A pair of North American Mustangs from the 1st Scouting
Force, 8th Air Force, with P-51D Chip flown by Merrill Dewey DuMont in the
foreground, detects a German V-2 rocket launch site near the English Channel in
the spring of 1945.
The V-2 units were mobile and could be deployed quickly in
open countryside or city suburbs, they were all heavily defended and thus
hazardous to attack.
The scouts would radio back information on the location,
weather conditions and defences etc. in order to aid allied bombers in
attacking these sites.
Happenstance other instances of Allied aircraft engaging launched V-2 rockets include the following:
on October 29, 1944, Lieutenants Donald A.
Schultz and Charles M. Crane in a P-38 Lightning attempted to photograph a launched
V-2 above the trees near the River Rhine,
Austro-Hungarian Emperor Karl’s promise of a two-pronged
offensive flew in the face of warnings that Field Marshal Boroević (his new
rank) had sent to the high command since the end of March. Karl and his chief
of staff hoped to make Rome negotiate, and enlarge their spoils when Germany
won the war. Boroević did not believe the Central Powers could win. Instead of
wasting its strength on needless offensives, Austria should conserve it to deal
with the turmoil that peace would unleash in the empire.
But Karl and the high command were adamant: there must be an
offensive. Boroević prepared a plan to attack across the River Piave, towards
Venice and Padua. Yet again, Conrad argued for an attack from the Asiago
plateau: if successful, this would make the Piave line indefensible and force
another Italian retreat. He urged the Emperor to attack on both sectors, and
Karl gave way. Preparations began on 1 April with a view to attacking on 11
June.
Boroević had seen Cadorna make this very mistake time and
again, attacking on too broad a front. He spoke up again: if they had to attack
on both sectors, the high command should send reinforcements. In mid-May, he repeated
his warning that it was irresponsible to attack without enough shells and with
troops ill-equipped and famished. By way of reply, the high command told
Boroević to confirm that he would be ready by 11 June. Not before the 25th, he
replied. The date was set for 15 June.
On paper, the Austrian army looked strong enough. With
Russia out of the war, most of the 53 divisions with a further ten in reserve
could be kept in Italy, which was now the empire’s major front. However, the
infantry divisions were down from 12,000 to 8,000 or even 5,000 men. New
battalions were at roughly half strength. Some 200,000 Hungarian soldiers had
deserted in the first three months of 1918. In the spring, Karl approved the
call-up of the class of 1900; the new intake would be boys of 17, plus older
men returning after convalescence. Cavalry divisions were even more depleted.
The railways were dilapidated from over use, and motor vehicles lacked fuel.
The industrial capacity of the empire had never been strong;
by 1917, output was declining under the double impact of battlefield casualties
and the Allied blockade. In 1918, the decline became a slump. Production of
artillery weapons and shells halved in the first half of the year, compared
with 1917. Production of rifles fell by 80 per cent in the same period.
Uniforms were tattered, there was no new underwear, and worn-out boots could
not be replaced. Food shortages helped to trigger a general strike in January.
The stoppages spread until 700,000 workers were crying for peace, justice and
bread. Radical Socialists exploited the hardship caused by hunger, war taxes
and inflation. (‘In Russia, the land, the factories and the mines are being
given to the people.’) The mainstream Social Democrats, however, decided not to
support the calls for revolution; instead they negotiated with the government.
Even so, the army had to send forces from the front to ensure order. February
brought the first significant mutiny, by naval crews in Montenegro. Food
shortages and officers’ privileges were the trigger, and the unrest spread up
the Adriatic coast. Hopes that cooperation with newly independent Ukraine would
unlock huge imports of grain came to nothing. April brought food riots in
Laibach and ‘mass rallies at which oaths for unity and independence were being
sworn’. By now, seven divisions were deployed in the interior of the empire.
The army was not cushioned against the shortages. By 1918,
it was getting only half the flour it needed. The daily rations of front-line
troops in Italy were reduced in January to 300 grams of bread and 200 grams of
meat. Even these statistics only tell half the story. A Czech NCO, Jan Triska
of the 13th Artillery Regiment, recorded the real conditions. The rations had
run out during the Caporetto offensive, and matters had grown much worse since
then. The army was ordered to provision itself from the occupied territory.
This was only possible for a month or two; in February, Boroević told the Army
High Command that the situation was critical: the men had been hungry for four
weeks, and were ‘no longer moved by incessant empty phrases that the hinterland
is starving or that we must hold out’. They must be properly fed if they were
to fight.
By late April, the men were starving. Bread and polenta were
very scarce, and often mixed with sawdust or even sand. Meat practically
disappeared. Soldiers stole the prime cuts from horses killed by enemy fire,
and orders went out for carcasses to be delivered directly to the
slaughterhouse. Triska’s battery horses were dying; only six of 36 were
healthy. Even the coffee made of chicory was in short supply. ‘Salt was only a
memory.’ The men were often given money instead of food, but there was nothing
to spend it on. The men grew so weak during May that they could only walk with
difficulty. Triska risked punishment by trading his service revolver and
ammunition for horsemeat. He collected stems of grass to boil and eat, and
picked mulberries when they could be found. Such was the condition of the men
who were sent against the Italians in June.
#
With 23 undersized divisions on the Asiago plateau, another
15 on the line of the Piave and 22 more in reserve, the Habsburg force barely
outnumbered the Italians, who had a clear advantage in firepower and in the
air. The offensive would start on the Piave, where Boroević’s divisions would
attack across the river. Conrad’s divisions were to follow up by striking from
the north.
Addressing his officers, Boroević openly criticised the
shortages of men and supplies. Due to Conrad’s stubbornness, he implied, the
Piave line was short of ten divisions. After this rare indiscretion, the field
marshal did his duty, ordering his battalion commanders to attack like a
hurricane and not pause until they reached the River Adige. ‘For this,
gentlemen, could well be the last battle. The fate of our monarchy and the
survival of the empire depend on your victory and the sacrifice of your men.’
It has been claimed that, despite everything, Habsburg morale ran high in June.
Certainly, there are reports of soldiers marching to the line with maps of
Treviso in their pockets, gaily asking the bystanders how far it was to Rome.
They would have taken heart from the order to plunder the Allied lines (no
shortages there). Different testimony came from Pero Blašković, commanding a
Bosnian battalion on the Piave. According to Blašković, a Habsburg loyalist to
the bone, everyone without exception hoped the offensive would be postponed,
for they were all aware of Karl’s muted search for a separate peace. It was
this, more than hunger or lack of munitions, Blašković says, that took the
men’s minds off victory, making them reflect that defeat would cost fewer
lives, letting more of them get safely home in the end.
The bombardment began at 03:00 on 15 June. As at Caporetto,
the Austrians aimed to incapacitate the enemy batteries with a pinpoint attack,
including gas shells. However, their accuracy was poor, due to Allied control
of the skies; many of the shells may have been time-expired, and the Italians
had been supplied with superior British gas-masks. Too many Austrian guns were
deployed in the Trentino, a secondary sector; some heavy batteries had no
shells at all; and there was no element of surprise, for Diaz’s army had agents
in the occupied territory, and deserters were talkative. The Austrian gunners
only had the advantage on the Asiago plateau, where thick fog blanketed the preparations.
At 05:10, the guns lengthened their fire to strike the
Italian rear lines and reserves. The pontoons were dragged out from behind the
gravel islands near the river’s eastern shore. The enemy batteries were still
silent; perhaps the gas shells had knocked them out? No such luck; the Italian
guns opened up, pounding the Austrian jump-off positions. The Italian riverbank
was still wreathed in gas fumes when the assault teams jumped ashore, quickly
taking the Italian forward positions amid the chatter of machine guns.
The morning went well; the Austrians moved 100,000 men
across the river under heavy rain. Watching the infantry pour over the
pontoons, Jan Triska and his gunners wondered if this time they would reach
Venice. Enlarging the bridgeheads proved more difficult. Progress was made on
the Montello, where the four divisions pushed forward several kilometres, and
around San Donà, near the sea. Elsewhere, the attackers were pinned down near
the river. Further north, Conrad’s divisions attacked from Asiago towards Mount
Grappa. Slight initial gains could not be held; the Italians had learned how to
use the ‘elastic defence’, absorbing enemy thrusts in a deep system of
trenches, then counter-attacking. By the end of the day, Blašković realised,
‘our paper house had been blown down’. The Emperor sent Boroević a desperate
telegram: ‘Hold your positions, I implore you in the name of the monarchy!’ The
answer was curt: ‘We shall do our best.’
Progress on the second day was no easier. Conrad was in
retreat; his batteries – more than a third of all the Habsburg guns in Italy –
were out of the fight. Boroević ordered his commanders to hunker down while
forces were transferred from the north. Meanwhile the Piave rose again, washing
away many of the pontoons. Supplying the bridgeheads across the torrent became
even more dangerous. The Austrians were too close to exhaustion and their
supplies too uncertain for a sustained battle to run in their favour. By the
first afternoon, Major Blašković realised that the Austrian artillery, laying
down a rolling barrage for the assault troops, were already husbanding their
shells. If the under-used Italian units further north were to be redeployed
around Montello, the Habsburg goose would soon be cooked. Overhead, the Caproni
aeroplanes chased away the Habsburg planes and British Sopwith Camels proved
their worth, bombing along the river. (‘In aviation, too, morale is very
important,’ Blašković remarked sadly, ‘but technology is even more so.’) The
pontoons and columns of men on the riverbank, waiting to cross, offered easy
targets. While the Austrians ran out of shells, the Allied artillery and air
bombardment were unrelenting. The fate of Jan Triska’s battery on the Piave was
indicative: over the week of battle, it lost 58 men, half its strength.
Conrad’s divisions were too hard pressed to transfer men to
the Piave. In fact, the opposite happened: the Italians transferred forces from
the mountains to the river. When these reinforcements arrived, on 19 June, the
Italians counter-attacked along the Piave. They failed to crack the
bridgeheads, but the Austrian position was untenable. Pontoons that had
survived the bombing were damaged by high water and debris. Blašković’s
regiment (the 3rd Bosnia & Herzegovina Infantry) ran out of shells and
bullets; the men fought on with bayonets and hand-grenades until a Hungarian
regiment managed to bring up a few crates of ammunition from the river.
