Warfare in Renaissance Italy
At the conclusion of the fifteenth century, Italy remained
divided. There were four kingdoms: Sardinia, Sicily, Corsica, and Naples; many
republics such as Venice, Genoa, Florence, Lucca, Siena, San Marino, Ragusa (in
Dalmatia); small principalities, Piombino, Monaco; and the duchies of Savoy,
Modena, Mantua, Milan, Ferrara, Massa, Carrara, and Urbino. Parts of Italy were
under foreign rule. The Habsburgs controlled the Trentino, Upper Adige,
Gorizia, and Trieste. Sardinia belonged to the kingdom of Aragon. Many Italian
states, however, held territories outside of the peninsula. The duke of Savoy
possessed the Italian region of Piedmont and the French-speaking Duchy of Savoy
along with the counties of Geneva and Nice. Venice owned Crete, Cyprus,
Dalmatia, and many Greek islands. The Banco di San Giorgio, the privately owned
bank of the republic of Genoa, possessed the kingdom of Corsica. Italian princes
also held titles and fiefdoms in neighboring states. Indeed, the duke of Savoy
could also claim that he was heir and a descendant of the crusader kings of
Cyprus and Jerusalem. All of this confusion often remained a source of
contention in Italian politics.
The Muslims became the greatest threat to security when the
Arabs occupied Sicily in the ninth century. Later Muslim attempts to conquer
central Italy failed as a result of papal resistance. Although the Norman
conquest of southern Italy and Sicily removed the immediate threat. Muslim
ships raided the Italian coast until the 1820s.
This conflict with Islam resulted in substantial Italian
participation in the Cru- sades. The Crusader military orders such as the
Templars and the Order of Saint John were populated by a great number of
Italian knights. Italian merchants, too, established their own warehouses and
agencies in the eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea. Thanks to the Crusades,
Venice and Genoa increased their influence as well. They expanded their
colonies, their revenues, and their importance to the Crusader kingdoms. Their
wealth exceeded that of many European kingdoms.
The fall of the Crusader kingdoms, the Turkish conquests,
and the fall of Constantinople by 1453 led to two significant consequences: the
increasing influence of Byzantine and Greek culture in Italian society, and the
growing Turkish threat to Italian territorial possessions in the Mediterranean.
The conflict between Italians and Muslims was complex. For centuries Italians and
Muslims were trading partners. So the wars between the Turks and Venetians
therefore consisted of a combination of bloody campaigns, privateering,
commerce, and maritime war lasting more than 350 years.
Despite a common enemy, common commercial and financial
interests, a common language, and a common culture, Italian politics remained
disparate and divisive. For much of the fifteenth century the states spent
their time fighting each other over disputed territorial rights. Although they
referred to themselves as Florentines, Lombards, Venetians, Genoese, or
Neapolitans, when relating themselves to outsiders, such as Muslims, French,
Germans, and other Europeans, they self- identified as “Italians.”
The Organization of Renaissance Armies
The lack of significant external threats led to the
reduction in size of Italian armies. The cost of maintaining standing armies or
employing their citizenry in permanent militias was too expensive and reduced
the productivity of the population. Italian city-states, duchies, and
principalities preferred to employ professional armies when needed, as they
were extremely costly to hire. Larger states, such as the Republic of Venice,
the Kingdom of Naples and the Papal States possessed a limited permanent force,
but the remainder of the Italian states had little more than city guards, or
small garrisons. Nevertheless, Italian Renaissance armies, when organized, were
divided into infantry and cavalry. Artillery was in its infancy and remained a
severely limited in application. Cavalry was composed of heavy or armored
cavalry, genti d’arme (men at arms), and light cavalry. Since the Middle Ages,
genti d’arme were divided into “lances” composed of a “lance chief”—or
corporal—a rider, and a boy. They were mounted on a warhorse, a charger, and a
jade respectively. The single knight with his squire was known as lancia
spezzata— literally “brokenspear,” or anspessade.
