The oft-quoted remark of Richard Fitz Neal in his preface to
the Dialogus de Scaccario about the supreme importance of money in war has been
shown by J. O. Prestwich to have been as much a commonplace in 1179 when he
wrote it as it seems today. ‘Money appears necessary not only in time of war
but also in peace’ Richard wrote, adding that ‘in war it is poured out in
fortifying castles, in soldiers’ wages, and in numerous other ways, depending
on the nature of the persons paid, for the preservation of the kingdom.’ This
was his way of explaining the central position of the Exchequer in the wars of
Henry II. It introduces us to a concept of paid military service which was
already clearly established in his day alongside more traditional concepts of
military obligation. However, this chapter is not just about paid military
service; the introduction of pay in various guises may have aroused the envy
and suspicions of the feudal class, and the wrath of the Church, but it was not
generally a matter of either surprise or despite by the eleventh century. Early
examples of pay took many forms: money fiefs, supplements to obligatory
service, subsistence allowances, rewards, and indeed pay to attract service,
pay to create profit. It is the concept of fighting for profit, together with
the gradual emergence of a concept of ‘foreignness’, which distinguish the true
mercenary, the subject of this chapter, from the ordinary paid soldier.
Hence the problem is not just one of assessing the growth of
the money economy, the accumulation of treasure, the raising of war taxes, the
development of scutage (a payment in lieu of personal service), and other forms
of commutation. Indeed as paid military service became a standard feature of
European warfare by the end of the thirteenth century, these factors have to be
taken for granted and form part of a quite different study. It is the
motivation of mercenaries, soldiers who fought for profit and not in the cause
of their native land or lord, and the circumstances and nature of their
employment that we have to try to identify.
Here it is not profitable to spend too much time on the
vexed question of the perception of who was a ‘foreigner’. The emergence of
independent and increasingly centrally administered states where distinctions
between local, ‘national’, ‘own’ troops, and ‘foreign’ troops became gradually
apparent has also to be accepted without too much attempt at further
definition. War itself was a primary factor in creating the distinctions and
encouraging the patriotism and xenophobia which led to a certain suspicion of
‘foreign’ troops. Even so, the distinction between foreign and native forces is
not always sharp: the occasional repressive actions of centralizing governments
were sometimes best supported and carried out by ‘foreign’ troops when their loyalty
was deemed more to be relied on than that of subjects.
Both supply of money and the changing needs of government
are demand factors; what we need to examine more carefully at the start of a
study of medieval mercenaries are rather supply factors. What did mercenaries
have to offer? The answer in this period was not just general military
expertise and experience, but increasingly specialist skills, particularly of
infantry. It was the growing sophistication of warfare which created the
mercenary, together with a series of local environmental factors which made
certain specific areas good recruiting grounds for soldiers. Underemployment,
whether in a pastoral economy or in a rapidly expanding city, has to be a part
of the equation.
But at the heart of the equation is the problem of loyalty.
Mercenaries, in the middle ages as now, stand accused of fragile loyalty,
loyalty dependent entirely on regular and often extravagant pay, and a concern
for personal survival. But the middle ages saw a very clear distinction between
the loyalty of the errant adventurer or the free company, and the loyalty of
the household knight or the long-serving bodyguard. The real categorization of
mercenaries is one of length of service; long service established personal
bonds just as strong as those between vassal and lord; it created commitments
as binding as those of emerging patriotism and nationality, once again blurring
any tidy distinction between native and foreigner.
The central theme of this chapter is that, while mercenary
service, in terms of service for pay, became increasingly accepted and
organized from at least the middle of the eleventh century, there was a real
change in the perception of the issue from the later thirteenth century. This
had little to do with economic growth, much more to do with changes in the
nature of society, of government, and of warfare. The thirteenth century was a
period in which the universality of the Church, of crusading, of the early
universities, of the widespread use of Latin, was giving way to the creation of
more local identities and loyalties, to concern with frontiers and problems of
long-term defence, to vernaculars and lay culture. The monopoly of military
skills held in the central middle ages by select bodies of aristocratic cavalry
was being challenged by the emergence of mass infantry, often with new
specialist skills, and of concepts of more general military obligation. The
thirteenth century is the period in which the mercenary became distinguished by
his foreignness and his expertise; and it is on this period and that which
followed it that I shall concentrate most attention, avoiding, however, the
exaggerations of the hallowed generalization of the ‘age of the mercenary’!