Boroević told the Emperor that if the Montello could be
secured, it should be the springboard for a new offensive. Securing it would
need at least three more divisions, including artillery. If the high command
did not intend to renew the offensive from the Montello, it was pointless to
retain the bridgeheads; they should be abandoned and all efforts dedicated to
strengthening the defences east of the river. As Karl wondered what to do, the
German high command stepped in, ordering a cessation of hostilities so that the
Austrians could despatch their six strongest divisions to the Western Front.
For Ludendorff’s spring offensives were running out of steam and 250,000
American troops were arriving every month. Karl consulted his commanders in the
field, who echoed Boroević’s stark choice: either reinforce or withdraw. Then
he consulted his chief of the general staff, General Arz von Straussenberg. A
new offensive within a few weeks was, they agreed, not a realistic prospect.
Their reserves were almost used up; even if enough divisions could be
transferred to the Piave from elsewhere – and none could safely be spared from
Ukraine or the Balkans – the Italians would match them. It would not be
possible to recapture the zest of 15 June without a lengthy recovery.
Late on the 20th, Karl ordered the right bank of the Piave
to be abandoned. General Goiginger, commanding the corps that had performed so
well on the Montello, refused to obey. They had taken 12,000 prisoners and 84
guns; how could they retreat? Eventually he submitted, and the withdrawal
began. Both sides were exhausted, and the manoeuvre was completed without much
fighting. The Bosnians and Hungarians on the Montello worked their way back to
the river. The last Austrians crossed on 23 June, ending the Battle of the
Solstice. The Italians had lost around 10,000 dead, 35,000 wounded and more
than 40,000 prisoners, against 118,000 Habsburg dead, wounded, sick, captured
and missing. Early in July, Third Army units capped the achievement by seizing
the swampy delta at the mouth of the Piave which the Austrians had held since
Caporetto.
The rejoicing was widespread and spontaneous. For many
soldiers, the Battle of the Solstice cleansed the stain of Caporetto, and the
name of the Piave has ever since evoked a glow of fulfilment, as smooth as the
sound of its utterance, untouched by the horrors of the Isonzo front or the
controversy that overshadowed Italy’s victory in November. Ferruccio Parri, a
much-decorated veteran who became a leading antifascist, said at the end of his
long life that the Battle of the Solstice was ‘the only proper national battle
of which our country can truly be proud’.
For the Allies, two things were clear: the Italians were a
fighting force again, and the Austro-Hungarian army was still dangerous: its
morale had not collapsed and the soldiers were still loyal. The view inside
Boroević’s army was different; to their eyes, the civilian system had let them
down. They were still better soldiers than the Italians, but what could they do
without food or munitions? The spectacle of his own men after the battle filled
the genial Blašković with despair: ‘weary, dejected and starving, their
tattered uniforms crusted with reddish dry clay. Their weapons alone gave them
any likeness to soldiers, for otherwise they looked like beggars roaming from
pillar to post.’ Gloom settled over the Austrian lines.
As more centralized governments developed during the Later
Middle Ages (1000-1500), significant changes took place in the way armies were
raised. This included the more extensive use of mercenaries and led to the
development of Europe’s professional armies.
While members of the nobility continued to fight primarily
as the result of social and feudal obligations, other soldiers increasingly
fought for pay. Although in theory some vassals in the later Middle Ages were
obliged to serve their lord annually for up to 40 days in the field, if they
had the financial ability they would often pay someone to serve in their stead.
The limited service requirements of feudal obligations could also cause severe
problems concerning a lord’s ability to sustain prolonged warfare. Once a
vassal’s required service was over, he could theoretically withdraw if
alternative arrangements had not been made. Thus, in addition to calling up
their vassals, wealthier lords and kings often employed mercenaries. Successful
use of mercenaries was usually dependent on their morale, as they were prone to
flee when battles went poorly or pay was tardy. Finally, cities sometimes
recruited armies from local populations or, if recruitment efforts were
unsuccessful, raised armies through conscription.
Once an army was raised, the issue of logistics was
paramount. Supply was so important that it often determined the makeup and size
of armies. Among the most important members of an army’s leadership was the
marshal, whose duties included marshaling, or gathering, the forces; organizing
the army’s heavy weapons; and providing for the army’s constant provisioning.
While all soldiers were responsible for providing their personal arms and
armor, the leadership was obliged to provide weapons beyond the pocketbook of
the common soldier, such as siege engines. Moreover, although soldiers would
bring an initial supply of rations for themselves, the army’s leadership was
responsible for plotting a route that allowed for resupply. This was done by
maintaining supply chains, purchasing supplies from local populations, or, more
often than not, foraging (plundering). Whatever the mean of provisioning, food
and drink were a constant worry and often in short supply.
Medieval European armies were normally arranged in three sections (battles or battalions) that included a vanguard, a main body, and a rear guard. The vanguard was the forward division of the army, usually comprised of archers and other soldiers who wielded long-range weapons. Their purpose was to inflict as much damage as possible on an opposing army before the main bodies, composed of infantry and armored cavalry, clashed. The main body comprised the bulk of the army’s forces, and its performance was usually crucial to the army’s success. The rear guard was usually comprised of less heavily armored and more agile cavalry, often mounted sergeants who could move quickly around the battlefield and chase down fleeing enemy soldiers. It also guarded the main force’s rear as well as the army’s supplies and camp followers (noncombatants who accompanied the army). Each section deployed in either a linear or block formation depending on the situation on the battlefield. While a block formation could better withstand cavalry charges, a linear formation allowed nearly the entire army to take part in a battle.
The importance of the mounted knight in medieval armies was
foundational to Europe’s social order. The prohibitive cost of proper arms,
armor, and horses limited knighthood primarily to the landed feudal class. The
typical knight was generally much more effective on the battlefield than the
common infantryman, as he was not only better equipped but also better trained.
Knights were usually placed in command of the cavalry (many of whom were less
well-armed sergeants from lower social classes), which was used primarily to
overrun enemy positions and break up enemy formations. If the cavalry charge
was successful, infantry was positioned to exploit any break in the enemy line.
The infantry was composed of pikemen, archers, crossbowmen,
swordsmen, and others who fought on foot and were usually joined by knights and
other cavalry who had lost their horses. While some infantry were experienced
warriors, many were poorly trained and only sporadically went into combat under
the leadership of their local lords. Pikemen defended against enemy cavalry by
pointing a concentrated number of pikes (long spears) in the direction of an
onrushing cavalry charge, while archers could fill the sky with arrows to
devastate the ranks of their approaching opponents. After several volleys, the
archers could step aside to allow the cavalry and other infantry to engage
their then weakened opponents. When the main bodies of two armies clashed on
the battlefield, infantrymen armed with swords, battle-axes, and similar weapons
provided screening for the cavalry and were essential for hand-to-hand combat.
As the battlefield became chaotic, communication was usually limited to audible
commands (sometimes produced by musical instruments), messengers, or visual
signals that included the use of banners, standards, or flags.
The development of effective siege warfare was necessitated
by the common use of defensive walls to protect medieval cities. Many cities
also contained a keep, or elevated fortification, for additional protection in
case the walls were breached by an enemy. Medieval strategists understood that
the most effective way for an army to overcome defensive walls was simply to
knock them down and rush through any openings. This was less risky than
maneuvers that involved scaling ladders while fending off the attacks of
defenders who benefited from their elevated position. Consequently, a variety
of powerful siege engines that included the mangonel, the ballista, and the
trebuchet were used to launch heavy projectiles at resisting cities and batter
their defenses. Additionally, attacking armies used siege towers to position
soldiers on a level equal to those defending a city wall, while forces on the
ground would also employ battering rams to knock down gates or sappers to
undermine walls.
Archers also played an important role in siege warfare.
Talented marksmen could wreak havoc on the opposing armies of both sides. The
skill and range of archers defending a city’s walls determined the placement of
the attacking army’s camp, as it was important to make sure that the attackers
were out of range of arrows. In the case of those who used the powerful English
longbow rather than the more common short bow, archers had a much higher rate
of fire and effective range, which made them especially valuable for use in
siege warfare and by the vanguard on the battlefield.
Technological developments also aided armies defending
cities or castles under siege. Concentric castles were developed during the
period of the crusades, as were architectural improvements, such as the round
tower, to make walls stronger and more defensible. Deeper wells allowed better
access to water during lengthy sieges, and small openings in the wall for
defending archers provided them protected positions. Attackers were also
repelled from city walls with boiling oil or water as well as molten lead. Yet
the most revolutionary changes in tactics, strategy, equipment, and
organization emerged with the introduction of gunpowder to European
battlefields in the fourteenth century. Powerful cannon tipped siege warfare in
favor of the attacking army, while hand cannon and other firearms made the
armor of knights obsolete. This led to the diminished importance of the mounted
nobility, which contributed to the rise of full-time professional armies in the
early modern period.
Renaissance Fortifications
The walls of Nicosia (1567) are a typical example of
Italian Renaissance military architecture that survives to this day.
At the beginning of the Renaissance, fortifications had to
be completely reconsidered as a result of developments in artillery. During the
Middle Ages, well-stocked fortresses with a source of potable water stood a
fairly good chance of resisting siege warfare. Such assaults usually began in
the spring or early summer, and hostile troops returned home at the onset of
cold weather if success did not appear imminent. Because repeated artillery
bombardment of medieval structures often yielded rapid results, warfare
continued year-round by the latter 15th century. Even though winter might be
approaching, military commanders persisted in barrages of artillery as long as
supplies were available for their troops, certain that they could break the
siege in a few more days or weeks. A new type of defensive fortification was
needed, and it was designed in Italy.