Infantry was divided into banners. Every banner was composed
of a captain, two corporals, two boys, ten crossbowmen, nine palvesai, soldiers
carrying the great medieval Italian shields called palvesi, and a servant for
the captain. Generally the ratio of cavalry to infantry was one to ten. There
was no organized artillery by the end of the fifteenth century, as it was relatively
new to European armies.
An Evolution in Military Affairs, or the So-Called
“Military Revolution”
Artillery was in its infancy during the fifteenth century,
but in the early days of the sixteenth century, a quick and impressive
development began. The Battle of Ravenna in 1512 marked the first decisive
employment of cannons as field artillery. Soon infantry and cavalry realized
the power of artillery and proceeded to alter their tactics to avoid or at
least to reduce the damage. Moreover, the increasing power of artillery
demonstrated the weakness of medieval castles and led to a trans- formation of
military architecture. The traditional castle wall was vertical and tall and
could be smashed by cannon-fired balls. In response, the new Italian-styled fortress
appeared. Its walls were lower and oblique instead of perpendicular to the
ground. The walls resisted cannonballs better, as their energy could also be
diverted by the obliquity of the wall itself. Then, the pentagonal design was
determined as best for a fortress, and each angle of the pentagon was
reinforced by another smaller pentagon, called a bastion. It appeared as the
main defensive work and was protected by many external defensive works,
intended to break and scatter the enemy’s attack. The fifteenth-century
Florentine walls in Volterra have many bastion elements, but the first
Italian-styled fortress was at Civitavecchia, the harbor for the papal fleet,
forty miles north of Rome. It was erected by Giuliano da Sangallo in 1519, but
recent studies suggest that Sangallo exploited an older draft by Michelangelo.
The classical scheme of the Italian-styled fortress often
referred to as the trace italienne was established in the second half of the
sixteenth century. Its elegant efficiency was recognized by all powers.
European sovereigns called upon Italian military architects to build these new
fortresses in their countries. Antwerp, Parma, Vienna, Györ, Karlovac,
Ersekujvar, Breda, Ostend, S’Hertogenbosch, Lyon, Char- leville, La Valletta,
and Amiens all exhibited the style and ability of Giuliano da Sangallo,
Francesco Paciotti, Pompeo Targone, Gerolamo Martini, and many other military
architects, who disseminated a style and a culture to the entire Continent. The
pentagonal style was further developed by Vauban and soon reached America, too,
where many fortresses and military buildings were built on a pentagonal scheme.
This evolution in military architecture—generally known as
“the Military Revolution”—meant order and uniformity. A revolution also
occurred in uniforms and weapons. Venetian infantrymen shipping on galleys for
the 1571 naval campaign were all dressed in the same way; and papal troops
shown in two 1583 frescoes are dressed in yellow and red, or in white and red,
depending on the company to which they belonged. Likewise, papal admiral
Marcantonio Colonna, in 1571, ordered his captains to provide all their
soldiers with “merion in the modern style, great velveted flasks for the
powder, as fine as possible, and all with well ammunitioned match arquebuses .
. . ” Of course, uniformity remained a dream, especially when compared with
eighteenth- or nineteenth-century styles, but it was a first step.
Although a revolution in artillery and fortifications
remained a significant aspect of the military revolution, captains faced the
problem of increasing firepower. The Swiss went to battle in squared
formations, but it proved to be unsatisfactory against artillery. Similarly,
portable weapons could not fire and be reloaded fast enough, and it soon became
apparent that armies needed a mixture of pike and firearms. The increasing
range and effectiveness of firearms made speed on the field more important. It
was clear that the more a captain could have a fast fire–armed maneuvering
mass, the better the result in battle. Machiavelli examined this issue; he was
as bad a military theorist as he was a formidable political theorist. He
suggested the use of two men on horseback: a rider and a scoppiettiere—a “hand-
gunner”—on the same horse. It was the first kind of mounted infantry in the
modern era. Giovanni de’Medici, the brave Florentine captain known as Giovanni
of the Black Band, adopted this system. Another contemporary Florentine
captain, Pietro Strozzi, who reduced the men on horseback to only one, developed
the same system. He fought against Florence and Spain, then he passed to the
French flag at the end of the Italian Wars. When in France, he organized a unit
based upon his previous experience. It was composed of firearmed riders,
considered mounted infantrymen, referred to as dragoons.