While it is probably true that elements of hired military
service survived throughout the early middle ages, the main characteristics of
the barbarian tribes which came to dominate Western Europe with the decline of
the Roman Empire were the bonds of personal obligation and dependence within
societies organized for war. As conditions eventually became more settled in
the eleventh century, we hear increasingly of forms of selective service, of
commutation of obligations, and of the maintenance of fighting men by
collective contributions. This was particularly true in Anglo-Saxon England.
However the Norman enterprises of the mid-eleventh century were something of a
turning point. William the Conqueror, in order to assemble a force sufficient
for his purposes in the invasion of England relied heavily on volunteers from
Brittany, Flanders, Champagne, and even Italy, and the military strength which
he maintained in being during the early years of the Conquest was also
significantly dependent on paid volunteers. There was indeed eventually a
settlement of William’s knights on the land and the re-creation of a system of
military obligation, but it was never adequate for defence of the realm from
significant threat and particularly not for the defence of Normandy. The
Anglo-Norman kings came to rely on a permanent military household made up
partly of royal vassals in constant attendance and partly of volunteers, often
landless younger sons of feudatories, who were maintained by the King and
generously rewarded after any military action. Significant numbers of these
household knights came from outside the bounds of the Anglo-Norman state. It
was the household, the familia regis that provided the core and the leadership
of the armies of William I and William II, the latter in particular being
described as ‘militum mercator et solidator’ (a great buyer and purveyor of
soldiers). A particular moment which is often cited by the main authorities on
this particular period of military activity was the treaty of 1101 by which
Count Robert of Flanders undertook to provide Henry I with 1,000 Flemish
knights for service in England and Normandy. These knights were to be
incorporated temporarily into the royal household and maintained by Henry at
his own expense; this was already an indication of the potential size of the
household in arms. Count Robert was to receive a fee of £500 for providing
these troops which places him in the role of a very early military contractor.
There is a good deal less evidence of such use of volunteers
and paid troops by the early Capetian kings whose sphere of influence and
military potential were a good deal less than those of the Normans. However in
the Holy Roman Empire the same pressures to supplement the limited obligation
for military service were being felt by the Emperors, particularly in campaigns
in Italy. With the twelfth century came the Crusades, offering an outlet to
military adventurism and at the same time prompting a greater concern amongst
Western European monarchs to husband and nourish their military households. It
was Henry I of England’s military household which in 1124 at Bourgthéroulde
defeated a Norman baronial rebellion, an event which provides us with a classic
contemporary distinction, in the words of the chronicler Orderic Vitalis,
between the hireling knights of the King fighting for their reputation and
their wages, and the Norman nobility fighting for their honour.
At Bourgthéroulde, despite Orderic’s attempt to portray the
royal troops as ‘peasants and common soldiers’, the battle was clearly still
one between mounted knights. But the hiring of infantry became an increasingly
common feature of twelfth-century military practice. Louis VII, as he began to
gather together the threads of central authority in France hired crossbowmen,
and the civil wars of Stephen’s reign in England were filled with the
activities of both cavalry and infantry mercenaries.
By the mid-twelfth century the sustained use of royal
household troops, particularly in the exercise of government central power in
both France and the Anglo-Norman empire, the proliferation of castles and of
siege warfare, and the growth of urban populations, all pointed towards a
growing role for infantry in the warfare of the day. It was the use of infantry
that could expand the size of armies beyond the narrow limits of the feudal class;
it was infantry that could storm cities and bring sieges to an abrupt end. It
was also small companies of infantry that provided the long-serving paid
garrisons of castles. A clear role for the mercenary was beginning to define
itself.