Early Renaissance
Medieval fortified structures consisted of high walls and
towers with slot windows, constructed of brick or stone. These buildings were
designed to withstand a long siege by hostile forces. The only ways to capture
such a fortification were (1) to roll a wooden siege tower against the wall and
climb over, but such towers were quite flammable and could be threatened by
fiery objects catapulted over the wall; (2) to batter down part of the wall,
under an assault of arrows, hot pitch, and other weapons hailing down from
above; and (3) to tunnel under the foundation, a process that could take a very
long time. Conventional towers and high walls were no match for artillery
bombardment, which could be accomplished from a distance with no threat to the
invading army. In addition, the walls and towers of medieval fortifications
were not equipped for the placement and utilization of heavy defensive
artillery. During the 15th century, European towns began to construct low,
thick walls against their main defensive walls, permitting pieces of artillery
to be rolled along the top and positioned as needed. The outer walls were often
sloped outwardly or slightly rounded to deflect projectiles at unpredictable
angles back toward the enemy. Bulwarks, usually U-shaped formations of earth,
timber, and stone, were built to protect the main gate and to provide defensive
artillery posts. In both central and northern Europe, many towns constructed
gun towers whose sole purpose was the deployment of defensive artillery. These
structures had guns at several levels, but usually lighter, lower caliber
weapons than those used on the walls. Heavier weapons would have created
unbearable noise and smoke in the small rooms in which they were discharged. In
several conventional medieval towers, the roof was removed and a gun platform
install.
Later Renaissance
Near the close of the 15th century, Italian architects and
engineers invented a new type of defensive trace, improving upon the bulwark
design. In the “Italian trace” [trace italienne -Star fort] triangle-shaped
bastions with thick, outward-sloping sides were pointed out from the main
defensive wall, with their top at the same level as the wall. At Civitavecchia,
a port near Rome used by the papal navy, the city walls were fortified with
bastions in 1520-the first example of bastions completely circling a defensive
wall. Bastions solved several problems of the bulwark system, especially with
bastions joined to the wall and not placed a short distance away, where troops
could be cut off by enemy troops. The most important improvement was the
elimination of the blind spot caused by round towers and bulwarks; gunners had
a complete sweep of enemy soldiers in the ditches below. Development of the
bastion design in Italy was a direct response to the 1494 invasion by the
troops of Charles VIII and the superior artillery of France at that time, and
to continued threats from the Turks. Bastion-dominated fortifications were
constructed along the Mediterranean coast to create a line of defense against
naval attacks. Several such fortifications were built in northern Europe,
beginning with Antwerp in 1544. In some instances fortifications were not
feasible, for reasons such as very hilly terrain or opposition from estate
owners reluctant to lose property, and in some regions military threat was not
extreme enough to warrant the effort of constructing new fortifications. In
such cases, an existing fortress might be renovated and strengthened to create
a citadel. Municipalities often opposed construction of citadels, which
symbolized tyranny, because they were imposed on defeated cities by warlords.
Citadels proved to be an effective means, however, for providing a protective
enclosure during enemy attacks. By the mid-16th century, the expense of
fortifications was exorbitant. Henry VIII, for example, was spending more than
one-quarter of his entire income on such structures, and the kingdom of Naples
was expending more than half.
THE DEVELOPMENT AND INFLUENCE OF FIREARM
After countless unsuccessful experiments, lethal accidents
and ineffective trials, firearms research and techniques gradually improved, and
chroniclers report many types of guns—mainly used in siege warfare—with
numerous names such as veuglaire, pot-de-fer, bombard, vasii, petara and so on.
In the second half of the 14th century, firearms became more efficient, and it
seemed obvious that cannons were the weapons of the future. Venice successfully
utilized cannons against Genoa in 1378. During the Hussite war from 1415 to
1436, the Czech Hussite rebels employed firearms in combination with a mobile
tactic of armored carts (wagenburg) enabling them to defeat German knights.
Firearms contributed to the end of the Hundred Years’ War and allowed the
French king Charles VII to defeat the English in Auray in 1385, Rouen in 1418
and Orleans in 1429. Normandy was reconquered in 1449 and Guyenne in 1451.
Finally, the battle of Chatillon in 1453 was won by the French artillery. This
marked the end of the Hundred Years’ War; the English, divided by the Wars of
the Roses, were driven out of France, keeping only Calais. The same year saw
the Turks taking Constantinople, which provoked consternation, agitation and
excitement in the whole Christian world.
In that siege and seizure of the capital of the Eastern
Roman empire, cannon and gunpowder achieved spectacular success. To breach the
city walls, the Turks utilized heavy cannons which, if we believe the
chronicler Critobulos of Imbros, shot projectiles weighing about 500 kg. Even
if this is exaggerated, big cannons certainly did exist by that time and were
more common in the East than in the West, doubtless because the mighty
potentates of the East could better afford them. Such monsters included the
Ghent bombard, called “Dulle Griet”; the large cannon “Mons Berg” which is
today in Edinburgh; and the Great Gun of Mohammed II, exhibited today in
London. The latter, cast in 1464 by Sultan Munir Ali, weighed 18 tons and could
shoot a 300 kg stone ball to a range of one kilometer.
A certain number of technical improvements took place in the
15th century. One major step was the amelioration of powder quality. Invented
about 1425, corned powder involved mixing saltpeter, charcoal and sulphur into
a soggy paste, then sieving and drying it, so that each individual grain or
corn contained the same and correct proportion of ingredients. The process
obviated the need for mixing in the field. It also resulted in more efficient
combustion, thus improving safety, power, range and accuracy.
Another important step was the development of foundries,
allowing cannons to be cast in one piece in iron and bronze (copper alloyed with
tin). In spite of its expense, casting was the best method to produce practical
and resilient weapons with lighter weight and higher muzzle velocity. In about
1460, guns were fitted with trunnions. These were cast on both sides of the
barrel and made sufficiently strong to carry the weight and bear the shock of
discharge, and permit the piece to rest on a two-wheeled wooden carriage.
Trunnions and wheeled mounting not only made for easier transportation and
better maneuverability but also allowed the gunners to raise and lower the
barrels of their pieces.
One major improvement was the introduction in about 1418 of
a very efficient projectile: the solid iron shot. Coming into use gradually,
the solid iron cannonball could destroy medieval crenellation, ram
castle-gates, and collapse towers and masonry walls. It broke through roofs,
made its way through several stories and crushed to pieces all it fell upon.
One single well-aimed projectile could mow down a whole row of soldiers or cut
down a splendid armored knight.
About 1460, mortars were invented. A mortar is a specific
kind of gun whose projectile is shot with a high, curved trajectory, between
45° and 75°, called plunging fire. Allowing gunners to lob projectiles over
high walls and reach concealed objectives or targets protected behind
fortifications, mortars were particularly useful in sieges. In the Middle Ages
they were characterized by a short and fat bore and two big trunnions. They
rested on massive timber-framed carriages without wheels, which helped them withstand
the shock of firing; the recoil force was passed directly to the ground by
means of the carriage. Owing to such ameliorations, artillery progressively
gained dominance, particularly in siege warfare.
Individual guns, essentially scaled down artillery pieces
fitted with handles for the firer, appeared after the middle of the 14th
century. Various models of portable small arms were developed, such as the
clopi or scopette, bombardelle, baton-de-feu, handgun, and firestick, to
mention just a few.
In purely military terms, these early handguns were more of
a hindrance than an asset on the battlefield, for they were expensive to
produce, inaccurate, heavy, and time-consuming to load; during loading the
firer was virtually defenseless. However, even as rudimentary weapons with poor
range, they were effective in their way, as much for attackers as for soldiers
defending a fortress.
The harquebus was a portable gun fitted with a hook that
absorbed the recoil force when firing from a battlement. It was generally
operated by two men, one aiming and the other igniting the propelling charge.
This weapon evolved in the Renaissance to become the matchlock musket in which
the fire mechanism consisted of a pivoting S-shaped arm. The upper part of the
arm gripped a length of rope impregnated with a combustible substance and kept
alight at one end, called the match. The lower end of the arm served as a
trigger: When pressed it brought the glowing tip of the match into contact with
a small quantity of gunpowder, which lay in a horizontal pan fixed beneath a
small vent in the side of the barrel at its breech. When this priming ignited, its
flash passed through the vent and ignited the main charge in the barrel,
expelling the spherical lead bullet.
The wheel lock pistol was a small harquebus taking its name
from the city Pistoia in Tuscany where the weapon was first built in the 15th
century. The wheel lock system, working on the principle of a modern cigarette
lighter, was reliable and easy to handle, especially for a combatant on
horseback. But its mechanism was complicated and therefore expensive, and so
its use was reserved for wealthy civilian hunters, rich soldiers and certain
mounted troops.
Portable cannons, handguns, harquebuses and pistols were
muzzle-loading and shot projectiles that could easily penetrate any armor.
Because of the power of firearms, traditional Middle Age weaponry become
obsolete; gradually, lances, shields and armor for both men and horses were
abandoned.
The destructive power of gunpowder allowed the use of mines
in siege warfare. The role of artillery and small firearms become progressively
larger; the new weapons changed the nature of naval and siege warfare and
transformed the physiognomy of the battlefield. This change was not a sudden
revolution, however, but a slow process. Many years elapsed before firearms
became widespread, and many traditional medieval weapons were still used in the
16th century.
One factor militating against artillery’s advancement in the
15th century was the amount of expensive material necessary to equip an army.
Cannons and powder were very costly items and also demanded a retinue of
expensive attendant specialists for design, transport and operation.
Consequently firearms had to be produced in peacetime, and since the Middle
Ages had rudimentary ideas of economics and fiscal science, only a few kings,
dukes and high prelates possessed the financial resources to build, purchase,
transport, maintain and use such expensive equipment in numbers that would have
an appreciable impression in war.
Conflicts with firearms became an economic business
involving qualified personnel backed up by traders, financiers and bankers as
well as the creation of comprehensive industrial structures. The development of
firearms meant the gradual end of feudalism. Firearms also brought about a
change in the mentality of combat because they created a physical and mental
distance between warriors. Traditional mounted knights, fighting each other at
close range within the rules of a certain code, were progressively replaced by
professional infantrymen who were anonymous targets for one another, while
local rebellious castles collapsed under royal artillery’s fire. Expensive
artillery helped to hasten the process by which central authority was restored.
Mercenaries
The collapse of the monetary economy in Western Europe
following the fall of Rome left just two areas where gold coin was still used
in the 10th century: southern Italy and southern Spain (al-Andalus). Ready gold
drew mercenaries to wars in those regions as carrion creatures draw near dead
flesh. Also able to pay in coin for military specialists and hardened veterans
was the Byzantine Empire, along with the Muslim states it opposed and fought
for several centuries. The rise of mercenaries in Western Europe in the 11th
century as a money economy resumed disturbed the social order and was received
with wrath and dismay by the clergy and service nobility. Early forms of
monetary service did not necessarily involve straight wages. They included fief
money and scutage. But by the end of the 13th century paid military service was
the norm in Europe. This meant that local bonds were forming in many places and
a concomitant sense of “foreignness” attached to long-service soldiers.
