The Battle of Fornovo in the Gallery of Maps (Vatican Museums)
The intelligent use of reserves has sometimes been described
as one of the distinguishing features of modern military tactics, and the
concept was certainly one that had been widely explored by the condottieri. But
in this case there was too much emphasis on reserves. Whether this was because
Gonzaga had more men than he knew what to do with or whether it was a sort of
natural caution is hard to say. However, part of the intention was clearly to
prevent the reserves being committed too early or all at once, and the leaders
of the various reserve divisions had strict orders not to enter the fray until
called forward by Ridolfo Gonzaga and no one else.
The battle opened in mid-afternoon with a brief artillery
duel across the Taro. But heavy rain had dampened the powder and the guns on
both sides were more than usually ineffective. The rain had also swollen the
river suddenly, and this was seriously to affect the Italian plan. When the
signal to advance was given the three spearhead columns began to cross the
river. The Count of Caiazzo attacked the van with indifferent success; his
infantry were badly cut up by the Swiss who outnumbered them, and elements of
his troops were soon fleeing towards Parma. However, he achieved his task of
keeping the French vanguard occupied. The stradiots also reached their first
objective and harried the French left flank. But when two of their leaders were
killed, they drew off and began to plunder the baggage train, which their
encircling movement had placed at their mercy. In the centre Gonzaga found it
impossible to cross the river where he had intended and moved further upstream
to cross close to Fortebraccio’s troops. This led to delay and some confusion;
but above all it meant that instead of striking the gap between the French
centre and the already committed vanguard, he crossed between the centre and
the rearguard, thus exposing his flank to the full weight of the French centre.
Here in the space of less than an hour the battle was decided. The element of
surprise was lost by the delays, and Gonzaga and Fortebraccio found their
squadrons depleted by the difficulties of crossing the river. They bore the
full brunt of the counter-attacks of the French and no reserves came forward,
as Ridolfo Gonzaga was mortally wounded at the height of the battle. Thus more
than half the Italian army never got into action at all. The heavily mauled
divisions of Gonzaga and Fortebraccio gave almost as good as they got; the two
leaders particularly fighting with exceptional gallantry. At one point they
came close to capturing Charles, but so furious a battle could not last for
long. Both armies drew back to regroup, and then approaching darkness prevented
a resumption of fighting.
The outcome of the battle appeared uncertain, and both sides
claimed a victory. The French had achieved their aim of opening a road
northwards, as they were able to resume their march stealthily the next night.
They had inflicted the heavier casualties on Gonzaga’s army which lost over
2,000 men, including a number of captains. The Italians could claim to be the
masters of the field as the French drew off, and they captured the French
baggage, including Charles’ personal illustrated record of his many amorous
conquests. They also took more prisoners. These perhaps, in terms of Italian
warfare, were indications of victory; but Fornovo was fought for specific
objectives, and Gonzaga failed to achieve his objective; so he can be said in
real terms to have lost the battle. But he lost it not because the Swiss
infantry and French artillery were invincible; neither of these elements played
much part. Nor did he lose it because the French fought better or with more
determination. He did not even lose it because a part of his army got out of
hand, notably the stradiots, and another part, the Milanese, did not press
their attack (perhaps on instructions from Milan), although these were the
excuses given for the lack of success. Three factors really contributed to the
Italian failure. First there was the sudden rising of the Taro which badly
disrupted the Italian plan and caused last minute confusion. Secondly both
Francesco Gonzaga and his uncle elected to lead the army, and thus no one was
really in a position to direct the whole battle. Gonzaga, although he showed
great personal bravery and many of the ideal qualities of a subordinate
commander, had not appreciated that so large and complex an army needed to be
directed from behind. This was by no means a typical Italian mistake; neither
Braccio nor Sforza would ever have allowed themselves to make it. Finally the
sheer size of the army and complexity of the battle plan frustrated success.
This sudden attempt to translate tactics which could work well with a small
army used to cooperation to a large composite army which had come together for
the first time, was bound to run into difficulties. More traditional tactics
would probably have won the day by sheer weight of numbers, which is a curious
reflection on the theory that Italian methods were outdated and superseded.
Fornovo was one of the two major battles in the whole period
between 1494 and 1530 when a largely Italian army met the invaders in the open
field. It is therefore one of the few occasions when one can seek to assess the
relative merits of Italian and ultramontane military methods. For the rest of
the time the political disunity of Italy and political weakness of most of the
states made combination against the invaders and a real trial of strength
impossible. Italians fought, sometimes distinguished themselves, and
occasionally disgraced themselves, on both sides in the wars, but the warfare
was increasingly becoming international rather than Italian. It only remains
therefore to analyse briefly the Italian contributions to the changes which
were taking place during these protracted wars.