It is not clear whether the companies of infantry
mercenaries which became a feature of the warfare of the second half of the
twelfth century emerged as a result of expanding population and underemployment
or whether royal initiative and deliberate recruitment was the key factor.
Certainly they were seen by contemporaries in two quite different ways: on the
one hand, they were denounced as brigands and outlaws, roving in
ill-disciplined bands to despoil the countryside and brutalize the population;
on the other, they appear as effective and coherent military units, led by
increasingly prestigious captains and often provided with uniform equipment and
arms by royal officials. The phenomenon was clearly a mixed one, and the same
company, led by a Mercadier or a Cadoc, could give useful, indeed invaluable,
service if properly paid and directed, and yet become a disorderly and
dangerous rabble when out of employment and beyond the reach of royal justice.
The names given to these companies—Brabançons, Aragonais, Navarrais, and ‘Cotteraux’—reveal
their tendency to originate in the poorer rural areas and on the fringes of the
Flemish cities. The last name is thought to originate either from their lowly
status (cotters) or from their use of the dagger (couteau) rather than the sword.
Certainly the non-feudal nature of their employment and status is clear, and
the increasing use by the companies of the bow and the crossbow added to the
fear and despite which they aroused.
Henry II used these troops extensively in his French lands,
both to suppress baronial revolt and to ward off the growing pressures from the
Capetian kings. It was quickly clear that he could not expect effective service
from his English knights across the Channel, except on a voluntary basis, and
so the levying of scutage became a standard feature of his financial
administration and the means by which the mercenaries were paid. However Louis
VII and, particularly, Philippe Augustus also quickly learnt the value of the
companies, and the Emperors too began to employ Brabançons in their campaigns
in Italy and eastern France. The problem was that even the Anglo-Norman state
did not have the resources to maintain the companies in times of peace and
truce, and so there was an endless process of short-term employment and often
longer term dismissal with all the implications of this for the security of the
countryside. The outcry of the Church and the ban on the employment of
mercenary companies at the 3rd Lateran Council in 1179 had little practical
effect as long as the service they gave was useful. But monarchs did learn that
such service was most effectively directed outside their frontiers, so as to
avoid both the worst impact of demobilization and the growing dislike of their
subjects for such troops. Henry II is thought to have used the Continental
companies only once in England on a significant scale, in 1174; John, on the
other hand, aroused bitter criticism for his lack of restraint in this respect.
The role of townsmen as infantry in this period was
particularly apparent in Italy but initially in the form of urban militias
rather than mercenary companies. The army of the Lombard League which defeated
Barbarossa at Legnano in 1176 was in part made up of the militias of the cities
of the League, moderately well-trained, undoubtably paid at least living
expenses while on campaign, and on this occasion supported by cavalry. The
specialist skills which converted elements of these militias into true
mercenaries were however already emerging. The use of the crossbow as the main
weapon for the defence of galleys led to large numbers of Genoese, Pisans, and
Venetians acquiring this skill and, in the case particularly of the Genoese,
selling their services abroad. Italy also provides the example of another
professional mercenary group in this period, the Saracen archers of Frederick
II. The colony of 35,000–40,000 Saracens settled round Lucera by the Emperor
provided him and his successors with a skilled force of 5,000–6,000 archers,
mostly on foot but some mounted, until 1266, when it was annihilated by the
Angevin cavalry at Benevento.
