Caffero Warfare and Italian States

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Warfare and Italian states, 1300–1500
william caferro
The history of Italian warfare from 1300 to 1500 has been dominated by
discussion of mercenary soldiers. Italian states used them throughout the
Middle Ages and by the fourteenth century the practice evolved into a species
of “system,” characterized by reliance on preformed bands of substantial size,
containing also foreign soldiers from outside of the peninsula. The era of the
“companies of adventure” (compagnie di ventura), as it is known, lasted from
roughly the second decade to the end of the fourteenth century. It was
followed by the emergence in the fifteenth century of individual native
mercenary captains, condottieri, who settled into regular service with states
and were the precursor to more permanent armies by the middle of the
century. The reliance on mercenaries rendered Italian warfare out of touch
with developments elsewhere in Europe, and left the peninsula unprepared
for the onslaught of the armies of France and Spain and the Italian Wars in the
sixteenth century. The invasion of Italy in 1494 by the French king Charles
VIII was the signal event that revealed the weakness of Italian military
institutions and more generally the strength of the rising nation state over
its evolutionary predecessor, the city-state.
It is important to restate this standard scholarly view, because it remains
largely intact and reflects a historiography that has not advanced as far as
other subfields related to premodern Italian history. In 1952, Piero Pieri
equated the use of mercenary cavalry with the absence of native infantry,
which doomed Italy to failure in the face of the French challenge. Pieri’s
interpretation reflects the deep-rooted influence of Niccolò Machiavelli
(1469–1527), who forcefully condemned the use of mercenaries in numerous
places in his work, seeing in it the loss of native martial spirit, which directly
led to the military humiliation by foreign powers that Machiavelli experi-
enced in his lifetime. Pieri’s view is likewise colored by nineteenth-century
Italian military historians, inspired by Machiavelli and the nationalism of
Risorgimento, who treated mercenaries, particularly the foreign soldiers of the
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trecento, as emblematic of the external oppression of the peninsula and an

internal moral weakness that prevented Italy from achieving unity until the
modern era.1
The consensus was revised in the 1970s and 80s by the English scholars
Michael Mallett and John Hale. Both stressed understanding Italian military
developments on their own terms and minimized the gap between events
occurring on the peninsula and those occurring elsewhere in Europe. They
treated mercenaries as part of the society they served, while making clear that
the men represented only a portion of Italian forces and thus one aspect of the
overall Italian military experience. Their work has formed the basis of an
ongoing – albeit slow-moving – reinterpretation of Italian warfare that has
sought to understand the phenomenon more closely in terms of political,
economic, and cultural developments. War, whether fought by mercenaries
or native troops, involved all aspects of Italian society, and, properly under-
stood, was inseparable from the pacific function of states.2
The advent of the companies

Revision notwithstanding, the phases of Italian warfare remain pegged to the
evolution of mercenary service and of Italian armies in general.3 The initial
turning point occurred in the late thirteenth century, when “native” armies
began to make greater use of mercenary cavalry. The shift is attributed to
1 Piero Pieri, Il Rinascimento e la crisi militare italiana (Turin, Einaudi, 1952). The standard
works include Ercole Ricotti, Storia delle compagnie di ventura in Italia, 2 vols. (Turin,
Pomba, 1845–7); Giuseppe Canestrini, “Documenti per servire della milizia italiana del
secolo XIII al XVI,” Archivio Storico Italiano, 1.15 (1851); Karl Heinrich Schäfer, Deutsche
Ritter und Edelknechte in Italien während des 14. Jahrhunderts, 4 vols. (Paderborn, Quellen
und Forschungen aus dem Gebiete der Geschichte XV, 1911), vol. 1. Machiavelli’s famous
comments on mercenaries are in The Prince (bks. 12, 13), The Art of War (bk. 1) and The
Discourses (bk. 2, discourse 20). See also Michael Mallett and Christine Shaw, The Italian
Wars 1494–1559: War, State and Society in Early Modern Europe (Harlow, Longman, 2012).
2 Michael Mallett, Mercenaries and Their Masters (Totowa, NJ, Rowman and Littlefield,
1974) and “Venice and Its Condottieri, 1404–1454,” in John Hale (ed.), Renaissance Venice
(London, Faber, 1973); John R. Hale, War and Society in Renaissance Europe, 1450–1620
(Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985) and with Michael Mallett, The Military
Organization of a Renaissance State: Venice, 1400–1617 (Cambridge, Cambridge University
Press, 1984). An evaluation of the historiographical tradition is in William Caferro,
Mercenary Companies and the Decline of Siena (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University
Press), pp. xiv–xv, 1–14 and “ Warfare and the Economy of Renaissance Italy,
1350–1450,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 39.2 (Autumn 2008), 167–71. See most
recently William Caferro, Petrarch’s War: Florence and the Black Death in Context
(Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2018).
3 The same basic schema appears is the most recent synthesis in Italian, Paolo Grillo,
Cavalieri e popoli in armi: Le istitutioni militari nell’Italia medievale (Rome and Bari, Editori
Laterza, 2008).
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political decentralization attending the death of the Holy Roman Emperor

