letteraria (Rome: Carocci; Sapienza Universita di Roma, 2010). 93 Sherer, Warriors for a Living, 71. 94 Jacopo Buonaparte, “Sul sacco di Roma dell’anno 1527,” in Classici scelti italiani antichi e moderni, eds. A. Mauri and F. Cusani, vol. 5 (Milan: Tipografia e Libreria Pirotta e C., 1844), 90. 95 Sherer, Warriors for a Living, 71. 96 Ibid., 72. 97 Sebastian Schertlin von Burtenbach, Leben und thaten des weiland wohledlen und gestrengen (Münster, 1858), 7. 98 Sherer, Warriors for a Living, 72. 99 Kenneth Meyer Setton, The Papacy and the Levant, 1204–1571, vol. 3 (Philadelphia, PA: American Philosophical Society, 1984), 306. 100 Sherer, Warriors for a Living, 73.

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101 Charles V to the Count of Cifuentes, Zaes, August 31 and September 5, 1536, Manuel Fernandez Alvarez, ed., Corpus documental de Carlos V, vol. 1 (Salamanca: Graficas Europa, 1973), 522. 102 Maria J. Rodríguez-Salgado, “The Habsburg-Valois Wars,” in The New Cambridge Modern History, ed. G.R. Elton, 2nd ed., vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 388. 103 Giovio, La seconda parte dell’istoria del suo tempo, 413. 104 Bourrilly and Vindry, Mémoires de Martin et Guillaume du Bellay, vol. 3, 299. 105 Blaise de Monluc, Commentaires et lettres de Blaise de Monluc Maréchal de France, vol. 1 (Paris: Renouard, 1864), 124–5. 106 Tracy, Emperor Charles V, Impresario of War, 112. 107 More on this subject in Chapter 4. 108 Irving A. Leonard, Los libros del conquistador (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1953), 136. 109 Sherer, Warriors for a Living, 68. 110 Zimmerman, Paolo Giovio, 157–8. Giovio spoke to d’Oria and other captains following the battle and was thus able to provide a good description of the battle. 111 Geoffrey Parker, Emperor: A New Life of Charles V (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2019), 270–4. 112 Alba, Diálogos de la vida del soldado, 9. 113 Francisco de Valdez, Espeio y disciplina militar por el maestre de campo Francisco de Valdez. en lo que se trata del officio del sargento mayor (Brussels: Roger Velpius, 1596), 11–12. 114 René Quatrefages, Los tercios, trans. Jarnes Bergua Enrique (Madrid: Servicio de publicaciones del E.M.E., 1983), 90. 115 Friedrich Blau, Die Deutschen landsknechte (Goerlitz: Starke, 1882), 108. 116 Francisco de Vitoria, Relectiones teologicae XII: in duos tomos divisae (Lyon: Iacobum Boyerium, 1557), 417–18. 117 Ibid., 419. 118 Ibid., 419–20. 119 Simone di Goro Brami da Colle, “Narrazione del sacco di Prato di ser Simone di Goro Brami da Colle,” in Archivio Storico Italiano, vol. 1 (Florence: Gio. Pietro Vieusseux, 1842), 255–6. 120 Giovio, La vita di Pescara, 39r. Giovio was present at the events and himself attempted to dissuade Pescara from allowing his troops to sack the city: Zimmermann, Giovio, 40. 121 Most famously, the gonfaloniere of Florence Luigi Guicciardini, brother of the famous historian Francesco. See Luigi Guicciardini, “Il sacco di Roma,” in Il sacco di Roma del MDXXVII, ed. Carlo Milanesi (Florence: G. Barbera, 1867), 111–12. 122 Giovio, La vita di Pescara, 39r. 123 Ibid. 124 Iacopo Modesty, “Il miserando sacco dato alla terra di Prato dagli spagnoli l’anno 1512,” in Archivio Storico Italiano, vol. 1 (Florence: Gio. Pietro Vieusseux, 1842), 243. 125 Ibid. 126 Ibid., 244; Luca Landucci, Diario fiorentino dal 1450 al 1516 (Florence: G.C. Sansoni, 1883), 326. 127 Landucci, Diario fiorentino, 329; Modesty, “Il miserando sacco,” 245. 128 “Copia d’una del cardinale di Como a uno suo segretario,” Civitavecchia, May 24, 1527, in Luigi Guicciardini, Il sacco di Roma del MDXXVII, ed. Carlo Milanesi (Florence: G. Barbera, 1867), 485–6. 129 Bowd, Renaissance Mass Murder. 130 Sherer, Warriors for a Living, 153. 131 Although some of the reasons and motivations were different. One French captain conveyed his soldiers’ words: “We’ve had enough. Here we are, after three years of

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getting our bodies broken with no result. The last offensive gave us nothing. We’ve been screwed over. There are too many shirkers. Make them come here. We want peace. The Germans also want peace. The people don’t want to fight anymore.” See Leonard V. Smith, “Remobilizing the Citizen-Soldier through the French Army Mutinies of 1917,” in State, Society and Mobilization in Europe during the First World War, ed. John Horne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 154. d’Auton, Chroniques, vol. 1, 263: “ilz voloyent estre tous payez en escuz au souleil … pour la prise du seigneur Ludovic, payé pour ung moys d’avantage.” Ibid. Ibid., 264. Ibid. Ibid., 265. Ibid. Ibid. Adam Reissner, Historia Herrn Georgen und Herrn Casparn von Frundsberg (Frankfurt, 1568), 95v. Ibid.: “der inen völlige Bezalung hett zugesagt.” Ibid. Ibid. Guicciardini, Storia d’Italia, vol. 3, 1184. Charles V and Francis I signed the truce following the campaigns in Lombardy and Provence in 1536–1538: Giovio, La seconda parte dell’istoria del suo tempo, 465. Sherer, Warriors for a Living, 114. Giovio, La seconda parte dell’istoria del suo tempo, 465. Sherer, Warriors for a Living, 115. Le loyal serviteur, La très joyeuse et très plaisante histoire du gentil seigneur de Bayart (Paris: Renouard, 1878), 342–50. The response was mostly dependent on the military context. Bourbon could not afford to alienate his German, Spanish, and Italian soldiers on his way to Rome in 1527. For Bourbon’s inability to react harshly, see for example, Sherer, Warriors for a Living, 112. This was also relevant to the frequent mutinies of the Swiss. Odet de Foix, vicomte de Lautrec, could not afford to retaliate when his Swiss soldiers confronted him regarding their wages on the eve of the battle of Bicocca (see more in Chapter 3) in 1522. See Bourrilly and Vindry, Mémoires de Martin et Guillaume du Bellay, vol. 1, 225. For the involvement of the veterans in the mutinies of the Spanish infantry, see Sherer, Warriors for a Living, 114. For discipline in the landknecht units, see Reinhard Baumann, Landsknechte: ihre Geschichte und Kultur vom späten Mittelalter bis zum Dreißigjährigen Krieg (München: Beck, 1994), 103–8. For discipline in the Spanish army, see Sherer, Warriors for a Living, 107–8.

3

“When war comes, they want to flee” Was Machiavelli right?

The debate on the effectiveness and dependability of professional soldiers was not new in the sixteenth century. As previously discussed, comprehensive changes in the perception of royal power and its influence on the creation of what would become the “state” were already brewing in the later Middle Ages, with France and Spain sharing many similar paths. The turbulent times of the second half of the fifteenth century, culminating in the French invasion of Italy and the forceful Spanish response, greatly contributed to the already evident process of royal authority and independence in matters pertaining to foreign policy and war. Whether it was the parlements in France or the Cortes in Spain, French and Spanish monarchs created, maintained, and inflated what might be termed a “patrimonial absolutism,” which was only reinforced and invigorated during the massive financial and military requirements of the Italian Wars.1 Paid military service was already widespread throughout Western Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The somewhat pejorative term “bastard feudalism” encompassed a variety of possibilities available for monarchs and princes to augment and supplant the unsatisfactory numbers of troops available through more traditional feudal levies. From the end of the thirteenth century, English monarchs employed “indentures,” by which they contracted local nobles, knights, and even esquires to raise and maintain units of armed men and accompany them to campaigns. These contracts contained specific information concerning periods of service, wages, compensation for expenses, and even political favors and demands. During much of the Hundred Years’ War, English kings and princes found this sort of recruitment to be more efficient and dependable than any obscure and unpredictable terms of feudal service in earlier periods. The more traditional feudal relationships based on land tenure and vague rules concerning military service were still present and employed, but these traditional systems could no longer handle the continuous and large-scale excursions of English armies on several fronts.2 The French monarchs in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries experienced many of the same problems as the English, especially when considering the fact that the vast majority of fighting took place on their lands. The shortcomings of the ban and arrière-ban were supplemented with the system of retenue, with which the French monarchs could contract captains to recruit and maintain

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their forces according to formal agreements. Much like their English counterparts, these contracts contained information on the number of recruits, expenses, and theaters of operations according to the king’s necessities and requirements. While marred by several prominent defeats to the English in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the main advantage of this system was the king’s control and leeway when the need for recruiting fresh soldiers arose, as opposed to the more rigid and cumbersome demands of the traditional feudal systems of recruitment.3 The end of a civil war in Spain and the resumption of hostilities between Castile and Aragon and Nasrid Granada led to the maintenance of large armies by the Catholic Monarchs. Although these forces comprised provincial militias (la Hermandad) and retinues of the higher and lesser nobility, significant portions of these armies were composed of heavy cavalry from the guardas reales, recruited and maintained directly by the monarchy, and contingents of the king and queen’s vassals, spread throughout their lands, who received an annual pension known as an acostamiento and could be called to arms and deployed when needed. At the height of the conflict, both forces contributed nearly 2,500 heavy cavalry and jinetes to the royal armies.4 Seemingly, throughout late medieval Europe, military professionalism was clearly present, even if in rudimentary form.

Mixed reviews Nevertheless, the Italian Wars were a splendid opportunity for the swifter progress of the privatization of war, in addition to and regardless of any attempts at the creation of standing forces. The collection of ordinary tax in France grew from an average of a little less than 4 million livres a year during Louis XII’s reign to an average of 6.5 million livres a year during Francis I’s reign, with a staggering amount of 9 million livres in 1546 alone. His son, Henry II, had to raise these revenues to about 12 million livres by the time of his death. Both kings had to supplement these ordinary revenues with further extraordinary revenues, averaging 1.5 million livres in Francis I’s reign and climbing to 4 million livres in Henry II’s to maintain their war with the Habsburgs and Tudors, among others.5 All of these revenues exclude the vast amount of loans raised by the French monarchs, actions that only exacerbated the already unstable financial circumstances and plunged the monarchy into severe debts during the second half of the sixteenth century.6 As Charles V became the master of two of the most powerful lands in Western Europe, Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, the responsibility and need to preserve and further enhance his power as king and emperor brought about substantial financial demands. Excluding the massive costs of continuously maintaining soldiers on several fronts, the costs of the campaign that ended successfully in the Battle of Pavia in February 1525 amounted to about 1 million ducats, while those of the campaign in Provence in 1536 rose to about 1.5 million ducats. With an average total revenue of about 3 million ducats in the 1520s, to an average of about 5 million ducats in the 1540s from his lands in

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Castile, Naples, and the Low Countries, Charles had to mortgage his future revenues and borrow heavily to maintain the tens of thousands of soldiers in campaigns and garrisons around his massive empire.7 It seems, then, that, as Spanish and French monarchs stretched their financial and political abilities to the limits in the Italian Wars, the consolidation of standing armies took place alongside, and was mostly overshadowed by, the simpler and more straightforward system of hiring mercenaries to make up most of their fighting forces. It was a period of cumbersome administrative and financial institutions attempting to centralize and consolidate power as best as they could under the considerable constraints of factors ranging from ideas of balance of power to feudal and personal rights and interests. These circumstances meant that sixteenth-century monarchs and generals had to make do. Unable to create large and stable standing armies that were maintained by and loyal to (specific) monarchies and nations, they had to furiously and helplessly grind their teeth while their mercenary armies displayed incredible acts of insubordination and instability, and exalt these same armies when they brought them victory and glory. Being heavily influenced by many of the same chivalric and humanistic ideals that brought about contempt toward the common soldiery of their time, these monarchs acknowledged both advantages and disadvantages of these hybrid systems of recruitment and maintenance of armies and went on to attempt to secure their interests as best they could. To be clear, many of these mercenary and professional soldiers were indeed glorified by contemporaries for both political and military reasons. Contemporaries were truly surprised by the ferocity and commitment for war of many of these soldiers, especially considering the lack of much of the same zeal and efficiency of local national infantry units. This was especially the case with the French armies, which were heavily dependent on foreign mercenaries. The French historian Jean d’Auton had to admit that, compared to the French infantry, “the Swiss are usually better ordered and more difficult to break and can be better rallied together,”8 despite the fact that “they are often difficult over payment, often restive and at quick need to pillage.”9 Among other and disparaging comments on their appearance and social and financial background, Philippe de Commynes described the Swiss soldiers of Charles VIII in 1495 in admiring terms: “I never saw so many fine men; it seemed to me impossible to have defeated them.”10 During the last decades of the fifteenth and the first few decades of the sixteenth centuries, the soldiers recruited in the cantons and their surroundings repeatedly proved themselves on the battlefield, either independently against the Duchy of Burgundy, the Habsburgs, and the French or under the employment of the French kings. The reputation of the Swiss soldiers was deeply entrenched in the minds of contemporary Europeans. The flight of a contingent of Swiss soldiers during the Battle of Pavia without even a single exchange of blows with the enemy was incredible enough to contemporaries as to have been portrayed by Bernard van Orley in his famous tapestry of the battle, which is located in the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples (see Fig 3.1). The tapestry famously and magnificently

Figure 3.1 On the right, Swiss soldiers fleeing the field of battle in Pavia in 1525. Bernard van Orley and his contemporaries deemed this event significant and surprising enough to be incorporated in written works and visual representations. The fact that some of the Swiss soldiers ran for their lives and even drowned in the Ticino River, as seen here, was even more tantalizing. Source: Museo di Capodimonte, Naples, Campania, Italy © Giancarlo Costa/Bridgeman Images.

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displays grim images of soldiers being slaughtered in a last attempt to cross the Ticino river to safety, during which many drowned or were killed. Orley might have attempted to highlight these extraordinary circumstances by placing several Swiss mercenaries in the fore of the scene, showing them running away, falling, and being killed by the enemy, with their red shirts sewn with white crosses clearly visible to the observer. Combined with the capture of Francis I and his consequential defeat, these images could be effective only if the prominence of the Swiss infantry were taken into account. This was also the case with the German landsknechts. In France, which relied heavily on landsknechts alongside French and Swiss infantry, the German infantry was considered an indispensable and significant element of the deployed forces.11 While most of the landsknechts ended up serving in the armies of German princes in local wars in the Empire or in those of the emperor, many of them could have easily found themselves recruited into the armies of the French monarchs and fighting on both sides of the battlefield, as was the case, for example, in Pavia in 1525 and Ceresole in 1544. The Italian Wars brought about a reality in which the dire and constant need for soldiers was greater than and superior to many other considerations of traditional borders between sworn enemies (i.e., the leaders of the Empire and France) and any national identity of the soldiers themselves. In the lands of the Holy Roman Empire, the landsknechts garnered even more admiration, considering the constant and, in the eyes of contemporaries, horrific threat of Ottoman invasions. Tens of thousands of soldiers, many of whom were not native to the lands of the Empire, were recruited and sent to the eastern frontiers of the Holy Roman Empire, and especially to Vienna, to stand against the waves of invasions from the Ottoman sultans beginning in 1529. The threat of these invasions, especially after the disaster at Mohács in 1526 and the fall of the Kingdom of Hungary, garnered the attention of the Christian powers for many decades thereafter. Many of these contemporaries were quite aware of the fact that the German mercenaries were one of the most formidable obstacles to the future success of any of the Ottoman attempts to rush through the Eastern European steppes into Germany and Austria. Therefore, as much as the landsknechts became a symbol for violence, death, and disease in the lands of the Holy Roman Empire, some of the same artists who depicted them in darkly humorous fashion also displayed their sense of pride, esprit de corps, and significance to the imperial cause. The text by Hans Sachs written above the standard-bearer in Erhard Schön’s woodcut, titled Column of Mercenaries, from around 1532 reads: “I have been appointed standard-bearer / Chosen from the noisy ranks / Whoever sees the flag flying / Believes that his side can still win / And thus encouraged to carry on the battle / And to fight with all his might / Therefore I wave my flag / since it is worth my life and limbs / I will not retreat a step / Because of this I must be given triple pay by a powerful lord / Who goes to war for honor and renown.”12 The perception of a tangible accomplishment is clearly present, as thousands of German soldiers set out to defend the Empire from one of the most serious

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threats to its integrity in a very long time, rather than setting out to foreign lands to fight the wars of foreign princes and vague employers. The sense of relief that accompanied the deflection, albeit temporarily, of the Ottoman threat and the potential glory that the soldiers could bask in are also apparent in contemporary writings. A poem by the same Hans Sachs, which was written in commemoration of the Ottoman retreat from Vienna in 1529 following an unsuccessful siege, reads: “Wake up heart, mind and imagination / Help me praise the good mercenaries / For their chivalrous deeds / Which they performed in Austria / At Vienna, within the city.”13 While far from being the ideal soldiers of the ancient republics in the eyes of many of their contemporaries, some of the latter could still appreciate the contribution of these soldiers to the maintenance of peace and stability in the empire. The threat of the ravaging hordes of mercenaries marching to the front and back was largely overshadowed by deep fears of the forces of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, as he was known in Europe. Very much like the armies of France, the armies of Castile and Aragon, which had become one and the same with the armies of the Holy Roman Empire since 1519 and throughout most of the Italian Wars, were composed of soldiers from myriad nations and ethnicities, and the Spanish contingents, which were recruited in the Iberian Peninsula, very rarely constituted a significant majority of these armies. During the campaigns of the Catholic Monarchs, and later those of Ferdinand II of Aragon, who was also regent in Castile from 1506 until his death in 1516, Spain sent large contingents of native infantry and cavalry to secure its interests in Italy. The later imperial armies usually comprised a majority of recruits from the lands of the Empire, with significant contributions of recruits from Spain and its lands in Italy. While one should always be skeptical regarding contemporary numerical estimates of the size of these forces, some still seem convincing. The imperial army that marched on Rome in 1526–1527 comprised 10,000 Germans, 5,000 Spaniards, and 3,000 Italians.14 The imperial force that invaded Provence in 1536 comprised 10,000 Spaniards, 10,000 Italians, and 20,000 Germans.15 The main force of the imperial army that was deployed in the Battle of Ceresole against the French in 1544 comprised about 7,000 landsknechts, who significantly outnumbered the Spanish forces.16 In the Battle of Marciano in 1554 during the final stages of the Italian Wars, after which Siena fell under the control of Florence with the aid of an imperial army, the Spanish soldiers constituted about 20 percent of the entire army.17 Considering the fact that most of the generals of the imperial army were not Spanish (one of them, Charles of Bourbon, was French), the term “Spanish army,” even in later conflicts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, is mainly used as a general term for the armies fighting for the Spanish monarchy and its dependencies. Nevertheless, the Spanish soldiers were very often acknowledged as the most important and effective part of the Spanish armies of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. When compared to the general perceptions of sixteenth-century soldiery, which have been previously discussed, some of these proclamations seem

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at first somewhat peculiar. Charles V apparently claimed that “[t]he fate of my battles was decided by the fuses of my Spanish arquebusiers.”18 The emperor’s claim most likely concerned the success of the imperial army in Pavia in 1525, which may have been determined by an efficient deployment of the Spanish arquebusiers, who, according to Charles de Lannoy, governor of Naples and general of the entire army, “having suffered three months without being paid, have done wonders and were responsible for winning the battle.”19 The central role of firearms in winning the day and subduing the French king, at least from the perspective of contemporaries, can be clearly discerned in the obvious presence of an arquebus lying on the ground below the captured Francis I in Bernard van Orley’s depiction of the scene. Therefore, such proclamations by the emperor should be approached with extreme caution and do not necessarily convey any general contemporary opinion. The same prince who, as we have already seen, equated his soldiers with destructive caterpillars and showed little concern for their lives, now seems to also acknowledge their commitment and significance to his achievements. The emperor might have simply been exceedingly morose and discouraged during a difficult campaign when he disparaged his soldiers and, contrarily, was extraordinarily elated and relieved after a massive victory when he acknowledged their direct influence on his own political and military successes. Similarly, these general and contradicting statements were employed regularly to describe the soldiers of the Spanish tercios later in the sixteenth and during the seventeenth centuries. Terms such as the “sole foundation of the monarchy” and “the defense of Christendom” were relatively common, and no real problem existed in describing these troops as “the real sinews of war, without whom no successful action has taken place in the past and none will take place in the future.”20 As has already been mentioned, these “glowing eulogies,” as Geoffrey Parker describes them, could effortlessly be replaced with far gloomier terms, whether specific or general, during times of tactical or strategic stress and especially during mutinies. The general perception of the soldier as a person steeped in glory and grace was also apparent in other sources. It is especially apparent in works such as Mateo Flecha’s (d. 1553) ensalada “La Guerra” from the first half of the sixteenth century, in which the well-known and reputable composer glorified the soldiers and their captains: “All the good soldiers / who will settle this war / want nothing in the world / but to go and rest / If they come forth victorious / the pay that would be given to them / will be that forever they will hold / eternal glory in Heaven.”21 Considering the fact that Flecha became the maestro de capilla and teacher of Charles V’s daughters Maria and Juana in Arévalo from 1544 to about 1548, it seems reasonable to believe that works such as these, which glorified the common soldiers and their captains, were very common and obviously enjoyable to the leading figures of the time, regardless of any deeper resentments and disapproval.22 Nevertheless, behind this great general admiration for these professional soldiers, one can easily find more pronounced and complex opinions. Whether they were steeped in hazy dreams of a time long gone where Greek hoplites and

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Roman legionnaires fought for their motherland as committed citizens or whether their experience repeatedly proved to them that something new, albeit still unattainable, was required to transform contemporary armies, the soldiers, politicians, and intellectuals of the Italian Wars lamented, often fiercely, their dependence on professional mercenaries. Complaints about the soldiers’ general lack of morality and social status were combined with a general distrust in their loyalty and efficiency on the battlefield. Mercenaries, they would say, cannot and should not be trusted in the battlefield, and remuneration would be the only way to motivate them to perform their duty in a satisfactory way. One of the most memorable of these lamenters was, of course, the Florentine Niccolò Machiavelli, who had to deal with Swiss mercenaries during the war between Florence and Pisa.23 Machiavelli’s experience with these mercenaries and his deep interest in the history of the Roman army contributed to his loathing of the mere idea of employing mercenaries. He famously claimed that they were “divided, ambitious, lacking discipline, disloyal, bold among friends, cowardly among the enemy … They have no other love or another reason that keeps them in the field other than a meager stipend, which is not sufficient to make them want to die for you. They want to be your soldiers while you are not at war, but when war comes they want to flee or leave.”24 These harsh words were not exaggerated. Following decades of infighting between the Italian powers, which mostly employed mercenary captains, Italian city-states and statesmen had few or no institutions to manage substantial standing forces of any kind. As was already mentioned, the contracting of condottieri, the vast majority of whom were Italians, to wage their wars became a standard practice. Contemporaries, such as Machiavelli, famously blamed this sort of military privatization and suspected distancing of the Italian princes and people from military zeal and spirit for the humiliation of the fall of Italy into foreign hands since Charles VIII’s invasion in 1494.25 While these claims by Machiavelli and others were written down in hindsight after many years of political and military turbulence in Italy and thus cannot be used as solid proof for any sort of actual military inferiority of the Italians, his attempt to construct a militia comprising natives of the Florentine Republic was not lip service; Machiavelli truly believed in his project, hanging on to it in his Dell’arte della guerra several years after his fall from grace and failure to secure Prato and Florence from a Spanish army in 1512.26 Like many of his contemporaries, Machiavelli’s goal was the erection (mostly in his imagination, in this case) of institutions that would be able to provide a state with organized, disciplined, and effective military forces who were recruited from among a committed and loyal population. As has already been established, these institutions would require at least two more centuries to materialize. These concerns were hardly confined to intellectuals and statesmen and could also be found in the writings of contemporary soldiers and generals, some of whom had been central figures in the battlefields of the Italian Wars. A reputable Flemish noble, captain of landsknechts, and highly experienced in military command under Emperor Maximilian I and King Louis XII of France, Philip of