The destruction of the Saracens coincided with a sharp
decline in the role elsewhere of the Brabançons and other mercenary companies
of the period. These relatively small infantry companies, rarely more than
1,000 in size, had proved vulnerable to concerted mass attack, and the tendency
in Western Europe, by the second half of the thirteenth century, was towards
the employment of larger numbers of increasingly professional cavalry and the
development of general obligations for military service amongst the populations
at large to provide infantry. Detailed studies of Edward I’s English armies
have been very influential in defining the move towards contractual employment
of cavalry companies made up of enfeoffed knights banneret alongside increasing
numbers of paid knights bachelor and professional men at arms. Improvements
over the next century in armour and weapons, and an emphasis on collective
training, ensured that the cavalry remained at the forefront of European
armies. On the other hand, the tendency of the late thirteenth century was also
towards the use of mass infantry. This was not necessarily at the expense of
skills as was illustrated by the effectiveness of the English archers and the
Swiss pikemen; but in both these cases a part of their success lay in their use
in large, disciplined numbers. Soldiering was becoming a way of life for many
foot soldiers as it had long been for the knights. By the fourteenth century,
pay was an essential component of this life and also by that time the term
‘mercenary’ was being reserved for the adventurer and the companies of
‘foreign’ specialist troops who continued to be sought after. The Hundred Years
War between the English and French monarchies was to confirm these trends.
The long series of wars which started in 1337 involved an
English crown which still controlled Gascony, and (under Henry V) regained for
a time Normandy, and a French crown the authority of which was only grudgingly
recognized in many outlying parts of France. Gascons, as subjects of the English
crown, appeared in large numbers in English armies throughout the wars, as did
Bretons and Flemish who saw themselves as natural allies of England against the
pretensions of the French crown. In French armies Normans, Burgundians,
Poitevins, and others fought somewhat uneasily side by side, but long
experience of such comradeship undoubtedly played a major part in creating a
sort of national feeling. The terms ‘English’ and ‘French’ became more
meaningful as the wars went on. But there was always a role for adventurers,
allied auxiliaries, and true mercenaries in the armies. Blind King John of
Bohemia and his knights fought at Crécy in the French army as did large
companies of Genoese crossbowmen; half of John of Gaunt’s captains on his
expedition to France in 1373 were ‘foreigners’, particularly Gascons and
Flemings but including three Castillians; Piedmontese knights and Scottish
archers fought for Charles VII in the 1420s. However the moments at which
mercenaries became particularly apparent were the moments of truce and peace
when large parts of the armies were disbanded and the phenomenon of the free
company re-emerged. The 1360s, following the peace of Brétigny, was such a
moment; mixed companies of English, reluctant to return home, and of French temporarily
deprived of royal pay, became adventurers seeking booty and employment. These
were essentially footloose companies of professionals led by their natural
leaders; more than a hundred such companies have been identified and they
gravitated first towards Southern France where political authority was weakly
established, and then on towards opportunities and possible employment in Italy
and Spain. Charles V of France learnt many lessons about the dangers of sudden
demobilization and the need to create greater permanence amongst his troops as
he struggled to track down and destroy the companies which were ravaging his
kingdom. They were lessons which were not easily absorbed and the same problem
arose after the peace of Arras in 1435 when the ‘Écorcheurs’, mostly French by
this time, became a threat and prompted Charles VII’s better-known ordonnances
for the organization of a standing army.
The arrival of the foreign companies in Italy and the
development of mercenary activity in that area is a very familiar story. It is
a story which goes back much further than the fourteenth century and the truces
of the Hundred Years War. Early urbanization, the accumulation of wealth in the
towns of north and central Italy, and the relative weakness of feudal institutions,
all pointed the way towards paid military service at an early stage. As already
discussed the towns provided abundant infantry manpower, and the growing
rivalries amongst them led to frequent confrontations, skirmishes, and sieges.
The urban militias which conducted these campaigns were provided with
subsistence, but it was not long before the escalating local warfare began to
create opportunities for more permanent and lucrative employment for hired
troops. Rural nobility with their followers, exiles, dispossessed and
underemployed peasants, all contributed to a pool of manpower which the urban
authorities could call on. The more successful a city was in expanding against
and taking over its neighbours, the more it required a system of permanent
defence beyond its walls with castles and professional garrisons. The gradual
decline of communal republicanism and its replacement by a series of urban
lordships or Signorie in the later thirteenth century encouraged this process
as did the relative weakness by this time of the central authorities of pope
and emperor.