Frederick II in 1250, which brought an end to Hohenstaufen rule in Italy.
Frederick’s demise exacerbated rivalries among states, particularly Guelf and
Ghibelline hostilities – a uniquely medieval Italian phenomenon – that
increased the incidence of conflict and the need for troops. By the early
fourteenth century warfare encompassed the whole peninsula. The rise of
aggressive lordships, signorie, provided impetus. The Scaligeri of Verona
seized neighboring states in eastern Lombardy in the first decades of the
fourteenth century; the Visconti of Milan took lands in western Lombardy;
and Castruccio Castracane of Lucca, a former mercenary captain, carved out
a patrimony in Tuscany which included Pisa, Pistoia, and Volterra. In south-
ern Italy, the king of Naples, Robert of Anjou, made repeated attempts (1314,
1316, 1325–6, 1335, 1339–42) to retake Sicily, which had been lost to the king of
Aragon in 1282. Meanwhile, the papacy abandoned Italy for Avignon in 1309
creating a power vacuum that encouraged the rise of petty lords (signoretti).
Pontiffs attempted to restore order through a series of legates, including
Bertrand du Poujet (1320–4) and Gil Albornoz (1353–67). Holy Roman emper-
ors meanwhile maintained legal rights in north and central Italy and routinely
“descended” on the peninsula, sometimes in alliance with the pope, more
often in opposition to him, which complicated the military situation still
further. Emperor Ludwig of Bavaria’s descent in 1328 helped Castruccio
Castracane capture Pisa. Ludwig bestowed the title of duke on the usurper.4
The incessant wars of the early trecento raised cries for peace from con-
temporaries. Dante Alighieri (d.1321) and Marsiglio of Padua (d.1342) famously
condemned the state of affairs, blaming the secular ambitions of the papacy.
A cycle of famine and plague starting in the third decade of the fourteenth
century exacerbated competition for resources that increased the rhythm of
war. The Black Death in 1348 reduced overall population by one-third or one-
half but intensified inter-city rivalries. Despite the contagion, states mobilized
armies, hoping to seize the advantage over rivals. The most notable example
of this was the hegemonic policies of the Visconti rulers of Milan, who moved
beyond Lombardy, taking on the papacy and much of the peninsula. Milan’s
wars against Florence and its allies at the end of the fourteenth and first half of
fifteenth century are among the most notable of the era.
The notoriety of the Visconti wars notwithstanding, the reality was that
most conflicts in Italy were local, between neighboring cities and between
4 Mallett, Mercenaries, pp. 6–24; J. K. Hyde, Society and Politics in Medieval Italy (New York,
St Martin’s Press, 1973), pp. 124–52.
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cities, subject towns, and the magnate clans who populated the countryside.
External violence was often connected to internal rivalries within states.
Public officials banished political opponents, who then joined enemies and
returned to fight against their native cities.
The circumstances made the use of mercenaries appealing. Continuous
conflict created demand for the soldiers, while internal faction made mercen-
aries, outsiders, more desirable because they were less likely to seek political
advantage inside the cities they served. The logic was already apparent in the
tradition, dating to the eleventh century, of employment of a podestà, a non-
citizen outsider, responsible for administering communal justice and over-
seeing daily governance.
The involvement of Holy Roman emperors in Italy brought German
troops, who often remained on the peninsula and sought local employment.
According to one scholarly study, there were as many as 10,000 Germans
active in Italy in the years from 1320 to 1360.5 They were joined by French,
Hungarian, and Catalan soldiers: the first associated with the Angevin rulers
in Naples, the second with a rival branch of Angevins in Hungary, and the last
with the kingdom of Aragon, which controlled Sicily. English soldiers entered
Italy in significant numbers in the second half of the fourteenth century,
during truces in the Hundred Years War. The famed White Company of John
Hawkwood, the greatest captain of the era, came to Italy in 1361 after the
Peace of Brètigny.6
The majority of mercenaries were, however, indigenous. They came often
from within Italy, from regions like Romagna and Umbria. Their numbers
included rulers of small independent states, such as the Malatesta clan of
Rimini and Este of Ferrara and powerful families like the Orsini and Savelli in
Rome.
The transformation of the nature of mercenary service from the use of
scattered individuals in the duecento to preformed companies of men in the
trecento has been linked to the use by Italian states of city leagues or taglie,
alliances against common enemies, and the incursions of foreign princes.7
The leagues involved a pledge by each participant of a share (taglia) of troops
for a common army. The tradition dates back to the twelfth century and the
famous Lombard league assembled in 1167 to combat the Holy Roman
5 Stephan Selzer, Deutsche Söldner im Italien des Trecento (Tübingen, Niemeyer, 2001), p. 56.
6 William Caferro, John Hawkwood: An English Mercenary in Fourteenth-Century Italy
(Baltimore and London, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006).
7 L. Naldini, “La ‘tallia militum societatis tallie Tuscie’ nella seconda metà del sec. XIII,”
Archivio Storico Italiano 78 (1920), 75–113.
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emperor Frederick I.8 The league inflicted a military defeat on Frederick in

1176 at Legnano, and various incarnations of it continued into the thirteenth
century. By then, however, there developed a series of Guelf leagues, spear-
headed by the French Angevin rulers in Naples and their ally, the papacy,
aimed against those who opposed their policies. According to Daniel Waley,
Florence joined these taglie so frequently in the second half of the thirteenth
and early years of the fourteenth century that it is impossible to “identify
a specifically Florentine army,” but rather a force that operated within the
“wide framework of Guelf military policy.”9
More pointedly, scholars have argued that the recourse to leagues encour-
aged the development of a “mercenary system” because the alliances offered
long-term employment to soldiers, whose services were not tied not to
a specific state but instead to a specific captain.10 The Tuscan Guelf league
of 1305 included a contingent of 300 mercenary cavalrymen under direct
command of the Catalan captain Diego de La Rat. Rat remained with the
league until 1313, during which time his cavalry contingent fluctuated in size
from 200 to 300 men and included an Almogavar infantry contingent of
300–500 men. Rat resided in the city of Florence, where he became a well-
known figure, catching the attention of Giovanni Boccaccio who included
him in the Decameron as a schemer who won the favors of the bishop’s niece
with counterfeit money.11 Rat’s army nevertheless remained obliged to him
and available to hire by the highest bidder.
Rat’s career presaged those of the great foreign captains of the middle of
the fourteenth century, who commanded large autonomous bands of mer-
cenaries (compagnie di ventura). The phenomenon of independent bands
occurred also in France, where free companies formed during truces in the
Hundred Years War (1337–1453). In Italy, the most impressive of the entities
was the Great Company that operated throughout the peninsula from 1340 to
1360. It was primarily German in composition and organized in a manner
similar to both feudal retinues and secular businesses. With respect to the
8 There were later versions of the league in 1185 and 1197 and a revival in 1226.
Gianluca Raccagni, The Lombard League, 1167–1225 (Oxford, Oxford University Press,
2010). Gina Fasoli has traced the formation of leagues on the peninsula back to the
ninth and tenth centuries, against the Saracens and others. Gina Fasoli, “La Lega
Lombarda: Antecedenti, Formazione, Struttura” in F. Bocchi, A. Carile, and
A. I. Pini (eds.), Scritti di Storia Medievale (Bologna, La Fotocromo Emiliana, 1974),
pp. 257–78.
9 Daniel Waley, “The Army of the Florentine Republic from the Twelfth to the
Fourteenth Century,” in Nicolai Rubinstein (ed.), Florentine Studies (Evanston, IL,
Northwestern University Press, 1968), pp. 80–2.
10 Ibid., p. 80. 11 Ibid., pp. 83–6.
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latter, they referred to themselves as societates or societies, the same word