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Cleves (1459–1528), admonished contemporary and future captains by claiming that “I know nothing better for every commander than to avoid the ordinary infantry if it is possible. But if he absolutely needs them, he has to pay them well, command them with an iron fist and severely punish the wrongdoers.”27 Like many of his contemporary military leaders, Philip of Cleves was well aware of the unpredictability and instability of mercenary forces, especially regarding issues of pay. Nevertheless, most contemporary princes could hardly be expected to take this admonition to heart, having no adequate substitute for these forces. With praise on the one hand and denigration on the other, it is somewhat difficult to create a clear image of what contemporaries actually thought when it came to professional soldiers and the advancing of military privatization. It is safe to conclude that sporadic moments of enthusiasm, based on actual events or assimilated into myriad literary and visual works, concerning the glory of soldiers and soldiering can easily be found in sixteenth-century Europe. These moments represent the still widespread idealization of war and the people who take part in it. In contrast, when it came to the real, difficult, and highly complex management of armies and soldiers in the Italian Wars, many of the true feelings of anger, frustration, helplessness, and distrust were exposed and appear in many sources. It still remains easy from today’s perspective to take these derogatory words at face value and consider them as true representations of the motivations, or lack thereof, of early modern soldiers in the battlefield and in general. When traditional European social and cultural ideals were re-evaluated and scrutinized, especially under the influence of the Enlightenment and Romanticism culminating in the second half of the eighteenth and throughout the nineteenth centuries, both general and specific attitudes toward the common soldiers were drastically transformed. Although often because of low socioeconomic background, under the influence of these cultural mechanisms, the modern soldier was prone to becoming a loyal and effective defender of his country through thorough processes of training and indoctrination that made him a fine product of an institutionalized military establishment.28 Subject to these cultural perceptions, stresses Yuval Harari, “[it] became well-nigh sacrilegious to criticize the common soldiers, and failures were always blamed on the commanders. Even if troops behaved badly, this too was laid at the door of the commander.”29 Interestingly, this remains the case to this day. A modern culture that reveres its soldiers for almost the same reasons that early modern cultures despised theirs can more easily accept sixteenth-century disparagement of the mercenaries who represent the complete opposite of the products of modern social and military training. When attempting to separate fact from fiction when it comes to the world of early modern mercenaries and professional soldiers, today one must discard some of the prisms that made it so difficult for people, such as Machiavelli and his contemporaries, to scorn (often, justifiably) these mercenaries without exception and in an exaggerated manner. Interestingly, some historians easily generalize this sense of contempt, which apparently persists in modern scholarship, albeit in different intensities. The

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more explicit mentions describe early modern European mercenaries as “lacking the motivation that keeps a native-born national army in the field—patriotism, protection of family, hope of glory and recognition at home … [T]hey have tended throughout history to melt away when the prospects of rich rewards have grown dim or the tide of battle has turned against them.”30 The more subtle historians claim that “most soldiers in the Italian Wars were fighting for pay, not for honor or duty or country.”31 The military historian John Lynn concluded that “[t]he brutal mercenaries of the sixteenth century fought mostly for material gain, so remunerative leverage was most effective.”32 While some of these claims can certainly be supported by evidence, they are far too general and vague to describe the complex world of military culture in early modern Europe in general and the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in particular. At times, the sources provide evidence that completely negates these arguments and especially the most uncompromising of them.

Mostly for material gain? The Italian Wars were especially replete with evidence concerning the soldiers who took part in them. Wars were everywhere to be found in the decades preceding the clashes in Italy. The Iberian Peninsula was steeped in civil wars, and the war in Granada, under Louis XI of France, dealt mainly with internal problems caused by a continuing struggle with the dukes of Burgundy. This was generally the case with the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I, who was still busy with defending and expanding the Empire’s direct borders. The novelty in Charles VIII’s decision to invade Italy was the creation of a cauldron of violence, diplomacy, and interests that not only attracted massive numbers of foreign fighting forces into the Italian Peninsula but also, combined with the still deeply rooted cultural influences of the Renaissance, created remarkable foundations and incentives for a significant production of literary and artistic works that further exposed the world of sixteenth-century warfare in Europe. Regardless, myriad sources provide us with a far more complex image of the soldiers of the Italian Wars than might be squeezed into several general and vague sentences. And, although many of these sources offer anecdotes or evidence of specific events and make it difficult for the modern historian to produce generalities, one should not discard them nor fail to attempt a deeper analysis. The fact that these soldiers saw themselves as professionals was already established. This means that the expectation for remuneration was one of the most significant motivations for joining the army initially and also a clear motivation to actually fight from the perspective of many of the soldiers. As previously mentioned, Ramón de Cardona, captain general of the Spanish army that besieged Prato in 1512, offered his soldiers the opportunity to assault the city or simply starve to death facing its walls. When his soldiers finally relented, he did not stop at that and offered 100, 50, and 25 ducats, respectively, to the first three soldiers who entered the breach that was created by a relatively short bombardment.33 While the numbers seem highly exaggerated, they convey a

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sense of understanding between generals, officers, and their troops: bravery in combat can and would be converted to actual monetary rewards. The common soldier would indeed have been excited for only a fraction of these numbers. This was also the case in far greater and extraordinary circumstances. One of the most infamous campaigns of the Italian Wars, the Duke of Bourbon’s march to Rome in 1526–1527, was almost solely based on general and vague promises to his soldiers concerning future remuneration. The only way Bourbon could dissuade his troops from dispersing in the beginning of the spring of 1527 was by promising them riches beyond their dreams once they arrived and took Rome.34 Most observers were quite aware of the fact that, contrary to his claims, Bourbon was not “dragged along with [his army] more like a prisoner than a free man.”35 The motivations of the general and his troops were well known to most contemporaries and appear in the fictional address of Bourbon to his troops in front of the walls of Rome, as conveyed by Luigi Guicciardini, then gonfaloniere of Florence: “[N]o other nation was presented with an easier, more deserving and richer prize … [I say] very rich, as any of you can easily understand, because enclosed inside these walls, which you now have to force down, penned up with the pope are many cardinals, prelates, lords, courtiers [and] merchants with the barons and people of Rome, together with their innumerable riches.”36 Bourbon’s correspondence and especially the writings of horrified observers of the events surrounding the sack, such as Guicciardini, understandably reduce the image of the soldiers to one of hordes of brutal and greedy men who cared very little for anything other than booty and pillage. Another instructive event concerned the dynamics that led to the Battle of Bicocca in 1522. Anne de Montmorency, the captain general of the Swiss contingent of the French army, headed an assault on the castle of Novara in March, leading his Swiss forces comprising up to 8,000 soldiers. When the walls were finally breached, Montmorency expected his infantry soldiers to assault and rush into the city, but “[t]he Swiss, admonished by the seigneur Montmorency to assault [the breach], answered that they are ready to fight in the open field, and that it wasn’t their profession to assault walls. Montmorency, acknowledging the will of the Swiss, urged them to place themselves on high ground near the town in order to escort the assailants, to which they agreed.”37 Highly extraordinary and even implausible to modern eyes, this response from a contingent of mercenary soldiers, as was previously demonstrated with Bayard and his landsknechts, was all too common. Montmorency, exactly as in Bayard’s case, was completely dependent on the Swiss soldiers for future missions and thus could hardly respond in any dramatic fashion. The French noblemen who led Swiss or German infantry forces in the Italian Wars had to contend with the fact that these forces were highly unpredictable. Several weeks later, the captain general of the entire French army, Odet de Foix, vicomte de Lautrec (d. 1528), became aware (again) of his soldiers’ unpredictability in an episode that highlighted the dramatic influence of these mercenaries on the outcomes of sixteenth-century campaigns. Camping in front of the imperial army, which surrounded itself with ditches and ramparts on the

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outskirts of Bicocca, Lautrec and his fellow officers realized that a head-on assault on masses of Spanish and German pikemen and arquebusiers who were assisted by artillery, would not end well for them. They seem to have decided to attempt to break the enemy by starvation and disease. Nevertheless, the Swiss had other ideas, and they demanded one of the following three: “silver (money), leave to retreat or rather that he (Lautrec) had to let them do battle immediately without further delay.”38 Lautrec’s beseeching did not influence the soldiers, and they “still persisted to go to battle or otherwise they would deliberate to walk away the next day.”39 The end is now well known. The pike squares of the Swiss repeatedly charged toward the imperial army and were smashed by a hail of artillery and arquebus rounds. Whoever managed to climb the ramparts was killed by the pikes and swords. The results of the battle had lasting effects on contemporaries, and Guicciardini commented separately on the bloody and brutal attempt of the Swiss to climb the ramparts at an extraordinary cost, being unable to leverage their furious assault to break the enemy as they were accustomed to.40 Thousands of Swiss soldiers were killed and injured, and the French campaign to reclaim Milan had to await future developments. These specific events, even if exaggerated to some extent in the sources, are only some of the most conspicuous in displaying the predilection of the professional soldiers of the Italian Wars for strict dependence on monetary gains and their motivations for performing, hopefully, well, if at all, on the battlefield. Considering these examples, one can clearly comprehend both contemporary and present-day perceptions of these soldiers’ efficiency and worth. One can also easily imagine the fury and helplessness of sixteenth-century generals as they traversed the lands of Italy trying to secure and expand their own and their princes’ interests only to end up being bested and prevented from achieving their goals by the volatility of their main fighting forces. This sense of rage clearly appears in the sources. Facing his mutinous Spanish infantry in Alessandria in 1534, Spanish General Antonio de Leyva wrote to the emperor that the mutiny “should not be described as anything but treason” and that the soldiers’ requests “grieved me greatly.”41 Montmorency, Lautrec, and other contemporary generals certainly faced some of the same strong feelings when it came to the behavior of their soldiers. While these examples greatly contribute to and clearly support the generalized and somewhat simplistic image of the professionals and mercenaries of the Italian Wars as they were previously presented, a deeper examination of the sources provides us with different insights. When the soldiers in the armies of the Italian Wars did fight—and they did so more often than not—many of them performed very efficiently. The extensive study of the subject of combat motivation that sprang up after World War II clearly demonstrates that soldiers are committed to perform well on the battlefield for myriad motivations that transcend the borders of both remuneration and ideology. Armed with many of the same motivations and combined with an unquenchable thirst for material and financial gains, the soldiers of the Italian Wars were some of the first in a rapidly changing European political

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and military context to demonstrate that the privatization of war could provide excellent fighting men, as long as the systems that recruited and maintained them could handle the requirements of such armies. The fact that mercenaries and professional soldiers were the only available solution for many princes in the Italian Wars, especially when considering their financial and administrative capabilities, does not necessarily mean that these soldiers were actually the lesser of two evils. Moreover, these soldiers could demonstrate extraordinary feats of courage and commitment on the battlefield and, while there is no credible and satisfactory method of comparison, did not fall short of any modern conception of how the ideal soldier should act. Considering the fact that the financial and logistical mechanisms that were responsible for the provision of wages and supplies were, at best, very limited, the soldiers of the Italian Wars in particular and early modern Europe in general were heavily dependent on their own institutions to survive the physical and mental hardships of everyday life on campaigns in foreign lands, far away from home. Soldiers from all national and geographic affiliations seemed to have developed these institutions, and, although it is almost impossible to trace exact influences between these groups, these institutions had striking similarities. European armies experienced comprehensive processes of institutionalization and organization that were able to produce systems of maintenance of variable degrees of quality and efficiency. Soldiers of most modern armies of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries are well aware that, despite various deficiencies and abnormalities, they are able to clearly discern an organization known as “the army.” Despite the comprehensive attempts at institutionalization and organization of political and military systems in even the most advanced polities, the soldiers of the Italian Wars were not able to comprehend such notions. These circumstances led to a reality that might appear inconceivable to modern soldiers. In this reality, the soldiers had much to say on subjects spanning financial, tactical, and even strategic matters. Large groups of soldiers huddling together to discuss matters of grave importance that in modern armies are almost entirely confined to the senior officers, were natural and even expected. The German landsknechts, for example, adopted many of the traditional institutions of the Swiss (as was already mentioned) and especially the striking, almost democratic, perception of their organization. The Gemein and Ring were the usual terms employed to describe the groupings of landsknechts, as was the case with the Swiss, who huddled and discussed matters, such as financial demands, new or unforeseen commands by their officers, or even whether to accept the conditions of the initial contract, or Artikelbrief. Thus, for example, when the imperial army was lacking money and supplies during the French invasion of 1525 and the Spanish and Italian soldiers were already satisfied with promises of later rewards, Georg von Frundsberg, in an attempt to persuade his landsknechts to keep going, “convened the twenty-nine companies (Fähnlin) of his landsknechts together in a Gemein and standing in the middle of the Ring as their superior, he came up to

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them, and as was his habit, addressed them all.” When the soldiers finally decided to confront their superiors, they could elect representatives—Amissaten or Ambosante—to represent them in their negotiations or disputes.43 The lingering effects of such gatherings were threatening to such a degree that military leaders in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries tried to forbid these kinds of assemblies, generally without success. Like their Swiss contemporaries, the Germans considered these gatherings to be a crucial component of their military service and self-perception. The tendency for social participation in many decisions trickled down to the smallest of units. While the Gemein and Ring were usually made up of hundreds of soldiers and sprung to life during serious organizational or military threats, the landsknechts also had to maintain order and security during their everyday lives and especially during campaigns. Companies of several hundred men were divided into squads of about eight to ten men, with each squad electing its leader. The latter’s responsibilities ranged from tactical leadership during battle to the handling of administrative aspects concerning food and lodging.44 The liberty to choose their own squad leader is yet another, albeit more personal and influential, prerogative that would seem peculiar, to say the least, to modern soldiers, who have very few such prerogatives. The Spanish soldiers who were recruited by the Catholic Monarchs and later the emperor experienced much of the same mistrust in military institutions and had to contend with being able to maintain themselves. The term camarada only appears in sources from the second half of the sixteenth century, and, when it does appear, it seems to describe groups of soldiers who were formed to deal with many of the same difficulties that other contemporary soldiers had to deal with. Writing in the middle of the sixteenth century, the highly experienced Spanish soldier and maestre de campo Sancho de Londoño (d. 1569) commented that “because a great part of the better soldiery consists of soldiers having camaradas, from which comes the ability to sustain themselves with a better salary than each one on his own, and also a great friendship, with many other profits, all the soldiers have them.”45 The Spanish soldier Martin de Eguiluz goes on to describe specific details: 42

to lodge with honorable comrades (camaradas), who are experienced soldiers from whom he could learn, and who are men of reputation and of good customs. And under no circumstances should he clash with any of them, but hold all of them as brothers and more … [In these camaradas] everyone has his own duty, whether in garrison or in the field, as one carries the food, the other carries the straw for lying down; one cuts branches to make a hut, and another fashions [the hut]; one builds a fire and another cooks the food … A good camarada is governed in this way that everyone does his duty, and that all the members eat together. And nothing will separate or dissolve them, like the so foolish and villainous custom of stubbornness, of which any sensible and honorable soldier must keep himself if he wants to maintain his friends; and even if his opinion is

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Sadly, sources and studies on the camarada are severely lacking. Nevertheless, even if exaggerated and somewhat mythologized, its mere existence and mentions provide yet another glimpse of the experience of soldiers who had to take matters into their own hands to survive the rigors of soldiering with little or no support from formal military organizations. Considering the extensive contact between soldiers of different nationalities in the armies of the Italian Wars, not surprisingly, many of these institutions exhibited striking similarities. All of these soldiers encountered many of the same problems—all of them were usually far from home, surrounded by hostile populations and unable to trust the military system for even their basic needs, thus making them completely dependent on each other. Considering the fact that European soldiers were still highly exposed to disease, starvation, and a general lack of money and provisions into the eighteenth and even nineteenth centuries, it is indeed not surprising that such institutions appear in similar forms in many armies. The French ordinaire goes back to the beginning of the seventeenth century, and the Kameradschaft, or Corporalschaft in Germanspeaking lands; the “mess” in British armies; and the Artel in Russia were all semiformal (or, at times, even formal) organizations of soldiers attempting to cope with the inefficiencies of later early modern armies.47 Soldiers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries could and still can suffer from shortages of supplies, which during times of war could become severe, and attempt to find ad hoc solutions, but the experience of an often completely undependable logistical and administrative system is very rare and could become a cause for social uproar. Modern soldiers could still experience a significant decline in everyday living conditions compared to their civilian lives, but the soldiers of the sixteenth century suffered from objectively real deprivation and thus had to resort to coping methods that may seem highly irregular and counterintuitive to most modern soldiers. These social institutions were, of course, deeply associated with the perception of the soldiers’ profession and position as fighting men and brought about significant pressures and demands from each and every soldier as much as it contributed to his survival. The sources provide us, even if through general anecdotes, with the characteristics of what appears to be a warrior society with a deep sense of esprit de corps and an obvious sense of pride and commitment when and where necessary. Not only that, considering the fact that the military systems of the Italian Wars could not provide defined and designated institutions to embed familiarity, training, and cohesion in a comprehensive and satisfactory way, many of the soldiers had to contend with their own set of institutions and practices. For the most part, the recruits were given weapons and armor when needed, and they marched on; there were no boot camps, no sort of formal instruction or even any kind of indoctrination, and no generally

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accepted methods of transfer and infusion of ideals or even general principles. The military systems of the sixteenth century could barely supply and maintain their soldiers, let alone provide any noticeable military education. To be sure, the landsknechts, for example, did go through several highly symbolic ceremonies to make their transition into a martial environment as clear as possible. The first part was walking through a “portal” created by two halberds crossed with a pike that was placed vertically on their conjoined ends.48 This was, in a sense, the first and crucial transfer from citizen life to that of a fully-fledged landsknecht. The soldiers were then presented with “letters of duty” (Artikelbrief), in which they faced their rights and duties for the duration of their contractual agreement.49 These letters were usually negotiated between the recruiters and their employers, but the common soldiers had much to say about their expectations. When the soldiers agreed to accept their duty, they held up two fingers, repeated their oath (there is no truly reliable source for the wording), and simultaneously shouted their assent.50 This also seems to be the reality for a force that was not recruited by a political power that had direct control over it, but its recruiters—more often than not its generals and colonels—who required it to become a military force par excellence. The Spanish soldiers, for example, were recruited in a more formal way, surrounded by several governmental or local officials and under the supervision of junior officers, who were themselves recruited and supervised (as much as it was possible in sixteenth-century Europe) by the governmental apparatus.51 With no formal institutions to instill a sense of military professionalism, the soldiers’ perception of themselves as taking part in a warrior society was greatly dependent on a core of already seasoned and highly experienced veterans and officers, some of them having served for many years. The behavior of many of the officers could be cruel and fraudulent, a dynamic that constituted the basis for many of the mutinies that plagued the armies of the Italian Wars. In his Kriegsbuch, published in 1573, the Bavarian soldier Leonhart Fronsperger (d. 1575) mentions that “the captains have many names in their books, but few soldiers under the banners.”52 Fronsperger sarcastically describes a widespread method by which many officers in the Italian Wars pocketed substantial amounts of money by enhancing the size of their companies through either straightforwardly lying in their reports or supplanting dead or injured soldiers with replacements who weren’t even soldiers. Many captains could thus transfer money that was otherwise intended for wages directly into their own coffers. The example of Alfonso d’Avalos, marchese del Vasto, and his warning to his Spanish captains to avoid such frauds was previously mentioned.53 One of the most prominent grievances of the Spanish soldiers during their widespread mutiny in Lombardy in 1538 was this kind of fraudulent behavior on the part of the junior officers.54 No soldier was truly immune from this kind of behavior. Financial fraud was nevertheless only one of the many potential sufferings of the common soldier. The soldiers of the Italian Wars and early modern soldiers

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in general were indeed exposed to severe and at times draconian disciplinary retaliation from their officers and sergeants. In his Diálogos (1552), the objective of which was mostly to highlight the sufferings of many veterans, the Spanish soldier Diego Nuñez Alba described some of the ways by which a soldier could feel the petty and random wrath of his superiors. When ordered to hang soldiers guilty of a crime, the captain “pardons the one who is guiltier, because the latter removed the dust from his cape, and hangs you instead for slandering, with an inscription on your feet as a mutineer [and] a rebel, and for what? For not doing what he ordered you to.”55 When anyone complains about a soldier, the alférez “arrives and gives you a cut with which he either kills or maims you.”56 When the sergeant “inspects the sentinels, he unexpectedly strikes you with a halberd in the chest, either throwing you off the wall or ending up killing you, later saying that he found you asleep on duty.”57 These seemingly general and anecdotal references appear frequently enough in sixteenth-century sources to be considered standard. It seems safe to say that, regardless of their national origins, the soldiers of the Italian Wars were not only exposed to the harshness of military life in general but also to potentially unpredictable and amoral behavior of their superior officers. One of the reasons might be the social distinction between soldiers and officers and as a result the general derogatory perception of the soldiers by their officers, although this does not seem to be the main reason, considering the fact that many of the junior officers in these armies were not of noble descent.58 Most of the captains committed fraud simply because they could. One should also keep in mind, as was previously mentioned in the context of their numerous mutinies, that the soldiers could and did, often violently, retaliate to highlight their grievances. This relatively prevalent behavior of sixteenth-century officers toward their soldiers greatly and understandably contributed then and still contributes today to the shady image of these forces. How could one expect such soldiers and officers to perform well on the battlefield? Nonetheless, myriad sources produced by the turmoil of the Italian Wars provide instructive testimony for substantially different behavior on the part of many of these junior and senior officers. On many occasions, officers and generals stood in front of or among their soldiers during battle and very often provided the main impetus, encouragement, and example to their soldiers. Indeed, in a society still highly immersed in chivalric ideals, colonels and even generals, most of whom were nobles, felt both pressure and the need to demonstrate their honor and prowess and thus easily found themselves in the middle of the chaos. Charles de Bourbon led his troops to the walls of Rome in 1527 and famously died while climbing the ladders with his soldiers.59 Del Vasto, nephew of the reputable marchese di Pescara, who himself used to tempt his fate on the front lines, led his troops to a dangerous assault on Sant’Angelo, near Pavia, in 1524, where he almost drowned in a moat under the weight of his armor.60 Blaise de Monluc, who had been especially active in the Italian Wars since the 1530s, famously opened his memoirs with a lamentation on “so many pains that I suffered during the fifty-five years during which I carried arms …