The Swiss
The Swiss (on the left) assault the Landsknecht
mercenaries in the French lines at the Battle of Marignano.
“As for trying to intimidate the enemy, blocks of
thousands of oncoming merciless Swiss, advancing swiftly accompanied by what a
contemporary called “the deep wails and moans of the Uri Bull and Unterwalden
Cow*” or landsknechts chanting “look out, here I come” in time with their drums
were posturing on a grand scale. Not to mention what 8 ranks of lowered
pike-heads looked like when viewed from the receiving end…”
The modern scholars Michael Mallett and Christine Shaw tell
us this about the Swiss mercenaries:
The French could boast the finest heavy cavalry in Europe
in the companies d’ordonnance, permanent units raised and paid for by the
Crown, in which the French competed to serve. For infantry, the French had come
to rely heavily on Swiss mercenaries. In the 1490s, the reputation of the Swiss
stood very high. They were a different kind of “national” army. A
well-established system of training, organized by the governments of the
cantons, resulted in a high proportion of able-bodied men having the strength
and ability to handle pikes, halberds and two-handed swords, and the discipline
to execute complex manoeuvres in formations of several thousand men.
Employers hired these men not only for their military skills
but also because entire contingents could be recruited simply by contacting the
Swiss cantons. Young men there were required to serve in the militia system,
were willing and well-prepared to do so, and welcomed the chance to serve
abroad. Alternatively, Swiss men could also hire themselves out individually or
in small groups. It is clear that the Swiss were hard fighters and hard-headed
businessmen as well. Their motto was: pas d’argent, pas de Swisse (no money, no
Swiss).
Swiss mercenaries were highly valued through late medieval
Europe because of the power of their determined mass attacks, in deep columns,
with pikes and halberds. They specialized in sending large columns of soldiers
into battle in “pike squares.” These were well-trained, well-disciplined bands
of men armed with long steel-tipped poles and were grouped into 100-man
formations that were 10 men wide and 10 men deep. On command, pike squares
could wheel and maneuver so quickly that it was nearly suicidal for horsemen or
infantrymen to attack them. As they came at their enemy with leveled pikes and
hoarse battle cries, they were almost invincible.
These Swiss soldiers were equally proficient in the use of
crossbows, early firearms, swords, and halberds. A These Swiss soldiers were
equally proficient in the use of crossbows, early firearms, swords, and halberds.
A halberd is an axe blade topped with a spike and mounted on a long shaft. If
the need arose, they could easily lay their pikes aside and take up other
weapons instead. They were so effective that between about 1450 and 1500 every
major leader in Europe either hired Swiss pikemen or hired fighters like the
German Landsknecht who copied Swiss tactics. The extensive and continuous
demand for these specialist Swiss and landsknecht pike companies may well have
given them the illusion of permanency. In any case, what it did show was that
medieval and Renaissance warfare was becoming better disciplined, more
organized, and more professional.
Swiss fighters were responding to several interrelated
factors: limited economic opportunities in their home mountains; pride in
themselves and their colleagues as world-class soldiers; and, last but not
least, by a love of adventure and combat. In fact, they were such good fighters
that the Swiss enjoyed a near-monopoly on pike-armed military service for many years.
One of their successes was the battle of Novara in northern Italy 1513 between
France and the Republic of Venice, on the one hand, and the Swiss Confederation
and the Duchy of Milan, on the other. The story runs as follows.
A French army, said by some sources to total 1,200
cavalrymen and about 20,000 Landsknechts, Gascons, and other troops, was camped
near and was besieging Novara. This city was being held by some of the Duke of
Milan’s Swiss mercenaries. A Swiss relief army of some 13,000 Swiss troops
unexpectedly fell upon the French camp. The pike-armed Landsknechts managed to
form up into their combat squares; the Landsknecht infantrymen took up their
proper positions; and the French were able to get some of their cannons into
action. The Swiss, however, surrounded the French camp, captured the cannons,
broke up the Landsknecht pike squares, and forced back the Landsknecht infantry
regiments.