used by contemporary cloth, banking, and silk firms. They possessed an
articulated internal hierarchy with treasurers to distribute profits, chancellors
to write letters, and notaries to handle legal issues. In times of peace, the
companies undertook their most profitable business. They raided the coun-
tryside and extorted bribes from cities and towns with which they had no
quarrel.12
The excesses of the companies gained the attention of Italian chroniclers,
who wrote at length about them. The precise reason for their formation is
not entirely clear. Did they reflect the effect of endogenous forces such as the
plagues and famines of the era, or internal forces from within the military
profession? Whatever the answers, scholars universally view the bands as the
“low point” in Italian military organization and associate their “rise” with the
eclipse of native martial spirit.13
The view is nevertheless overstated. There were few large companies
operating in Italy at any single time. Cities continued to rely on civic militia
and native infantrymen. The Florentine army contained local men, who were
more professionalized than current studies portray them, and were not, as
the stereotype suggests, dismissed wholesale after conflict. Florence retained
its soldiers in times of nominal peace. A recent study has in fact shown
considerable continuity within the ranks, as Florentine officials employed the
same captains, both mercenary cavalrymen and native infantrymen, over
many consecutive years.14 Moreover, the mercenary companies, despite their
bad reputations, were often effective fighting forces. This was particularly the
case of the English White Company, which proved an indomitable entity in
the service of Pisa in 1364. It evoked fear and admiration throughout Italy and
its martial ways were widely imitated. Under the leadership of John
Hawkwood, it penetrated to the Florentine walls and nearly took the city.
Whatever their military value, the companies and the widespread partici-
pation of foreign soldiers in Italian warfare hold interest also in sociological
and cultural terms. Italian armies brought together in close proximity men of
various lands and languages, and of differing social classes. In this way, they
represented one of the most unique spaces in all of Europe. They functioned
12 Caferro, John Hawkwood, pp. 64–71.

13 Maria Nadia Covini, “Political and Military Bonds in the Italian State System,
Thirteenth to Sixteenth Century,” in Philippe Contamine (ed.), War and Competition
between States (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 14.
14 William Caferro, “Continuity, Long-Term Service and Permanent Forces:
A Reassessment of the Florentine Army in the Fourteenth Century,” The Journal of
Modern History 80 (2008), 303–22. See now Caferro, Petrarch’s War.
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as sites of self-definition, where men recreated themselves anew and notions

of ethnicity and nation were operative.15
The practice of war

The practice of Italian warfare focused primarily on raids in the countryside.
Offensives involved burning barns, destroying vines, stealing livestock, and
ransoming workers. The attacks were consciously designed to inflict financial
damage on opponents. To that end, armies also aimed at cutting off trade by
harassing merchants and blockading routes. Battles in the field were conse-
quently rare. States were reluctant to risk losing whole armies, which were
expensive. Nevertheless, officials did not hesitate to blame captains for
sluggishness or for not seizing the advantage when the opportunity arose.
Military planners routed armies through areas where political tensions ran
high, hoping to touch off rebellions and thus force enemies to capitulate on
account of internal pressure.
Sieges were commonplace. Armies advanced to the gates of towns and
attacked the enemy by means of trebuchets and cannons – the latter already
in widespread use in trecento Italy. Trebuchets and cannons were likewise
used to defend town walls. Nevertheless, capitulation occurred most often as
the result of treachery, usually by means of bribing a key official within.
Large, well-fortified cities were difficult to take by force, and attacks on them
usually focused on ravaging the surrounding countryside. In the middle years
of the fourteenth century, in Tuscany and Umbria in particular, town walls
became the site of what Richard Trexler has called “collective insults,”
defamatory acts intended to shame and humiliate the opponent.16 The
demonstrations involved minting coins with mocking insignia, knighting
soldiers (often local exiles), and holding horse races (palii) that simulated
celebratory races run in Italian cities on feast days. The insults included also
pitture infamante, defamatory paintings, often of enemy commanders, drawn
on public buildings and in public areas. During Siena’s war with Florence in
15 William Caferro, “Travel, Economy, and Identity in Fourteenth-Century Italy,” in