A large number of potential employers, abundant wealth both
to be earned and looted, pleasant campaigning conditions, these were the
attractions of the Italian military scene which began to draw in fighters from
other parts of Europe. Italy was also a forming-up point for crusading armies
and an objective for Norman, Imperial, and Angevin expeditions many of which
left a residue of ultramontane troops ready to exploit the opportunities
available. By the end of the thirteenth century the organized mercenary
company, operating either as a collective or under the command of a chosen
leader, was a common feature.
One of the largest and best-known of these companies, the
existence of which spanned the turn of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,
was the Catalan Company. This formed itself during the wars in Sicily between
Aragonese and Angevins, but was partly made up of Almogavars, Aragonese rural
troops who had for years earned their living in the border warfare of the
Reconquista. After the peace of Caltabellota in 1302 which settled the fate of
Sicily, the Company, some 6,000 strong, took service with the Byzantine emperor
against the advancing Turks, and in 1311, still in Byzantine service, it overthrew
Walter of Brienne, the Duke of Athens, and seized his principality. From this
base the Catalans were able to conduct a profitable military activity until
1388.
The story of the Catalan Company was an exceptional, and
only initially an Italian, one. However, the fourteenth century did see
companies of similar size appearing in the peninsular and often extending their
activities over several years. While initially such enterprises often operated
on a sort of collective basis, electing their leaders, and deciding on and
negotiating contracts with employers through chosen representatives, it was
inevitable that successful leaders should emerge to take control and give
continuity. The contracts for military service were known as condotte, the
contractors whose names began to appear on them were the condottieri. The
service which was contracted for was initially of a very short-term nature.
Italian city-states were seeking additional protection or an increment to their
strike power for a summer season at the most and often just a matter of weeks.
The presence of the companies beyond the moment of immediate need was certainly
not encouraged but it was not simple to get them to withdraw, and the
inevitable gaps between contracts and the long winter months created the
conditions of uncontrolled marauding so often associated with this phase of
Italian warfare.
Much of the manpower and the leadership of these companies
during the first half of the fourteenth century was non-Italian. Germans were
particularly prominent at this stage with the Great Company of Werner von
Urslingen appearing in 1342. During the period between 1320 and 1360 over 700
German cavalry leaders have been identified as being active in Italy, and as
many as 10,000 men-at-arms. Werner von Urslingen remained the most prominent
figure throughout the 1340s when he organized successive companies to
manipulate and terrorize the Italian cities. The only solution to this problem
of very large companies of well-armed men spending much of their time devastating
the countryside was for leagues of cities to pool their resources to resist
them. But the political instability of the period made this a rare possibility.
By 1347 Werner von Urslingen had new allies in the form of Hungarian troops
coming to support the Angevin Queen of Naples, Joanna I, who had married the
younger brother of King Louis of Hungary. By the late 1340s other leaders had
also emerged; Conrad von Landau, a long-term associate of Werner, now came to
the fore, as did the Provençal ex-hospitaller Montreal d’Albarno, known in
Italy as Fra Moriale. The union of these three leaders produced the largest
company yet seen in Italy which, on behalf of Joanna I, defeated the Neapolitan
baronage at Meleto in 1349 and took over half a million florins’ worth of
booty. This was the beginning of a decade which was dominated by the Great
Company of Fra Moriale and Conard von Landau. This company, over 10,000 strong,
established a remarkable continuity in these years, holding cities to ransom
and creating extraordinary wealth. The execution of Fra Moriale in Rome in 1354
did not disturb this continuity which went on until Conrad’s death in 1363.
While ultramontane troops, particularly Germans and Hungarians, but
increasingly also southern French, continued to dominate in these companies up
to the 1360s, it is important also to see strong Italian elements. Members of
the Visconti and Ordelaffi families were prominent amongst the leaders of the
companies, usually with very specific political agendas to regain control in
their native cities. Undoubtedly substantial numbers of Italians fought in the
great companies, and some of the smaller companies were predominantly Italian.