The fight was very bloody: the Swiss executed hundreds of the
Landsknechts they had captured, and 700 men were killed in three minutes by
heavy artillery fire alone. To use a later English naval term from the days of
sail, the “butcher’s bill” (the list of those killed in action) was somewhere
between 5,000 and 10,000 men. Despite this Swiss success, however, the days of
their supremacy as the world’s best mercenaries were numbered. In about 1515,
the Swiss pledged themselves to neutrality, with the exception of Swiss
soldiers serving in the ranks of the royal French army. The Landsknechts, on
the other hand, would continue to serve any paymaster and would even fight each
other if need be. Moreover, since the rigid battle formations of the Swiss were
increasingly vulnerable to arquebus and artillery fire, employers were more
inclined to hire the Landsknechts instead.
In retrospect, it is clear that the successes of Swiss
soldiers in the 15th and early 16th centuries were due to three factors:
• Their courage was extraordinary. No Swiss force ever broke
in battle, surrendered, or ran away. In several instances, the Swiss literally
fought to the last man. When they were forced to retreat in the face of
overwhelming odds, they did so in good order while defending themselves against
attack.
• Their training was excellent. Swiss soldiers relied on a
simple system of tactics, practiced until it became second nature to every man.
They were held to the mark by a committee-leadership of experienced old
soldiers.
• They were ferocious and gave no quarter, not even for
ransom, and sometimes violated terms of surrender already given to garrisons
and pillaged towns that had capitulated. These qualities inspired fear in their
opponents.
Knights
For all of their deficiencies, knights proved their mettle
against Byzantine and Muslim forces, and for nearly 250 years after the Battle
of Hastings (1066) they were all but invulnerable to the weapons used by
European infantrymen. At the Battles of Courtrai (1302) in the Franco-Dutch War
and the Morgarten (1315) in the First Austro-Swiss War, however, Flemish and
Swiss pikemen demonstrated that the proper choice of terrain allowed resolute
foot soldiers to defeat French and Austrian knights respectively. By then the
use of powerful crossbows and longbows also put knights at greater risk of
death on the battlefield at the hands of commoner bowmen. The combination of
archer and dismounted knight used by the English throughout the Hundred Years’
War (1337-1453) proved deadly effective against French knights. Men-at-arms
responded to their new vulnerability by using plate armor for themselves and
their horses, which were more likely than their riders to be killed in battle.
Plate armor presented several problems. It was too expensive for the less
wealthy nobles, so that the near equality in knightly equipment that had marked
the previous era disappeared. Its weight required larger and more costly
warhorses, which were slower and less maneuverable, allowing the men-at-arms to
do little more than a straight-ahead charge. Despite defeat by the Swiss
infantrymen in numerous battles throughout the fifteenth century, culminating
at Nancy (1477) in the death of Charles the Bold (1433-1477), the duke of
Normandy, armored horsemen remained a potent element, especially in the French
army.
A full suit of Italian plate armour circa 1450.
Renaissance armor was not just a means of protection,
but also a work of art. Some armor, like the suit shown here, had simple
borders cut into the metal. Other pieces displayed elaborate images of saints
or ancient heroes. The most expensive armor included designs in silver or gold.
Development of Armor.
Arms and armor changed significantly during the Renaissance,
with improvements in one of them often leading to modifications in the other.
New military tactics and techniques triggered some developments, while others
were based on fashion. Armor and weapons were not simply tools of war; they
also served important social and artistic functions.
The most popular form of armor during the Middle Ages was
mail—sheets of interlocking iron rings. Though flexible and strong, mail did
not protect as well as solid plates. In the 1200s armorers began making plate
armor out of materials such as leather and, eventually, steel. The earliest
plate armor protected the lower legs and knees, the areas that a foot soldier
could easily attack on a mounted knight. Over time, armor expanded to cover
more and more of the body.