D. Ramada Curto et al. (eds.), From Florence to the Mediterranean and Beyond (Florence,
Olschki, 2009), pp. 363–80.
16 Richard C. Trexler, “Correre la Terra: Collective Insults in the Late Middle Ages,”
Mélanges de l’École Français de Rome 96 (1984), 845–902; William Caferro, “Honor and
Insult: Military Rituals in Late Medieval Tuscany,” in Samuel K. Cohn, Jr.,
Marcello Fantoni, and Franco Franceschi (eds.), Ritual and Symbol in Late Medieval
and Early Modern Italy (Turnhout, Brepols, 2013), pp. 125–43.
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1390, Sienese officials had painted on the city walls derisive images of
members of the Malavolti family, who had supported the enemy.17
The practice should be viewed as part of the larger symbolic and ritualistic
aspects of Italian warfare. Captains of armies received their batons by means
of public ceremony. The departure of an army was arranged in consultation
with astrologers, who paid close attention to other-worldly signs that might
indicate future outcomes and even suggested the route that armies should
take out of their cities.
Although pitched battles in the field were rare, they did occur. Most were
impromptu affairs, happening, as at Crevalcuore near the Panaro river in 1373,
when one side was distracted crossing a river or had a distinct advantage over
the other.18 States nevertheless employed broader strategies, arranged in
discussion between captains and government officials. In republics like
Venice and Florence ad hoc committees known as balie were appointed in
times of war and given special powers to enact policies without consulting
ponderous governmental deliberative machineries. Cities sent civilian offi-
cials or provveditori to advise captains. The Florentine battle plan in 1391
involved a coordinated attack against the city of Milan from both the south
and the north. The plan ultimately failed when the northern force, com-
manded by Jean II, count of Armagnac of France, was delayed, leaving the
southern force isolated, short of provisions and thus with no option but to
retreat. When Armagnac finally arrived, he rushed headlong in disorganized
fashion into battle and lost his army and his own life.
Armagnac was clearly an ineffective captain, whose faults were widely
noted by Florentine chroniclers, who blamed his rashness on his youth. But
other contemporary captains were far more accomplished. Indeed, the pre-
sence in Italy of mercenaries from throughout Europe brought different
methods of war in close proximity, and the habit of captains in changing
sides allowed them to become familiar with the tactics of their opponents,
whom they had often previously fought beside. Moral issues aside, the
practice added to the sophistication of the warriors. It was indeed in this
milieu that the Englishman John Hawkwood emerged as a captain. His
tactical skill at the battle of Castagnaro (1387) has been rightly judged
masterful. At the head of Paduan forces, cut off from any means of retreat,
Hawkwood effected an enveloping move along a canal that enabled him to
surround and defeat Veronese forces. The maneuver has been compared to
17 Caferro, John Hawkwood, p. 290. 18 Caferro, John Hawkwood, p. 155.
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that used at the great English victory at Poitiers (1356) during the Hundred
Years War.
The precise size and composition of fourteenth-century armies is difficult
to judge. Our main sources are chronicle accounts. The writers tended,
however, to exaggerate. In particular, they were given to overstating the
size of opposing forces and understating their own. In addition, they paid
more attention to the aristocratic portion of the army, the cavalry, and less to
their social inferiors, the infantry. Chroniclers often offer precise numbers
and details about the former, but little about the latter, describing them
generically as a “mass of men.”19 The accounts cannot, however, be wholly
dismissed, as they are not entirely inconsistent with archival data where that
is available. But army size clearly varied widely, depending on the nature of
the campaign. Offensives against neighboring magnate clans required fewer
men than those against more distant foes. Sieges necessitated a greater
proportion of infantry, while campaigns in the field required more cavalry.
The open plains of Lombardy could accommodate wars of maneuver; the
hills of Tuscany were more conducive to sieges.
Estimates of army size usually range from several hundred to several
thousand men. The 15,000 men-at-arms employed by Verona at Castagnaro
should be taken as an upper limit. It is in any case necessary to distinguish
carefully between those men hired for active service and those employed as
auxiliaries or in non-combat roles. It is also necessary to treat cautiously the
notion of “state” armies. The Veronese army in 1387, like those of other
states, contained contingents from allies and military league partners. It is
thus difficult to say for sure what parts were distinctly Veronese.20
Among the best surviving sources of information for armies and their
relations with employers are contracts or condotte. Many exists, primarily
those involving mercenary cavalry captains (and to a lesser extent those
involving Genoese crossbowmen). They spell out in detail the obligations
between soldiers and states. The first major clause usually stipulated the
number of soldiers to be furnished by a captain, expressed in terms of
individual horses or in units such as bandiere, barbute, or lances. The bandiera
consisted of twenty to twenty-five men, while the barbuta, common among
German mercenaries, consisted of two cavalrymen and two horses. By
the second half of the fourteenth century these units were replaced by the
19 Ibid., p. 89.
20 Mallett, Mercenaries, pp. 115–16. On the issue of army size, see also Bert S. Hall, Weapons
and Warfare in Renaissance Europe (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997),
pp. 205–9.
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lance, consisting of three men (a knight, a squire, and a page) and three
horses. The lance became the standard cavalry contingent in Italy and Europe
in the fifteenth century.
Pay was disbursed either in a lump sum to the captain, who distributed it
to his men, or, more typically, apportioned directly by the state, at separate
monthly rates to the captain and to the members of his band. Captains
usually received advance pay in the form of a loan, to help assemble their
bands. The sum was deducted from future pay. Contracts also laid out the
division of spoils, payment of bonuses, compensation (menda) for injured
horses, as well as a monthly schedule of inspections of the contingent to make
sure they were properly armed and in order.21
The contracts make clear the capitalized nature of Italian war. There were
monetary rewards (double pay) for “significant” victories in the field, com-
pensation for injured horses, and penalties for failure to maintain one’s
equipment and pass muster. Soldiers were usually allowed to keep all
movables they captured as well as a portion of the ransom of prisoners.
The state received lands and castles. There were, however, substantial
disagreements over such issues.
Throughout the fourteenth century, most contracts were of short dura-
tion, lasting from four to six months. A special type of contract, a condotta in
aspetto, offered longer terms, allowing a captain, usually a prominent one, to
fight for other employers, provided he returned when called upon. For this
he received a continuous salary, usually a third of his regular pay.
The condotta in aspetto provided a means by which states could gain more
permanent service from captains. By the fifteenth century, the duration of the
contracts, particularly in the cities of Venice and Milan, increased,
extending year-round. The contracts have been viewed as an advance toward
more permanent, standing armies by the middle of fifteenth century.22
We shall discuss more fully below the implications of this contractual
evolution. It is important, however, not to overstate its significance. As with
all prescriptive legal sources, contracts constitute an ideal and must be treated
as a general guideline to military organization and practice. Not all soldiers
were hired by means of condotte; infantry often were not, and communal
levies still remained. Those hired by condotte did not necessarily receive pay as
promised. There were often long delays and compensation by means of
commodities such as cloth rather than coin. Salaries were also subject to
21 Caferro, John Hawkwood, pp. 71–81; Mallett, Mercenaries, pp. 76–87.