Charles VIII did not renew his attempts to dominate Italy,
and the forces which he left in Naples were gradually overrun with the help of
increasing numbers of Spanish troops. The Aragonese dynasty was re-established
in Naples, but a Spanish army led by Gonsalvo de Cordoba, the Great Captain,
became a permanent part of its defences. The next French invasion of Italy came
in 1499 after Louis XII had succeeded Charles and added the Orleanist claim to
Milan to the Angevin interest in Naples. The four year lull between the two
invasions was filled by serious fighting in only one part of the peninsula, and
this was the long war fought by Florence for the recovery of Pisa.
Pisa had declared her independence following Florence’s
surrender to Charles VIII in 1494, and for fifteen years its recovery was the
main preoccupation of Florentine policy. This war was an interesting one in a
number of respects. It saw two states totally committed to war for a protracted
period; not only the Pisans, subjected to almost continuous siege, but also the
Florentines found that every aspect of the life of their cities was subject to
the effects of war. In this situation Florence became to some extent reconciled
to the problem of standing forces, but her suspicion of the condottieri
remained. It was the sort of war in which condottiere cavalry could not be seen
to best advantage. Paolo Vitelli, who was executed in 1499 for failing to take
Pisa, was no more unsuccessful than the French troops hired two years later for
the same purpose. The problem was of course not just a military one; the Pisans
received support in turn from every state in Italy, together with France and
Spain, as each struck at Florence through this running sore in her side. The
solutions were therefore diplomatic—to avoid offending potential allies of Pisa
and isolate her diplomatically—as well as military. In the latter sphere
Florence turned to increasingly permanent companies of infantry, and eventually
to Machiavelli’s militia, to surround Pisa and starve her into submission. But
she still failed to build up the comprehensive military organisation which had
long existed in Venice. She was still at the mercy of a military attack, such
as those mounted against her by Cesare Borgia in 1501 and 1502, and even more
conclusively by the Spanish in 1512. The sack of Prato in the latter year, and
the complete humiliation of Florence’s new national militia by the Spanish
troops, was not so much an indication of Italian military weakness as a
justification for the faith which continued, for many years to come, to be
placed in professional mercenary troops rather than embryo national armies.
Nor was the success of Cesare Borgia in winning control of
the Romagna in a series of campaigns between 1499 and 1503 an example of the
effectiveness of militia troops as Machiavelli seemed to think. Cesare’s army
was essentially a mercenary army. He relied heavily on contingents of French
and Spanish troops, and even in July 1502, when he was said to have assembled
the best troops in Italy, his army was made up largely of the condottiere
companies of men like Vitellozzo Vitelli, Oliverotto da Fermo and the Orsini,
and his own Romagnol mercenaries. Cesare, like a number of other Italian
commanders, was experimenting with mounted arquebusiers and, with the aid of
Vitellozzo, he had assembled a fine artillery train, but the Romagnol militia,
paraded briefly in the last weeks of 1502, contributed little to his military
success.
Cesare Borgia’s army was an effective military weapon for
his limited purposes; he had some troops who would have undoubtedly given a
good account of themselves against the French or the Spanish, and the French in
particular went to considerable trouble to secure his assistance. But he did
not have a monopoly of the good Italian troops or the effective Italian
captains in the first years of the sixteenth century. The second French
invasion of 1499, having absorbed Milan easily, led to a confrontation with
Spain in Naples. On both sides in this war Italian commanders played a
considerable role. In April 1503 at Cerignola the French and Spanish armies met
for the first time in a major battle. In the French army were considerable
numbers of Italian troops, but acting only in a supporting role to the French
cavalry and the Swiss. On the Spanish side Gonsalvo de Cordoba relied heavily
on Prospero and Fabrizio Colonna, who not only led his cavalry forces but also
designed the powerful field fortification which contributed greatly to the Spanish
victory. Cerignola was one of the most significant battles of the Italian Wars
in that it demonstrated in the most complete fashion the answer to the problem
of how to deal with the Swiss infantry square. Machiavelli was still obsessed
by this problem twenty years later when he wrote his Arte della Guerra, but
this was only an indication of the unreality of the theoretical framework
within which he was writing. The Swiss were never the masters of the
battlefields of the Italian Wars as they had been twenty years earlier; Spanish
strength linked to the tactical conceptions of the Italian condottieri saw to
that, and Cerignola was the turning point.