But, of course, at this time a Sienese, or a Pisan, or a Bolognese was as much
of an enemy to a Florentine as a German was, and possibly more distrusted and
feared because of long-standing local rivalries. The depredations of a German
company were a temporary phenomenon which could be bought off; those of a rival
city-state were aimed either at takeover or at least at economic strangulation.
After 1360 the scene changed as the free companies from the
wars in France began to reach Italy. The most prominent of these was the White
Company, eventually led by the English knight, John Hawkwood, but initially
made up of mixed elements and leaders from the Anglo-French wars. However the
White Company was always associated with the English methods of warfare, the
use of archers and dismounted men-at-arms giving each other mutual support, and
under Hawkwood’s leadership it became a highly disciplined and effective force
which Italian states became increasingly anxious to employ on a long-term
basis.
The last three decades of the fourteenth century were a
formative period in the history of mercenary warfare in Italy. The main Italian
states were beginning to emerge from the maelstrom of political life in the
communal period. As the Visconti gradually established their authority in Milan
and western Lombardy, the Florentines extended the control of their city over
large parts of central Tuscany. At the same time the Avignon popes were
devoting huge resources to restoring order within the Papal States, and Venice
was beginning to exert greater influence on the political situation in eastern
Lombardy, prior to its decisive moves to establishing formal authority after
1404. The governments of these states were becoming stronger, more organized,
better financed; they began to think more seriously about the permanent defence
of their larger states. But, given the availability of large professional
mercenary companies, of experienced leaders like Hawkwood, and a generation of
Italian captains who were emerging in the 1370s, and given also the inevitable
reluctance of the governments of the larger states to entrust defence to the
untested loyalty of their new subjects, a military system based on extended and
better managed contracts to experienced mercenaries became an obvious
development. The process was a gradual one; foreign companies began to meet
sterner resistance, the wars in France resumed and created counter attractions
and obligations, assured pay began to look more attractive than casual booty.
At the same time Italian leaders began to emerge strongly; men like Alberigo da
Barbiano, Jacopo dal Verme, and Facino Cane saw the advantage of creating
semi-permanent links with Giangaleazzo Visconti, just as Hawkwood began to
associate himself more and more with Florence.
There was indeed a rapid decline of the foreign companies in
the last decades of the fourteenth century. Alberigo da Barbiano’s famous
victory over the Breton companies at Marino in 1379 became a sort of symbol of
the recovery of Italian military prowess and of the end of a humiliating and
damaging period of dominance by foreign mercenaries. However Alberigo’s Company
of St George was little different in function or intention from those which
preceded it or which it defeated; Italians had played a considerable part in
the warfare of the previous decades, and Hawkwood remained for a further
fifteen years as the most feared and respected soldier in Italy. His later
years were spent largely in the service of Florence with lands, a castle, and a
large salary for life provided to encourage his fidelity as captain-general.
But he died in 1394 whilst preparing to return to England, leaving behind him a
military scene which was in an advanced stage of transition.