22 For a different interpretation on standing armies and length of contracts, see Caferro,
“Continuity, Long-Term Service and Permanent Forces,” pp. 303–12.
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communal taxes and deductions. Most important, short-term contracts of

four to six months did not necessarily mean short-term employment. The
Florentine army, for example, retained its mercenaries for long periods in the
fourteenth century, rehiring the same men on short-term contract again and
again. The continuity was accompanied by careful assessment of the soldiers’
skills; Florentine officials kept those men who most distinguished themselves.
The short-term condotte provided Florence with a frequent means of assessing
forces. But there was de facto long-term service apart from contractual
terms.23
The contractual evidence also overstates the role of the cavalry. Most of
extant condotte deal with that sector of the army. But infantry remained an
important feature of armies. Some scholars have claimed that cavalry out-
numbered infantry by as much as ten to one in the second half of the
fourteenth century.24 The reality, however, is that the proportions, where
we are able to ascertain them, are often close, and sometimes favor infantry,
even for armies that operated in the open plains of Lombardy. The Milanese
army that defeated the count of Armagnac at Alessandria (near Milan) in 1391
consisted of 1,000 lances and 4,000 infantrymen.
Infantry contingents consisted of shield bearers and crossbowmen as their
most basic components. They were joined by guastatori and sappers, who dug
below fortifications, cleared roads, and did much of the dirty work. These
men were usually not formally arranged into units, but their numbers were
nevertheless often significant, particularly during sieges. Crossbowmen were
frequently integrated with shield bearers, who stood beside them and pro-
tected them as they shot, a tactic that had been highly effective at the battle of
Campaldino in 1289. The crossbow was more generally an important
weapon, used both in the field and to defend against those trying to scale
town walls. Missile weaponry also included rocks, thrown from buildings or
launched by trebuchets. The defense of the Pisan town wall in 1363 involved
tossing rocks and even a beehive at the enemy.
It is important to stress, however, that Italian warfare was not restricted to
land. States fought also on the seas and on rivers, and on river and land in
combination. Venetian and Genoese fleets battled each other in 1350 near
Negroponte in the Aegean. John Hawkwood had men and supplies trans-
ported from his lands in Bagnacavallo in the Romagna to his troops in
Lombardy via the Po river in the late 1370s. Venice and Milan sent fleets
23 Ibid., pp. 303–23.

24 Ugo Barlozzetti and Marco Giuliani, “La prassi guerresca in Toscana,” in Guerre
e assoldati in Toscana: 1260–1364 (Florence, Museo Stibbert, 1982), p. 55.
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HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE
RE
KINGDOM OF PU
AN
Vicenza
BL
DUCHY OF Milan
MIL
FRANCE IC
SAVOY Verona Venice
Mantua Padua
OF
Turin
O
Y
F
C H
DU Modena Ferrara MARQUISATE
V
Genoa OF MANTUA
E
Avignon Bologna
N
DUCHY OF
I
DUCHY OF Pistoia FERRARA C
MODENA Lucca Florence Urbino E
C:/ITOOLS/WMS/CUP-NEW/22003789/WORKINGFOLDER/CURRY-RG/9780521877152C14.3D
REPUBLIC Pisa REPUBLIC OF

OF GENOA REPUBLIC FLORENCE
A
OF LUCCA Siena
A
400
PA P A L
EN
r
SI
Orvieto
F
KINGDOM OF i
O a
A
ARAGON LIC
pp t
CORSICA P UB en i c
(Genoa)
S T AT E S
RE in
Rome S
[389–408] 20.4.2020
es
e
a
KINGDOM OF
Naples NAPLES
SARDINIA
(Aragon)
Ty r r h e n i a n
Sea
Ionian
S ea
Palermo
M e d i t e r r a n e a n S e a KINGDOM OF
SICILY
(Aragon) 0 100 200 300 400 km
0 50 100 150 200 250 miles
map 11. Italy c.1400

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along the Po and Adige; Mantua patrolled the Mincio river with boats. The
vessels ranged from war galleys to small barche, rowboats with a handful of
men. During its war with Pisa in 1363, Florence fought battles on the seas near
the island of Giglio. Milanese and Venetian fleets fought a major battle on the
Po below the city of Cremona in 1431.
Evolution and innovation in the fifteenth century