At Cerignola the Colonna brothers prepared a long ditch and
rampart in front of the Spanish position. Behind this were placed the infantry
made up of Landsknechte in the centre and large numbers of crossbowmen and
arquebusiers on the flanks. Further out on either flank were stationed bodies
of light cavalry, while the heavy cavalry was held in the rear in reserve under
Prospero Colonna. The French attacked this position without fully reconnoitring
it. First the heavy cavalry and then the Swiss were held up by the ditch and
caught in a murderous crossfire from the arquebusiers. Confusion quickly
spread, and, when the Spanish and Italian cavalry charged in on both flanks,
the Swiss square was already broken and defenceless. The combination of field
fortifications, hand firearms and light cavalry had proved the answer, and
Cordoba and the Colonna brothers in finding that answer were profiting from the
experiments of earlier condottiere warfare.
Cerignola was also the turning point in this war in Naples.
The French, demoralised, began to retreat and were badly defeated again at the
battle of the Garigliano later in the year. On this occasion Francesco Gonzaga
had command of the French army, and proved no match for the tactical skill of
Cordoba, the Colonna, and now also Bartolomeo d’Alviano, who proved himself a
master of light cavalry tactics.
Most of the Italians involved in this campaign were
Neapolitan and papal troops; the army of Venice was still waiting on the
sidelines, committed to a war with the Turks until 1503. Venice had supported
the French invasion in 1499 and still remained allied to France, although taking
no serious part in the wars, until in February 1508 her northern Alpine
frontiers were invaded by an imperial army anxious to participate in the spoils
of a division of Italy. The imperialists were weak and the invading army
contained no more than 5-6,000 Swiss and German infantry. It was completely
out-manoeuvred and utterly defeated by Bartolomeo d’Alviano near Pieve di
Cadore. This was a notable victory for an Italian army largely composed of
infantry and light cavalry, and it established d’Alviano alongside the Colonna
brothers and Gian Jacopo Trivulzio, who now commanded the French forces in
Milan, amongst the leading captains of the day.
But this humiliation of the Emperor and Venice’s refusal to
accept foreign control of Italy brought down on her in the last months of 1508
a combination of all the foreign powers together with the pope, Julius II, in
the League of Cambrai. The decision to partition Venice and her large mainland
empire was put into operation with less alacrity and determination than might
have been expected, so that in the spring of 1509 it was only the French army
attacking from the east which posed an immediate danger. This led to the second
and final confrontation between a completely Italian army and the invaders at
Agnadello.
The opposing armies at Agnadello were fairly evenly matched.
The Venetians, commanded by Pitigliano and d’Alviano, had 10,000 cavalry and
22,000 infantry in the field; the infantry consisted of 9,000 militia dressed
in their uniforms of red and white, and a core of Romagnol pike infantry
trained in the manner of the Swiss. The French began to cross the frontier line
of the Adda with almost 40,000 men including 15,000 heavy cavalry and 8,000
Swiss. The opportunity to attack the French while they were crossing the river
was lost, as Pitigliano, the supreme commander, preferred to dig himself in and
await the French assault in a powerful fortified camp. Pitigliano was an
experienced condottiere of the old school; he lacked the confidence and the
panache of d’Alviano, but there is no reason to suppose that, had he been
allowed to keep to his plan, he would not have made the French pay dearly for
an attack on his position. The French were certainly aware of this and
hesitated in their advance; d’Alviano was all for ignoring the French army and
making a swift counter-move against Milan itself. But this daring idea was
rejected and, on orders from Venice, Pitigliano began to move his army
cautiously forward, intending to occupy new fortified positions in a more commanding
position. The move from one fortified camp to another was the undoing of the
Venetians because it enabled the French to attack them in the open. In fact it
was the Venetian rearguard, commanded by d’Alviano himself, which took the
brunt of the French attack, and initially repelled it with heavy losses.
However, the Venetian army was too spread out to take advantage of this
situation, and the column next to d’Alviano’s, commanded by Antonio Pio da
Carpi, did not move to his assistance. Indeed, when it was itself attacked by
the ever-increasing concentration of French forces, the newly arrived militia
from Brescia which made up a large part of the column, broke and fled. This
left d’Alviano and his rear-guard completely isolated with Pitigliano still some
two kilometres away and reluctant to commit the remainder of the army to this
dangerous situation. D’Alviano was now in a hopeless position; he and his small
force of cavalry were surrounded and captured; his infantry fought on
desperately. Surrounded by overwhelming numbers of Swiss and Gascons, their
leaders soon all killed, they were eventually annihilated.