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[M]y body is maimed by arquebus rounds and strikes of pikes and swords, and half-useless, without any strength or hope to recover and heal from this large arquebus round that I have in my face.”61 Like their soldiers, generals were not exempt from death or incapacitating injuries in the Italian Wars, much like their medieval ancestors. As in the case of Blaise de Monluc, these senior officers and even generals saw nothing wrong with fighting alongside their troops. It is indeed true that, as armies grew significantly larger and battlefields became stretched over several kilometers later in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, many of the generals and their senior officers had to remove themselves from actively fighting to be able to inspect and observe the battlefield to better control their forces; generally speaking, they did not lack courage or flinch from a fight, nor did they lack actual military experience. Some of the generals of the Italian Wars were no different, as the example of del Vasto’s inspection of his forces from a high ground during the Battle of Ceresole in 1544 clearly demonstrates. Nevertheless, besides a deep sense of their social and military obligations, the generals and senior officers of the Italian Wars and early modern Europe in general could still manage their armies—as much as it was even possible in the heat of battle—while they were in their midst. In the Battle of Bicocca, Georg von Frundsberg stood with his men above the trenches to fend off the Swiss assaults, and he “and his men received many strikes and wounds.”62 Frundsberg and other sixteenth-century recruiters of landsknechts, such as the reputable Mark Sittich (d. 1533), were military entrepreneurs but also perceived themselves primarily as soldiers. Often, they were contracted for their commanding abilities as much as for their ability to secure the recruitment of large numbers of soldiers. While the physical presence and prowess of some of these generals and colonels could indeed be displayed in an exaggerated manner by contemporary chroniclers, as in the case of Paolo Giovio, del Vasto, and Pescara, for example,63 to highlight their patrons’ heroism—and thus should be considered with caution—the numerous mentions of acts of heroism and prowess by junior officers and veteran soldiers provide a contrasting image of officers whose mere objective was sadism and financial fraud. The sources, even those written by men whose suspicion toward their contemporary soldiers was already established, abound in more or less casual descriptions of courageous and dramatic behavior of such men during combat. The circa 8,000 Swiss infantry who advanced under the command of Anne de Montmorency against the Spanish and German ditches and ramparts in Bicocca in 1522 were smashed by continuous barrages of arquebus and artillery rounds. Francesco Guicciardini claimed that, among the estimated 3,000 dead Swiss, 22 were captains, which means that about half of all the Swiss captains had died.64 According to Martin du Bellay, the artillery barrages, combined with the Spanish arquebusiers and the German pikemen, brought about that “most of the [Swiss] captains and best soldiers had died there.”65 The battle in Bicocca was no exception. Although Blaise de Monluc was highly critical of the behavior of the mercenaries from Gruyères (the canton of Fribourg) for retreating

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after the first contact with a combined Spanish and German contingent on the left flank of the French army during the Battle of Ceresole in 1544, he nevertheless mentions that “there died all the captains and lieutenants that stood in the front line.”66 The testimony of Monluc, among others, clearly demonstrates that the captains of the Swiss mercenaries accompanied their troops during assaults and that the Swiss soldiers would be accustomed to and even expect the presence of their captains in front or among them. The same was true in the case of the landsknechts. We can confirm from the sources that the junior officers and especially the captains and lieutenants were always expected to fight in front of or alongside their soldiers. For the captains, as in the case of the Swiss, it meant potentially very high casualty rates. The Battle of Ceresole, for example, was especially infamous for the bloody defense of the (originally) 7,000 imperial landsknechts, who were surrounded by Swiss infantry and French cavalry, that left thousands of dead and injured soldiers on the battleground. Giovio, a close acquaintance of del Vasto, the commander of the imperial army, wrote that “all the captains in the front lines had died.”67 Much like most contemporary soldiers, the German landsknechts placed an extremely high value on the unit’s standard and the lieutenant who carried it.68 The standard symbolized the company’s honor and traditions, and losing it—or even watching it fall to the ground— was perceived as a grievous sign of dishonor. Giovio’s mention of the fact that “the standards were knocked down by the enemy’s soldiers” suggests that many of the lieutenants were also dead and wounded.69 The Spanish officers were also accustomed to leading their soldiers from the front lines. For the most part, captains and lieutenants (alféreces) participated in every battle or skirmish, whether during an assault on the walls of a besieged stronghold or a pitched battle. The soldiers were accustomed to the presence of their officers, who usually fought alongside them. The sources mention many examples of maestres de campo, captains, and alféreces leading their men and even attempting to reach first into a breach or smash into the enemy’s line of battle. During the assault on Genoa in 1522, two Spanish alféreces competed with each other on who would plant his standard behind the walls first.70 The Spanish captain Ruiz Sanchez de Vargas was 60 years old when he stormed the walls of Chieri with his troops in 1537 and lost a leg.71 The veteran soldiers, many of whom were already highly experienced in the grim realities of battle in the Italian Wars, also appear in the sources as an important factor in the general motivation of the other soldiers. In the Spanish assault on Goletta, Tunis, in 1535, the first soldiers who entered through the walls were the veterans Antonio de Toro, Juan de Herrera, and Miguel de Salas. When the assault was over, a fierce debate arose regarding who had entered first, with both honor and monetary rewards at stake.72 As in the case of the Swiss and the Germans, the sources suggest that the quality, abilities, and determination of the junior officers and veterans were crucial to the success of the company and the army as a whole. Even anecdotal examples can be revealing, especially when they include troops from more than one nationality. In his description of the Battle of

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Ravenna in 1512, which was also supported by the historian Juan de Mariana, Francesco Guicciardini mentions an actual duel between two captains in the heat of battle, a Spaniard named Zamudio and a German named Jacob Empser, with the latter being defeated and killed by his Spanish counterpart.73 While the writers may have exaggerated their description of this dramatic event during the battle, other sources do confirm the presence and death of one German captain with the name Jacob.74 It is also reasonable to assume that officers from both sides were targeted by enemy soldiers and could easily have found themselves confronted by enemy officers. It is safe to assume, then, that both junior and senior officers in the professional and mercenary armies of the Italian Wars had great influence on the consequences of military actions. They could indeed be tyrannical, fraudulent, and unjust, but many could also become proven and experienced leaders for their soldiers. Not surprisingly, every recruiter of German landsknechts had his pool of potential captains, and for the most part the Spanish captains required the approval of the king to receive command over their own company.75 At the very least, we can be more certain that, during the fast and comprehensive process of professionalization and privatization, which was greatly expanding during the military crucible that was the Italian Wars, the soldiers had to depend on their officers, or at least those of some quality and experience, to perform effectively and survive. This necessity was further heightened by the fact that, as has already been established, the military systems that recruited and maintained these soldiers offered very little if anything at all in terms of military training, indoctrination, and experience. Some of the most influential studies of the twentieth century on the subject of motivation during military service suggest that group cohesion and exemplary behavior by superior officers surpassed, although definitely not always, other forms of normative and remunerative motivations.76 The process of widespread European military privatization and professionalization, which reached its first major apex in the Italian Wars, greatly affected both contemporary and present-day assessments of the motivations and behavior of soldiers who, as the most famous and dramatic events of the wars seemingly demonstrated, were indeed fighting solely for monetary gains. Such conclusions determined the image of the brutal and greedy mercenary soldiers for years to come and, as has already been established, seems to persist to this day, albeit under a different set of cultural prisms. While the sources provide myriad examples for the widespread derogatory perception of these soldiers, other sources demonstrate a far more complex image of soldiers who, more often than not, were proud of their profession and achievements, loyal to their prince or nationality, and deeply aware and connected to the cause. The German landsknechts were highly aware of their special status in a deeply hierarchical society and displayed their apparent and relative freedom for all to see. A poem written by a soldier after the war of the succession of Landshut (1503–1505) ends with the following lines: “The one who composed this poem, who sings a lot to us about the story, and will soon reflect upon himself, is a free

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and good landsknecht, who gives us this poem as gift.”77 Another poem, written after the Battle of Pavia in 1525 by a soldier under French employment claims that “[a]s a farmer I thresh / I have to drink sour milk / In the king’s service I have full bottles / As a farmer I wear rough cloth / In the king’s service I advance courageously to battle / and advance like a free hero / to smash and slice / as the nobles do.”78 For many of these men, joining the army, whether that of the emperor or any other, meant replacing the shackles of society with different shackles but nevertheless ones that potentially provided them with honor and purpose on top of rewards and monetary gains. From their perspective, they could finally take part in the violent sport of the nobility and disregard the general suspicion and, at times, even fear and revulsion of contemporary society. The best testimony for this view, especially in the case of the Swiss and German soldiers, was their pompous and extravagant attire (see Fig 3.2), which deliberately made them prominent and conspicuous among the population. To be sure, many of them could experience horrific conditions of service that might leave them with few or no clothes and bare feet, but, when the time came to demonstrate their uniqueness in early modern society, an army could easily seem more similar to a carnivalesque procession than a disciplined and uniform fighting force. The extravagant soldiers who appear in the woodcuts of Erhard Schön, Urs Graf, and Albrecht Dürer, to name only some of the more prominent artists of the sixteenth century, are obviously proud in their identity and profession and, at the very least, convey a sense of complexity when it comes to the self-perception and motivations of many of these men. Despite the still too pervasive impression of the soldiers of the Italian Wars as brutal mercenaries with little or no other care in the world besides killing and the monetary rewards that accompanied it, the sources also abound in testimonies of a deep sense of esprit de corps combined with the idea of a warrior society detached from that of other civilians. The processes of professionalization and privatization of the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries did not—and still do not—necessarily entail a businesslike state of mind of men who are expected first and foremost to risk their lives and take those of others. Considering what was (and is) at stake for soldiers throughout history, the mere implication that anyone could fight solely or even mainly for material gains seems problematic. For example, many contemporaries did view the landsknechts as a destructive force, especially after they had been discharged and had returned to civilian life. Oswald Fragenstainer, a Tyrolean soldier under the command of Frundsberg, who knew full well that returning to civilian life could be difficult and demanding, wrote about his fellow soldiers who were discharged after Bicocca in 1522, “May God protect you from vice and shame.”79 Other soldiers, some of whom originated from patrician families of some political and financial status, were nevertheless proud of their career as soldiers, flaunted their experiences in their writings, and utilized their experience for political and social gains. As Reinhard Baumann summarized it, “for these men, [their

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Figure 3.2 This woodcut by Urs Graf from 1521 of a Swiss standard-bearer from Unterwalden displays the conspicuous appearance of mercenary soldiers in the sixteenth century. The soldier—much like Urs Graf himself—appears to be proud of his nationality, position, and duty and dressed in pompous and extravagant clothes for all to see. Source: Minneapolis Institute of Art.

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military service as landsknechts] was not a ‘youthful sin,’ but a thing to be proud of for the rest of their lives.”80 Moreover, the sources consistently show that the soldiers of the Italian Wars were highly vulnerable to any attempt at damaging their pride as warriors. The soldier Martin García Cerezeda mentions that the companies of Spanish infantry who successfully assaulted and defeated a French force in Caraglio, near Turin (modern-day Torino), in January 1537, were disappointed and even disturbed to learn that their captain general, del Vasto, would not arrive to watch them march through the streets of Asti with the banners of the defeated enemy dragged under their own.81 Cerezeda’s testimony is especially instructive in that it demonstrates the pride of having vanquished one’s enemy, on the one hand, and the potential disgrace of having been defeated, physically and symbolically, on the other. On top of their wages (which were constantly in arrears) and expected booty, Cerezeda and his fellow soldiers clearly demanded an acknowledgment of their achievement as soldiers and warriors and not merely employed workers. The fact that Cerezeda even mentioned the event and his recollection of the soldiers’ sincere disappointment is as instructive and interesting as his description. Cerezeda describes another interesting event in which, following a failed assault on Chieri in October 1536, del Vasto decided to retreat to Asti. The soldiers who arrived with him were annoyed by the retreat and hung posters claiming that “anyone who have said or would say that there was any fault in the Spanish nation whereby the attack on Chieri was abandoned, would lie one and two and three times.”82 According to Cerezeda, del Vasto did not receive his soldiers’ criticism well and demanded that the posters be removed. Nevertheless, it seems that Cerezeda felt disturbed and protective enough of his honor to describe the event and clear his and his fellow soldiers’ reputation. On another occasion, and almost as if to strengthen both of his testimonies, Cerezeda upholds his and his fellow soldiers’ decision to defend a seemingly insignificant house in Piedmont under heavy fire in January 1537 because “a soldier should not leave his post, until he is relieved by his officers.”83 His memoirs being full of descriptions of events such as these, Cerezeda was adamant at portraying himself and his fellow soldiers as both professionals and warriors. Despite their general tendency for violence against enemy troops and in general, the soldiers were also quite aware of the difference between “good” and “bad” war (i.e., a war with some rules and moral considerations as opposed to all-out violence and mayhem). According to Martin du Bellay, in 1524, Giovanni de Medici, fighting for the imperial side, encountered about 200 Swiss soldiers from the French army roaming the lands near Binasco in search of food and supplies. Aware that they could not face his force head-on, the Swiss fortified themselves in a castle nearby and agreed to surrender to Giovanni. When they came out of the castle, Giovanni killed them all. Bellay describes how the Swiss soldiers in the French camp, “irritated by this outrage, demanded from [Guillaume Gouffier, seigneur de Bonnivet, commander of the French army] to allow them to make a bad war (mauvaise guerre), which he allowed in order to

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keep them content.” And indeed, for three weeks the Swiss went out to massacre every enemy soldier they encountered without asking questions. Although Bellay could have exaggerated the context of these events, it seems that even the mercenaries par excellence of the Italian Wars were aware of the difference between honorable and dishonorable warfare. It is true that this line could very often become vague and even disappear completely, but the mere implication of its existence is telling. Other mentions may be more anecdotal in nature but can still provide instructive evidence for the soldiers’ perception of themselves or at least for the way their sense of pride was noted by contemporaries. When writing on the Swiss, Guicciardini noted that “not only did they always defend their lands valorously, but also waged war outside of their lands with great praise.”85 In his description of the Battle of Bicocca in 1522, Blaise de Monluc commented about the Swiss that “I saw in my time the chagrin of the people of this nation being the cause of the loss of many places, and greatly interrupting the affairs of the king; they are truly men of war and act like a rampart for an army, but it is necessary that money and supplies would never be lacking; they cannot be paid with words.”86 More specific examples abound of what appears to be some kind of admiration by contemporary writers for the soldiers. According to Giovio, for example, the Spaniards and Germans who were besieged by a French army in Naples in 1528 and were very hard pressed and reduced to disease and starvation “said each day that they would rather die of hunger than surrender to the French, who were defeated by them many times in the past … [A]nd next … raising their right hand, in a sort of oath-taking which is done in haste, they swore to keep it.”87 These and many other examples from chronicles, histories, and similar sources should of course be handled with great caution, considering the intentions, biases, and dubious handling of the truth by their writers, but they can nevertheless demonstrate that, despite any prejudice and animosity toward the men who joined these armies, contemporaries were indeed aware of and even admired the men’s image as true soldiers. The sources also demonstrate that the soldiers were very much aware of and greatly affected by the national and political affiliations and religious beliefs that provided them with far more complex motivations than merely monetary gains. The case of the deep hatred between the Swiss and Germans is one of the first to come to mind. The geographic proximity to southern Germany, from which many of the landsknechts originated, made the long-lasting conflicts between the Habsburgs and the Swiss cantons particularly real and evident, even for the common soldiery; the mere fact that the landsknechts were created to replace the dependency of Maximilian I on foreign troops and Maximilian I’s difficulties in confronting the Swiss all conjoined to fashion this reality. The flames were only intensified by the fact that the Swiss were mostly employed by the French, whereas most landsknechts were employed by the emperor. The Germans enjoyed mocking the Swiss for being rural herdsmen who practiced sodomy with their livestock. One Swiss soldier poetically derided the Germans for being cowards, choosing to fortify themselves behind ditches

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and ramparts and firing their artillery instead of clashing with pikes “like real men,” as was the case, for example, in Bicocca in 1522. The same poet added: “I defecate on your nose and smear it on your beard.”88 Of course, the Germans did not take these insults without retaliating. Following the Battle of Bicocca, Fragenstainer was careful to mock the Swiss defeat and went even further by claiming that “after the enemy escaped, all of the Swiss were visited,” meaning that the injured and dead Swiss who remained on the battlefield—and there were many of them—were all robbed of their belongings.89 The clash between the landsknechts and the Swiss in the Battle of Ceresole in 1544 was likely more than “work” for both sides, and the Swiss had the delight of trapping a large force of Germans, ready for the taking. As Giovio described it, “And now the Swiss, which were facing the Italians, seeing the Germans collapsing and being routed, breaking off and leaving the Italians, they turned against the Germans, considering the natural hatred that existed between them, they being true and real enemies.”90 This sense of deep political and cultural hatred would not be conspicuous to the modern reader. Mercenaries, as they were, took with them to the battlefield many of the beliefs, feelings, and prejudices that they held as true in their everyday civilian lives, much as was the case with soldiers in the seemingly more national, ideological, and cultural wars from the nineteenth century to the present. Regardless of the complexity of the terms “Swiss” and “German,” which was explored in Chapter 2, both sides had a very clear definition of their general political and cultural allegiances, and they could easily transfer them to the bloody battlefields of the Italian Wars. The fact that many of these soldiers conveniently found themselves fighting on opposite sides only heightened their sense of discord and conflict. As was the case in both Bicocca and Ceresole, to name only two of the most obvious examples, on these battlefields the soldiers were Swiss and Germans first and mercenaries second. When the landsknechts slaughtered the Swiss on the ramparts in Bicocca and the Swiss did the same to the landsknechts in Ceresole, all of them clearly had much more than money on their minds. The Spaniards were also very much aware of their national identity, and their officers and generals could use it to their advantage. On the eve of the Battle of Pavia, both the Spanish and German infantry mutinied for what they rightly perceived as massive arrears, which in some cases amounted to more than six months’ pay. The imperial army was already suffering from lack of supplies, and the French siege of Pavia seemed endless. At least once, two of their generals, Pescara and Bourbon, had to intervene to prevent the landsknechts from leaving following a fight with the Spaniards over supplies.91 Considering their options, the imperial generals decided that a swift attack would provide them with the element of surprise and give their mutinous soldiers something to look forward to. The presence of the French king meant that booty might be plentiful. Nevertheless, Giovio’s choice of words in his description of Fernando d’Avalos’s (marchese di Pescara) speech to the mutinous Spaniards is instructive. When

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large portions of their armies refused to fight or decided to mutiny, more often than not generals had to resort to motivations other than money, especially when their soldiers knew that no money was or would be available. Thus, Pescara approached his men and proclaimed that “Spaniards do not fight as laborers for money, like the custom of mercenary soldiers, but are accustomed to fight for glory, for empire, for victories, [and] for honor.”92 This choice of words could well have stemmed from Giovio’s will to present his hero as an excellent and charismatic leader, but the fact that he suggests that this sort of speech would have convinced the Spaniards to end the mutiny is in itself revealing. The strong link between the Spaniards’ own perception of their loyalty and their honor as men and soldiers is a recurring theme. During the mutiny in Sicily in the winter of 1538–1539, in what seems to be a furious response by the mutineers to claims that they acted like traitors to the emperor, they “implored [His Excellency the Viceroy of Sicily] to see that we are Spaniards, and we have to do what is suitable for the service of His Majesty [the emperor], and His Excellency.”93 Like their German and Swiss counterparts, many of the Spaniards were highly sensitive to any attempt at criticizing their national allegiance, regardless of expected monetary gains. Even if many of them were disparaged precisely for their extremely unChristian behavior and morals, the soldiers were also highly affected by their religious affinities, a reality that became overly complicated by the rise of the Reformation in many of the same geographic areas where soldiers were recruited in Germany. To be sure, both Catholic and Protestant landsknechts fought in the Italian Wars and at times were often deployed against each other. The army that marched to Rome in 1527 under Bourbon was made up of thousands of landsknechts, some of whom already prided themselves as zealous Lutherans. Naturally, it is impossible to determine how many of the landsknechts in the army were actually Lutheran or how attuned they were to the main messages and arguments of Martin Luther during the 1520s. Nevertheless, the recent repression of the Peasants’ Revolt (c. 1524–1525), some of which at least was infused with religious discontent, and the expanding influence of Luther’s ideas throughout the Holy Roman Empire certainly left a mark on at least some of the German soldiers; one of the rumors suggested that Frundsberg himself carried with him to Rome a golden noose with which he wanted to hang the pope.94 The mere existence of such rumors suggests that the landsknechts had far-reaching plans in Rome that did not solely entail robbery and murder. Martin Luther’s general objection to the use of “hand and flail” against the Church and his portrayal of the rebellious peasants as “raging and robbing like rapacious dogs” did not prevent many of the landsknechts from believing in and of course taking advantage of his provocative claim that the “priests, bishops and popes are neither different from, nor superior to, other Christians”95 and should be punished violently, rather than solely await göttliche zorn. The Germans were overjoyed by the absurdity of this new reality. Several German soldiers dragged the Cardinal della Minerva through the streets wearing a doublet and stockings, and a soldier wore his cardinal’s hat. The same

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report also claims that a large group of Germans, all Lutherans, carried Cardinal Aracele in a coffin, as if he were dead, through every street in Rome, repeatedly chanting.96 These were not solely violent and aimless horrors, and at least some of the soldiers were very much aware of the religious, political, and social implications of their actions. When the army was about to leave the city at the beginning of 1528, several landsknechts even left a reminder for posterity written on one of the walls in the Villa Farnesina in Rome: “Why should I cry rather than laugh, [since] the landsknechts made the pope run?” If the graffiti were actually the handiwork of some of the common soldiers, it is safe to say that they were far from being (only) ravenous and mindless brutes. Religious services were also crucial to performance, as was the case, for example, with the Spanish soldiers. From the point of view of many of them, “a soldier has a greater necessity of having a priest near him than any other sort of people, having death in front of his eyes and his soul between his teeth on a daily basis.”97 The presence of a chaplain (capellán) in each company was the norm, despite many of them being “idiots and abnormal.”98 Being the only ones who could administer the sacraments—a significant duty considering the always imminent dangers of military life—they were the closest thing that the soldiers had to the representatives of the Church when on campaigns and before and after a battle. The Spanish soldiers were also highly affected by religious zeal. By the beginning of the sixteenth century, for most of the soldiers, the end of the Reconquista and the war in Granada was either a fading memory or a set of historical events steeped in legend and unattainable heroism of fighting the infidels. The advent and spread of the Reformation and the continuation of the fight against Muslim forces in the East and in the Mediterranean gave fresh impetus to new generations of Spanish soldiers who took great pride and joy in perceiving themselves as defenders of the Catholic faith. The Spanish soldier Diego Nuñez Alba fought in the Schmalkaldic War in Germany against, he claimed, the “cursed sect of Martin Luther.”99 Martin García Cerezeda, fondly and with an uncharacteristically nostalgic tone, remembered a friar by the name of Buenaventura carrying a large cross in front of the Spanish soldiers who landed in Tunis in 1535: “[I]n truth, his words were enough to give strength to whoever lost it.”100 It may well be that some of these testaments were the result of myriad utilitarian and sentimental reasons; the veteran Alba likely directed his memoirs to the Duke of Alba in an attempt to secure a pension or at least recognition while facing difficult personal problems.101 Nevertheless, it is safe to conclude that many of the Spanish soldiers endured harsh conditions of service during these campaigns far from home with the aid of spiritual, rather than solely tangible, motivations and objectives. Considering, then, that the motivations of the soldiers of the Italian Wars were, at the very least, more complex than the mere need or thirst for all sorts of monetary gains, it seems that another central misconception should be clarified. Many of the soldiers of the Italian Wars thought of themselves as professionals and demanded to be compensated for their services, as was promised in the first place. When the Swiss refused to fight until they were paid, when the Germans

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huddled in their Gemein in order to determine whether they should comply with the orders given by their superiors, and when the Spanish soldiers mutinied to the point of distorting the strategic plans of their generals, they did not act in such a manner out of fear or reluctance to fight. In fact, one should stress that, for example, when the Swiss refused Lautrec’s orders in Bicocca, they actually pressured the French general to “let them do battle immediately without further delay.” Like their counterparts, they were very much motivated by the potential booty and rewards, but they were more than willing to take their chances, even if it meant risking their lives. Demanding what was owed to them even in critical moments and being motivated by monetary gains did not in any way mean that these soldiers did not see themselves as fighting men. Not only did the soldiers of the Italian Wars demonstrate courage, commitment, and effectiveness on the battlefield, the sources also demonstrate that flight from the battlefield, cowardice, and losing face in front of the enemy were rare occasions and that this reality could not be explained merely by expectation for remuneration.