Fifteenth-century warfare has received more scholarly attention than its
fourteenth-century predecessor. It possessed many of the same features as
earlier: emphasis on raids in the countryside, disruption of trade, and, more
generally, maneuver and attrition over direct engagement. But scholars
position fifteenth-century developments more closely in relation to the rest
of Europe and with respect to the so-called military revolution. Italy has been
judged backward with respect to the former and thus devolved into a testing
ground for the weaponry of the latter. In all cases, scholars agree that Italy
saw important changes. The scale and scope of warfare increased, accom-
panied by innovations with regard to artillery and fortifications, and ulti-
mately the development of more permanent armies employed in times of
peace, managed by more regularized administrative structures and
procedures.
Two styles or “schools” of battlefield tactics dominated early fifteenth-
century Italian warfare. They were based on the methods of two major
mercenary captains, Muzio Attendolo “Sforza” (1369–1424) and Braccio da
Montone (1368–1424). The men are usually cast as opposites. Sforza, from
a wealthy landholding family, is known for his good-looks and his promotion
early in his career to the rank of full-fledged captain. Braccio da Montone,
a Perugian exile, walked with a limp and remained obscure until his late
thirties. Both were, however, highly successful in the battlefield. Sforza relied
on a loyal cadre of troops recruited from his native lands in the Romagna,
which he massed in large contingents and deployed cautiously in counter-
attack. Braccio relied on speed and daring, dividing his men into small
squadrons and committing them piecemeal into battle. This kept his army
fresh and facilitated control of his men, who unlike those of Sforza, were not
recruited from his own lands
The sforzechi and bracceschi, as their followers have been called, have
attracted significant scholarly attention. Their methods were not so antitheti-
cal as they at first appear. Both relied on strong military discipline that
involved coordination of cavalry movements with those of infantrymen,
401
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william caferro
who played an important role in fighting. The sforzechi and bracceschi are
probably better understood as factions in support of the rival condottieri,
based more on friendship and place of origin. Their ranks included many of
the most important captains of the century and the rivalry continued into the
sixteenth century long after both men were dead.
Sforza and Braccio opposed each other directly in the field in June 1424 at
L’Aquila. Sforza won the day, in part because one of his captains, Jacopo
Caldora, had fought alongside Braccio and knew well his tendencies. Braccio
was captured and died of wounds suffered in the conflict. The battle was
notable for the roster of mercenary captains who participated in it, many of
whom went on to illustrious careers. They included Erasmo da Narni
(known as Gattamelata), who fought on the bracceschi side, and Niccoló
Tolentino, who was among the sforzeschi. The battle was also noteworthy
for its bloody nature. Chronicle accounts claim that as many as 3,000 men
were killed, evidence that contradicts Machiavelli’s famous assertion that
engagements of the era were generally “bloodless” owing to the lack of
interest of mercenaries in battle.25
The period after L’Aquila, from 1424 to 1454, is seen as an important one in
the development of Italian armies and war. Scholars point to a variety of
developments, above all the broadening of inter-city conflicts. Venice, which
had been largely preoccupied with its overseas activities in the fourteenth
century, became more involved on the mainland and after 1425 embarked on
a long series of wars with Milan that involved much of the northern and
central part of the peninsula. The papal states remained unsettled. With the
settlement of the papal schism (1378–1415), the newly elected pontiff Martin
V (1417–31) attempted to restore order. Meanwhile, Alfonso of Aragon (1396–
1458), ruler of Sicily, became heir to the Neapolitan throne in 1421 and
embarked on series of wars to consolidate his hold on the region (which
ended successfully in 1442). Italy also faced a growing external threat from the
Ottoman Turks, who were moving west and took Constantinople in 1453.
The peace of Lodi in 1454 stabilized political realities within the peninsula, but
it did not stop local skirmishes or the advance of the Ottomans. Venice
fought back Turkish offensives in Friuli and Dalmatia in 1470 and 1477
respectively.26
In the face of the challenge, the size of armies grew. Michael Mallett
estimated that Venetian and Milanese forces, which consisted of
25 Mallet, Mercenaries, p. 197.

26 Paolo Grillo, Cavalieri e popoli in armi: Le istituzioni militari nell’Italia medievale (Rome
and Bari, Laterza, 2008), p. 188.
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10,000–12,000 cavalrymen in the 1420s, grew to 20,000 cavalrymen in the 1440s