The defeat at Agnadello had some similarities to Fornovo. In
this case the Italian army was caught in a disadvantageous position, but again
it was the failure to coordinate properly a large army which materially
affected the result. Most of the troops actually involved gave a very good
account of themselves. The flight of the Brescia militia was decisive, but
other militia elements fought with outstanding heroism, and the condottiere
troops stood equally firm. D’Alviano did all that could be done by one man to
retrieve the situation; Pitigliano’s judgment and caution could certainly be
questioned, but his action had some justification, and the fact that half the
army was saved was to be an important factor in the subsequent campaign. The
heroic defence of Padua two months later was made possible because so much of
the army, and particularly the Romagnol infantry, had been preserved intact.
In the remaining battles of these wars, Italian troops and
Italian leaders were heavily involved, but never again as a complete army. At
Ravenna in 1512 the Ferrarese artillery of Alfonso d’Este played a major part
in the French victory, while a large contingent of papal infantry, led by
Ramazzotto da Forlì, fought gallantly on the Spanish side. The commander of the
Spanish light cavalry at this battle was the Marquis of Pescara, an
Aragonese-Neapolitan nobleman who was to become one of the most famous leaders
in the later campaigns.
At Marignano in 1515, when the French recovered Milan, it
was Trivulzio, who had been a decisive leader at Agnadello, who still led the
French army, and d’Alviano with the Venetian cavalry who delivered the coup de
grace to the Swiss. At Bicocca in 1522, the victorious Spanish army was
commanded by the Marquis of Pescara and Prospero Colonna, and owed their
victory to Colonna’s field fortifications and massive numbers of Spanish
arquebusiers. On the French side, between two enormous squares of Swiss in the
front line, were the mounted arquebusiers of yet another Italian leader,
Giovanni de’ Medici, the famous Giovanni delle Bande Nere. But by the time of
Pavia in 1525, the last of the major battles of these wars, the battle at which
French hopes of Italian conquest finally faded and at which the French king,
Francis I, was captured, the role of the Italians was somewhat reduced. There
were probably 3,000–4,000 Italian troops on each side, of whom the most notable
were the Black Bands of Giovanni de’ Medici, who were described as being
amongst the finest troops in the French army. But Giovanni himself was wounded
just before the battle and his companies, although they fought gallantly, were
overwhelmed and largely destroyed by German Landsknechte. With Francis I was
Teodoro Trivulzio, cousin of the more famous Gian Jacopo but a far less
experienced commander. On the imperialist side was still Pescara, and his
nephew Alfonso d’Avalos, Marquis del Vasto, with a few Neapolitan troops. But
it was many years since any of these men had fought for an Italian state, and
the links with the military scene of limited numbers and limited objectives
before 1494 were becoming more and more remote.
Italian soldiers and Italian traditions had contributed much
to military developments during these wars, but the only field in which they
still predominated was in that of military engineering and architecture. Most
of the fortifications built were the work of Italian architects. Francesco di
Giorgio Martini, who had designed fortresses and siege works for Federigo da
Montefeltro, was still active in Naples in the 1490’s. With him was Fra
Giocondo, the Veronese architect who later designed the Venetian fortifications
at Padua. The successor to Fra Giocondo in Venetian service was Sanmicheli, who
was trained in Rome in the tradition of Bramante and the Sangallos and whose
fortification work can still be seen all over the Veneto and the Venetian
overseas empire. In central Italy the fortresses built by the Sangallo family stretch
from Poggio Imperiale (1488) and the Fortezza del Basso (1534) in Tuscany to
Civita Castellana (1494) and Nettuno (1502) in the Papal States. Leonardo da
Vinci was inspector of fortresses for Cesare Borgia, and Michelangelo
strengthened the fortifications of Florence in 1529.
But the only Italian army which remained intact in 1530 with
traditions reaching back into the fifteenth century was that of Venice. Milan
and Naples were now Spanish. Florence, besieged in that year by an imperialist
army, had little or no army with which to defend itself. It relied on a hastily
formed militia and the mercenaries of Malatesta Baglioni, employed for the
occasion. The pope still had an army, but it was small, its components
fluctuated, its traditions were few; it had been able to do little to save Rome
from sack by the imperialists in 1527. While it would certainly be wrong to end
a history of Italian warfare in the Renaissance in 1494, it would be equally
wrong to try to continue it beyond 1530.