The bloody battlefields As is the case with most attempts to construct the reality of the battlefield, even to this day, all we have are the general impressions of contemporaries and then usually in hindsight, which makes reconstruction extremely difficult and at times impossible.102 Nevertheless, a careful handling of these impressions can assist us in re-creating the often conflicting notions of contemporaries concerning the soldiers of the Italian Wars. Some of the same men who derided and disparaged them could not avoid a sense of admiration for their battlefield effectiveness, and these impressions paint a somewhat different image of at least some of these forces. The Battle of Ravenna in 1512, for example, remains one of the most noteworthy military engagements of the period, especially, as will be explored later, when one considers the technological developments of gunpowder weapons in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It was also the first extraordinarily bloody battle of the Italian Wars. Most contemporary impressions were also fascinated with the dramatic clash of infantry, mainly between the French landsknechts and Spanish infantry, 8,000 of the latter having fortified themselves between the Ronco River and an artificial ditch and rampart. The French knight Bayard, who took part in the battle, added that “between two guns, on small wheeled carts, they had large pieces of sharp-edged iron, shaped like triple-forks, to roll them into the infantrymen who wished to enter among them.”103 But the Spaniards apparently remained almost alone on the battlefield, their flanks of cavalry having been hit hard and having fled, when the French landsknechts charged into the ramparts, and a bloody push of pikes, swords, and halberds commenced and quickly transformed into a brutal push of pikes. Not surprisingly, the Spanish historian Jerónimo Zurita y Castro (d. 1580), writing long after the events about the glorious rule of Ferdinand II of Aragon, wrote that “[t]hen the Spanish infantry entered the battle with the greatest

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impetus that was seen in those times.”104 But other contemporaries were very much impressed by this clash and especially the ability of the Spanish infantry to resist the assault and retreat in an orderly fashion. For the Italians, the Spaniards’ discipline and endurance were most likely further underscored in contrast to what they saw as Italian decadence and inferiority. Francesco Guicciardini commented that “all the squadrons mingled like that, [and] the greatest battle commenced, and doubtlessly one of the greatest seen in Italy for many years.”105 In his attempt to strengthen his position on the significance of infantry tactics, Machiavelli lauded the Spaniards and bolstered Guicciardini, who wrote that “many of the Spaniards, protected with shields and entering between the legs of the Germans with daggers, arrived almost to the middle of their squadron causing the greatest carnage.”106 Contemporaries were as bewildered by the Spaniards’ success in maintaining their formation and retreating from the battlefield in an orderly fashion, exploiting the confusion in the French army following the death of the French General Gaston de Foix at the hands of a separate Spanish contingent.107 Using superlatives similar to those used by Zurita y Castro, Charles V’s historian Pedro de Mexía added later that “I do not believe that it is reasonable to name [the French] victors in this battle, since after the engagement, a squadron of Spanish infantry remained intact, victorious and unbreakable.”108 Other sources by participants and eyewitnesses provide similar impressions. The French Robert de la Marck, maréchal de Floranges (d. 1537), who took part and was badly injured in the battle, wrote about the clash of Spanish and German infantry that “there occurred a great slaughter.”109 Bayard’s biographer commented that “never before did men make a better defense than the Spaniards, who, having no arms or legs, they bit their enemies.”110 The Italian condottiere Fabrizio Colonna, whose cavalry force charged the enemy under intense artillery barrages and exposed the Spanish flank, testified from captivity that the Spaniards, “who, assisted by the few [cavalrymen] remaining from our rearguard … fought so well that they gave me hope of victory.”111 Although thousands of Spaniards were injured or killed and the Spanish coronel Pedro Navarro was taken prisoner, it seems that many contemporaries viewed, each from his own literary or actual vantage point, the Battle of Ravenna as confirmation of the rumored extraordinary capabilities of the Spanish infantry and the success of the administrative and tactical military reforms initiated by Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba and maintained by the Spanish monarchy. Another famous battle was that in Bicocca in April 1522. As has already been discussed, the Swiss mutinied and demanded pay, threatening Lautrec that they would simply go home. Nevertheless, instead of receiving the money, they proclaimed that they simply wanted to charge the enemy. This peculiar exchange of threats encapsulates much of the spirit of the professional soldiers of the Italian Wars. Yes, they demanded to be paid, but more often than not they did not flinch when it came to doing battle against all odds. And that was certainly the case with the fortified position of the imperial army. Martin du Bellay painted a grim picture: “[B]ut before they arrived [at the ditch], more than a thousand Swiss fell from artillery rounds. And arriving there, they found a ditch with a rampart so

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high, that they could barely touch its highest point with their [long] pikes, which made them halt.”112 Guicciardini added that “either because of the unevenness of the position or on account of the virtue of the defenders, [the Swiss] exhausted themselves without achieving anything, receiving very great damage not only from [the pikemen] who fought in the front but from the many Spanish arquebusiers … smashing them from the flank.”113 Considering the fact that almost half of the entire Swiss force of about 8,000 were injured or killed, these brutal scenes are even more perplexing. The Battle of Bicocca was only the most conspicuous example from the sources that suggest that the Swiss did not only consider the head-on assault to be their main professional “calling card” but also a badge of honor and pride that separated them from other nationalities. Their actions in Bicocca demonstrate, then, that it would be somewhat careless to claim, as John Lynn does, that they “fought mostly for material gain.” Yet another important example is the performance of the Germans in the Battle of Ceresole in 1544. As usual, both the imperial army under del Vasto and the French army under François de Bourbon, comte d’Enghien (d. 1546), were composed of contingents of many nationalities. Nevertheless, the main force of the imperial army was made up of about 7,000 landsknechts, who were supposed to execute a crucial assault on the center of the French army, which was made of large bodies of Swiss and Gascon soldiers. The push of pikes succeeded to the extent that, when the French left flank under the command of d’Enghien could not break the imperial right flank after three successive cavalry charges, the count believed that all was lost. Only then did the news about the defeat of the landsknechts reach him. The sources portray the last and hopeless stand of the Germans as they were assaulted from all sides. From the start, the engagement of the Swiss and Germans in the center provided horrific images; Monluc, who commanded the Gascon infantry that engaged the Germans, acknowledged that the Germans were elite fighters. He also testified that, when the lines met, “a great slaughter occurred there.”114 But, when the Germans were finally surrounded, they could not break free, despite the fact that they were able to maintain their formations. Cerezeda, who apparently fought on the right flank of the imperial army and thus did not witness the events in the center, nonetheless felt obliged to add that “the squadron of 7,000 Germans … fought very valiantly against the Swiss and broke three of their rows and lines, and endured [the assault] of the Gascons.”115 Having most likely discussed the matter with del Vasto himself and at least some soldiers or officers, Giovio provided a similar, yet more detailed, description: “[T]he Germans, who were in the front, valorously driving back the Gascons and the veteran Swiss, who fought with great force, were not able to sustain the fresh assault of the Swiss who attacked them from the flank … and with no one to assist them, and on top of that, assaulted from the back by the French men-at-arms … they turned around and almost all of them were killed.”116 Giovio goes on to mention that most of the German junior and senior officers were killed in the battle.117 As is the case with all the battles of the Italian Wars, even the testimonies of soldiers who took part in the battle cannot provide a clear image of the actual

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circumstances; the chaos was immense. But accepting that the general sketch of the events is valid, the portrayal of the hopeless stand of the Germans seems accurate enough. One can claim that the Germans had no other choice; surrendering to the Swiss or breaking the formation in general meant a horrible and vengeful death. With the help of a simple thought experiment, even if unbecoming of an academic study, one should consider how insurmountable the effort of maintaining a close and ordered formation during a brutal engagement would prove to be, with violent pushes of pikes, an endless hail of arquebus rounds, horrific screams of men and horses, and a rising sense of horror and helplessness. And, while the imperial landsknechts had ceased to exist as a viable fighting force by the end of the battle,118 theirs was not a performance expected of mercenary soldiers who tend to “melt away when the prospects of rich rewards have grown dim or the tide of battle has turned against them.” In other circumstances (i.e., fighting for their country, religion, or ideology), their behavior might even be termed heroic and their deaths as martyrdom. The bloody battles of Ravenna, Bicocca, and Ceresole are some of the most dramatic examples but are also far from exceptional. There is no space here to recount the many dangerous skirmishes, assaults on breaches, and even what would today be termed special operations, that constituted an inseparable part of military service for these soldiers. Throughout all these battles, money and rewards were obviously an important factor, but so too were following orders, personal and national pride, and general effectiveness. It appears that, for many of these soldiers, losing prestige and respect was at least as bad as losing money of any kind. Undoubtedly there were many other occasions in which even the most reputable soldiers decided to turn their backs and leave the battle. When it became obvious that the French army had collapsed in Pavia in 1525, “the Swiss, terrified while they were torn to pieces like beasts, jumped into the Ticino [river], and being unable to swim, they drowned while miserably assaulted and impeded together.”119 Cerezeda mentions that d’Enghien threatened the Spanish and German squadron, which remained almost alone and far away from the now crushed center of the imperial army at Ceresole, by telling them that the Swiss and Gascon infantry were on their way and they should surrender immediately, an offer that the Spanish and German force reluctantly accepted.120 Even though earlier the Spaniards had been “very much amazed” to hear their maestre de campo ordering them to retreat from the battlefield and head to safety, they were not deterred from acknowledging that the battle was indeed lost.121 Nevertheless, these occurrences were reserved for extreme circumstances. On many other occasions, the more reputable and experienced forces were competent and disciplined enough to attempt an organized retreat to avoid a complete rout, as any organized, disciplined, and quality military force in history would aspire to be able to do. Some of the most reputable military forces of the modern age chose to retreat or even surrender, rather than be wiped out. The noticeable rise of employment of professional and private military forces in the crucible that was the Italian Wars naturally brought with it prejudice and

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mistrust in a society steeped in an intricate amalgamation of chivalric and humanist ideals. The legacy of these forces remained mostly the same, until very recently, as it attempted to fight its way through thick prisms made up of ideals of national armies comprising committed and highly motivated citizen soldiers. The idealistic constructs identified in the professionals and mercenaries of early modern Europe in general and the Italian Wars in particular present a convenient mirror image. On the one hand, that image was undoubtedly based on countless instances where these soldiers proved to be avaricious, rapacious, brutal, unpredictable, and unreliable fighting forces. On the other hand, the construction of that image also entailed the discarding of many other instances where these soldiers proved to be as effective, committed, and reliable as any other ideal soldier. The sources show that more often than not—although definitely not always—these forces were not merely “a lesser of two evils,” but dependable military forces that fought under unbearable conditions that would have overwhelmed any modern elite unit. And, while there is no real need for a comprehensive revision of the characterization of the soldiers of the Italian Wars, a more reasonable and sober outlook should at least be considered.

Notes 1 Thomas Ertman, Birth of the Leviathan: Building States and Regimes in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 90–102. 2 For the institution of “indentures,” or contracts for the raising and maintenance of military forces by private men, in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century England, see, for example, A.E. Prince, “The Indenture System under Edward III,” in Historical Essays in Honour of James Tait, eds. J.G. Edwards et al. (Manchester, 1933), 283–97; M.R. Powicke, “Lancastarian Captains,” in Essays in Medieval History Presented to Bertie Wilkinson, eds. T.A. Sandquist and M.R. Powicke (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969), 371–83. 3 For these development in France, see Philip Contamine, War in the Middle Ages, trans. Michael Jones (Oxford and New York: Basil Blackwell, 1985), 153–7. 4 For a general survey of the forces of Castile and Aragon in the second half of the fifteenth century, see René Quatrefages, La revolución militar moderna: el crisol español (Madrid: Ministerio de Defensa, 1996), 19–63. 5 Jean Jules Clamageran, Histoire de l‘impôt en France, vol. 2 (Paris: Libraire de Guillaumin, 1868), 130–1. These conclusions are already mentioned in Ertman, Birth of the Leviathan, 97. I went back to the original text for more specific numbers. 6 Ertman, Birth of the Leviathan, 97. 7 James D. Tracy, Emperor Charles V, Impresario of War: Campaign Strategy, International Finance and Domestic Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 102, 125, 177; Ramon Carande Thobar, Carlos V y sus banqueros, vol. 2 (Madrid: Sociedad de Estudios y Publicaciones, 1949–1967), 91. 8 Jean d’Auton, Chroniques de Louis XII, vol. 4 (Paris: Librairie Renouard, 1893), 239. 9 David Potter, Renaissance France at War: Armies, Culture and Society, c.1480–1560 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2008), 126. 10 Ibid. 11 Specifically on the landknechts in French service, see the instructive work of David Potter, “Les Allemands et les armées francaises au XVIe siècle. Jean-Philippe Rhingrave, chef de lansquenets: étude suivie de sa correspondance en France, 1548–1566, seconde partie,” Francia 21:2 (1994): 2.

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12 Keith Moxey, “Mercenary Warriors and the ‘Rod of God,’” in Peasants, Warriors and Wives: Popular Imagery in the Reformation, ed. Keith Moxey (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1989), 71. 13 Ibid., 75. 14 Idan Sherer, Warriors for a Living: The Experience of the Spanish Infantry in the Italian Wars, 1494–1559 (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 72. 15 Martín Garcia Cerezeda, Tratado de las campañas y otros acontecimientos de los ejercitos del emperador Carlos V en Italia, Francia, Austria, Berbería y Grecia desde 1521 hasta 1545, vol. 2 (Madrid, 1873), 139–40. 16 Ibid., vol. 3, 185; Paolo Giovio, La seconda parte dell’istoria del suo tempo (Venice, 1560), 752. 17 Antonio di Motalvo, Relazione della guerra di Siena (Torino: Tipografia V. Vercellino, 1863), 97; Girolamo Roffia, “Racconti,” in Archivio Storico Italiano, vol. 2 (Firenze: Gio. Pietro Vieusseux, 1842), 559–82; “Vittoria riportata dagl’imperiali presso Marciano scritte da un anonimo,” in ibid., 583–90. 18 Manuel Fernandez Álvarez, España y los españoles en los tiempos modernos (Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca, 1979), 167. 19 Charles de Lannoy to Charles V, Pavia, February 25, 1525, in Karl Lanz, ed., Correspondenz des Kaisers Karl V aus dem Könglichen Archive und der Bibliothque de Buorgogne zu Brüssel, vol. 1 (Leipzig: F.A. Brockhaus, 1844), 152. 20 Geoffrey Parker, The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road, 1567–1659, 2nd. ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 27. 21 Mateo Flecha, Las ensaladas Flecha, maestro de capilla que fue de las serenísimas Infantes de Castilla, recopiladas por F. Mateo Flecha su sobrino (Prague: Jorge Norgino, 1581), f. 10v. 22 For Flecha, see Francese Villanueva Serrano, “Mateo Flecha el Viejo en la cathedral de Valencia: sus dos períodos de magisterio de capilla (1526–1531? Y 1539–1541) y su entorno musical,” Anuario Musical 64 (2009): 57–108. 23 As described in a letter from Pisa by Luca Antonio degli Albizzi dated July 8, 1500 in Christian E. Detmold, ed., The Historical, Political, and Diplomatic Writings of Niccolo Machivaelli, vol. 3 (London: James R. Osgood, 1882), 27–9. Machiavelli was present during violent events. 24 Niccolò Machiavelli, Il principe, ed. Giuseppe Liso (Florence: Sansoni, 1964), 76. 25 Especially in Chapter 14 in the Il principe: ibid., 135–7. 26 For a description of the sack in the context of Machiavelli’s attempts to create and maintain the militia, see Charles Calvert Bayley, War and Society in Renaissance Florence: The De Militia of Leonardo Bruni (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1961). 27 Reinhard Baumann, Landsknechte: ihre Geschichte und Kultur vom späten Mittelalter bis zum Dreißigjährigen Krieg (München: Beck, 1994), 109. 28 As presented in Yuval Noah Harari, The Ultimate Experience: Battlefield Revelations and the Making of Modern War Culture, 1450–2000 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 160–91. 29 Ibid., 185. 30 John Julius Norwich, A History of Venice (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982), 399–400. 31 Ian Frederick Moulton, “Whores and Shopkeepers: Money and Sexuality in Aretino’s Ragionamenti,” in Money, Morality, and Culture in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Juliann Vitullo and Diane Wolfthal (Farnham and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010), 80. 32 John Albert Lynn, The Bayonets of the Republic: Motivation and Tactics in the Army of Revolutionary France (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984), 24. 33 Simone di Goro Brami da Colle, “Narrazione del sacco di Prato di ser Simone di Goro Brami da Colle,” in Archivio Storico Italiano, vol. 1 (Florence: Gio. Pietro Vieusseux, 1842), 256.

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34 Sherer, Warriors for a Living, 112. 35 Ibid. 36 Luigi Guicciardini, “Il sacco di Roma,” in Il sacco di Roma del MDXXVII, ed. Carlo Milanesi (Florence: G. Barbera, 1867), 165–7. 37 V.L. Bourrilly and F. Vindry, ed., Mémoires de Martin et Guillaume du Bellay, vol. 1 (Paris: Renouard, 1908), 220. 38 Ibid., 225. 39 Ibid. 40 Francesco Guicciardini, Storia d’Italia, vol. 3 (Milan: Garzanti, 2006), 1625. 41 Sherer, Warriors for a Living, 119. 42 Adam Reissner, Historia Herrn Georgen und Herrn Casparn von Frundsberg (Frankfurt, 1568), 39. 43 Baumann, Landsknechte, 101. 44 Ibid., 119–20. 45 Sancho de Londoño, Discurso sobre la forma de reducir la disciplina militar a mejor y antiguo estado (Madrid: Luis Sánchez, 1593), 32v. Also appears in Sherer, Warriors for a Living, 92. 46 Martin de Eguiluz, Milicia, discurso y regla militar (Antwerp: Pedro Bellero, 1595), 4. Also appears in Sherer, Warriors for a Living, 93. 47 Ilya Berkovich, Motivation in War: The Experience of Common Soldiers in OldRegime Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 34. 48 Baumann, Landknechte, 75. 49 Ibid., 80–2. 50 Ibid., 84. 51 For the recruitment process of soldiers in Spain, see Sherer, Warriors for a Living, 26–37. 52 Baumann, Landsknechte, 77. 53 Cerezeda, Tratado de las campañas, vol. 2, 232. 54 Sherer, Warriors for a Living, 45. 55 Diego Núñez de Alba, Diálogos de la vida del soldado (Madrid: Fernando Fe, 1890), 18. 56 Ibid. 57 Ibid. 58 This was mostly the case in the German landsknechts and Swiss infantry: Baumann, Landsknechte, 94–5. 59 Fernando Marín to Charles V, May 27, 1527, in Antonio Rodríguez Villa, ed., Memorias del saco de Roma: el relato documental del asalto y saqueo de Roma en 1527 (Córdoba: Editorial Almuzara, 2011), 96. 60 Paolo Giovio, La vita del signor don Fernando d’Avalo marchese di Pescara (Venice: Giovanni de Rossi, 1557), 60r, 23r, 70r, 101r. 61 Blaise de Monluc, Commentaires et lettres de Blaise de Monluc Maréchal de France, vol. 1 (Paris: Renouard, 1864), 26. 62 Baumann, Landsknechte, 125. 63 Paolo Giovio was especially close to Alfonso d’Avalos, marchese del Vasto, who became one of Giovio’s patrons and close friends. See especially T.C. Price Zimmerman, Paolo Giovio: The Historian and the Crisis of Sixteenth Century Italy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), 87–106. 64 Guicciardini, Storia d’Italia, vol. 3, 1626. 65 Bourrilly and Vindry, Mémoires de Martin et Guillaume du Bellay, vol. 1, 228. 66 Monluc, Commentaires, vol. 1, 274–5. 67 Giovio, La seconda parte dell’istoria del suo temp, 753. 68 Baumann, Landsknechte, 97–8. 69 Giovio, La seconda parte dell’istoria del suo tempo, 753. 70 Giovio, La vita di Pescara, 58r.