and 1450s. The increase was accompanied by use of year-long condotte, which
now included explicit clauses spelling out the terms of peacetime service.
Venice was precocious in this regard, with this type of condotta becoming
common already by 1425. In 1433 Venice maintained a peacetime force of 5,000
horsemen and 2,000 infantrymen.27 Venice owed its precocity with regard to
military organization to several additional factors, including its relative
political unity, its restricted land base for recruitment of soldiers in Italy
and its expanding frontiers, which required constant vigilance.
The move toward more permanent forces occurred also in Milan. Under
Filippo Maria Visconti (1412–47), the city relied on a corps of famigliari, cavalry
units chosen directly from within Filippo’s circle. In addition, Milan
employed lanze spezzate, broken lances, detached from the service of con-
dottieri and hired directly by the state, which then appointed their captains. In
the 1420s, Milan recruited 700 lanze spezzate from Braccio da Montone’s army
at Aquila and arranged them into squadre under a hand-picked commander.
The Venetians pursued a similar policy, building a nucleus of permanent
cavalry devoted directly to the state, not to their captain as in earlier years. In
addition, both Milan and Venice developed more enduring relationships with
infantrymen, employing long-term a core of men.
The condottieri nevertheless remained an important part of armies. Some
settled into long-term service. Niccolò Piccinino captained Milanese armies
for twenty years; Gattamelata worked for much of his long career for Venice.
Officials worked to keep the men tied to the state by means of rewards, such
as pensions and grants of estates. The latter constituted a species of enfeuda-
tion of the captains, which also provided a useful means of protecting
borderlands. The Venetians, for example, gave the condottiere Carmagnola
possession of the towns of Chiari and Sanguinetto, the former on the frontier
near Brescia, the latter overlooking the Po river and the southeastern
approaches to Verona. The grants of land both honored Carmagnola and
solidified Venetian defenses in these key locations. In Milan under Francesco
Sforza (1450–80), enfeudation helped create a whole class of condottieri/
vassals obliged directly to Sforza, allowing him to more effectively consoli-
date his political control on the city.
Despite this “domestication” of condottieri by state authorities, it is never-
theless true that the personal status of the captains also grew. Exactly how the
two phenomena were linked remains unclear. Contractual evidence shows
27 Mallett, “Venice and Its Condottieri,” p. 139; Grillo, Cavalieri e popoli in armi, p. 176.
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william caferro
that distinguished condottieri received more favorable terms than in the past,
including the right, as in the condotta ad provisionem, to form his own band in
the manner that the captain desired. Bartolomeo Colleoni maintained service
with several employers in his career and attempted to carve out his own
private domain in Romagna in 1467, a move reminiscent of his less domes-
ticated forebears in the fourteenth century.
In any case, the notion of a decisive shift in these years toward permanent
forces should be treated with caution. Elements of permanence may be
traced back to the garrisons of fortresses in the communal period and to
the long-term employment of mercenaries by Florence in the fourteenth
century. In 1369, the ruler of Milan, Bernabò Visconti, inaugurated
a “standing” force of provvisionati, consisting of a small group of Milanese
nobles who wore bright red cloaks. The difference in the fifteenth century
appears to be one of degree, as larger numbers of men-at-arms entered
permanent service (apart from garrisons, which continued nevertheless to
exist). The changes were accompanied by state-level administrative altera-
tions that regularized procedures and made management of armies
a permanent part of local bureaucracies.
A major administrative innovation, again evident first in Venice and Milan,
was the use in the fifteenth century of colaterali, permanent officials respon-
sible for the overall administration of the army. These replaced the ad hoc
provveditori of the fourteenth century. In Venice, Belpetro Manelmi held the
position of colaterale for thirty years and had wide-ranging powers. In Milan,
the office gained impetus under Francesco Sforza, who used it to create
a cadre of permanent and professional officials, which included soldiers in
administrative roles.
In both cities, the rise of permanent forces was also accompanied by
a more regularized system of billeting soldiers. Milan employed
a commissario degli allogiamenti to supervise the comportment of troops.
The state maintained the billets by means of taxes imposed on rural com-
munities. Maria Nadia Covini has argued that the taxes and general main-
tenance of armies constituted a transfer of resources from the countryside to
the state and thus the transformation of the Milanese army was closely linked
to overall political consolidation.28
There nevertheless remained considerable differences among armies. Not
all were large. The Venetian chronicler Marin Sanudo estimated that in 1439
28 Maria Nadia Covini, L’esercito del duca: Organizzazione militare e istituzioni al tempo degli
Sforza, 1450–1480 (Rome, Istituto Palazzo Borromini, 1998).
404
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the three biggest armies on the peninsula were those of Milan, Venice, and
Naples, all with about 20,000 cavalrymen. The armies of Florence and the
papacy, the two other major states, were substantially smaller, estimated at
no more than 4,000 cavalrymen. Attempts at state control were not always
successful. King Alfonso of Naples tried in 1443 to create a permanent force of
1,000 lances under his direct control from his demesne lands, but was opposed
by local barons.29 He therefore relied mostly on prominent independent
condottieri from whom he gained generally good and long-lasting service.
The Florentines did not use professional officials to manage their armies and
were reluctant to grant lands and favors to mercenary captains. The papacy
meanwhile managed its army primarily by appointing relatives of popes and
cardinals to key leadership positions. Pier Luigi Borgia, nephew of Pope
Calixtus III, was captain general of papal armies in 1457 and Antonio
Piccolomini, relative of Pius II, served in that role in 1460. The duchy of
Savoy, a small Piedmontese state that straddled the Alps, made hardly any
use of mercenaries at all, maintaining a feudal cavalry composed of vassals of
the duke and citizen infantry.
Nevertheless, the value of permanent forces was by the middle of the
fifteenth century accepted in theory if not always followed in fact. It was
advocated in military treatises such as that of Diomede Carafa, who worked
for Alfonso of Naples.30 Indeed, Alfonso’s son and successor Ferrante
achieved modest success in establishing a permanent cavalry force of 1,256
lance and infantry units modeled on the highly successful Spanish armies.
The Florentines likewise, by the end of the century, moved more in line with
the other states.
Thus, despite local differences, it is fair to say that the armies of the second
half of the fifteenth century were distinct from those of the second half of the
fourteenth century. States experimented with regard to cavalry, introducing
larger individual units and more structured chains of command. The
Venetians introduced light cavalry, stradiots from Albania, who provided
greater maneuverability and flexibility on the battlefield, particularly in the
wars against Ottoman armies. The changes in cavalry were matched by
changes also with regard to infantry. Italian states developed no equivalent
to the contemporary Swiss pike infantry, but they increasingly used infantry
in a more offensive role. Braccio da Montone introduced a sword-and-
buckler type infantryman, lightly armed for hand-to-hand offensive fighting.
29 Mallett, Mercenaries, p. 116; Grillo, Cavalieri, pp. 174, 191.

30 Mallett, “Venice and Its Condottieri,” p. 139.
405
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There was increased use of firearms and the introduction in the 1430s of
specialist handgun infantry units, schioppetieri companies, in Venetian and
Milanese armies. There emerged also infantry captains, who maintained, like
their cavalry counterparts, long-term relationships with states. Diotisalvi
Lupi was a captain of Venetian infantry units for thirty years and was
knighted by the republic in 1447.
The precise role of firearms and of gunpowder weapons remains a much-
debated topic. Cannon were used already in the fourteenth century during
sieges, often alongside rock-throwing trebuchets. They were likewise
deployed – and often most effectively – in defense of town walls. By the
middle of the fifteenth century, cannon had become larger and more mobile.
Armies had large-scale artillery trains. The price of gunpowder decreased and
the reliability of the weapons increased markedly.31
Most Italian scholars agree, however, that the effects of the gunpowder
revolution were limited on the peninsula. Cannon and firearms did not yet
sway the course of battles, though they were a factor in sieges. Their
influence is most evident in fortress building, which by the middle
and second half of the fifteenth century was much improved. Defensive
walls were thickened and scarped, with emphasis on low projecting bastions.
But the changes in fortification have been viewed not so much as a direct
response to gunpowder, but as part of a broader impulse toward experimen-
tation with regard to war that included also new approaches to fortifying
camps and constructing temporary field fortifications and diverting rivers.
The impulse derived also from the artistic and humanistic cultures then
developing in Italy. Some of the most important military engineers were
Renaissance artists and architects, including Leon Battista Alberti and
Leonardo da Vinci. Understood in context then, changes in fortifications
during the gunpowder era appear more evolutionary than revolutionary.
This revisionist view has been applied also to the French invasion of 1494,
the great turning point in Italian military history. The contemporary huma-
nist historian Francesco Guicciardini attributed French success primarily to
their cannons, which were larger, more mobile, and more effective than
hitherto seen on the peninsula.32 Few dispute French and northern European
expertise and innovation with regard to the weapon. But Italianists now
stress local familiarity with the cannon and question the role the weapon
played in French success in the peninsula. They argue that the French
31 Hall, Weapons and Warfare, pp. 67–105.