The most powerful state in Italy at the turn of the century
was undoubtedly the duchy of Milan where Giangaleazzo Visconti had attracted to
his service a bevy of leading captains, including Jacopo dal Verme, a Veronese
noble who was his captain-general for thirty years. Milanese expansionism
inevitably provoked its main neighbours, Florence and Venice, into taking
similar steps to protect themselves, and although the death of Giangaleazzo in
1402 led to a temporary break-up of the Milanese state, the threat of Milanese
expansion had returned by the 1420s. The competition between the three states
then continued until the peace of Lodi in 1454 and was the context for a
stabilization of the mercenary tradition in northern and central Italy. The
role of Venice in this was particularly important. Venice, long accustomed to
maintaining a permanent military stance in its empire in the eastern
Mediterranean with garrisons and galley squadrons, became involved in a quite
dramatic way in the occupation and defence of a terraferma empire in the period
between 1404 and 1427. The speed with which Vicenza, Verona, and Padua were
absorbed, followed quickly by Friuli, and then Brescia and Bergamo, led to a
perception of the problem of how to maintain effective military strength which
was more coherent than that of its neighbours. A determined search for good
captains, a gradual extension of the length of the condotte to allow first for
year-round service and then for service for two or three years, the allocation
of permanent billets and enfeoffed lands to the captains who accepted these
contracts, the erection of a system of military administration which watched
over and served the companies, and the realization that regular pay was the key
to faithful mercenary service, these were the mechanisms which Venice in this
period succeeded in implementing rather more effectively than any of the other
Italian states. They were the essential mechanisms of standing armies, applied
to an Italian situation in which the majority of the troops were still
mercenaries in the ordinary sense of the word. Venice’s leading captains in the
early years of the century all came from outside the new expanded state, and
the companies which they brought with them contained few Venetian subjects in
this period. The same remained true of Milan and Florence, although the
Visconti were more inclined to use local nobility as lesser captains. The major
captains in the first half of the fifteenth century, Jacopo dal Verme,
Francesco Carmagnola, Musio and Francesco Sforza, Braccio da Montone, Niccolò
Piccinino, Gattamelata, rarely served under a flag that could be described as
their own. But their service was often sustained, their companies were
surprisingly permanent and well organized, their moves were watched with
admiration and satisfaction as much as suspicion. Only one of them, Francesco
Sforza, established himself as a ruler; only one, Carmagnola, was executed for
suspected infidelity.
This relative maturity of mercenary institutions was a good
deal less apparent in the south of Italy where the political instability
created by the Angevin—Aragonese rivalry for control of Naples, and the
prolonged crisis of the Schism discouraged such developments. Many of the
captains mentioned above came originally from the Papal States and had learnt
their soldiering in the endemic local warfare of the area and the spasmodic
papal attempts to control this. Many also saw service on one side or other of
the warring factions in Naples. In these circumstances the condottieri behaved
inevitably in a more volatile, self-interested fashion; desertions and
treachery were rife, and booty continued to be more common than pay. It is interesting
that despite the continuation of these unsettled conditions through the 1430s
and into the 1440s, many of the leading captains had by then abandoned the
uncertain prospects of the south to seek their fortunes in the more controlled
and disciplined world of north and central Italy.
The establishment of Alfonso V of Aragon on the throne of
Naples in 1442 and the growing recognition accorded to Eugenius IV as Pope as
the influence of the Council of Basle declined led to a gradual lessening of
this difference between north and south in Italy. In fact both the Papal State
and the kingdom of Naples had greater possibilities of raising military
manpower within their own frontiers that did the northern states. Nevertheless
the tensions that existed between the two states led to kings of Naples seeking
to attract condottieri from the Roman baronial families into their service in
order to weaken the Pope and create disruption in Rome. At the same time the
Popes of the second half of the century did their best to prevent the warlike
signorial families of Umbria and the Romagna from taking service in the north.
The wars in Lombardy in the 1430s and 1440s were in many
ways a high point of conflict in later medieval Italy. Armies of over 20,000
men on either side confronted each other in the Lombard plain; armies which had
become reasonably stable in terms of their composition and organization, and in
which one senior captain changing sides could significantly affect the balance
of power. Francesco Sforza used his substantial company in this way as he
worked towards political control in Milan in the vacuum created by the death of
Filippo Maria Visconti (1447) without male heir. His cousin Michele Attendolo
Sforza, on the other hand, lacking perhaps the same political ambition and
military prowess, but nevertheless controlling as large a company (details of
the organization of which have survived to us) timed his moves less well.
During a career as a major condottiere spanning nearly twenty-five years,
Michele (or Micheletto as he was usually known) moved at long intervals from
papal service to that of Florence and back again, and eventually served Venice
as captain-general for seven years in the 1440s. He came from the Romagna, as
did his better known cousin, and a significant proportion of his troops were
Romagnol recruited by his local agents and dispatched to wherever the company
was based. That company, normally consisting of about 600 lances and 400
infantry, also contained soldiers from all over Italy and at least 20
capisquadra many of whom came from aristocratic families and were on their way
to themselves building a career as condottieri. As a reward for his services to
Venice, Micheletto was given the important garrison town of Castelfranco, in
the Trevigiano, as a fief and base. However his career fell apart when he was
dismissed and his company disbanded after he lost the battle of Caravaggio to
his cousin Francesco in 1448.