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71 Cerezeda, Tratado de las campañas, vol. 2, 278. 72 Ibid., 49–50. 73 Guicciardini, Storia d’Italia, vol. 2, 1129; Juan de Mariana, “Historia de España,” in Obras del padre Juan de Mariana, vol. 2 (Madrid: M. Rivadeneyra, 1854), 355. 74 Marino Sanuto, I diarii, vol. 14 (Venice: Fratelli Visentini Tipografi Editori, 1886), 106, 112, 132. 75 Sherer, Warriors for a Living, esp. 29–30. 76 The classic studies of Morris Janowitz, “Cohesion and Disintegration in the Weharmacht in World War II,” in Military Conflict: Essays in the Institutional Analysis of War and Peace, ed. Morris Janowitz (London: Sage, 1975), 177–220, first published in 1945, and S.L.A. Marshall, Men against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1947) brought the importance of primary group cohesion to the fore as the central motivation of combat soldiers to function in combat conditions. For more recent debates, see Anthony King, “The Word of Command: Communication and Cohesion in the Military,” Armed Forces and Society 32:4 (2006): 493–512. See also Guy L. Siebold, “The Essence of Military Group Cohesion,” Armed Forces and Society 33:2 (2007): 286–95. 77 Rochus von Liliencron, Die historischen volkslieder der Deutschen vom 13. Bis 16. Jahrhundert, vol. 2 (Leipzig: F.C.W. Vogel, 1866), 551. Baumann, Landknechte wrongly refers to p. 550. 78 Baumann, Landsknechte, 113. 79 Baumann, Landsknechte, 141. For Fragenstainer, see Reinhard Baumann, “Die Schlacht von Bicocca 1522 im Versepos des Landsknechts Oswald Fragenstainer,” in Kulturgeschichte der Schlacht, ed. Marian Füssel and Michael Sikora (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2014), 117–34. 80 Baumann, Landsknechte, 203. 81 Cerezeda, Tratado de las campañas, vol. 2, 241. 82 Ibid., 209–10. 83 Ibid., 236. 84 Bourrilly and Vindry, Mémoires de Martin et Guillaume du Bellay, vol. 1, 307. 85 Guicciardini, Storia d’Italia, vol. 2, 1078. 86 Monluc, Commentaires, vol. 1, 45. 87 Giovio, La seconda parte dell’istoria del suo tempo, 67–8. 88 Baumann, Landsknechte, 115. 89 Ibid., 127. 90 Giovio, La seconda parte dell’istoria del suo tempo, 755. 91 Marino Sanuto, I diarii, vol. 37 (Venice: Visentini, 1893), 496. 92 Giovio, La vita di Pescara, 98r. 93 Sherer, Warriors for a Living, 131. 94 Zimmerman, Paolo Giovio, 81. 95 Martin Luther, Werke, Schriften, vol. 8 (Weimar: Böhlaus Nachfolger, 2003), 679; ibid., vol. 18, 357; ibid., vol. 6, 408. 96 “Copia d’una del cardinale di Como a uno suo segretario,” Civitavecchia, May 24, 1527, in Guicciardini, Il sacco di Roma del MDXXVII, 482–3. 97 Eguiluz, Milicia, discurso y regla militar, 18v. 98 Londoño, Discurso, 6v. 99 Ibid., 34. 100 Cerezeda, Tratado de las campañas, vol. 2, 26. 101 Idan Sherer, “‘¿Qué te parece Cliterio? ¿Quieres todavía ser soldado?’: Diego Núñez Alba’s Diálogos de la Vida del Soldado (1552) and Soldiering in Early Modern Spain,” Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies 19:4 (2018): 393–406. 102 Several attempts were made to reconstruct the famous battles of the Italian Wars from the available sources. The best known among them remains Charles Oman, A History

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104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121

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of the Art of War in the Sixteenth Century (New York: Methuen, 1937), 105–282. The battle of Pavia received the most widespread interest: Reinhard Thom, Die schlacht bei Pavia (24. Februar 1525) (Berlin: G. Nauck, 1907); Zacarías García Villada, La batalla de Pavía y sus resultados (Madrid: Razón y fe, 1925); Jean Giono, Le desastre de Pavie, fevrier 1525 (Paris: Gallimard, 1963); Luigi Casali, La battaglia di Pavia, 24 febbraio 1525 (Pavia, 1984); Jean-Paul Mayer, Pavie, 1525: l’Italie joue son deston pour deux siècles (Le Mans: Cénomane, 1998). For the battle of Novara, see Mario Troso, L’ultima battaglia del medioevo: La battaglia dell’ariotta Novara, 6 giugno 1513 (Novara: Edizioni della Laguna, 2002). For the important battle of Marignano in 1515, see Didier Le Fur, Marignan: 13–14 septembre 1515 (Paris: Perrin, 2004). For the battle of Ceresole in 1544, see Alberto Lusso, La battaglia di Ceresole: 14 aprile 1544: L’ultimo scontro tra gli eserciti di Francesco I e di Carlo V in Piemonte: Storia, tattica militare arte e letteratura (Boves: Arabe Fenice, 2012). Le loyal serviteur, La très joyeuse et très plaisante histoire du gentil seigneur de Bayart, 318. Also Confirmed by the ambassador to Gaston de Foix Francesco Pandolfini in Abel Desjardins, ed., Négociations diplomatiques de la France avec la Toscane, vol. 2 (Paris: Imprimerie imperiale, 1861), 584. Jerónimo Zurita, Los cinco libros postreros de la historia del rey Don Hernando el Catholico (Zaragoza: Domingo de Portonariis y Ursino, 1580), 282v. Guicciardini, Storia d’Italia, vol. 2, 1128–9. Machiavelli, Il principe, 319–20. Guicciardini, Storia d’Italia, vol. 2, 1131; Luigi da Porto to Battista da Porto, Venice, April 30, 1512, in Bartolommeo Bressan, Lettere storiche di Luigi da Porto dall’anno 1508 al 1529 (Florence: Felice Le Monnier, 1857), 310. Pedro de Mexía, Historia del Imperador Carlos V (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1945), 52. Robert III de La Mark, Seigneur de Fleuranges, Mémoires de Maréchal de Florange, ed. Robert Goubaux and P. André Lemoisne, vol. 1 (Paris: Renouard, 1913), 90. Le loyal serviteur, La très joyeuse et très plaisante histoire, 325. Colonna’s letter can be found in Sanuto, I diarii, vol. 14, 180. Bourrilly and Vindry, Mémoires de Martin et Guillaume du Bellay, 228. Guicciardini, Storia d’Italia, vol. 3, 1625. Monluc, Commentaires, vol. 1, 277. Cerezeda, Tratado de las campañas, vol. 3, 186–7. Giovio, La seconda parte dell’istoria del suo tempo, 755. Ibid. Oman, A History of The Art of War, 238. Giovio, La vita di Pescara, 118v–119r. Cerezeda, Tratado de las campañas, vol. 3, 188. Ibid., 187–8.

4

New weapons in a zealously traditional world

Many of the same clashes between technological innovation and conservatism that arose during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries characterized the dramatic developments in military technology centuries later during the Industrial Revolution, as some generals and theoreticians were slow or unwilling to react to how the battlefield was changing in front of their eyes. When men such as Richard Gatling and later Hiram Maxim offered machines that could fire hundreds of rounds per minute to nineteenth-century European armies, the reactions … were not a rational response to either technical or financial considerations. They were rooted in the traditions of an anachronistic officer corps whose conception of warfare still centered around the notions of hand-to-hand combat and individual heroism. They still thought that they would fight on the battlefields on which man was the dominant factor and only needed courage and resolution to be able to carry the day.1 Despite the obvious disparities between the immediacy and comprehensiveness of the effects of the proposed Military Revolution in early modern Europe and the effects of the Industrial Revolution, it should come as no surprise that men in both periods or in any other were distressed when they found out that their perception and experience of war and their role in it were at stake. Some of these same machine guns were still in use when the masses of infantrymen of World War I charged toward each other as hitherto unimaginable amounts of lead and iron were thrown at them from every direction at incredible speed and power. The disparity between tactics and technology in the Great War becomes much clearer when one considers the words of maréchal Joffre in 1913, according to whom “all attacks are to be pushed to the extreme with the firm resolution to charge the enemy with the bayonet, in order to destroy him … This result can only be obtained at the price of bloody sacrifices.”2 Some of these same disparagements and anxious rejections will appear shortly, albeit in a different historical context.

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Apprehension, rejection, and acceptance Since the rise of the debate on the military revolution of early modern Europe and its strong link to gunpowder weapons and changes in tactics and strategy, some scholars have attempted to shift at least some of the focus to fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Europe. The main arguments stressed the rise of infantry formations to counter the heavily armored and well-trained European men-at-arms and the improvements in the methods of casting and employing artillery beginning as early as the end of the thirteenth century and maturing during the final phases of the Hundred Years’ War.3 To be sure, some scholars attempted to scale down some of the more dramatic conclusions,4 but at the very least, the scholarly work on late medieval developments in tactics and technology added a medieval flavor to what was generally an early modern debate. Despite the fact that this work intentionally refrains from taking sides in this inconclusive debate, it still seems appropriate to determine that the Italian Wars constituted a strong catalyst for widespread changes and developments that were obviously already apparent during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Military formations and the deployment of artillery may have already been more widespread during the fifteenth century, but the massive struggle in Italy in the sixteenth century, which drew Europe’s mightiest powers to several standoffs in Italy, seem to have been the (almost) final phase in the transformation of warfare and society in Western Europe. By the end of the struggle, artillery was in widespread and much more efficient use during sieges and set-piece battles alike; regiments of pikemen, arquebusiers, and musketeers were by then operating in coordination and according to embryonic forms of disciplined drill; and the battlefields of the Italian Wars—Ravenna, Bicocca, and Ceresole—became some of the bloodiest and brutal that Europe had seen for many decades. It should come as no surprise, then, that contemporaries reacted more dramatically to changes and developments that, as is often the case, seemed to occur much faster during periods of heightened political and military pressures. It is therefore unsurprising that the French descent into Italy in 1494 is still celebrated as a turning point in the history of gunpowder weapons, when Charles VIII confronted the walls of Italian cities and towns with his bronze artillery pieces until he could successfully take Naples. Looking back, Machiavelli famously commented in Il principe that the French king took Italy with chalk in hand, suggesting that he merely had to signal where his troops should be billeted.5 Writing this work in the beginning of the 1510s, Machiavelli clearly acknowledged the already apparent and clear advantages that artillery brought to siege warfare. Looking back from closer to the middle of the century, the sense of amazement and acceptance in Italy, which had its share of experience with gunpowder weapons, was accentuated even further. In an exhaustively quoted paragraph from his Ricordi, written in the 1520s, Francesco Guicciardini acknowledged that

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New weapons in a zealously traditional world [u]ntil 1494 the wars were long, the battles bloodless and the methods of taking cities by force prolonged and difficult; and though artillery was already in use, it was handled with so little aptness that it made very little damage … [Then] the French came to Italy and introduced such pugnacity to the wars, that by [15]21, when the open country was lost (allowing a siege), the whole state was lost.6

Later, in his magnum opus Storia d’Italia, written in the second half of the 1530s, Guicciardini adds that the French “used this more diabolical than human instrument not only against walls of cities but also on the battlefield.”7 It certainly did not surprise Giovio, who wrote near the middle of the century, that the Florentines who watched the French army marching through their streets on its way to Naples in 1494 “were astonished, watching the battalions of the Swiss infantry and the bronze artillery pieces drawn by carts.”8 These three Italian historians were highly involved in the political and military events of their time, and their testimonies should not be taken lightly, even if one considers their deep resentment in the face of Italy’s subjugation to foreign powers. Guicciardini, being the one with the most direct military experience among them, clearly exaggerates the bloodlessness of Italian warfare before the Italian Wars,9 but he can certainly be trusted when it comes to the grudging acceptance of how warfare was changing throughout his eventful career. What was becoming obvious in the 1520s went on to become ominous and “diabolical” as the aging diplomat and, for some time in the 1520s, military general looked back to the way the military history of his time had unfolded since the French first invaded Italy. This rancor became all the more conspicuous when it came to the performance of artillery on the battlefield. Here, resentment could have easily turned into outright rejection, not unlike the previously mentioned conservative officers refusing to accept the industrialization of war in the nineteenth century. Soldiers such as Monluc, who went through the entire chain of command in the French armies of the sixteenth century, even as he looked back from the 1570s, still insisted that artillery is “that which terrifies the most of anything and oftentimes begets more fear than it does harm.”10 Monluc’s statement is very similar to those of others and especially that of Machiavelli, who published his respected Dell’arte della guerra in 1521. At the end of the 1510s, it seems, Machiavelli was still confident that the tactics of the “Ancients,” as they appeared in the way the Swiss fought during his time, could not be deterred by battlefield artillery. “Artillery,” said Fabrizio [Colonna], “according to my opinion, should not hinder us from being able to use the ways of the ancients and demonstrate the ancient virtue.”11 He also stressed that, although some could take it jokingly, “nothing blocks the sight of the army more than the artillery’s smoke after it was fired.”12 At least from Monluc’s point of view five decades later, this was no laughing matter. The carnage of Bicocca may have only strengthened his determination that the Swiss “never turn their back out of fear of the artillery, and kill anyone who breaks rank or displays fear of these instruments.”13

New weapons in a zealously traditional world 119 This deep sense of resentment and distrust could have easily become sheer dread, disgust, and hatred. Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso has already been mentioned in connection with the chivalric ethos of the sixteenth century, but it did provide a more practical and realistic analysis of the way these instruments changed the battlefields of Europe.14 When Orlando meets the Count of Holland’s daughter, she describes “an uncanny weapon, nothing like the sword or mace, but able to deal distant death to many men at once, a fearsome thing indeed with noise and smoke, and it makes men fall and bleed.” The ball fired by this “infernal engine … cuts through anything in its path, flesh, brick, or stone, leaving utter ruin where it has gone.”15 Later, the narrator is even more outraged: Soon Italy and France and other nations had learned the wicked art of how to pour molten bronze into molds and the preparations for making bombards, cannons, hackbuts, or petards for various martial situations. And all was changed from what had gone before, for there was no skill with sword or lance that could against such a weapon do anyone any good. They shatter iron and smash marble, and no armor can protect against them. You may as well turn your swords into ploughshares or keep them for show, now that their usefulness has had its day … Consider, if you will, this present war and what it has meant to Italy and the entire world. Our battlefields are lakes of gore because of this machine of metal and fire that the devil was the inspiration for. Let its inventor rot in hell. For his dire sins, let him be thrown in the deepest abyss next to where the accursed Judas is for having caused the decline of what we agree was a rare and glorious moment of civilization.16 Any statements other than these would be unbecoming of a work on chivalry, honor, and prowess as these were perceived in medieval Europe and were still pervasive enough in the sixteenth century. Even if Ariosto simply added these to highlight the changes in warfare since the first incarnation of Roland around the twelfth century, it seems that his words echo a prevailing sense of a decaying world in which chivalry can hardly find its rightful place on the battlefield. In his biography of the marchese di Pescara, Giovio lamented the current state of affairs where the tables had turned on honor in the battlefield: [T]he infantry soldiers often jested with [the heavy men-at-arms], asking them with pungent words if there was a feast on account of which they walked about so well clad and haughtily, and when they saw a certain horse which was thin or old, they called him a fine colt on account of his fat rump, and one which yet to emit his molar teeth was lauded with laughter. And the men-of-arms had to swallow these affronts, since the laws of war seemed to be placed in the burning matches of the arquebuses.17 This image, however embellished, does not seem so far-fetched. The mere possibility of lowly soldiers unabashedly mocking the men-at-arms in the imperial army is precisely what bothered many contemporaries. Writing with hindsight,

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Giovio was well aware by the middle of the sixteenth century that the rules were changing and that his readers would not be surprised to come across such displays of contempt toward a once honorable chivalric ethos that not long ago was considered practical on the battlefield. Monluc could have easily related to such sentiments, as he famously lamented: “Would to God that this miserable instrument had never been invented! I wouldn’t have carried the marks which now make me languid.”18 He goes on to mention gunpowder weapons, which by now clearly appear to be a regular addition in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe: “But these are tricks of the devil to make us kill each other.”19 By the end of the sixteenth century, Cervantes echoed this sentiment in Don Quixote’s perception of chivalric ideals, with the miserable knight lamenting this “diabolical invention” and “cursed machine.”20 Interestingly, the link between gunpowder weapons and the devil did not end during nor following this period of rapid changes. In France, as late as the nineteenth century, the “soldiers’ power to deliver death through fire and iron made them objects of superstitious horror,” and their mere ability to do so was seen as “a skill [the soldier] shared with the Devil.”21 One can easily understand the link between gunpowder weapons and the devil in a world where blasting fires and explosions were mostly depictions of an established medieval imagery of Hell. These images were either displayed in detail in works such as Dante’s Inferno (as part of the Divine Comedy) or even as simplistically as in Jesus’ own words in Matthew 25:41: “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”

A real or dubious threat? Regardless of whether or how these statements influence the recognition of the role of the Italian Wars in the general trend of change in early modern Europe, contemporaries were obviously absorbing and reacting to these changes. It cannot be denied that the lamentations, rejections, and, even if less often, acceptance and affirmation were reactions to real and practical changes in the way war was fought and especially by people who witnessed it first-hand and physically endured its effects. The most direct response to the developments in the abilities and effectiveness of artillery was of course a widening interest in more effective fortifications. And, indeed, the Italian Wars saw the placing of the foundations for the bastion fort with its low and thick walls to better withstand bombardment and the protruding bastions that were supposed to provide flanking fire for the defenders manning the walls.22 The trace-italienne was, nevertheless, still in the stages of experimentation and, considering the massive costs of rebuilding walls and supplementing them with bastions, made the accomplishment of many of these plans almost impossible during the wars. Thus, Rome in the 1540s and Siena in the 1550s could not withstand the costs of such projects, and they had to abandon them.23 It was not until the second half of the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries that massive forts began to spring up throughout Europe.

New weapons in a zealously traditional world 121 The fear and anxiety inspired by the deployment of artillery by Charles VIII at the end of the fifteenth century, as it appears in the previously mentioned quotes, is especially interesting considering that, during the major siege campaigns of the Italian Wars, artillery could not assist in subduing a well-fortified and defended city. When the walls were not thick enough and the defenses were built for a more traditional assault, campaigns could end rapidly with a breaching and an assault. This was the case with the fall of Prato to a Spanish army in 1512 and the failed attempt by an imperial army to take Volterra in 1537, despite being able to create a substantial breach in the walls.24 When cities were prepared to defend themselves, even artillery could not supply enough force to create substantial breaches in several places and was mostly employed for fire exchanges. Even when artillery was present and could be deployed safely, creating one or more breaches was often not enough to force a surrender, and an assault, usually very difficult and bloody, was required to take a well-fortified position. Generals resorted to assaults when they felt the number and quality of their soldiers allowed them to do so, their armies could not handle a long siege, and the prize was worth the usually bloody assault. The hungry and destitute army of Charles III, duc de Bourbon, arrived in Rome in May 1527 with few or no artillery pieces and assaulted the next day, succeeding in taking one of Italy’s greatest cities with relatively little resistance.25 In an attempt to take Naples a year later, Odet de Foix, vicomte de Lautrec, had enough artillery pieces to attempt to breach the walls, but he decided to starve the city into submission, fearing the result of an unsuccessful assault. During the four-month siege, both sides exchanged artillery fire but to no avail, and the French army scattered due to spread of disease, which led to Lautrec’s death.26 The captain general of the imperial army, Philibert de Chalon, Prince of Orange, managed to secure enough artillery pieces for the siege of Florence in 1529–1530, but he did not have enough of them to breach the walls. Thus, as in the case of the siege of Naples, both sides exchanged artillery fire and skirmished for ten months, with the imperial army attempting several assaults of varying tenacity.27 The long and difficult siege of Siena in 1554 by the imperial forces included the establishment of artillery positions as close as a hundred meters from the walls and an attempt to breach them in several places. Having been appointed by King Henry II of France to command the defense, Monluc’s description of the events demonstrates the continuous and failed imperial attempts to breach the walls and assault the weak spots directly.28 The mere presence and employment of a large number of artillery pieces did not therefore promise satisfactory results, and the greatest sieges of the Italian Wars ended in the surrender or dispersion of besiegers or besieged. Nevertheless, the potential destruction of artillery fire and its performance in positions of smaller-scale and lesser fortifications proved to be strong enough, and, as a direct consequence, the visual representations of these changes in technology and tactics became far more obvious during the Italian Wars. Lavish manuscripts from the fifteenth and even fourteenth centuries clearly display artillery in sieges and battlefields, regardless of their actual presence or

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influence. These representations are not surprising considering the fact that, by the end of the Hundred Years’ War in France, artillery was regularly employed in sieges and even, although more rarely, in skirmishes and set-piece battles.29 Artillery was also employed by the English during the Wars of the Roses and the clashes in Wales and Scotland. King James II of Scotland was killed in 1460 by the accidental explosion of one of his cannons.30 The War of Granada, which culminated in the fall of the city of Granada and the proclamation of the end of the Reconquista in 1492, was achieved by the widespread and efficient deployment of artillery in siege warfare.31 The Italians witnessing the French artillery trains and pieces might have indeed been surprised by their quantity and quality, but they were well aware of the potential of artillery long before the French invasion.32 Nonetheless, what becomes clearer in the visual representations of gunpowder weapons in the first half of the sixteenth century is the level of detail and precision in these depictions. This may be one of the most obvious signs of the way Europeans reacted to what they saw as a significant change in the way war was fought and their reactions to and acknowledgment of the idea that, regardless of their actual efficiency, gunpowder weapons were becoming established. While during the fifteenth century artillery was represented in a somewhat simplistic fashion, visual representations in the sixteenth century became more realistic, a development that cannot be attributed solely to better skills and methods but also to the fact that the masters of the Italian Renaissance joined the rush of artistic production when the war appeared at their very door. Some of the most famous depictions of warfare in the sixteenth century did not necessarily emanate from any of the more famous European Renaissance artists.33 Bernard van Orley’s tapestry depicting the Battle of Pavia in 1525 features a relatively realistic portrayal of the widespread methods of planting the artillery and protecting the cannons and artillerymen with gabions (see Fig 4.1). These cylindrically shaped containers were mostly made from wicker, were taller than a man, and were filled with rocks or sand to absorb arquebus rounds, arrows, or even artillery rounds when possible. As the tapestry clearly shows, the artillery pieces were protruding from between the gabions, which was especially critical considering the fact that the artillery pieces had to be as close as 200– 300 meters to the walls or bastions to be truly effective.34 In Rupert Heller’s depiction of the same battle from c. 1529, one can clearly distinguish between the artillery pieces deployed against the walls of the city and protected by gabions and the artillery pieces that were drawn by oxen and placed in trenches or dispersed for deployment against enemy troops in the open (see Fig 4.2). Giorgio Vasari’s magnificently detailed depiction of the siege of Florence, created around 1558, also realistically shows the deployment of artillery for battering walls and towers and harassing the population and for defensive purposes, as artillery pieces are shown to fire at assaulting imperial forces. The effects of arquebuses on the battlefields of the Italian Wars and in general are also conspicuous. It was already mentioned that, in the scene of the capture of Francis I in the Battle of Pavia as portrayed in van Orley’s tapestry, a large

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Figure 4.1 Bernard van Orley tapestry of the Battle of Pavia. Artillery pieces were placed between gabions filled with dirt or rocks to protect the artillerymen from enemy fire. When used during sieges, the artillery had to be planted in close proximity to enemy walls (see center), making both the artillery pieces and the men around them highly vulnerable to enemy assaults and fire. It was very common for artillery pieces, which still were very cumbersome, to exchange hands several times during campaigns and battles. Source: © A. Dagli Orti / De Agostini Picture Library /Bridgeman Images

arquebus is clearly evident beneath the central scene, perhaps to demonstrate the obvious influence of the Spanish arquebusiers on the outcome of the battle and the capture of the French king. In Heller’s depiction of the battle, one can identify imperial soldiers, dressed in white, going through the main motions of loading and firing their weapons, including the depiction of the sparks and ignition of several arquebuses. Giorgio Vasari’s depiction of the Battle of Marciano in 1554 and the fall of Siena in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence is far too dramatic to be deemed realistic, but the details of gunpowder weaponry, which are usually highlighted in the front, are meticulous and obvious. From these select examples, being some of the more obvious, it indeed seems that the production of more accurate and detailed visual representations of gunpowder technology in the first half of the sixteenth century went hand in hand with what contemporaries saw as a new phase in the way war was fought in Europe. The fascination, even if tainted by resentment and fear, with these technologies