Mercenaries were valued for their military expertise but now feared and
increasingly despised for their perceived moral indifference to the causes for
which they fought. Ex-mercenary bands (routiers, Free Companies) were
commonplace in France in the 12th century and a social and economic scourge
wherever they moved during the Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453). Their main
weapon was the crossbow, on land and at sea. In the galley wars of the
Mediterranean many Genoese, Pisan, and Venetian crossbowmen hired out as
specialist marine archers. Much of the Reconquista in Spain was fueled by the
mercenary impulse and concomitant necessity for armies to live off the land.
The hard methods and cruel attitudes learned by Iberians while fighting Moors
were then applied in the Americas by quasi-mercenary conquistadores.
Mercenaries- “condottieri,” or foreign “contractors”-also played a major part
in the wars of the city-states of the Italian Renaissance.
French “gen d’armes” and Swiss pikemen and halberdiers
fought for Lorraine at Nancy (1477). By the start of the 15th century Swiss
companies hired out with official Cantonal approval or as free bands who elected
their officers and went to Italy to fight as condottieri. With the end of the
wars of the Swiss Confederation against France and Burgundy, Swiss soldiers of
fortune formed a company known as “das torechte Leben” (roughly, “the mad
life”) and fought for pay under a Banner displaying a town idiot and a pig.
Within four years of Nancy some 6,000 Swiss were hired by Louis XI. In 1497,
Charles VIII (“The Affable”) of France engaged 100 Swiss halberdiers as his
personal bodyguard (“Garde de Cent Suisses”). In either form, the Swiss became
the major mercenary people of Europe into the 16th century. “Pas d’argent, pas
de Suisses” (“no money, no Swiss”) was a baleful maxim echoed by many
sovereigns and generals. Mercenaries of all regional origins filled out the
armies of Charles V, and those of his son, Philip II, as well as their enemies
during the wars of religion of the 16th and 17th centuries. By that time Swiss
mercenaries who still used pikes (and many did) were largely employed to guard
the artillery or trenches or supplies. Similarly, by the late 16th century
German Landsknechte were still hired for battle as shock troops but they were
considered undisciplined and perfectly useless in a siege.
In Poland in the 15th century most mercenaries were
Bohemians who fought under the flag of St. George, which had a red cross on a
white background. When Bohemian units found themselves on opposite sides of a
battlefield they usually agreed that one side would adopt a white cross on a
red background while their countrymen on the other side used the standard
red-on-white flag of St. George. In the Polish-Prussian and Teutonic Knights
campaigns of the mid-15th century the Brethren-by this point too few to do all
their own fighting-hired German, English, Scots, and Irish mercenaries to fill
out their armies. During the “War of the Cities” (1454-1466) German mercenaries
were critical to the victory of the Teutonic Knights at Chojnice (September 18,
1454). When the Order ran out of money, however, Bohemian soldiers-for-hire who
held the key fortress and Teutonic capital of Marienburg for the Knights sold
it to a besieging Polish army and departed, well paid and unscathed by even a
token fight.
Condottierie
From the end of the War of the Sicilian Vespers (1282-1302),
the Italians tried to decide for themselves what government they wanted,
resulting in conflict between the Ghibellines-who supported Imperial rule-and
the Guelfs-who supported papal rule. The Guelfs were successful in the first
decade of the fourteenth century, ironically at much the same time the papacy
moved to Avignon in 1308. Suddenly freed from either Imperial or papal
influence, the large number of sovereign states in northern and central Italy
began to try to exert control over their neighbors. Florence, Milan, and
Venice, and to a lesser extent Lucca, Siena, Mantua, and Genoa, all profited
from the early-fourteenth-century military situation by exerting their
independence. But this independence came at a price. The inhabitants of the
north Italian city-states had enough wealth to be able to pay for others to
fight for them and they frequently employed soldiers, condottieri in their
language (from the condotte, the contract hiring these soldiers) and
mercenaries in ours. Indeed, the immense wealth of the Italian city-states in
the late Middle Ages meant that the number of native soldiers was lower than
elsewhere in Europe at the same time, but it meant the cost of waging war was
much higher.
One might think that having to add the pay for condottieri
to the normal costs of war would have limited the numbers of military conflicts
in late medieval Italy. But that was not the case and, in what was an
incredibly bellicose time, Italy was one of the most fought over regions in
Europe. Most of these wars were small, with one city’s mercenary forces facing
another’s, but they were very frequent. They gave employment to a large number
of condottieri, who in turn fought the wars, which in turn employed the
condottieri. An obvious self-perpetuating circle developed. It was fueled by a
number of factors: the wealth of northern Italy; the greed of wealthier
Italians to acquire more wealth by occupying neighboring cities and lands (or
to keep these cities from competing by incorporating their economies); their
unwillingness themselves to fight the wars; and the availability of a large
number of men who were not only willing to do so, but who saw regular
employment in their mercenary companies as a means to comfort, wealth, and often
titles and offices. In 1416, one condottierie, Braccio da Montone, became lord
of Perugia, while a short time later two others, condottieri sons of the
condottiere Muccio Attendolo Sforza, Alessandro and Francesco, became the
Master of Pesaro and Duke of Milan, respectively. Other condottieri became
governors of Urbino, Mantua, Rimini, and Ferrara during the fifteenth century.
Venice and Genoa continued to be the greatest rivals among
the northern Italian city-states. Both believed the Mediterranean to be theirs,
and they refused to share it with anyone, including Naples and Aragon, nor, of
course, with each other. This became a military issue at the end of the
fifteenth century. The common practice was a monopoly trading contract.
Venice’s monopoly with the crusader states ceased when the crusaders were
forced from the Middle East in 1291, although they were able to sustain their
trade with the victorious Muslim powers. And Venice’s contract with
Constantinople was abandoned with the fall of the Latin Kingdom in 1261, only
to be replaced by a similar contract with Genoa that would last till the city’s
fall to the Ottoman Turks in 1453.
Frequently during the late Middle Ages, this rivalry turned
to warfare, fought primarily on the sea, as was fitting for two naval powers.
Venice almost always won these engagements, most notably the War of Chioggia
(1376-1381), and there seems little doubt that such defeats led to a weakening
of the political independence and economic strength of Genoa. Although Venice
never actually conquered Genoa, nor does it appear that the Venetian rulers
considered this to be in their city’s interest, other principalities did target
the once powerful city-state. Florence held Genoa for a period of three years
(1353-1356), and Naples, Aragon, and Milan vied for control in the fifteenth
century. Seeking defensive assistance, the Republic of Genoa sought alliance
with the Kingdom of France, and it is in this context that their most prominent
military feature is set, the Genoese mercenary. During the Hundred Years War,
Genoa supplied France with naval and, more famously, crossbowmen mercenaries,
the latter ironically provided by a city whose experience in land warfare was
rather thin.
Before the fifteenth century, the Republic of Venice had also
rarely participated in land campaigns-except for leading the forces of the
Second Crusade in their attack of Constantinople in 1204. Seeing the sea not
only as a provider of economic security but also as defense for the city,
Venetian doges and other city officials had rarely pursued campaigns against
their neighbors. However, in 1404- 1405, a Venetian army, once again almost
entirely mercenaries, attacked to the west and captured Vicenza, Verona, and
Padua. In 1411-1412 and again in 1418-1420, they attacked to the northeast,
against Hungary, and captured Dalmatia, Fruili, and Istria. So far it had been
easy-simply pay for enough condottieri to fight the wars, and reap the profits
of conquest. But in 1424 Venice ran into two Italian city-states that had the
same military philosophy they did, and both were as wealthy: Milan and
Florence. The result was thirty years of protracted warfare.
The strategy of all three of these city-states during this
conflict was to employ more and more mercenaries. At the start, the Venetian
army numbered 10,000-12,000; by 1432 this figure had grown to 18,000; and by
1439 it was 25,000, although it declined to 20,000 during the 1440s and 1450s.
The other two city-states kept pace. At almost any time after 1430 more than
50,000 soldiers were fighting in northern Italy. The economy and society of the
whole region were damaged, with little gain by any of the protagonists during
the war. At its end, a negotiated settlement, Venice gained little, but it also
lost very little. The city went back to war in 1478-1479, the Pazzi War, and
again in 1482-1484, the War of Ferrara. The Florentines and Milanese
participated in both as well.
After the acquisition of Vicenza, Verona, and Padua in 1405
Venice shared a land frontier with Milan. From that time forward Milan was the
greatest threat to Venice and her allies, and to practically any other
city-state, town, or village in northern Italy. Milan also shared a land
frontier with Florence, and if Milanese armies were not fighting Venetian armies,
they were fighting Florentine armies, sometimes taking on both at the same
time.
Their animosity predates the later Middle Ages, but it
intensified with the wealth and ability of both sides to hire condottieri. This
led to wars with Florence in 1351-1354 and 1390-1402, and with Florence and
Venice (in league together) in 1423-1454, 1478-1479, and 1482-1484. In those
rare times when not at war with Florence or Venice, Milanese armies often
turned on other neighboring towns, for example, capturing Pavia and Monza among
other places.
Perhaps the most telling sign of Milan’s bellicosity is the
rise to power of its condottiere ruler, Francesco Sforza, in 1450. Sforza had
been one of Milan’s condottieri captains for a number of years, following in
the footsteps of his father, Muccio, who had been in the city-state’s employ
off and on since about 1400. Both had performed diligently, successfully, and,
at least for condottieri, loyally, and they had become wealthy because of it.
Francesco had even married the illegitimate daughter of the reigning Duke of
Milan, Filippo Maria Visconti. But during the most recent wars, after he had
assumed the lordship of Pavia, and in the wake of Filippo’s death in 1447, the
Milanese decided not to renew Francesco’s contract. In response, the
condottiere used his army to besiege the city, which capitulated in less than a
year. Within a very short time, Francesco Sforza had insinuated himself into
all facets of Milanese rule; his brother even became the city’s archbishop in
1454, and his descendants continued to hold power in the sixteenth century.