After his dismissal many of Micheletto’s lances were taken
into the direct service of Venice as lanze spezzate (individual detachments,
which could be combined together to form a company). In doing this Venice was
following a clear trend by the middle of the fifteenth century of the better
organized Italian states taking the opportunity, on the death or retirement of
a condottiere, of retaining their troops in composite companies commanded by
captains chosen by the government. To see this as a deliberate attempt to
reduce the mercenary element in Italian armies is probably misleading; the prime
consideration was the retention of good troops who had probably spent some time
under their former leader in the service of the particular state. It was common
Venetian practice to give command of a company of lanze spezzate to a minor
condottiere who already had his own company but who had given faithful and
effective service.
The Battle of San Romano (1432) was a much vaunted minor victory of the Florentines over the Sienese. Paolo Uccello painted three scenes from the battle for the Medici palace in the 1450s, and here illustrates the final phase when Michele Attendolo led his contingent of the Florentine army into an attack on the Sienese rearguard.
After the succession of Francesco Sforza as the new Duke of
Milan in 1450, the Milanese army began to emerge as the prototype of the later
fifteenth-century Italian army in which certain mercenary institutions survived
but the overall impression was one of a large standing army which could be
expanded rapidly when needed. Army lists of the 1470s reveal an organization
which paid about 20,000 troops in peacetime and anticipated a doubling of the
number if needed in war. At the heart of the permanent force were companies of
lanze spezzate commanded by four chosen captains who formed part of the ducal
entourage, and an equivalent force known as the famiglia ducale which served as
the Duke’s bodyguard. There were then the senior condottieri on long-term
contracts which bound them to maintain their companies at half strength in
peacetime, and the main feudatories, including the sons and brothers of the
Duke, who were condottieri ‘ad discretionem’ with no specific obligations or
pay in peacetime but clear expectations for service in time of war. Finally
over 18,000 infantry, many of whom were in permanent service as garrison troops
etc. were included in the mobilization plans. The bulk of this force,
therefore, was based firmly within the frontiers of the state, although some of
the senior condottieri, such as the Marquis of Mantua, had their own
independent bases where they maintained their companies. Mobilization did not
mean a hurried search for new companies to hire but a more or less measured
increase in the size of the existing companies, supervised by government
officials.
Inevitably, after the peace of Lodi and the ending of a
period of almost continuous warfare in Lombardy in which Neapolitan and papal
armies had become involved by the early 1450s, the second half of the century
with only spasmodic outbreaks of fighting has been seen in military terms as an
anticlimax. However, more recent historical perceptions of the Italian scene in
the second half of the fifteen century have emphasized the considerable
political and diplomatic tensions which existed between the states, the need
for a constant state of military preparedness, and the effectiveness of the
armies which were brought into action on frequent occasions during the period.
It has to be remembered that some of the most distinguished names in the annals
of the condottieri belong to the post-Lodi period: Bartolomeo Colleoni,
Venetian captain-general for twenty years, garrisoning the western frontiers of
the Venetian state from his base at Malpaga; Federigo da Montefeltro, the most
famed and trusted soldier of his day, Duke of Urbino, commander of the papal
army, sought after in every emergency; Roberto da Sanseverino, linked to the
Sforza but a brooding spirit with a progeny of ambitious soldier sons whose
restlessness added to the tensions of the period; the rising generation of
leaders who were to play a prominent part in the Italian Wars after 1494, Gian
Giacomo Trivulzio, Niccolò Orsini Count of Pitigliano, Francesco Gonzaga. These
were all condottieri; they continued to receive contracts of employment from
states within which they had not been born, but nevertheless it is increasingly
difficult to describe their role as that of mercenaries.