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Figure 4.2 Battle of Pavia in 1525, painting by Rupert Heller. Note at the top how the artillery is planted in close proximity to the enemy walls. Source: Nationalmuseum, Stockholm (Photo: Erik Cornelius), public domain.

was brought to the fore as they became more efficient and acceptable on the battlefields of Europe and elsewhere. Written evidence suggests much of the same. Besides Monluc’s previously mentioned famous complaints, other contemporaries were very much aware of the fact that gunpowder weapons were there to stay. When he fell ill following the taking of Ravenna in 1512, Bayard is said by his biographer to have exclaimed: “My God! I have gone through so many dangers brought about by artillery in battles, assaults and encounters, from which you graciously assisted me in escaping, only to presently die in my bed like a young girl?”35 First published at the end of the 1520s, these are not the words of a man who refuses to accept the fact that artillery was dangerous and a real enough threat to have been able to easily end his life during countless engagements. Even if his descriptions are consistently dramatic and extravagant, Bayard could hardly see it in any other way, considering his lengthy descriptions of how artillery could change and had changed the world of warfare, about which he and

New weapons in a zealously traditional world 125 his contemporaries could only read in chronicles and chivalric romances and chansons. Describing the Siege of Padua in 1509 by imperial and French forces during the War of the League of Cambrai, Bayard’s biographer testifies that [t]he next day after the armies arrived, the artillerymen began to do their duty, and the battery continued incessantly for eight days. It was the most impetuous and terrible that was seen in the last hundred years, for all three camps fired together more than 20,000 rounds of artillery. And if the emperor and his men served the inhabitants of the city well with their artillery, you should believe that they were served as well, and perhaps even better, by the besieged.36 Although the numbers seem highly exaggerated, Bayard and his contemporaries went through the process of acknowledging these dramatic changes. When Pope Julius II besieged Mirandola in 1511 to prevent French expansion in the Papal States, Bayard had to help organize the defense of a fortified place named Bastia in the Duchy of Ferrara from a papal force of several thousand men and addressed the disheartened warriors by admitting that “I have always heard it said that he who does not esteem his enemy is mad. We are pressed by ours with three of them to one of us and if they knew about our plans we would certainly have a lot of trouble dealing with them, since they have artillery and we do not.”37 According to his biography, the French won the day, but the message of acceptance is clear: artillery could and did provide obvious advantages in sieges and set-piece battles alike. War was indeed never a pretty sight to either eyewitnesses or participants. The wounds inflicted by what contemporaries considered traditional weaponry, even including long-range weapons, could be as horrific and deadly as those inflicted by any gunpowder weapons. Artillery was deployed on several occasions during the English campaign that culminated in the famous and bloody Battle of Agincourt in 1415, but the battle itself was fought with traditional medieval weaponry. According to a somewhat dramatic exposition by the writer of the Henrici Quinti Angliae Regis, Gesta, the scenes were as horrific as one would expect from a direct clash between several masses of men equipped and trained for brutal violence: For when some of them slain at the start of the engagement fell in front, such was the undisciplined violence and pressure of the host behind that the living fell on the dead, and others falling on the living were killed in turn; and so in the three places where there was a concentration of our forces, the piles of dead and those crushed in between grew so much that our men climbed on these heaps which grew higher than a man and slew those below with swords, axes, and other weapons.38 The English longbowmen had famously aided in decimating the advancing French columns, and “prior to the commencement of the general assault, many

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of the French were killed and severely wounded by the English archers.”39 Medieval battlefields could provide sights that were as horrific as those of any battlefield in which armies deployed gunpowder weapons of any kind. Despite the fact that, in hindsight, gunpowder weapons did not add dramatically to the horrors of war, contemporaries had to adapt to new battlefield dynamics, and they made it known in their testimonies. In an imperial assault on Monopoli in 1528, one of del Vasto’s servants was cut to pieces by an artillery round, and the marchese was covered by his entrails.40 According to his biographer, Bayard encountered Gaston de Foix, the French captain general, on the battlefield of Ravenna covered with the remains of one of his men who was swept away by an artillery round.41 These and many other mentions of the effects of artillery do not seem to be accidental or aimless and are even natural and understandable considering the general dread that these weapons spread in the first half of the sixteenth century. Blood and entrails were an ordinary sight in battlefields long before the advent of gunpowder weapons, but these gory descriptions seem to have served the general impression of fear and disapproval. And, indeed, several decades after the events of Agincourt and especially during the clashes in and around Italy in the first half of the sixteenth century, almost every violent encounter, whether skirmishes, pitched battles, or, of course, sieges, included some sort of gunpowder technology that, by the end of the fifteenth century, had become ubiquitous. As Charles VIII and his army were making their way back to France in July 1495, they encountered the combined forces of Venice, Milan, and Mantua near Fornovo. The battle was indecisive, as the Italian forces could not achieve their objective of defeating the retreating French force. The events were also too swift for any effective deployment of artillery. Philippe de Commynes, who was present at the battle, commented that “I do not believe that the artillery on both sides killed even ten men and that the battle lasted even a quarter of an hour.”42 The French proved that artillery had become a prerequisite for a massive invasion and conquest, such as that of 1494–1495, but its performance on the battlefield still required a great deal of development. In the next encounter between France and Spain during the campaign of Louis XII in Naples, the armies clashed in the famous Battle of Cerignola in April 1503, where the Gran Capitán decided to fortify his Spanish and German forces and await the Swiss infantry and French men-at-arms to assault his position. The French historian Jean d’Auton describes how the forces of the Gran Capitán “fired so many rounds of artillery against our men that they caused a lot of damage and many were injured there … By the end many of the French were injured by the rounds of arquebuses and heavy artillery, and it has so badly transpired that the Duke of Nemours, the commander of the French army, was hit by three arquebus rounds and being so weak could not maintain himself on his horse’s back.”43 The lamentations of contemporaries about the effects of these weapons, even if exaggerated, were completely understandable, considering the fact that artillery and personal firearms were very scarce three or even four generations before Charles VIII’s descent into Italy. From the point of view of sixteenth-century

New weapons in a zealously traditional world 127 soldiers, there was much to acknowledge and digest as they read or listened intently to medieval tales of smashing lances, swords, and shields and high-pitched whistles of arrows that, until the second half of the fifteenth century, were very rarely if at all outweighed by deafening explosions and clouds of smoke. It is no wonder, then, that in mentions of the effects of gunpowder weapons they were still referred to with a sense of awe and bewilderment. Some of the previously mentioned lamentations were general, but many others were more specific to the devastating effects—and they were devastating—of artillery and personal firearms, even in set-piece battles. The Battle of Ravenna in 1512, for example, became known as the first well-documented engagement that commenced with a noticeable and effective exchange of artillery fire. The Spanish force under the command of Pedro Navarro, relying on the safety of their fortified position on the banks of the Ronco River, had to lie down en masse to avoid the artillery rounds fired from the French positions in front of them.44 The Spanish and papal artillery returned in kind, and the German landsknechts had to endure a similar barrage while waiting for orders to assault. As an eyewitness, Bayard also claims that 2,000 Germans died of these artillery rounds before the battle had even started.45 The same apparently happened in Pavia in 1525, and, as the Spanish soldier Cerezeda describes, “[T]he [imperial] infantry [soldiers] lay on the ground on account of the great damage that the French artillery caused.”46 Countless mentions in sixteenth-century sources verify that artillery pieces were so cumbersome that they became a burden during campaigns and battles but, by the beginning of the sixteenth century, they could certainly decide the outcome of a battle under the right circumstances. One could only try to imagine Fabrizio Colonna with hundreds of his Italian cavalry standing in wait on the right flank of the fortified position of the Spanish infantry while providing a discernible and prominent target for the French guns firing from no more than 200–300 meters away. Colonna himself wrote from captivity after the battle that the artillery fire “caused such damage to the men-at-arms that it could not be resisted and it lasted more than two hours.” He goes on to blame Pescara for calling an assault ahead of time, without alerting him, and thus exposing the army’s flank and, by the end, deciding the battle.47 Bayard’s biographer, who may have witnessed the fire exchange from the French side, mentions, albeit exaggeratedly, the dramatic effects of the artillery on Colonna’s men: “The two pieces [of artillery] that seigneur [Yves II] d’Alègre and the good knight [Bayard] brought from the other side of the river were firing incessantly on Fabrizio’s men and caused incredible damage as they killed 300 of his men-atarms.” He later wrote from his captivity in Ferrara that “one round of artillery swept away 33 of his men.” On a more dramatic note, the writer mentions that “Fabrizio Colonna could not hold his men in check as they cried [in Spanish] ‘Body of God, we are killed from the sky; let us go fight with men!’”48 Even if these testimonies are tainted with literary embellishments, it is clear that the efficient deployment of artillery would have a noticeable impact on the soldiers of the Battle of Ravenna for years to come.

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The next decade proved to be crucial for the implementation of artillery in set-piece battles, and the Swiss infantry became the unfortunate test subjects for widespread and efficient deployment of larger trains of artillery. The success of the Swiss in Novara in 1513 gave them control over Milan, but the coronation of Francis I as the new King of France in 1515 brought about a renewed royal interest in Milan and Naples. The much-celebrated Battle of Marignano, lasting two days in September 1515, saw the clash of the Swiss phalanx with the German landsknechts and French men-at-arms but also the deployment of 72 bronze artillery pieces by the French. The Swiss, attempting to reduce the effects of the artillery, charged at them several times. As Robert de la Marck, seigneur de Fleuranges, testified, “The artillery caused [the Swiss] a great displeasure.”49 When the Swiss again attempted to charge quickly on the second day of fighting, “the artillery and arquebuses of the French made great damage among them and they could not accomplish their objective.”50 The defeat at Marignano did not prevent the Swiss forces under French employ from attempting many of the same tactics in the bloody Battle of Bicocca in April 1522, where the Italian condottiere Prospero Colonna organized the imperial army in the same manner as the arrangement of the Spanish forces in Cerignola and Ravenna. Contemporary narrators of the battle were bewildered by the effects of artillery and arquebus fire on the Swiss squadrons. In a highly excited description of the battle in his biography of the marchese di Pescara, first published in 1549,51 Giovio provides one of the first mentions of an attempt to create a disciplined method of volley fire, a feat that is usually saved for the military reforms of the end of the sixteenth century: [Pescara] commanded the first line of arquebusiers that after they discharged their arquebuses they should immediately kneel and reload their guns so that the second line [of arquebusiers] could comfortably fire their guns without any danger to those who stand in front of them. He commanded that the second, third and fourth lines do the same, so that when the last line [of arquebusiers] fired their guns, [the arquebusiers] of the first and second lines would quickly and expediently rise and fire their loaded guns.52 The hail of arquebus and artillery fire from the fortified position was indeed devastating for the advancing Swiss infantry. Guicciardini mentioned how “[the Swiss] exhausted themselves without achieving anything, receiving very great damage not only from [the pikemen] who fought in the front but from the many Spanish arquebusiers … smashing them from the flank.”53 Giovio added that “a hail of arquebus fire was shot, and such a terrible slaughter was made, that in a single moment [the Swiss infantry] were hit and overwhelmed, in such a way that not only squads, but entire companies collapsed to the ground in one impetus.”54 By the time Guicciardini and Giovio were writing these words, the bloody and devastating defeat of the Swiss had made it clear that a resourceful employment of gunpowder weapons could easily affect the fate of battles.

New weapons in a zealously traditional world 129 The result of the Battle of Bicocca echoed throughout Europe and deemed the heroic and noble furious charge against artillery and arquebus fire disadvantageous, albeit far from obsolete. The Battle of Pavia heightened the sense of change, and many contemporaries lamented the fact that it was a small force of Spanish arquebusiers who were able to defeat the French men-at-arms commanded by the French king himself. The Spanish soldier Cerezeda, who took part in the assault on the French menat-arms, remembered: [A]nd thus some men-at-arms sallied forth wanting to overtake [the arquebusiers]. But on account of the latter being so spread out they could not do it and these 300 [arquebusiers] killed and injured the men-at-arms … The great damage that was inflicted upon the French was unbelievable, though I would like to keep silent about what the infantry, and especially the arquebusiers, achieved, for my pen will not suffice to describe it.55 Writing more than 20 years after the events, Giovio lamented that “[t]he honorable virtue of the cavalry was completely lost,” as “many and most honorable captains and knights were completely battered down, without being able to avenge themselves, by low-born and hidden foot-soldiers.”56 From the other side of the barrel, soldiers had to consider practices that were unfamiliar to their predecessors and only relevant to the advent of gunpowder weapons. The mere widespread use of gunpowder changed some of the most basic experiences of handling these weapons. The French historian Jean d’Auton most likely organized and wrote his chronicles of the adventures of Louis XII in Italy during the first two decades of the sixteenth century, and it appears that the effectiveness and role of gunpowder weapons were still somewhat baffling during this time for him to describe how, during the Battle of Cerignola in 1503, “one of [the enemy’s] artillerymen, an Italian, was so afraid of [the artillery’s] noise, that while he was recharging the artillery he set fire to two carts of three hundred small barrels of powder and caused such a great fire that it seemed to the French that all the Spaniards were burned, but it actually damaged them very little.”57 Whether or not an embellishment, the Italian artilleryman of d’Auton may have symbolized, even if anecdotally, the way contemporaries, such as the French chroniclers, perceived the change that transpired in front of their very eyes; Monluc and Machiavelli might have disparaged the actual effects of artillery, but, in the beginning of the sixteenth century, some of the soldiers were still quite taken aback by its basic features. The same was relevant for other sorts of firearms. The soldiers who took part in the 1541 attempt by Emperor Charles V to take Algiers had to deal with a massive storm that prohibited them from using their weapons: “Our firearms did not work because the rain ruined the powder and match … [yet] we were unfamiliar with making war with bows, crossbows, stones and other missiles.”58

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This was also the case with the general use of gunpowder, the volatility and novelty of which could produce disastrous effects if handled incorrectly. Accidents remain relevant to this day, but sixteenth-century testimonies still find them peculiar and dramatic. The soldier Cerezeda describes an event during which several inexperienced Spanish soldiers attempted to move barrels of gunpowder from a tower in Pavia in 1529, but, having entered with their arquebus matches lit, they caused a massive explosion that killed 200 soldiers.59 On August 10, 1512, as part of the War of the League of Cambrai, English and French ships engaged not far from Pointe Saint-Matheiu in Brittany. The English Regent succeeded in attaching itself to the French Cordelière and boarding it, but “sodenly as [the French] war yelding themsylf, the [Cordelière] was one a flamyng fyre, and lyke wyse the Regent within the turnyng of one had.”60 It appears that, as the gunpowder barrels aboard the Cordelière caught fire, both ships were hit by the explosion, causing the deaths of hundreds and the loss of two great ships. The arquebuses and muskets of the sixteenth century were equipped with the cumbersome and often awkward matchlock. Handling longbows and crossbows was by no means an easy task, but arquebusiers and musketeers had to contend with many of the disadvantages of their rapidly evolving weapons. First and foremost, keeping the match lit or at least ready to be lit as quickly as possible could prove to be the difference between life and death. As Cerezeda, who was present at the events, testifies, the Spanish arquebusiers who landed in Tunis in 1535 had to quickly light up their matches to face a surprising assault by Muslim forces. Cerezeda understood that “sleeping and [leaving] the arquebusiers without fire [to light their matches]” could end up in disaster.61 Giovio thought it appropriate to mention an occurrence in 1524 during which a Spanish force under the command of the marchese di Pescara attempted to take the town of Melzo during the campaign around Pavia. Apparently, the imperial arquebusiers were spotted by the defenders from afar by their lighted matches, and they lost the element of surprise.62 High humidity and rain could also influence the effectiveness of the arquebusiers, as they struggled to keep their matches lit despite the weather.63 Moreover, the implementation of gunpowder weapons on land went hand in hand with a rapid introduction of guns to naval warfare, a process that was going to dramatically change the way war was fought at sea. The medieval galleys were built and prepared mostly for the ramming and boarding of enemy ships. Low and equipped with oars and basic rigging, the war galleys remained significant long into the sixteenth century. Nevertheless, as early as the second half of the fifteenth century, the galleys were furnished with guns, which were usually placed in specifically built castles in the stem and stern of the ship and were becoming more efficient as the years went by. During the first half of the sixteenth century, galleys could carry 20 or more guns of different calibers. The sixteenth-century Venetian galleass, which was introduced in the 1520s, was a larger and sturdier type of the basic galley and could carry up to 80 guns of different calibers.64

New weapons in a zealously traditional world 131 The next stage, which went hand in the hand with improvement of the galley but later took its own course, brought to the fore the multidecked sailing ship, which offered at least one separate low deck for guns and, with the discarding of the oarsmen, could be maintained with fewer crew members. The first of these ships were cumbersome and bulky, but nonetheless these heavily armored ships proved that they were the future of naval warfare. The Henry Grace à Dieu, built in 1509 by Henry VIII, carried 43 heavy guns and 141 light guns but, like others of her size and armament, proved to be too massive for fierce and swift naval warfare.65 In Spain and Portugal, the requirements of long oceanic voyages brought about the need for swifter and more agile vessels, which culminated in the production of the galleon, which could offer the benefits of the galley’s agility and the sturdiness and spacious accommodation for artillery.66 The navies of the sixteenth century, from those fighting in Preveza in 1538 to the Spanish Armada in 1588, were made of patchworks and combinations of vessels. The visual representations of these battles clearly show galleys and galleasses fighting alongside smooth galleons and monstrous carracks, many of which were trade ships fitted for battle. Nevertheless, soldiers in the naval battles of the Italian Wars and their immediate successors had to survive ordeals that, by the first half of the sixteenth century, already included effective exchanges of artillery and arquebus fire on top of the usual and still very much prevalent attempts at ramming and boarding. During the French siege of Naples in 1528, an imperial fleet commanded by the Viceroy of Naples Hugo de Moncada attempted to smash through the blockading fleet of the Genoese Admiral Andrea d’Oria, who commanded his own and a French fleet. A Venetian witness wrote back to Venice that “[the imperial fleet] began firing their artillery and ours made a good response … [F]or two hours both sides fired their artillery and arquebuses.”67 A Florentine report mentions that the sides “fought in such a way that two [imperial] galleys were sent to the deep by our heavy artillery.”68 The cardinal Pompeo Colonna wrote back to Rome that “the battle was the most cruel and bloody that was ever fought at sea in our times.”69 The viceroy of Naples was killed, and several captains, including Alfonso d’Avalos, marchese del Vasto, were injured and taken prisoner. Nevertheless, some were unwilling to fully apprehend the significance of the changes. As usual, Giovio was one of the greatest detractors of this transformation while still caught in nostalgic ideas of warfare. The Battle of Preveza in 1538 ended in disaster because the imperial ships under the command of Andrea d’Oria could not withstand the fleet of the (in)famous Barbarossa. Giovio’s account of the battle, written in 1540 and thus not long after the events,70 is highly critical of d’Oria’s unwillingness to clash with the enemy fleet and instead attempting to maneuver and fire his artillery and arquebus attack from afar. At first, even Giovio had to admit that drawing the enemy close and firing at them proved to be effective: “[P]ulling the Turks together, they fired such a fury of arquebus and artillery fire that the enemy had to use the oars and having received great damage they retreated fearfully.”71 Nevertheless, at one point, Giovio writes that “the sea was quiet and wholly calm and ready for a noble

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battle,” which according to him meant, of course, an exchange of blows between men. The captains who were close to d’Oria “were astounded to hear that [d’Oria] would not risk a battle.”72 Giovio was highly critical of d’Oria’s decision to leave the battle, instead of clashing with the Ottoman fleet: “Prince d’Oria, a man of such experience, of such valor and, finally, of such reputation, was not worth much that day.” He mentions that some of d’Oria’s ships extinguished their lamps to avoid detection while fleeing: “Did d’Oria, therefore, extinguish the light to better hide his escape in the dark?”73 D’Oria’s peculiar and controversial decisions in the battle led to a devastating defeat and the loss of dozens of ships and thousands of lives to the imperial fleet. Giovio, as many other contemporaries, could not comprehend nor accept the admiral’s decision to avoid battle but, even more so, could not consider the use of fire exchanges from afar as a noble fight. By 1571 and the Battle of Lepanto, it seems that the most conspicuous thing that many remembered was the noise of the myriad gunpowder weapons that fired on both sides. Onorato Caetani, duce di Sermoneta (d. 1592), remembered that “so great was the roaring of the cannon at the start, that it’s not possible to imagine or describe.” Others remembered the “mortal storm of arquebus shots and arrows, and it seemed that the sea was aflame from the flashes and continuous fire lit by fire trumpets, fire pots and other weapons.”74 The lack of standardization and general ability to procure enough artillery pieces became one of the gravest disadvantages of the Spanish Armada in 1588. A senior officer in the Spanish fleet apparently confided that “unless God helps us by a miracle the English, who have faster and handier ships than ours, and many more long-range guns, and who know their advantage just as well as we do, will never close with us at all, but stand aloof and knock us to pieces with their culverins, without our being able to do them any serious hurt.”75 The defeat of the Armada was not achieved solely or even mainly by the superiority of English ships and artillery, but, by the end of the sixteenth century, it was clear that naval warfare was changing dramatically. Galleys, galleons, and carracks kept smashing into each other long afterward, but massive riggings and several artillery decks made it rarer as time progressed. To sum up, as was clearly stated in the introduction, the objective here was not a reappraisal of the role of the Italian Wars, if there was indeed any, in the supposed military revolution of early modern Europe. Nevertheless, if one’s hand is forced, it is apparent that, while the changes in tactics and technology during the first half of the sixteenth century were highlighted and developed in a more dramatic fashion as a direct result of the climactic clashes between Europe’s greatest forces in Italy, the term “revolution” seems quite strained when attached in any way to the period of c. 1450–1550. If there were revolutionary changes, they seem to have appeared later, even if some of their foundations can be recognized in the battlefields and sieges of the Italian Wars. However, this chapter attempted to demonstrate that, from the point of view of contemporaries, these changes were perceived as dramatic enough and as catalysts of social, political, and cultural, rather than solely military, changes.

New weapons in a zealously traditional world 133 As in many cases throughout history, this anxiety of sixteenth-century soldiers and intellectuals was not necessarily and wholly grounded on rational analysis of reality as it was unfolding in front of their eyes; unlike modern scholars, they did not have the privilege of hindsight. For many of them, the constant and rising threat of gunpowder weapons and infantry tactics to the elitist militaristic ethos of chivalry and nobility was enough to stir their natural feelings of anxiety and helplessness as they faced a changing world. One might playfully say that the feverish images of fiery bronze and iron tubes and crumbling walls served as a perfect horrific metaphor for their disintegration, regardless of any actual and positivistic experimental results. Like any generation throughout history, these men looked back with nostalgic fervor to long-gone generations who still manifested the ideals that they feared and believed were slowly disappearing. Despite our prolonged and fiery debate, from their point of view, these changes were as revolutionary as they come.