Genoa, Venice, and Milan all fought extensively throughout
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but Florence played the most active
role in Italian warfare of the later Middle Ages. A republican city-state,
although in the fifteenth century controlled almost exclusively by the Medici
family, Florence had been deeply involved in the Guelf and Ghibelline conflicts
of the thirteenth century, serving as the center of the Guelf party. But though
the Guelfs were successful this did not bring peace to Florence and when, in
1301, they split into two parties-the blacks and the whites-the fighting
continued until 1307. Before this feud was even concluded, however, the
Florentine army, numbering 7,000, mostly condottieri, attacked Pistoia,
capturing the city in 1307. In 1315 in league with Naples, Florentine forces
attempted to take Pisa, but were defeated. In 1325, they were again defeated
while trying to take Pisa and Lucca. Between 1351 and 1354 they fought the
Milanese. From 1376 to 1378 they fought against papal forces hired at and drawn
from Rome in what was known as the War of the Eight Saints, but the Florentines
lost more than they gained. Forming the League of Bologna with Bologna, Padua,
Ferrara, and other northern Italian cities, they warred against Milan from 1390
to 1402. While they were initially successful against the Milanese, Gian
Galeazzo, Duke of Milan, was eventually able to bring Pisa, Lucca, and Venice
onto his city’s side, and once again Florence was defeated. In 1406 Florence
annexed Pisa without armed resistance. But war broke out with Milan again in
1423 lasting until 1454; Florence would ally with Venice in 1425, and with the
papacy in 1440. Battles were lost on the Serchio in 1450 and at Imola in 1434,
but won at Anghiara in 1440. Finally, after the Peace of Lodi was signed in
1454 ending the conflict, a league was formed between Florence, Venice, and
Milan that lasted for 25 years. But, after the murder of Giuliano de’ Medici
and the attempted murder of his brother, Lorenzo-Pope Sixtus IV was complicit
in the affair-war broke out in 1478 with the papacy and lasted until the death
of Sixtus in 1484. In addition, interspersed with these external wars were
numerous rebellions within Florence itself. In 1345 a revolt broke out at the
announcement of the bankruptcy of the Bardi and Peruzzi banking firms; in 1368
the dyers revolted; in 1378 there was the Ciompi Revolt; and in 1382 the popolo
grasso revolt. None of these were extensive or successful, but they did disrupt
social, economic, and political life in the city until permanently put to rest
by the rise to power of the Medicis.
Why Florence continued to wage so many wars in the face of
so many defeats and revolts is simple to understand. Again one must see the
role of the condottieri in Florentine military strategy; as long as the
governors of the city-state were willing to pay for military activity and as
long as there were soldiers willing to take this pay, wars would continue until
the wealth of the town ran out. In Renaissance Florence this did not happen.
Take, for example, the employment of perhaps the most famous condottiere, Sir
John Hawkwood. Coming south in 1361, during one of the lulls in fighting in the
Hundred Years War, the Englishman Hawkwood joined the White Company, a unit of
condottieri already fighting in Italy. In 1364, while in the pay of Pisa, the
White Company had its first encounter with Florence when, unable to effectively
besiege the city, they sacked and pillaged its rich suburbs. In 1375, now under
the leadership of Hawkwood, the White Company made an agreement with the
Florentines not to attack them, only to discover later that year, now in the
pay of the papacy, that they were required to fight in the
Florentine-controlled Romagna. Hawkwood decided that he was not actually
attacking Florence, and the White Company conquered Faenza in 1376 and Cesena
in 1377. However, perhaps because the papacy ordered the massacres of the
people of both towns, a short time later Hawkwood and his condottieri left
their papal employment. They did not stay unemployed for long, however;
Florence hired them almost immediately, and for the next seventeen years, John
Hawkwood and the White Company fought diligently, although not always
successfully, for the city. All of the company’s condottieri became quite
wealthy, but Hawkwood especially prospered. He was granted three castles
outside the city, a house in Florence, a life pension of 2,000 florins, a
pension for his wife, Donnina Visconti, payable after his death, and dowries
for his three daughters, above his contracted pay. Florentines, it seems, loved
to lavish their wealth on those whom they employed to carry out their wars,
whether they were successful or not.
In comparison to the north, the south of Italy was
positively peaceful. Much of this came from the fact that there were only two
powers in southern Italy. The Papal States, with Rome as their capital, did not
have the prosperity of the northern city-states, and in fact for most of the
later Middle Ages they were, essentially, bankrupt. But economic problems were
not the only matter that disrupted Roman life. From 1308 to 1378 there was no
pope in Rome and from then until 1417 the Roman pontiff was one of two (and
sometimes three) popes sitting on the papal throne at the same time. But even
after 1417 the papacy was weak, kept that way by a Roman populace not willing
to see a theocracy return to power. Perhaps this is the reason why the Papal
States suffered so many insurrections. In 1347 Cola di Rienzo defeated the
Roman nobles and was named Tribune by the Roman people. He governed until those
same people overthrew and executed him in 1354. In 1434 the Columna family
established a republican government in the Papal States, forcing the ruling
pope, Eugenius IV, to flee to Florence. He did not return and reestablish his
government until 1343. Finally, in 1453, a plot to put another republican
government in place was halted only by the general dislike for its leader, Stefano
Porcaro, who was executed for treason.
One might think that such political and economic turmoil
would not breed much military confidence, yet it did not seem to keep the
governors of the Papal States from hiring mercenaries, making alliances with other
Italian states, or pursuing an active military role, especially in the central
parts of Italy. Usually small papal armies were pitted against much larger
northern city-state forces, yet often these small numbers carried the day,
perhaps not winning many battles, but often winning the wars, certainly as much
because of the Papal States alliances as its military prowess. This meant that
despite all the obvious upheaval in the Papal States during the later Middle
Ages, at the beginning of the 1490s it was much larger and more powerful than
it had ever been previously.
Bibliography Contamine, Philippe. War in the Middle
Ages. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984. France, John. Western Warfare in the Age
of the Crusades, 1000-1300. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999. Lepage,
Jean-Denis G. G. Medieval Armies and Weapons in Western Europe: An Illustrated
History. Jefferson, NC, and London: McFarland, 2005. Nicholson, Helen. Medieval
Warfare. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Nicolle, David. French Medieval
Armies, 1000-1300. Oxford, UK: Osprey, 1991.
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.
The conquest of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade
and the founding of the Latin Empire split the remaining possessions of the
Byzantines into two large states, Nikaia and Epiros, and some smaller states. Despite
reduced resources, it was an effective army which rarely lost a battle, beating
the Seljuqs at Antioch in 1211, the Latin Empire at Poimanenon in 1224 and the
Achaian Franks at Pelagonia in 1259. Originally based only on the Anatolian provinces,
it regained Thrace in 1235, Macedonia and Thessaloniki in 1246. The Varangians
were now purely palace guards and no longer went to war, but the Vardariotai
guards originally recruited from Magyar settlers in the Vardar valley did still
take the field. The Latinikon were Frankish knights, now mainly recruited from
Constantinople, the Latin Emperor being poor and Byzantine pay generous.
Tourkopouloi were Christianised Turks. The Skythikon
had originally been recruited from Pechenegs, but were now usually Cumans. They
were not used in a single body, but as detachments scattered through the army.
They were supplemented from 1242 by a mass settlement of Cuman refugees fleeing
from the Mongols. These were given lands in exchange for military service, but
on one occasion deserted to the enemy on the field of battle. Native cavalry
were now mostly reservists called stratiotai holding individual pronoiai,
grants not of land but of its rents. They were thus neither localised
soldier-farmers as in the old Thematic forces, nor feudal lords, but soldiers
who collected their own pay and were called up by the central authorities for
service anywhere in the empire. They were still armoured lancers, but had
reverted to the skirmishing tactics of earlier days.
Until the accession of Theodoros II Laskaris they served only in Anatolia. Their quality was variable, those of the Paphlagonian theme for example being considered good and those of Macedonia bad. The illustrations in the Skylitzes manuscript of around the start of this period shows several bodies of lancers who lack armour. Infantry were now predominantly archers from the Anatolian themes. Peltastai are no longer mentioned, but some archers are depicted with spears and small shields. Camp servants were used to attack the unwalled town of Serres in 1246. Byzantine warships were now lighter and no longer mentioned using Greek Fire.
The restored Byzantine Empire in 1265.
When Pope Innocent III was informed of the sacking of
Constantinople, he understood at once the damage that had been done. Furiously
excommunicating everyone who had taken part, he wondered aloud how the dream of
church unity could ever now occur. How could the Greeks, he wrote to his
legates, ever forgive their Catholic brothers, whose swords still dripped with
Christian blood, and who had betrayed and violated their holiest shrines?
Eastern Christians, he concluded with good reason, now detested Latins more
than dogs.
The new masters of Constantinople, meanwhile, seemed
determined to increase the native resentment. In a hastily cleaned Hagia
Sophia, where a few days before a prostitute had been mockingly perched on the
patriarchal throne, a Latin emperor was crowned, and the feudal arrangements of
the West were forced on the corpse of the Byzantine Empire. The various nobles
were rewarded with large estates, and a patchwork of semi-independent kingdoms
replaced the single authority of the emperor. A crusader knight seized
Macedonia, calling himself the king of Thessaloniki, and another set himself up
as the lord of Athens. Not even in its most advanced decay had the Byzantine
state been as powerless as the Latin one that took its place.
Remarkably enough, given the deplorable state of the
capital, the vast majority of Byzantines in the countryside were reasonably
well off. As the central authority of the emperors had weakened in the years
before the Fourth Crusade, the towns and villages of Byzantium had flourished.
Merchants of the West, the East, and the Islamic world converged in fairs held
throughout the empire, where they displayed exotic wares from as far away as
Russia, India, China, and Africa. The urban population boomed, and since the
corrupt and paralyzed imperial government was unable to collect taxes, the
wealth stayed in private hands. Emperors could no longer afford their lavish
building programs as the treasury dried up, but private citizens could, and the
cities became showpieces for personal fortunes. A new spirit of humanism was in
the air, along with an intellectual curiosity. Byzantine art, which had been
stylized for centuries, became suddenly more lifelike; writers began to depart
from the cluttered, archaic styles of antiquity; and individual patrons of the
arts sponsored vibrant local styles in the frescoes and mosaics of their
villas. The spirit of Byzantium was flowering even as imperial fortunes
declined, and not even the terrible trauma of the Fourth Crusade could dampen
it for long.