By the early 1400s, knights were encased in complete suits
of overlapping steel plates. A full suit of armor might weigh as much as 60
pounds, but its weight was distributed over the entire body. A knight
accustomed to wearing armor could mount and dismount a horse fairly easily and
even lie down and rise again without difficulty. A foot soldier wore less armor
than a knight. He might have an open-faced helmet and a shirt of mail with
solid plates covering his back and chest.
Armor changed again as firearms became more common. Rigid
armor would crack when hit by a shot from a pistol or musket. Some armorers
responded by making their armor harder, while others produced plates that would
dent rather than breaking. However, the only really effective technique was to
thicken the armor, which made it too heavy to wear in battle. As armor became
less useful, soldiers tended to wear less of it. By 1650 most mounted fighters
wore only an open-faced helmet, a heavy breastplate, and a backplate. By 1700
armor had all but disappeared from the battlefield.
Tournaments called for special armor. Since participants did
not have to carry the armor’s weight as long as they would in battle, they wore
heavier armor that offered them greater protection. Each specific event in a
tournament required its own type of armor. Some contests involved battles
between mounted knights, while others featured hand-to-hand combat on foot.
Most armor, even that worn in battle, was decorated in some
way. The decoration ranged from etched borders around the edges of plates to
detailed images of saints or ancient heroes. Some very expensive armor was
inlaid with patterns in silver or gold. Highly decorated weapons and suits of
armor were status symbols, worn only at court or on special social occasions.
Development of Arms.
Renaissance weapons fell into three basic categories: edged
weapons, staff weapons, and projectile weapons. Edged weapons included swords
and daggers. Renaissance swords often had thin, stiff blades to pierce the gaps
between the plates in a suit of armor. The blades were usually straight and had
two sharpened edges, although some swords featured curved or single-edged
blades. Large swords swung with two hands were common among foot soldiers in
Germany and Switzerland.
A staff weapon, a pole with a steel head, was used to cut,
stab, or strike an opponent. Heavily armored mounted knights favored the lance,
a wooden shaft 10 to 12 feet long with a steel tip. Foot soldiers, especially
in Switzerland, often used the halberd, a 5- to 7-foot shaft with a head that
had both a cutting edge and a point for stabbing.
Projectile weapons were designed to hurl objects at great
speeds. The simplest of these, the sling, threw stones or lead pellets. Most
archers in the 1300s and 1400s used the longbow. Both it and the mechanical crossbow
could shoot arrows capable of penetrating plate armor at certain ranges. In the
1500s, firearms gradually took the place of bows.
The first pistols, called “hand cannons,” appeared in the
early 1300s. They were little more than a barrel with a handle, or stock. The
barrel had a chamber, or breech, that held shot and powder. The soldier loaded
powder into the open end of the barrel (the muzzle) and packed it tight with a
rod. The bullet went in after the powder. The gunner touched a lighted fuse to
a small hole in the barrel to ignite the powder and fire the shot.
Over the next few hundred years, various improvements made
firearms more reliable and easier to fire. The most important development was
the invention of firing mechanisms, known as locks, in the 1400s. The simplest
kind was the matchlock. It had an arm that held the lighted fuse. Pulling a
trigger turned the arm, touching the fuse to the powder. Even easier to use was
the wheel lock, which removed the need for a fuse. It ignited the powder by
striking a spark from a piece of iron pyrite when the trigger was pulled. A
variation of this, the flintlock, relied on flint to produce a spark.
Heavy cannons, or artillery, appeared about the same time as
firearms. Artillery pieces were loaded and fired in much the same way as
firearms, but they fired much larger stones and iron balls. The biggest
artillery pieces were used for castle sieges. The largest gun ever built could
hurl a 300-pound stone ball up to two miles. However, siege cannons weighed thousands
of pounds and could not be moved easily. By the late 1400s, field artillery had
been developed that could be mounted on wheels and transported. Cannons also
became common aboard ships. Like armor, many cannons were highly decorated with
designs or the owners’ coats of arms.