Notes 1 John Ellis, A Social History of the Machine Gun (London: Aurum, 2005), 70. 2 Ibid., 54. 3 Most importantly, Clifford J. Rogers, “The Military Revolutions of the Hundred Years War,” Journal of Military History 57:2 (1993): 241–78; Andrew Ayton and J. L. Price, eds., The Medieval Military Revolution: State, Society and Military Change in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (New York: I.B. Tauris, 1995); Bert Hall and Kelly DeVries, “The ‘Military Revolution’ Revisited,” Technology and Culture 31 (1990): 500–7. 4 For example, Robert D. Smith, “Artillery and the Hundred Years War: Myth and Interpretation,” in Arms, Armies and Fortifications in the Hundred Years War, eds. Anne Curry and Michael Hughes (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1999), 151–60. 5 In chapter XII: Niccolò Machiavelli, Il principe (Florence: Sansoni, 1964), 77: “Onde che a Carlo re di Francia fu licito pigliare la Italia col gesso.” 6 Francesco Guicciardini, Ricordi (Milan: Rizzoli, 1951), 84. 7 Francesco Guicciardini, Storia d’Italia, vol. 1 (Milan: Garzanti, 2006), 92. 8 Paolo Giovio, La prima parte delle historie del suo tempo di Mons. Paolo Giovio Vescovo di Nocera (Venice: Trino di Monferrato, 1558), 51v. 9 As Michael Mallett demonstrated, the battles of fifteenth-century Italy, fought between condottieri with much to lose, were indeed less bloody and decisive than other battlefields in Europe during the same period, but were also anything but bloodless. The tendency of Italian historians to portray the battles of the high Renaissance as more ceremonial in nature, although true to some extent, stem from a nostalgic yearning to times long gone. See Michael Mallett, Mercenaries and their Masters: Warfare in Renaissance Italy. Totowa: Rowman and Littlefield, 1974, 177–8. 10 Monluc, Commentaires et lettres de Blaise de Monluc Maréchal de France. 5 vols. (Paris: Renouard, 1864–1872), 158. 11 Niccolò Machiavelli, Arte della guerra e scritti politici minori, ed. Sergio Bertelli (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1961), 415. 12 Ibid., 413. 13 Ibid., 414. 14 For the inclusion of gunpowder weapons in Ariosto’s work, see Sheila J. Nayar, “Arms or the Man I: Gunpowder Technology and the Early Modern Romance,” Studies in Philology 114:3 (2017): esp. 521–3; Matteo Valleriani, “The War in

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22 23 24 25 26

27 28 29

30 31 32

33

New weapons in a zealously traditional world Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso: A Snapshot of the Passage from Medieval to Early Modern Technology,” in War in Words: Transformation of War from Antiquity to Clausewitz, eds. Hartmut Böhme and Marco Formisano (Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 2011), 375–90. Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, trans. David R. Slavitt (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2009), 157. Ibid., 208–9. Paolo Giovio, La vita del signor don Fernando d’Avalo marchese di Pescara (Venice: Giovanni de Rossi, 1557), 99v. Monluc, Commentaires, vol. 1, 34–5. Ibid. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quijote de la Mancha (Madrid: Algaba Ediciones, 2004), 396. David M. Hopkin, “La Ramée, The Archetypal Soldier, as an Indicator of Popular Attitudes to the Army in Nineteenth-Century France,” French History 14:2 (2000): 139. For a general trend throughout Europe, see Ilya Berkovich, Motivation in War: The Experience of the Common Soldiers in Old-Regime Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 20. The general discussion in Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 10–14, remains instructive. For the specific case of Siena, see especially Simon Pepper and Nicholas Adams, Firearms and Fortifications: Military Architecture and Siege Warfare in SixteenthCentury Siena (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986). Paolo Giovio, La seconda parte dell’istoria del suo tempo (Venice, 1560), 198. Giovio mentions two breaches that were created by the firing of about 400 rounds. For the chain of events that led to the fall and sack of Rome, see Judith Hook, The Sack of Rome (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). For Lautrec’s decision to avoid an assault, see Guicciardini, Storia d’Italia, vol. 3 (Milan: Garzanti, 2006), 2139–40. For the failed attempt to reduce the city and for the spread of disease, which eventually killed Lautrec, see Idan Sherer, Warriors for a Living: The Experience of the Spanish Infantry during the Italian Wars (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 72–3. Guicciardini, Storia d’Italia, vol. 3, 2238–9 mentions that the Sienese promised to provide eight cannons to Orange’s army. Monluc, Commentaires, vol. 2, 32–64. Although the efficiency of artillery was still limited during much of the fifteenth century, in his campaign of Agincourt in 1415, for example, Henry V brought with him to France 65 gunners and 10,000 gunstones to make his half-dozen massive bombards as useful as possible. The king employed gunpowder weapons during his later campaigns to varying degrees of efficiency. See Jim Bradbury, The Medieval Siege (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1992), 219. Kelly DeVries and Robert Douglas Smith, Medieval Military Technology, 2nd ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012), 157. For the employment of artillery during the war in Granada, see especially Weston F. Cook, “The Cannon Conquest of Nasrid Spain and the End of the Reconquista,” Journal of Military History 57:1 (1993): 43–70. As is clear in the case of Venice, for example, as demonstrated in Michael E. Mallett and John R. Hale, The Military Organization of a Renaissance State: Venice c.1400 to 1617 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 81–7. For earlier examples, also see Mallett, Mercenaries and Their Masters, 160. One of the best surveys available on this subject remains John R. Hale, Artists and Warfare in the Renaissance (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1990).

New weapons in a zealously traditional world 135 34 Using data from the eighteenth century onward and taking into account that the artillery of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries had lesser capabilities, its efficiency remains limited even in siege warfare. See Bert S. Hall, Weapons and Warfare in Renaissance Europe (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 135–47. 35 Le loyal serviteur, La très joyeuse et très plaisante histoire du gentil seigneur de Bayart (Paris: Renouard, 1878), 337. 36 Ibid., 162. 37 Ibid., 236. The engagements in and around Basti[d]a di Fossa-Geniolo are described in detail in Marino Sanuto, I diarii, vol. 12 (Venice: Barrozzi, 1886), esp.10–14 but also passim. 38 A.R. Myers, ed., English Historical Documents, 1327–1485 (London and New York: Routledge, 1969), 207. 39 L. Douet d’Arcq, La chronique d’Enguerrand de Monstrelet, vol. 3 (Paris: Renouard, 1859), 107. 40 Giovio, La seconda parte dell’istoria del suo tempo, 99. 41 Le loyal serviteur, La très joyeuse et très plaisante histoire, 322. 42 Phillipe de Commynes, Mémoires, vol. 2, ed. Émilie Dupont (Paris: Renouard, 1843), 480. 43 Jean d’Auton, Chroniques de Louis XII, vol. 3 (Paris: Librairie Renouard, 1893), 173. 44 Guicciardini, Storia d’Italia, vol. 2, 1128. 45 Le loyal serviteur, La très joyeuse et très plaisante histoire, 319. 46 Martín Garcia Cerezeda, Tratado de las campañas y otros acontecimientos de los ejercitos del emperador Carlos V en Italia, Francia, Austria, Berbería y Grecia desde 1521 hasta 1545, vol. 1 (Madrid, 1873), 122–3. 47 Sanuto, I diarii, vol. 14, 179. 48 Le loyal serviteur, La très joyeuse et très plaisante histoire, 319–20. 49 Robert III de La Mark, Seigneur de Fleuranges, Mémoires du Maréchal de Florange, ed. Robert Goubaux and P. André Lemoisne, vol. 1 (Paris: Renouard, 1913), 193. 50 Ibid., 196. 51 T.C. Price Zimmermann, Paolo Giovio: The Historian and the Crisis of SixteenthCentury Italy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), 289. 52 Giovio, La vita di Pescara, 48v. 53 Guicciardini, Storia d’Italia, vol. 3, 1625. 54 Giovio, La vita di Pescara, 49v. 55 Cerezeda, Tratado de las campañas, vol. 1, 124–5. See also Fleuranges, Mémoires, vol. 2, 228. 56 Giovio, La vita di Pescara, 115v. 57 d’Auton, Chroniques de Louis XII, vol. 2, 172. 58 Geoffrey Parker, Emperor: A New Life of Charles V (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2019), 274. 59 Cerezeda, Tratado de las campañas, vol. 1, 250. 60 Cardinal Wolsey to the Bishop of Worchester, Farnham, August 26, 1512: Alfred Spont, ed., Letters and Papers Relating to the War with France, 1512–1513 (London, 1897), 50. 61 Cerezeda, Tratado de las campañas, vol. 2, 35. 62 Giovio, La vita di Pescara, 93r. 63 Giovio, La seconda parte dell’istoria del suo tempo, 470. 64 For these developments in general, see Carlo M. Cipolla, Guns, Sails and Empires: Technological Innovation and the Early Phases of European Expansion, 1400–1700 (Manhattan, KS: Sunflower University Press, 1965); John F. Guilmartin, Gunpowder and Galleys: Changing Technology and Mediterranean Warfare at Sea in the Sixteenth Century (London: Cambridge University Press, 1974). For the galleys and gunpowder weapons, see Kelly de Vries, “The Effectiveness of Fifteenth-Century Shipboard Artillery,” Mariner’s Mirror 84:4 (1998): 389–99; John R. Hale, “Men and

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New weapons in a zealously traditional world Weapons: The Fighting Potential of Sixteenth-Century Venetian Galleys,” in War and Society. A Yearbook of Military History, eds. B. Bond and I. Roy (London: Croom Helm, 1975), 1–23. Parker, The Military Revolution, 90. For the rise of the galleon, see especially João da Gama Pimentel Barata, “The Portuguese Galleon (1519–1625),” in Five Hundred Years of Nautical Science, ed. Derek Howse (Greenwich: National Maritime Museum, 1971), 181–91. Sanuto, I diarii, vol. 47, 385. Ibid., 386. Ibid., 389. Zimmerman, Paolo Giovio, 287. Giovio, La seconda parte dell’istoria del suo tempo, 480. Ibid. Ibid., 481. Roger Crowley, Empires of the Sea: The Final Battle for the Mediterranean, 1521– 1580 (London: Faber, 2009), 279. N.A.M. Rodger, The Safeguard of the Sea: A Naval History of Britain, 660–1649 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997), 259.

Conclusion

The Italian Wars are rightly considered to be a watershed in the history of early modern Europe. The involvement of all the great European powers in the struggle, the intensity of the fighting, and the high stakes contributed to the clashes in and around the Italian Peninsula becoming a significant catalyst for changes and developments in the political, military, and even social and cultural history of Europe. The drained coffers and exhaustion of France and Spain that drove Henry II and Felipe II to seek a permanent peace in order to “recover from the damages brought on by war” is a testament to the heavy burden of these continuous clashes.1 The fact that some of the most important works that assess the Italian Wars as a separate and significant set of events were produced around the middle of the twentieth century is therefore lamentable. One of the main objectives of this study was to illuminate some of the themes that are occasionally scattered and dissipated in studies that tend to leap into the second half of the sixteenth century to trace some of the more prominent events that drove European history forward. First, this study attempted to demonstrate that some changes were not as obvious and swift as they are viewed in recent research. Knighthood and its accompanying chivalric ethos, for example, were very much embedded in how the European nobility perceived its place and role in war and politics long into the sixteenth century. Several substantial technological developments indeed affected the battlefields of Europe. The insatiable need for massive amounts of manpower and financial resources certainly challenged sixteenth-century administrative and fiscal systems and laid the ground for further and more rapid developments in the materialization of the modern state.2 Nevertheless, these changes did not necessarily entail dramatic transformations in the perception of European elites, who still evaluated their world through thick prisms that formed during the Middle Ages. Not only did “[t]he chivalric model remained remarkably resilient throughout the sixteenth century,” and, especially in the case of France, “the mythification of knightly figures such as Bayard” was widespread, European nobles could still understand and relate to chivalric literature and lore.3 Concepts of honor and reputation even remained a part of massive and consequential “grand strategies,” as was the case, for example, with Charles V.4 These changes required several more decades to

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ripen, and thus, from this perspective, the Italian Wars demonstrated more continuity than change. But change was brewing. The intensity and scope of the wars provided a vital impetus for already existing processes of professionalization and privatization of war. The hordes of professional soldiers who joined sixteenth-century armies still fought alongside more traditional tactical units, but their identity, reliability, and effectiveness were exceedingly scrutinized, as more traditional and even ancient models had to struggle for their mere existence. These professionals were men who far more often than not originated from various social strata and financial standing. With fantasies about chivalric knights and Roman legionnaires in the background, these professionalized, even if often mutinous and unpredictable, soldiers were very much aware of their rights while working for military organizations that could barely support them and, when pushed, could be (and were) very effective on the battlefields. Western Europe was on the verge of more comprehensive processes of privatization and professionalization, and the Italian Wars provided an adequate testing ground for what was yet to come.5 Another significant change was the way sixteenth-century Europeans saw the way war was changing in front of their very eyes. For the most part, the Italian Wars were mainly scrutinized as part of a wider debate on the military revolution, which may or may not have occurred later in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Nevertheless, from the vantage point of many soldiers and intellectuals writing around the middle of the sixteenth century, change was obvious and often burdensome and terrifying. Contemporaries remained unconvinced long into the second half of the sixteenth century.6 The fact that European elites were still imbued with medieval concepts of honor and chivalry did not suggest that they were not aware of obvious changes in the form of gunpowder weapons and infantry tactics. From the point of view of many of them, these changes entailed some sort of revolution, even if they did not necessarily portray it as such. In general, then, one can rightly conclude that the Italian Wars entailed more change than continuity. The Italian Wars, then, appear to be a period of a general “fog of war,” which also characterized other historical periods that were presented with relatively swift changes in military technology and tactics. The European armies that entered the Great War in 1914 were led by men who, while more open to technological changes, were still immersed in the military culture and perceptions of the nineteenth century. Machine guns, heavy and devastatingly accurate artillery, rifles, and, later, even tanks, were employed so comprehensively and efficiently for the first time and brought about significant changes that led to shock and awe among all the fighting powers. Compared to the sixteenth century, the reactions of twentieth-century decision makers, generals, and soldiers, who were far more accustomed to the rapid changes of the Industrial Revolution, were swifter. Nevertheless, the costs in human lives, economic resources, and general destruction of the collision between traditional and rising military cultures were staggering and remain one of the hallmarks of the Great War to this day.7 Two decades later, as many of the same powers clashed again in

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World War II, the European battlefields, albeit still brutal and bloody, were far more accustomed to the results of significant industrial and scientific advancements, at least until Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the case of the Italian Wars, this sense of “fog of war” was manifested in the struggle between continuity and change and the myriad contradictions that were embodied in it. The Italian Wars were as “international” as any military and political struggle could be in the sixteenth century. Soldiers from myriad geographical, social, political, and cultural backgrounds came to the Italian city-states, which were still attempting to preserve their own political, military, and cultural traditions. This clash of cultures—of nobles, knights, and common soldiers alike—produced influential outcomes for the way war was organized and fought in future struggles of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The consolidation of military privatization and entrepreneurship, standardization, and growing uniformity could only dissipate the fog during the end of the sixteenth and throughout the seventeenth century.8 The armies of the Italian Wars were led by men who were still immersed in the ideals of the chivalric ethos and feudal dynastic aspirations, but were also composed of professionals and mercenaries, many of whom were fighting for money and booty as much as for honor and glory. The same leaders of armies criticized and belittled the use of firearms and deemed it at best dishonorable, but could easily construct defensive positions guarded by arquebusiers and artillery pieces if it meant securing victory. The Swiss packed formations, so effective against the Burgundian cavalry and infantry in the fifteenth century, were courageous enough to maintain their reputation as long as they could, but were also swept away by hails of artillery and arquebus shot several times during the Italian Wars until this sort of frontal assault had to adapt and adjust to more efficient use of firearms. Never an easy feat, the armies of the Italian Wars were increasingly reliant on professional forces, but could barely support these armies, either logistically or financially, since truly centralized systems of military organization were only beginning to form. The magazine system and its accompanying military administration and infrastructure had yet to emerge and would appear later in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.9 Until then, and much like their medieval predecessors and many of their immediate successors, armies had to either take what they needed with them, attempt to live off the land, or hope for supply to arrive in some way or another via land or sea. These contradictions were present throughout Western Europe even before the Italian Wars, but the concentration of interests in and around the Italian Peninsula brought with it the myriad changes and developments that occurred separately in different areas. It is true that even the local struggles throughout Europe were almost always interconnected and influenced by larger political struggles—e.g., the endless conflicts between France and England, Spain and France, the Holy Roman Empire and Italy, the Ottomans and the eastern Christian polities, etc.—but the struggle for dominance in Italy absorbed, highlighted, and magnified many of these conflicts, as Italy was flooded with

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foreign armies, princes, and interests. As is often the case, all-out war drove forward changes and developments that, although they were already there for many to see, could now manifest their advantages and influence more persuasively and extravagantly. The intensity of the Italian Wars demonstrates several key factors that should be considered especially significant and that require further attention. First, it has already been established that the second half of the fifteenth and first half of the sixteenth centuries brought about significant developments in the materialization of what would become the modern state and in the methods by which these states organized and executed their political and military interests. Nevertheless, the contention, as presented in this study, that the perception of European political and military elites was still greatly infused with feudal and chivalric ideals requires further assessment. The impression that the first half of the sixteenth century ushered in rapid changes in the political and social milieux of Europe is certainly correct, but we should also approach these changes more carefully, as contemporaries obviously did not see them in the same dramatic light. One should consider, for example, that the link between nobility and war, combined with several aspects of traditional chivalric ideals, remained strong for centuries to come and endured what we consider today as the passage to modernity. At the end of the 1730s more than 90 percent of the generals, colonels, lieutenant-colonels, and majors of the Prussian army were nobles. By 1786 only 22 of the 689 senior officers were non-nobles. The same was true in the case of France, where only 5–10 percent of commissioned army officers were commoners. These numbers were significantly lowered because of the 1781 Ségur Law that demanded each officer prove that he was a descendant of four generations of nobility. In general, the French high nobility was still heavily drawn to military service; in Louis XIV’s France more than 90 percent of the men from elite noble houses became senior officers with 41 percent becoming generals. In England, however, only 30 percent of officers had titles in 1780, but that was the exception rather than the rule.10 The significance of war and military service to social and political standing remained high even during more pronounced and widespread processes of bureaucratization, centralization, and professionalization that characterized eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe. If we indeed consider the sixteenth century to be a period of change, even if less dramatic than previously proposed, the extent to which European nobility clung to the traditional attitudes and the way they influenced political and military decision making in the sixteenth century and beyond should be further explored and include case studies from different geopolitical and social vantage points. If sixteenth-century princes and soldiers were indeed still influenced by these notions to a significant extent, it might further affect our understanding and assessment of several political, cultural, and military processes that characterized early modern Europe. Second, and as a continuation of the work of David Parrott on military entrepreneurship in the seventeenth century, the composition, efficiency, and reputation of armies and soldiers of the sixteenth century should be

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reconsidered in light of the sources. This suggestion is not meant as an attempt at rehabilitation or comprehensive revision, but simply as a call for reassessment and reconsideration, considering some of our preconceptions of what characterizes soldiering and military service in general and under the circumstances of sixteenth-century European administrative and logistical capabilities in particular. The phenomenon of mutinies, for example, should receive more comprehensive scholarly attention, considering their substantial frequency, intensity, and influence on tactical, strategic, and even political objectives. Rather than describing them in general and vague terms, the dynamics of these acts of mass insubordination can provide instructive new conclusions and ideas on early modern soldiers and armies.11 The battles and technological developments of the Italian Wars received vast amounts of scholarly attention and rightly so. Nevertheless, they can provide only limited information on early modern soldiers and armies, especially when considering the fact that many of these soldiers and armies spent much of their time in garrison duty, marches, and low-intensity combat or, more often than not, suffering from hunger, disease, and lack of pay. Further attempts to reconstruct this or that battle or siege would not enhance our knowledge or further our understanding of sixteenth-century military mentalité. Lastly, the debate about the military revolution seems to have subsided without a general agreement, and the term remains contested and somewhat vague to this day. The importance of categorization and delineation for historical research is of course central, but the actual experiences and impressions of sixteenth-century soldiers and intellectuals may have paid the price when it comes to subjects of interest to modern scholars. One must stop for a moment and attempt to reveal the myriad ways in which the developments in military technology influenced the way the men and women of the sixteenth century perceived continuity and change in their own world, regardless of whether these developments had great or little effects later on. As this study has attempted to demonstrate, these people considered their own time as one of change and even trauma—Francesco Guicciardini termed it “the calamity of Italy”12—and they cared less about its being a time of revolution or not. And indeed, the intensity of the Italian Wars had great repercussions on the immediate future of the powers that took part in them. After most of the central disagreements surrounding lands and titles between France and Spain faded away after Cateau-Cambrésis in 1559, both sides were very much exhausted from the endless fighting. Spain remained victorious in Italy and took hold of Naples and Milan for centuries to come, but Italy also became one of the main bases of preparation for the thousands of soldiers who had been sent since 1566 to crush the rebellious provinces in the Low Countries. France lost several important strategic points in Northern Italy, but, with religious tensions rising between Catholics and Huguenots, the bloody civil war that had spread since 1562 took massive amounts of financial and human resources and left France unwilling to address the remaining issues in Italy. The Holy Roman Empire, now separated from the Spanish crown, still had to contend with Ottoman

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ambitions and religious strife long into the sixteenth century. Of course, the main powers of Europe did not forget the balance of power and their hereditary struggles, but their long and bloody experience in the Italian Wars changed the way they fought in future conflicts. If only for that, continuity and change in the military history of the Italian Wars merited a separate discussion.

Notes 1 From the treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis: Archivo Histórico Nacional, Estado, leg. 2776, exp. 7, fol. 2r. 2 Thomas Ertman, Birth of the Leviathan: Building States and Regimes in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 94–102, 111–21. 3 Jeanice Brooks, Courtly Song in Late Sixteenth-Century France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 126. 4 James D. Tracy, Emperor Charles V, Impresario of War: Campaign Strategy, International Finance and Domestic Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 109. 5 For the “expansion of military enterprise” immediately following the Italian Wars, see David Parrott, The Business of War: Military Enterprise and Military Revolution in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 71–100. 6 As, for example, the English soldier John Smythe. See John Smythe, Certain Discourses Military, ed. John Rigby Hale (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1964), 67. 7 For the debate on the role of technology, see, for example, Dennis E. Showalter, “Mass Warfare and the Impact of Technology,” in Great War, Total War: Combat and Mobilization on the Western Front, 1914–1918, eds. Roger Chickering and Stig Förster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 73–93. 8 For this process of consolidation, see Parrott, The Business of War, esp. part II, 139–259. 9 See the now classic study of Martin van Creveld, Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 17–26. 10 Christopher Storrs and H.M. Scott, “The Military Revolution and the European Nobility, c.1600–1800,” War in History 3:1 (1996): 15–16. 11 While the phenomenon of mutiny in sixteenth-century armies received some scholarly attention (see Chapter 2), the background and circumstances for the creation of the main institutions employed by the soldiers still require further scholarly attention. 12 Francesco Guicciardini, Storia d’Italia, vol. 1 (Milan: Grazanti, 2006), 4.