Despite the resilience of its culture and economy, the
empire’s power seemed irretrievably lost. Alexius Murtzuphlus had tried to
organize a counteroffensive with his fellow emperor-in-exile Alexius III, but
his idiotic colleague had betrayed him, and the crusaders had flung Murtzuphlus
to his death from the top of the Theodosian column. In remote Trebizond on the
shores of the Black Sea, the grandsons of Andronicus the Terrible declared
themselves the rightful emperors; while at Epirus, the great-grandson of
Alexius Comnenus claimed the same thing. The most powerful and important
fragment of the empire, however, was centered at Nicaea, where the patriarch
crowned Alexius III’s son-in-law Theodore Lascaris as emperor.
As refugees and wealth poured into the Nicene haven of the
Orthodox faith and Byzantine culture, the crusader’s Latin Empire of
Constantinople grew progressively weaker. Within a year, a Bulgarian army had
effectively broken its power, destroying its army, capturing the impotent
emperor, and allowing Theodore Lascaris to reconquer most of northwestern Asia
Minor. Instead of confronting the obvious danger of Nicaea, however, successive
Latin emperors concentrated on extracting wealth from the citizens of
Constantinople, abandoning themselves to the pleasures of palace life.
Only the threat of the Seljuk Turks at their rear prevented
the Nicaean emperors from further exploiting Latin weakness; but in 1242, a
terrifying Mongol horde suddenly appeared, and the situation dramatically
changed. Smashing the Turkish army sent against him, the Mongol khan forced the
Seljuk sultan to become his vassal and extracted a promise of an annual tribute
of horses, hunting dogs, and gold. The Mongol horde seemed poised to descend on
Nicaea next, but it unexpectedly withdrew the next year, leaving the Seljuks
crippled in his wake. To the relieved Byzantines, it seemed as if God had
delivered them from certain destruction, and perhaps even given them a powerful
new ally. Nestorian Christians who had been expelled from the Byzantine Empire
had reached Mongolia in the seventh century, and though the khans had yet to
embrace a major religion, several high-ranking Mongols—including the
daughter-in-law of Genghis Khan—were Christian. In any case, whether they were
well disposed to Christianity or not, the Mongols’ timely attack finally left
Nicaea free to pursue its dream of recapturing Constantinople.
Through careful diplomacy and military displays, Nicaea
slowly built up the pressure on the tottering Latin Empire. By now the crusader
kingdom had virtually shrunk down to Constantinople itself, and the capital
lived under a perpetual shadow of gloom, with its deserted streets and
dilapidated palaces. Its humiliated emperor Baldwin II was so impoverished that
he’d been obliged to sell off the lead from the roof of the imperial
palace—which was now in a tumbledown state of advanced decay—and in his
desperate search for money had even begun to pawn the few relics that had
survived the sack. By 1259, when a dashing young general named Michael
Palaeologus was crowned in Nicaea, Baldwin was barely clinging on to power, and
few doubted the general would recover the city. The only question was when.
Michael VIII Palaiologos
Nicaea was not without its own turmoil. The
thirty-four-year-old Michael Palaeologus had come to power only after the
regent was brutally hacked to death during the funeral service of his
predecessor, but by the time Michael was crowned on Christmas day, his empire
was infinitely more powerful and vibrant than its Latin counterpart. In the
summer of 1261, Michael neutralized the threat of the Venetian navy by signing
a treaty with their archrivals Genoa, and sent his Caesar, Alexius
Strategopoulos, to see how strong Constantinople’s defenses were. When the
Caesar arrived outside the city in July with eight hundred men, some farmers
immediately informed him that the Latin garrison—along with the Venetian
navy—was away attacking an island in the Bosporus. Hardly believing his luck,
Strategopoulos hid until nightfall in a monastery near the Pege Gate, easily
escaping detection by the laconic defenders. Upon discovering a small, unlocked
postern gate nearby, the Caesar sent through a handful of men who quietly
overpowered the guards and opened the main gate. On the morning of July 25,
1261, the Nicaean army poured into the city, shouting at the top of their lungs
and beating their swords against their shields. Emperor Baldwin II was so
terrified by the noise that he left the crown jewels behind, fleeing to the
palace of the Bucoleon, where he was somehow able to find a Venetian ship and
make good his escape. Within hours, it was all over. The Venetian quarter was
burned to the ground, and the returning Venetian navy was too busy rescuing its
loved ones to fight back.
For the Latins inside the city, there was no thought of
resistance, only of panicked flight. Scattering in all directions, they hid in
churches, disguised themselves as monks, and even leaped into the sewers to
avoid detection. When they cautiously emerged, however, they found that there
had been no massacre. The Byzantines had come home not to plunder but to live.
The bedraggled Latins hurried quietly down to the harbors and boarded the
returning Venetian ships, glad that Byzantines had shown more restraint in
victory than their own crusading predecessors.
The incredible news reached Michael Palaeologus where he was
asleep in his tent, nearly two hundred miles away. Refusing to believe that his
forces had captured the city until he had seen Baldwin’s discarded scepter,
Michael hurried to take possession of the capital that he had long dreamed of
but never seen. On August 15, 1261, he solemnly entered through the Golden Gate
and walked to the Hagia Sophia, where he was crowned as Michael VIII. After
fifty-seven years in exile, the Byzantine Empire had come home.
The city that Michael VIII triumphantly entered was a pale
shadow of its former self. Charred and blackened houses stood abandoned on
every corner, still sagging and in ruin from the sack more than five decades
before. Its churches were despoiled and dilapidated, its palaces decayed, and
its treasures dispersed. The formidable Theodosian walls were badly in need of
repair, the imperial harbor was completely unprotected, and the surrounding
countryside was devastated. Its weary citizens had little hope for relief from
a throne that had seen—from Irene in 780 to Alexius Murtzuphlus in 1204—half of
its occupants overthrown. Worst of all, however, the old unity of the Byzantine
world had vanished—the splinters of the empire in Trebizond and Epirus remained
stubbornly independent, sapping the already diminished strength of Byzantium.
The only hope of salvation seemed to be from the West, but the Fourth Crusade
had severely ruptured western relations.
If anyone had a chance of repairing the damage, however, it
was Michael VIII. Not yet forty, he was energetic and vibrant, hiding a fierce
intelligence behind a convivial smile. Boasting an impressive imperial lineage
of no fewer than eleven emperors and three dynasties among his ancestors, he was
well connected, able, and smarter than anyone else around him. His first task
was to restore the city’s shattered morale, and he did so with a whirlwind of
construction, repairing walls and rebuilding churches. In the upper gallery of
the Hagia Sophia, the emperor commissioned a stunning mosaic of Christ flanked
by Mary and John the Baptist—perhaps the finest piece of art that Byzantium
ever produced. A massive chain was stretched across the imperial harbor to
protect it from enemy vessels, and the moats around the land walls were
cleared. Knowing the value of propaganda, the emperor designed a new flag and
sent it fluttering from every parapet and tower in the city. Though the eagle
had been the symbol of the Roman Empire since Gaius Marius had chosen it
thirteen hundred years before, most banners before Michael bore either
Constantine’s cross or the Chi-Rho—the first two Greek letters of Christ’s
name. Now the emperor added a great golden eagle, double-headed with two
crowns—one for the interim capital of Nicaea and one for Constantinople. Those
who saw it could swell with pride and remind themselves that Byzantium had been
a mighty empire embracing two continents, looking both east and west. Perhaps
under the dashing Michael VIII it would be so again. The imperial enemies were
scattered and disunited, and an immediate offensive just might catch them on
their heels.
At the head of his small, battle-hardened army, Michael VIII
had soon pushed back a marauding Bulgarian army and forced the Byzantine despot
of Epirus to submit to the empire. By 1265, he had conquered most of the
Peloponnese from its Latin overlords and even managed to clear the Turks out of
the Meander valley. The next year, however, a new player appeared on the
international stage, and everything was thrown into confusion.
The Norman Kingdom of Sicily had dominated Italian politics
for a long time, but by 1266 its energy was exhausted. Pope Urban IV, wanting a
friendlier hand at its helm, invited Charles of Anjou, the younger brother of
King Louis IX of France, to seize the kingdom. If the pope wanted a neutral
power to his south, however, he could hardly have made a worse choice. Charles
was cruel and grasping, and after beheading his sixteen-year-old opponent in a
public square, he immediately began planning to enlarge his domains. His
schemes were given an unexpected boost when Baldwin II, the exiled and rather
pathetic Latin emperor of Constantinople, offered to give him the Peloponnese
in exchange for help regaining the throne. The delighted Sicilian king
immediately began levying heavy taxes to support the war effort and searching
for allies, forming an anti-Byzantine league with Venice.
Knowing his small army and decrepit navy would stand no
chance against his united enemies, Michael VIII turned to diplomacy, adroitly
managing to keep them at bay. Venice was bought off with greater trading
privileges within the empire, and a few letters hastily written to King Louis
persuaded the French king to restrain his headstrong younger brother. For the
moment, the voracious Charles was forced to sit on his hands, but the French
king died in 1270, and Charles gleefully invaded. Sicilian arms were
irresistible, but once again Michael VIII outthought his opponent. Writing to
the pope, the emperor cleverly dangled the promise of a union of the churches
before the pontiff’s eyes in exchange for bringing Charles to heel.
The ploy worked and Charles was recalled, but Michael was
playing a dangerous game. He was well aware that his subjects would never
accept domination by the hated Roman church, and he couldn’t keep stalling the
pope indefinitely. For three years, the emperor smoothly dodged the papal
representatives; but by 1274, Pope Gregory X got tired of waiting and sent an
ultimatum to Constantinople—either implement the union immediately or face the
consequences. There was little that Michael VIII could do. Asking only that
eastern practices be left alone, he submitted his church to the authority of
the pope.
The firestorm in Constantinople was both unsurprising and
immediate. The patriarch angrily refused to ratify the hated document, and most
of Michael’s subjects felt bitterly betrayed. The emperor had not only
dangerously weakened his throne, but he had also handed the Orthodox powers of
Serbia and Bulgaria the perfect bit of propaganda. Each could now invade
imperial territory at will and claim to be fighting for tradition and truth.