32 Francesco Guicciardini, The History of Italy, trans. Sidney Alexander (Princeton, NJ,
Princeton University Press, 1984), pp. 50–1.
406
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invading army was in fact not substantially different from forces already
operating in Italy. Its advance was in the first instance facilitated by
a breakdown in Italian political alliances. The city of Florence has absorbed
much of the blame for failing to adequately block its passes through the
Apennine mountains, thus allowing French forces to move largely unim-
peded to Naples.
War and society

The overall impact of war on Italian society is the focal point of much current
research. The most obvious effect of war during the period was political. The
years 1300 to 1500 coincided with the consolidation of political power on the
peninsula, with the formation of territorial states and the so-called five
Renaissance states (Venice, Naples, Milan, Florence, and the papacy). It is
unclear, however, whether war served as a mainspring or makeweight for
these developments. Consolidation and territorial expansion involved
a complex game of diplomacy and maneuver in which the acquisition of
land often preceded wars (purchased with money) and was as much a cause
of them as their result. The notion that war made more efficient or “mod-
ernized” government bureaucracies, an argument stated most forcefully in
the sociological work of Charles Tilly, is uneasily applied to Italy.33 The
Venetians and Milanese undertook important bureaucratic changes, but it
would be an overstatement to assert that their administrations became
efficient or modern as a result of warfare. The need to raise quickly enormous
sums of money and disburse them produced as much chaos and confusion in
the fisc as innovation, and it challenged the bureaucratic capacity of even the
wealthiest regimes.
The economic effects of war were similarly variegated. War was in the first
instance destructive. It hampered trade and damaged rural lands and physical
structures. At the same time, however, it provided income for soldiers and
for laborers – carpenters, rope makers, stonemasons, blacksmiths among
them – who made weapons, or built field fortifications, trebuchets, and
cannons. It produced earnings also for industries such as the Venetian
arsenale, which produced ships, and for Milan’s armor business. Most impor-
tant, war redistributed wealth, both on the micro level within states (in terms
of the various social classes, which bore different tax burdens) and on the
33 Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990–1992 (London, Wiley-
Blackwell, 1992).
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macro level, among states, which gained and lost according to outcomes, and
whose economic, social, and political makeup as well as geographic location
occasioned diverse pressures and produced different responses. In this con-
text, the shift from use of foreign mercenaries in the fourteenth century to
native condottieri in the fifteenth century assumes a critical economic mean-
ing. The former sent earnings back home to their native states to prepare for
return there, while the native troops spent all their pay within Italy, enhan-
cing the recycling of wages back into the local economy.
The last statement points us toward the cultural dimension of war, which
is perhaps its most visible and enduring feature. War was profitable for those
soldiers who successfully fought it. Captains often used these profits to
endow chapels, patronize the arts, and to consume conspicuously. The
pattern is evident already in the fourteenth century in the career of the
obscure German captain Hüglin von Schöneck, who used his profits to
endow a chapel in the local cathedral in his native Basel. His Italian counter-
part Braccio da Montone spent lavishly to beautify his native Perugia, after he
took the city in 1416. The trend reached its peak with Sigismondo Malatesta of
Rimini (d.1468) and Federigo da Montefeltro of Urbino (d.1482), condottieri
known as much for the art they commissioned in their native states as their
deeds on the battlefield.
408

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C:/ITOOLS/WMS/CUP-NEW/22003789/WORKINGFOLDER/CURRY-RG/9780521877152C14.3D 389 [389–408] 20.4.

trecento, as emblematic of the external oppression of the peninsula and an

The advent of the companies

Warfare and Italian states, 1300–1500

political decentralization attending the death of the Holy Roman Emperor

Warfare and Italian states, 1300–1500

emperor Frederick I.8 The league inﬂicted a military defeat on Frederick in

latter, they referred to themselves as societates or societies, the same word

12 Caferro, John Hawkwood, pp. 64–71.

Warfare and Italian states, 1300–1500

as sites of self-deﬁnition, where men recreated themselves anew and notions

The practice of war

15 William Caferro, “Travel, Economy, and Identity in Fourteenth-Century Italy,” in

17 Caferro, John Hawkwood, p. 290. 18 Caferro, John Hawkwood, p. 155.

Warfare and Italian states, 1300–1500

21 Caferro, John Hawkwood, pp. 71–81; Mallett, Mercenaries, pp. 76–87.

Warfare and Italian states, 1300–1500

communal taxes and deductions. Most important, short-term contracts of

23 Ibid., pp. 303–23.

HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE

REPUBLIC Pisa REPUBLIC OF

0 50 100 150 200 250 miles

map 11. Italy c.1400

Warfare and Italian states, 1300–1500

Evolution and innovation in the ﬁfteenth century

25 Mallet, Mercenaries, p. 197.

Warfare and Italian states, 1300–1500

10,000–12,000 cavalrymen in the 1420s, grew to 20,000 cavalrymen in the 1440s

Warfare and Italian states, 1300–1500

29 Mallett, Mercenaries, p. 116; Grillo, Cavalieri, pp. 174, 191.

31 Hall, Weapons and Warfare, pp. 67–105.

Warfare and Italian states, 1300–1500

War and society

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