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Index

Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations. Those followed by n refer to a note with its number. accidents, gunpowder 130 Agincourt, Battle of (1415): archers 3, 30, 41n76, 125–6; use of artillery 125, 134n29 Agnadello, Battle of (1509) 48 Alba, Diego Nuñez 76n69; religious attitudes 106; soldiers’ conditions 58, 61, 65–6, 96; status of 23 Albert, Charles d’ 17 Alvanio, Bartolomeo d’ 48 Amadís de Gaula 17–18, 24–5, 37 ambushes 28, 31 Amman, Jost 66 Anghiera, Pietro Martire d’ 55–6 Aragon 49, 55, 85 archers 3, 30, 125–6 Ariosto, Ludovico 11, 18, 119 aristocracy see nobility Armagnac, Louis d', duc de Nemours 27 armor: heavy armor 11, 12, 117, 119; light armor 11, 13, 29–30 arquebuses: attitudes to 11, 20, 139; matchlocks 130; use in battle 29, 86, 91, 97, 117, 122–3, 126, 128–9; see also artillery; gunpowder weapons Arthurian romance 19, 25 artillery 118, 119; in 20th century 138–9; attitudes to 118–19, 126–7; on ships 130–1; use in battle 30, 91, 97, 107, 118–19, 122–9, 134n29, 138–9; use in sieges 121, 124–5; see also arquebuses; gunpowder weapons Auton, Jean d’ 27, 34, 82, 126, 129 Avalos, Alfonso d', marchese del Vasto, 6th marchese di Pescara 19, 27; dealing with soldiers 60–1, 95, 102; experience

in battle 96, 97, 109, 126; friendship with Paolo Giovio 113n63; taken prisoner 131 Avalos, Fernando d', 5th marchese di Pescara 19, 27; experience in battle 104–5, 127; offered crown of Italy 49, 57, 76n62; sack of Como (1521) 36–7, 67 Barbarossa, Hayreddin 65, 131 Barletta, Battle of (1503) 33–4 battles 122–9; artillery 117, 118; dynamics of 29, 97, 126; fortifications 32, 107, 108–9; importance of victory 30–2; set-piece 117, 125, 127–8; violence of 14–15, 61, 107–10, 119 Bayard, seigneur de, Pierre du Terrail 21–2; artillery 124–5, 126; Battle of Ravenna (1512) 107, 127; chivalry 3, 19–20, 22, 23, 24, 32, 37; death 20; mercenaries 71 Beaumont, Jean de 15 Bellay, Martin du, sieur de Langey 16–17, 29, 64, 97, 102, 108 Bicocca, Battle of (1522): gunpowder weapons 91, 97, 118, 128–9; mercenaries 90–1, 103, 104, 107, 108–9 Bohemia 16, 54 Bontemps, Pierre 26 Bourbon, Charles III duc de see Charles III, duc de Bourbon Bourbon, François de, comte d'Enghien 29, 31, 109, 110 Bourdeille, Pierre de, seigneur de Brantôme 46 Boutières, seigneur, Guiges Guiffrey 29

Index Brandon, Charles, Duke of Suffolk 71 Breitenfeld, Battle of (1631) 11, 13 Brescia, siege of (1512) 21–2 Buonoparte, Jacopo 63 Burgundy 2, 34, 48, 89 Burtenbach, Sebastian Schertlin von 63 Caetani, Onorato, duce di Sermoneta 132 camp followers 45 Cardona, Ramón de 27, 32, 67, 89 Castile 49, 55, 56, 85 Castillo, Bernal Díaz del 18 Castro, Jerónimo Zurita y 107–8 Cateau-Cambrésis, Treaty of (1559) 1–2, 141 Catholic Monarchs: armies of 27, 47–8, 51, 66, 81, 85; centralization of the state 49, 55 cavalry 29, 31, 81, 129 centralization of the state 37–8, 49–50, 52, 55, 137, 140 Ceresole, Battle of (1544): cavalry charges 31; gunpowder weapons 29; mercenaries 53, 57, 84, 85, 104, 109–10; military leadership 97, 98 Cerezeda, Martín García: attitude to nobility 19, 20; Battle of Ceresole (1544) 109, 110; Battle of Pavia (1525) 127, 129, 130; conditions of service 56, 57, 60, 62; gunpowder weapons 130; religious attitudes 106; soldiers’ pride 102 Cerignola, Battle of (1503) 27, 126–7, 129 Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de 58, 61–2, 120 Chabannes, Jean de, seigneur de Vendenesse 36–7 Chalon, Philibert de, Prince of Orange 27, 121 chansons de geste 3, 14, 23 Charles III, duc de Bourbon 27, 85; Battle of Pavia (1525) 104; sack of Rome (1527) 63, 69–70, 79n149, 90, 96, 105, 121 Charles V (Emperor): accession 1, 48; Algiers 129; armies 46, 47, 49–50, 51, 54, 82, 86; chivalry 26, 34–6; daughters of 86; financial administration 81–2; invasion of Provence (1536) 63–4 Charles V (France) 46–7 Charles VII (France) 46, 47 Charles VIII (France) 24; armies 47, 53, 82; invasion of Italy (1494) 1, 4, 16, 56–7, 89, 117, 126

155

Charny, Geoffroi de 14, 31 chivalry: artworks 26–7; ethos 2–3, 12–16, 34–5, 96, 137, 140; and gunpowder weapons 11, 119–20; literature 3–4, 14, 15, 17–18, 19, 25–6; military leadership 27–9, 32–3; and violence 23–4; see also honor; knighthood; nobility citizen soldiers see militias city-states 18, 50, 57, 87, 117, 139 civilian life 100 Clement VII (Pope) 2, 34–5, 69–70 Cleves, Philip of 87–8 Colonna, Fabrizio 108, 118, 127 Colonna, Pompeo 131 Colonna, Prospero 32, 33, 128 Commynes, Philippe de 16, 53, 59, 82, 126 Como, sack of (1521) 36, 67 conditions of service (soldiers') 59–64, 66–7, 69–70, 92, 94; punishment 71, 96 condottieri 4, 18, 48, 50, 57, 76n60, 87 Cordelière (ship) 130 Córdoba, Gonzalo Fernández de (Gran Capitán) 27, 34; and allies 33; gunpowder weapons 126; military reforms 108; Spanish standing army 47; trench warfare 28, 31 Creazzo, Battle of (1513) 48 Crécy, Battle of (1346) 3, 30 cuirassier 11, 29–30 death: attitude to 24, 27, 45; from disease and starvation 61–4 Delicado (Delgado), Francisco 25 Despuig, Cristòfor 56 disease 45, 61–4 Don Quixote 58, 61–2, 120 drill 7, 117 duels 23, 37; battles as 33–4; challenges 34–6, 42n114 Dürer, Albrecht 100 Eguiluz, Martin de 93–4 Eighty Years War 51 El Cid, Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar 14, 18, 32 Enghien, comte d', François Bourbon 29, 31, 109 England 37, 59–60, 80, 122; navy 130–1 entrepreneurship 4, 97, 140–1 Erasmus, Desiderius 44 esprit de corps 94, 100, 114n76; camaradas 93–4, 102; landsknechts 84, 98, 102 Este, Alfonso I d’ 19, 57 Este, Ercole I d’ 19 Estrella, Juan Calvete de 25

156

Index

Felipe II (Spain) 1, 26, 137 Ferdinand II (Emperor) 16 Fernando (king of Spain & Aragon) see Catholic Monarchs feudalism 16, 140; bastard feudalism 80; feudal levies 6, 46–7, 50, 80; in Italy 18–19 Fieramosca, Ettore 33 financial administration 49, 137; soldiers’ pay 60–1, 66, 68–70, 72, 92; taxes 81–2 financial fraud 60–1, 95–6 firearms see arquebuses; gunpowder weapons First World War 116, 138–9 Flecha, Mateo 86 Fleuranges, seigneur de, Robert III de la Marck 32, 108, 128 Florence 44, 56–7, 67; militias 48, 49–50, 87; siege 121, 122 "fog of war" 138–9 Foix, Gaston de, duc de Nemours 23, 108, 126 Foix, Odet de see Lautrec, Vicomte de, Odet de Foix Fornovo, Battle of (1495) 16, 48, 53, 126 fortifications: on battlefields 32, 90–1, 107, 108–9; developments in 7, 120–1 Fragenstainer, Oswald 100, 104 France: centralization of the state 37, 49, 80; claims in Italy 1–2, 6, 16; conflict with Spain 139, 141 Francis I (France): capture at Battle of Pavia (1525) 11, 12, 34; chivalry 20, 34–6; claims in Italy 1, 16, 128; increase in power 49; mercenaries 51, 53, 55; revenues 81; siege of Hesdin (1537) 17; tomb of 26 French army 90–1; feudal levies 46–7, 80; landsknechts 51, 84, 107; legions 47, 50, 53, 74n36; mercenaries 47, 51, 53, 55, 103–4; standing armies 46–7, 81 French navy 130 Friedrich V, Elector of the Palatine 16 Froissart, Jean 3, 24 Fronsperger, Leonhart 95 Frundsberg, Georg von 54, 69–70, 75n46, 92–3, 97, 105 Fürstenberg, Wilhelm von 54–5 gambling 66 Gascoigne, George 20 Genoa, assault on (1522) 98 German mercenaries seelandsknechts Giovio, Paolo 29, 41n73, 97, 113n63; Battle of Barletta (1503) 33–4; Battle of

Bicocca (1522) 128; Battle of Ceresole (1544) 98, 109; Battle of Creazzo (1513) 48; Battle of Pavia (1525) 19, 104–5; Battle of Preveza (1538) 78n110, 131–2; gunpowder weapons 119–20, 129, 130; mercenaries 44; sack of Como (1521) 36, 78n120; soldiers’ conditions 62, 68, 103 globalization 5, 9n16, 52 Gonzaga, Federico II, duc di Mantua 19 Gonzaga, Ferrante 56, 70 Graf, Urs 66, 100 Gran Capitánsee Córdoba, Gonzalo Fernández de (Gran Capitán) Granada, War of (1492) 47, 75n53, 89, 122 Grandson, Battle of (1476) 53 guerilla warfare 28, 32 Guicciardini, Francesco 1, 141; Battle of Bicocca (1522) 91, 97, 109; Battle of Ravenna (1512) 99, 108; gunpowder weapons 117–18, 128; mercenaries 44, 46, 103 Guicciardini, Luigi 90 Guiffrey, Guiges, seigneur Boutières 29 gunpowder weapons 7, 117; accidents 130; attitudes to 11, 120; and chivalry 11–12, 119–20, 133, 139; effect of weather 129–30; transition to 11, 28; visual representation 122–4; see also arquebuses; artillery Günzburg, Johann Eberlin von 44–5 Gustav Adolph (King of Sweden) 11, 13 Guzmán, Alonso Enríquez de 22–3, 58–9 heavy men-at-arms 11, 29–30, 81, 117, 119 Heller, Rupert 122–3 Henry Grace à Dieu (ship) 131 Henry II (England) 30 Henry II (France) 1, 24, 81, 121, 137 Henry V (England) 30, 42n114, 134n29 Henry VIII (England) 59, 131 Hesdin, siege of (1537) 17 hidalgos 17, 22–3, 40n48, 58, 74n34 Holy League 65 Holy Roman Empire 1, 84–5, 89, 139, 141–2 honor: duels 33–4, 35–7; and knighthood 13–14, 15–16, 20, 24; and military service 16–17, 27, 51–2, 59–60, 96; soldiers’ 102–3; and strategy 137; see also chivalry; knighthood; nobility humanists 4–5, 24–5 Hundred Years’ War 80, 117 hybrid armies 50–2, 82

Index Iberian military orders 17, 39n25 immorality 45 imperial army 31, 85–6, 121; commanders 27, 60; disease and starvation 63, 64; landsknechts 51, 54, 94, 104, 109 infantry: formations 107, 117, 139; Spanish army 23, 102; tactics 7, 28, 29–30, 133 insubordination 69–72, 91, 141; see also mutiny Isabel (queen of Spain & Castile) see Catholic Monarchs Italian soldiers 4, 18, 33, 48–9, 56–7, 87; see alsocondottieri James II (Scotland) 122 Julius II (Pope) 57, 125 knighthood 137; chivalry 3, 12–16, 19–21; duels 33–4; knighting ceremony 16, 17–18; military leadership 27–9; social position 19–20, 22–3; and violence 23–4; see also chivalry; honor; nobility la Marck, Robert III de, seigneur de Fleuranges 32, 108, 128 la Motte, Charles de 33, 34 Laguna, Andrés 24 landsknechts 51, 54, 84; Battle of Ceresole (1544) 29, 84, 109–10; Battle of Pavia (1525) 84; Battle of Ravenna (1512) 107, 108, 127; behavior 44–5, 46, 66, 70; and death 45; demands for pay 71, 92–3; esprit de corps 84, 98, 102; officers 71, 98, 99–100; organization of 54–5, 92–3, 95; religious affiliations 105–6; reputation 84, 99–100; rivalry with Swiss 103; siege of Padua (1509) 21 Langey, sieur de see Bellay, Martin du, sieur de Langey Lannoy, Charles de 27, 55, 86 Lautrec, Vicomte de, Odet de Foix: Battle of Bicocca (1522) 32, 79n149, 90–1, 107, 108; siege of Naples 17, 63, 121 leadership see military leadership League of Cambrai 48; War of 22, 125, 130 League of Cognac 34–5 Lecco, siege of (1528) 62 legions (French) 50, 53, 74n36 Leoni, Leone 26 Lepanto, Battle of (1571) 65, 132 Leyva, Antonio de 60, 91 literary works, chivalric 3–4, 14, 15, 17–18, 19, 25–6

157

Lodi, Peace of (1454) 50, 56 logistics 49, 61, 63–4, 139 Lombardy 1, 60, 70, 79n144, 95 Londoño, Sancho de 93 looting 22, 67–8; see also sack of cities Louis IX (France) 36 Louis XI (France) 49 Louis XII (France) 1, 16, 49, 126; mercenaries 51, 53 Low Countries 2, 51, 82, 141 Lutherans 51, 105–6 Lynn, John 89 Machiavelli, Niccolò: artillery 117, 118, 129; humanism 4; infantry tactics 108; mercenaries 4–5, 44, 46, 87; militias 48, 50 Madrid, Treaty of (1526) 34 Mallett, Michael 2, 28, 133n9 Marciano, Battle of (1554) 85, 123 Mariana, Juan de 99 Marignano, battle of (1515) 128 Marshal, William 30 Maximilian I (Emperor) 89; cenotaph 25; chivalric romances 25–6; mercenaries 21, 44–5, 51, 54 Medici, Cosimo I de 19 Medici, Giovanni de 102 men-at-arms 11, 29–30, 117, 119, 129 mercenaries 82; modern warfare 5–6; perceptions of 52, 86–9, 91, 99; self-perception 99–100, 103; widespread use 50–2, 57, 91, 139; see also Italian soldiers; landsknechts; professionalization; Swiss mercenaries Mexía, Pedro de 108 Mézières, Philippe de 46–7, 73n16 Milan, Duchy of: control of 35, 62, 128; French claim 1–2, 16, 53; soldiers from 57 military administration 7, 137, 139; shortcomings 49, 61, 63–4, 67, 68–9, 87; within the ranks 92–5, 99 military leadership: dealing with insubordination 71, 91; in the field 96–9; quality of 31, 67, 139; role of nobility 18–20, 27–9, 140 military revolution debate 6–7, 28–9, 116–17, 132–3, 141 militias 5, 48, 49–50, 52, 87 Mirandola, siege of (1511) 125 modern warfare 52, 61; armies 5–6; soldiers 62, 88, 92, 94 Mohács, Battle of (1526) 84

158

Index

Moncada, Hugo de 62, 131 Monluc, Blaise de: Battle of Bicocca (1522) 103; Battle of Ceresole (1544) 29, 31, 97–8, 109; chivalry 20; gunpowder weapons 11, 96–7, 118, 120, 129; invasion of Provence (1536) 64; siege of Siena (1554) 121; view of leadership 31 Monopoli, assault on (1528) 126 Montalvo, Garci Rodríguez de 17–18 Montmorency, Anne de 17, 90, 97 motivation 99, 100, 105; for combat 89–90, 91–2, 110; enlisting 51–2, 58–9, 89 mutiny 71–2, 78n131, 95, 141; landsknechts 71, 104; Spanish soldiers 56, 70, 91, 104–5; Swiss mercenaries 53–4, 79n149, 108–9; see also insubordination Naples, Kingdom of 1–2; French claim 16, 128; military campaigns 31, 47–8, 126; sieges of Naples 17, 63, 117, 121, 131; soldiers from 57 Napoleon 62, 77n89 national identity 84, 104, 105 naval warfare 57; sea voyages 64–5; strategies 130–2 Navarro, Pedro 27, 108, 127 Nemours, duc de, Gaston de Foix 23, 108, 126 Nemours, duc de, Louis d'Armagnac 27 Niño, Pero 27 nobility 2–3, 15, 38, 137; military leadership 18–20, 27–9, 140; see also chivalry; honor; knighthood Novara: Battle of (1513) 128; siege of (1495) 59, 90 officers 98, 99; relationship with soldiers 96; social status 140 Oria, Andrea d’ 65, 131–2 Orlando Furioso (Ariosto) 11, 18, 119 Orley, Bernard van 11, 82, 122–3 Ottomans 65, 84–5, 131–2, 139, 141–2 Padua, siege of (1509) 21, 125 Papacy 34–6, 56–7, 65, 69–70, 105–6, 125 Parrott, David 50, 52 Paul III (Pope) 35–6, 65 Pavia, Battle of (1525) 19, 123, 124; capture of Francis I 11, 12, 34; gunpowder weapons 86, 122–4, 129; mercenaries 54, 55, 60, 83, 84, 104, 110 pay (soldiers') 51–2, 59, 89–90; problems with 60–1, 66, 68–70, 72

Pescara, 5th marchese di see Avalos, Fernando d', 5th marchese di Pescara Pescara, 6th marchese di see Avalos, Alfonso d', marchese del Vasto, 6th marchese di Pescara pikemen 7, 30, 91, 97, 117 Poitiers, Battle of (1356) 3, 30 political issues 52, 139–40, 141–2; centralization of the state 37–8, 49–50, 55, 137, 140 Prato, siege of (1512) 48, 67–8, 89, 121 Preveza, Battle of (1538) 65, 131 privatization 4, 5–6, 50, 87–8, 99, 138 professionalization 86–7, 89, 110; increased 5, 6, 46–8, 68, 81, 138; see also mercenaries; standing armies Provence, invasion of (1536) 48, 51, 63–4, 81–2, 85 Puddu, Raffaele 28 Puente de la Reyna, siege of (1512) 70–1 Ravenna, Battle of (1512) 32, 57, 108, 126; artillery 107, 124, 127 reckless behavior 28, 30, 31–2 recruitment 4, 52–9, 80–2, 95 Regent (ship) 130 Reissner, Adam 69–70 religious affiliations 105–6 reputation see honor retreat 32, 108, 110 Roberts, Michael 6 Roland 14, 18, 32 Roman legions 4, 52, 87 romances 3, 23, 25–6 Rome, sack of (1527) 63, 68, 69–70, 90, 105–6, 120, 121 Sachs, Hans 84, 85 sack of cities 66–7; Brescia (1512) 21–2; Como (1521) 36–7; Prato (1512) 67–8; Rome (1527) 63, 68, 69–70, 90, 105–6, 120, 121; see also looting Sanseverino, Galeazzo di 24 Schmalkaldic War (1546–1547) 23, 106 Schön, Erhard 84, 100 Second World War 6, 62, 77n89, 138, 139 Seminara, Battle of (1495) 31 Sforza, Ludovico 56, 69 ships 64–5; gunpowder weapons 130–2 Sicily 70, 105 sieges 89; artillery 117, 121, 124–5; assaults 21, 121; disease and starvation 62–3 Siena 57, 85, 120, 121, 123

Index Sittich, Mark 97 social hierarchies: and military service 19–20, 22–3, 59–60; officers 27–9, 96, 98, 99, 140; soldiers 138, 139 soldiers 139, 141; affiliations 103–5; attire 100; behavior 50, 66; conditions of service 59–64, 66–7, 69, 70, 92, 94; insubordination 69–70, 72, 141; militias 5, 48, 49–50, 52; modern soldiers 62, 88, 92, 94; perceptions of 58, 86–9; punishment 71, 96; social organization 92–6; volatility of 50, 91; see also mercenaries; motivation; mutiny; pay (soldiers'); recruitment Sotomayer, Alonso de 37 Spain: centralization of the state 37, 49, 55, 80, 81; conflict with France 1–2, 139, 141; Reconquista 14, 17, 32, 47–8, 106, 122 Spanish Armada (1588) 131, 132 Spanish army 26; camaradas 93–4, 102; conditions of service 62; hidalgos 22–3, 40n48, 74n34; Iberian military orders 17, 39n25; infantry 102, 107–8; landsknechts 51, 54; military leadership 27, 31–3, 98; mutiny 56, 70, 91, 104–5; national identity 56, 104–5; professionalization 47–8, 51–2, 85–6, 89–90, 108; provincial militias 81; recruitment 55, 95; religious affiliations 106; tercios 48, 50, 51, 52, 86 standing armies 6, 7, 49–50, 82; France 28, 46–7, 50, 74n36, 81; Italy 48; Spain 47–8; see also professionalization starvation 61, 62–3, 68, 94; on ships 65; sieges 89, 91, 103, 121 strategy: effect of insubordination 92, 107, 141; influence of chivalry 34, 59, 137; stratagems 28, 30 Swiss mercenaries 53, 83, 101; in action 97–8, 128–9, 139; and French army 51–2, 69; mutiny 53–4, 79n149, 108–9; professionalism 90–1; reputation 45–6, 53–4, 82, 84; rivalry with landsknechts 103; and violence 102–4

159

symbolism 26–7, 33; company standard 98, 101 tactics: infantry 7, 28, 29–30, 117, 133, 139; stratagems 28, 30–2; volley fire 128 taxes 81–2 Terrail, Pierre du see Bayard, seigneur de, Pierre du Terrail Thirty Years’ War 16, 50, 52 Toledo, Fernando Ivarez de, third Duke of Alba 23 tournaments 14, 15, 24 trace italienne 7, 120 trench warfare 28, 31, 32 Tunis, Battle of (1535) 65, 98, 130 Valdéz, Francisco de 66 Vargas, Ruiz Sanchez de 98 Vasari, Giorgio 122–3 Vasto, marchese del, Alfonso d’ Avalos see Avalos, Alfonso d’, marchese del Vasto, 6th marchese de Pescara Venice 1, 48, 57, 76n60; galleys 130 Vienna 49, 84, 85 violence: attitude to 15, 22; on battlefield 14–15, 109–10, 126; and chivalry 23–4; disciplinary 71, 96; honor 102–3; laws of war 66–7; sack of cities 63, 67–8 visual representation 8; artillery 122–4; portraits 26–7; warships 131 Vitelli, Paolo 11 Vitoria, Francisco de 66–7 Vivar, Rodrigo Díaz de see El Cid Volterra, siege of (1537) 121 War of the League of Cambrai 22, 125, 130 warfare: changes in 28–9, 37–8; laws of war 66–7; modern warfare 5–6, 52, 61, 88, 94 weather conditions 62, 65, 77n89; effect on gunpowder 129–30 World War I 116, 138–9 World War II 6, 62, 77n89, 138, 139