Any such invasion, Michael well knew, would receive dangerous support from his
outraged subjects. But he had removed the justification of papal support from
any future attack by Charles, and that for Michael VIII was worth the price of
popular unrest. In any case, he didn’t intend to sit idly by while his enemies
pounced. When Bulgaria invaded, trying to exploit the weakness, Michael simply
invited the Mongol Golden Horde into Bulgaria. The Mongol advance crippled the
kingdom, dealing Bulgaria a blow from which it never recovered.
Charles of Anjou had been seriously checked, but he wasn’t
beaten yet. If his grand alliance had foundered on Byzantine treachery, then it
must be more solidly rebuilt. Venice was easily seduced. She was always looking
to her own advantage, and the rights Michael VIII had granted to Genoa were
cutting deeply into her profits. A victory for Charles would mean the
banishment of the Genoese upstarts—an irresistible attraction for the Lion of
Saint Mark’s. The only thing restraining Charles was papal displeasure, but the
resourceful king overcame even this seemingly insurmountable obstacle. Pope
Gregory X died in 1276, and through steady interference and intimidation
Charles managed to have a French cardinal elected pope who hated the Byzantines
almost as much as he did. In 1281, the French pope sent a letter to the stunned
Byzantine emperor informing him that he had been excommunicated on the grounds
of his subjects’ continued resistance to Catholicism. The emperor could hardly
believe the news. He had sacrificed his popularity and invited charges of
impiety and betrayal for nothing. Now Venice and Sicily were firmly allied
against him, and they would sail under the papal blessing. Not even the Fourth
Crusade had such support.
Byzantium’s only advantage was Michael VIII. In a brilliant
bit of truly “byzantine” diplomacy, Michael reached out to Peter III of Aragon,
urging him to invade Sicily. Peter was related to the dynasty that Charles of
Anjou had evicted from power and considered Sicily his birthright. And thanks
to vicious taxation and a copious amount of Byzantine gold, anti-French feeling
on the island was at a fever pitch. Now, suggested Michael VIII, would be the
perfect time for the Spanish savior to arrive.
Unaware of the storm that was gathering, Charles of Anjou
left Sicily for the mainland of Italy to put the finishing touches on his army.
In his absence, the island exploded. The revolt known to posterity as the
Sicilian Vespers started innocuously enough on the outskirts of Palermo. As the
bells of the church of Santo Spirito rang to call the faithful to Vespers on
Easter Monday of 1282, an inebriated French soldier tried to seduce a Sicilian
girl. To the outraged onlookers, it was the last straw. These boorish French
had lorded it over them for long enough, growing fat off Sicilian labor. The
enraged mob killed the offending soldier and fanned out through the streets of
Palermo, venting nearly two decades of frustration on anyone with a drop of
French blood. When the sun rose on Tuesday morning, there wasn’t a Frenchman
left alive, and the electrifying news of the revolt sped throughout the island.
By May, French resistance had collapsed, and by the end of August Peter III had
landed and taken possession of Palermo. Charles of Anjou furiously put several
Sicilian ports under siege, but he had abused his former subjects for too long,
and they preferred death to his return. Though he spent the rest of his life
trying to recover the island, he was never successful, and in 1285 he died, a
broken man.
Michael VIII never lived to see the death of his great enemy.
With the threat of western aggression gone, the despot of Epirus was once again
asserting his independence, and the emperor was determined to bring him into
line. The fifty-eight-year-old emperor again led his troops toward battle, but
he had gotten no farther than Thrace when he fell seriously ill. Thinking as
always of his responsibilities, the dying emperor proclaimed his son Andronicus
II to be his successor, and expired quietly in the first days of December.
He had been among Byzantium’s greatest emperors, restoring
its capital and dominating the politics of the Mediterranean. Without him, the
empire would certainly have fallen to Charles of Anjou—or any number of
watching enemies—and the Byzantine light would have been extinguished, its
immense learning dispersed among a West not yet ready to receive it. Instead,
Michael VIII had deftly outmaneuvered his enemies, founding in the process the
longest-lasting dynasty in the history of the Roman Empire. Nearly two hundred
years later, a member of his family would still be sitting on the throne of
Byzantium, fighting the same battle of survival—albeit with much longer odds.
Michael had done what he could to repair the imperial wreckage. He left behind
valuable tools to continue the recovery: a small but disciplined army, a
reasonably full treasury, and a refurbished navy. But for the savior of the
empire, no gratitude awaited. Excommunicated by the pope, he died a heretic to
the Catholic West and a traitor to the Orthodox East. His son buried him without
ceremony or consecration in a simple, unmarked grave. Michael VIII’s affronted
subjects, however, would all too soon have reason to miss him. If Byzantium
looked strong at his death, it was only because his brilliance had made it so.
Without a strong army or reliable allies, its power was now purely diplomatic,
and it needed hands as skillful as Michael’s to guide it. Unfortunately for the
empire, however, few of Michael’s successors would prove worthy of him.
Richard J. Gatling was seeking business. In the meticulous penmanship
of a man born to a land-owning Southern family, he began a letter to President
Abraham Lincoln.
It was February 18, 1864, late in the American Civil War and
an extraordinary period in the evolution of firearms: dawn in the age of the
machine gun and yet a time when officers still roamed battlefields with swords.
At forty-five, Gatling was a medical-school graduate who had never practiced
medicine, opting instead to turn his stern father’s sideline as an inventor
into a career. For twenty years he had mainly designed agricultural devices.
Dr. Gatling, as he liked to be called, came from a North Carolina family that
owned as many as twenty slaves. But he had moved north to Indiana for business
and marriage, and when the war began in 1861 he did not align himself with the
secessionists who formed the Confederacy. He knew men on both sides. Far from
his place of birth and away from the battlefields, he had taken to viewing the
contents of the caskets returning to the railroad depot in Indianapolis. Inside
were the remains of Union soldiers, many felled by trauma but most by infection
or disease. Seeing these gruesome sights, Gatling shifted attention from farm
devices to firearms, and to the ambition of designing a rapid-fire weapon, a
pursuit that since the fourteenth century had attracted and eluded gunsmiths
around the world. “I witnessed almost daily the departure of troops to the
front and the return of the wounded, sick and dead,” he wrote. “It occurred to
me that if I could invent a machine—a gun—that would by its rapidity of fire
enable one man to do as much battle duty as a hundred, that it would to a great
extent, supersede the necessity of large armies, and consequently exposure to battle
and disease would be greatly diminished.”
Gatling did not fit any caricature of an arms profiteer. By
the available accounts, he carried himself as a neat and finely dressed
gentleman. He was kindhearted to his family and associates, soft-spoken at home,
and self-conscious enough that he wore a beard to hide the smallpox scars that
peppered his face. He made for a curious figure: an earnest and competitive
showboat when promoting his weapon, but restrained and modest on the subject of
himself. He was, his son-in-law said, “an exception to the rule that no man is
great to his valet.” One interviewer noted that he professed to feel “that if
he could invent a gun which would do the work of 100 men, the other ninety and
nine could remain at home and be saved to the country.” He repeated this point
throughout his life, explaining a sentiment that he insisted rose from seeing
firsthand the ruined remains of young men lost in a fratricidal war. His
records make clear that he was driven by profits. He never ceased claiming that
compassion urged him on at the start.
Gatling was neither a military nor a social visionary. But
he was a gifted tinkerer and an unrelenting salesman, and he found good help.
His plans proceeded swiftly. Though there is no record of his having prior
experience with weapon design, by late 1862, after viewing rival guns, drawing
on his knowledge of agricultural machinery, and enlisting the mechanical
assistance of Otis Frink, a local machinist, he had received a patent for a
prototype he called the “battery gun.” “The object of this invention,” he told
the U.S. Patent Office, “is to obtain a simple, compact, durable, and efficient
firearm for war purposes, to be used either in attack or defence, one that is
light when compared with ordinary field artillery, that is easily transported,
that may be rapidly fired, and that can be operated by few men.”
Gatling’s battery gun, while imperfect in its early forms,
was a breakthrough in a field that had frustrated everyone who had tried
before. Since medieval times, the pursuit of a single weapon that could mass
musket fire had confounded generations of military-minded gunsmiths and
engineers. Gunsmiths had long ago learned to place barrels side by side on
frames to create firearms capable of discharging projectiles in rapid
succession. These unwieldy devices, known as volley guns, were capable in
theory of blasting a hole in a line of advancing soldiers. They had limitations
in practice, among them slow reload times and difficulties in adjusting fire
toward moving targets and their flanks. Ammunition was a problem, too, as was
the poor state of metallurgy, although this did not discourage everyone, and
the lethal possibilities of a machine that could concentrate gunfire attracted
would-be inventors of many stripes. One of the few highly detailed accounts of
the early models suggests an inauspicious start. In 1835, Giuseppe Fieschi, a
Corsican, rented an apartment on Boulevard du Temple in Paris. In a room
overlooking the street he secretly constructed a frame of thick oak posts and
attached twenty-five rifle barrels, all in a space of roughly a meter square. Each
barrel was packed with multiple musket balls and a heavy charge of powder, then
aligned to aim together at a point on the street below. Fieschi waited. On July
28, his intended victim appeared: King Louis-Philippe. Fieschi fired his
makeshift device, and a volley flew from the apartment window and slammed into
the king’s entourage. In the technical sense, the “infernal machine,” as his
device came to be known in Europe, was both a success and a failure. It had a
terrible effect. A piece of lead grazed Louis-Philippe’s skull, just above his
face, and others cut down his company, killing eighteen people. But an
examination of the gun later suggested that while it worked well enough as a
tool for assassination or terror, it was hardly ready for the battlefield. Four
barrels had failed to fire. Four others had ruptured. Two of these had
exploded, scattering lead inside the assassin’s rented room and gravely
injuring Fieschi, who was captured and saved from his injuries by the French
authorities, to be executed later by guillotine.
Several hundred years of near stagnation in rapid-fire design, coupled with such mishaps, did not make machine guns an attractive idea to investors or customers alike. There was reason as well for potential purchasers to suspect nonsense in the claims of the movement’s dreamers, whose folly preceded Fieschi. In 1718, James Puckle, of London, had received an English patent for a rapid-fire flintlock that he proposed to manufacture in two forms: one for firing round balls at Christians, and another for firing square blocks at Muslims. The weapon, he wrote, was for “defending King George, Your country and Lawes, to defending yourselves and Protestant cause.” Puckle was nearly two centuries ahead of the machine-gun age. His proposal to subject Muslims to what he expected to be the crueler effects of square projectiles in some ways foreshadowed the punishing ways.
Piedmont proved to be an impenetrable barrier to every
advance from the French side of the Alps. The first attempt, by way of the
little-used Varaita valley, was checked by the entrenched position of the
Piedmontese near Casteldelfino in October 1743. In the following year the
French staff officer Pierre Bourcet (who was brought up in the Alps)
accomplished a clever concentration of 33,700 French and Spanish troops in the
Stura valley further to the south. This venture too came to an end in front of
a Piedmontese strongpoint, in this case the pentagonal fortress of Cuneo. The
place was held by 3,000 men under the command of a fine old Saxon soldier of
fortune, Major-General Leutrum, and few sieges have ever undergone such varied
and comprehensive misfortunes – disagreements in command, floods, and
guerrillas roving around on the lines of communication. The French and Spanish
raised the siege on the night of 21-22 October and marched back over the Alps,
having fired away 43,000 rounds of shot and bombs, and having lost 15,000 men
through enemy action, sickness and desertion.
One final attempt to pierce the Alps, by way of the
Mont-Genevre route, was shattered on the ridge of the Colle dell’ Assietta on
19 July 1747.
#
In the spring of 1747, a new French army marched along the
Mediterranean coast. Charles Emmanuel ordered his troops to hold Nice, but soon
he knew that another French expeditionary force was approaching the Alps from
the west. If they crossed the Alps, they could effectively threaten Turin.
Charles Emmanuel had no troops to stem the invasion.
in June 1747 a French army under Marshal Belle-Isle advanced
along the Mediterranean coast, the siege of Genoa was lifted.
Now the French and Spanish decided on a concerted attack on
Savoy-Piedmont, hoping to knock it out of the war. While the Spanish were advancing north along
the Appeninnes, Marshal Belle-Isle attempted to advance through Stura
Pass. The marshal’s brother, the
Chevalier Belle-Isle would advance on Turin from further north. The French crossed Mont Genevre into Italy on
July 15th and 16th and were faced with two valleys, both heading toward their object
– Turin, the capital of Savoy. The
northern valley was protected by a fortress at Exilles. The southern valley was protected by the
Fenestrelle fortress. Between these two
valleys was the Colle della Assietta, a mountain with an elevation of around
8,000 feet. Seeing that the enemy could
pass along the ridge, and that a road over the ridge was the best connection
between the fortresses of Exilles and Fenestrelle, on June 29th the King of
Savoy had ordered that 3,000 workers start building a defensive line there. Numerous obstacles, redoubts and an 18 foot
high palisade, had been built on the slope.
To the south, the mountain descends 3,000 feet in around two
miles. To the north, it descends over
5,000 feet in around two miles to Exilles.
Terrain this difficult was greatly advantageous to the Allied
defenders. As an additional advantage,
they might descend from the mountain into the rear of an enemy army in the
valley. The French received bad
intelligence and believed that Colle della Assiatta was weakly defended.
The Sardinian had fortified the area with 13 infantry
battalions: 9 Sardinian, the remaining were Austrian and Swiss taken from the
troops that had unsuccessfully besieged Genoa.
After a delay of several days due to bad weather, the French
army advanced along the ridge on July 19, 1747 hoping to get behind the two
valley fortresses. If they could get
behind the Exilles fortress and capture it, the road to Turin would be
open. Instead they would meet the enemy
in difficult terrain and behind entrenchments.
That morning the Savoy army woke up early but found no enemy
to their front. Later in the day,
however, the French emerged. Rejecting
advice to delay an attack in order to prepare scaling ladders, Belle Isle
ordered an advance. Separating into
three columns, the French army of around 40,000 men moved on the enemy
position, since reinforced (including a few Austrian troops) to a total of
around 7,500 men in 13 battalions.
The French right column of 14 battalions under the command
of Marshal Villemur swung wide to the right and around much of the enemy
position to attack it on another section of the mountain. The effort failed.
The French left column of 9 battalions under General Mailly
was to move through a ravine and attack the enemy position.
The French center column of 8 battalions under Marshal
d’Arnaud was to attack the salient to their front. At 4:30, the French attacked.
The French attacks were a disaster. Belle-Isle was dead along with Marshal
D’Arnault and many other high ranking officers.
Montcalm, a colonel who would become famous in Canada during the next
war, was left wounded in a ditch overnight covered with bodies. After five hours of battle, the French
retreated.
What ensued in the late afternoon was celebrated as the most
one-sided slaughter of the war. Neither the flanking columns moved decisively
enough to influence events in. These, lashed by determined officers, the French
struggled up the slope, disassembling the various man-made impediments as they
proceeded, while withering musket fire from concealed and protected hideouts
exacted the heavy toll. Four times the French fell back before the onslaught;
each time they returned to the struggle. The living climbed over the piles of
dead as they tried to surmount the palisades. Defenders rained bullets and
rocks down on the relentless blood-drenched attackers. A retreat, more orderly
than the butchery, ensured.
The French lost around 5,000 men in all. Accounts give the losses of Savoy and its
allies at just 219. The Franco-Spanish
attempt to crush Savoy was a failure, and the war settled down in Italy after
the battle.
The beaten French troops returned to France. Frederick II of
Prussia, after hearing of news of the Sardinian defence at Assietta, declared
that, if he had had such valorous troops, he could easily become King of Italy.
The Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, or Aachen, ended the war the
next year with Savoy gaining some territory.
The kingdom continued to survive and in the next century was prominent
in efforts to unify Italy: the King of
Savoy would become King of Italy.
The strength of the Byzantine Empire lay in its
disciplined heavy cavalry – the cataphracts. Both men and horses were trained
to a high degree, and were capable of carrying out complex drills on the
battlefield. As well as proficiency in the lance, cataphracts were adept in the
use of their bows.
CATAPHRACT CAVALRY
The Byzantine cataphract – from the Greek word for
“covered” – was equipped with full metal-scale armor, which extended
to the horse as well as the rider. The Parthians had been the first army to
make use of cataphracts, and their Roman opponents were sufficiently impressed
to create heavy cavalry units of their own. The Byzantines later made the
cataphracts the major strike force within their army. Mounted on a powerful
warhorse, the Byzantine cataphract bristled with weapons, which included a bow,
lance, sword, and even a dagger. Besides body armor he wore an iron helmet and
carried a shield, the latter strapped to the arm so he could use both hands to
control his horse. The main cataphract tactic depended on shock action – a
ferocious charge that could crash through virtually any enemy.
The strength of the sixth-century Byzantine army was undoubtedly its cavalry. The majority were equipped equally for shock action or for fighting from a distance. These horsemen wielded lance or bow as the situation demanded, but although the riders were heavily armoured, their horses do not seem to have been protected. The Strategikon emphasized the need for cavalry to charge in a disciplined manner, always maintain a reserve of fresh troops, and be careful not to be drawn into a rash pursuit. Bucellarii were normally cavalry, and by their nature horsemen were more suited than foot soldiers to the raids and ambushes which dominated the warfare of this period. The sixth-century cavalryman was far more likely to experience combat than his infantry counterpart. In a largescale action a well-balanced mix of horse and foot was still the ideal, but the Roman infantry of this period had a very poor reputation. In part this was a result of their inexperience, but they often seem to have lacked discipline and training. N ars’es used dismounted cavalrymen to provide a reliable centre to his infantry line at Taginae. At Dara Belisarius protected his foot behind specially prepared ditches. Roman infantry almost invariably fought in a defensive role, providing a solid base for the cavalry to rally behind. They did not advance to contact enemy foot, but relied on a barrage of missiles, javelins, and especially arrows, to win the combat. All units now included an element of archers and it was claimed that Roman bows shot more powerfully than their Persian counterparts. The front ranks of a formation wore armour and carried large round shields and long spears, but some of the ranks to the rear carried bows. Infantry formations might be as deep as sixteen ranks. Such deep formations made it difficult for soldiers to flee, but also reduced their practical contribution to the fighting, and were another indication of the unreliability of the Roman foot soldier. The Strategikon recorded drill commands given in Latin to an army that almost exclusively spoke Greek. There were other survivals of the traditional Roman military system, many of which would endure until the tenth century, but the aggressive, sword-armed legionary was now a distant memory.
In 541, the Byzantine hold on Italy was seriously threatened
by Totila, the new Ostrogoth king. Raising the banner of rebellion, Totila
advanced as far south as Naples before being stopped.
After he had taken Naples, Totila laid siege to Rome.
Belisarius was sent back to Italy. Rome was taken by Totila in December 546.
The Byzantine forces were left holding only four fortresses in Italy.
Belisarius returned again to Constantinople and was replaced by Justinian’s
Court Chamberlain, Narses, a man who conducted his generalship less with
flamboyance than with the precision of a mathematician. In the meantime Totila
had taken Sicily again and manned 300 ships to control the Adriatic. By the
spring of 552 Narses had mobilized his forces fully, composed mainly of
Barbarian contingents, Huns, Lombards, Persians and others. Finding his way
south blocked by Teia and his Gothic warriors at Verona, he outflanked them by
marching close to the Adriatic coast, reaching Ravenna safely. When Totila
received the news in the vicinity of Rome, he took almost his entire army,
crossed Tuscany, and established his base at the village of Taginae, the
present day Tadino.
The Byzantine reconquest of Italy proved short-lived. In
568, the Lombards invaded Italy and forced the Byzantines into the southern
part of the peninsula. However, southern Italy and Sicily remained Byzantine
until the advent of the Normans. The Byzantine reconquest of Spain, completed
in 554, was somewhat more successful. The empire held the southern third of the
Iberian Peninsula until 616, when the Visigoths reclaimed their lost
territories.
#
Byzantine Emperor Justinian had finally realized that he
could not succeed in Italy without a major effort, in which an able general
would have to be placed in command of adequate forces. Still jealous of
Belisarius, he first selected his nephew Germanius, who had distinguished
himself as a subordinate of Belisarius in Persia and who had recently won a
substantial victory over the Slavs. Germanius, however, died near Sardica, so
Justinian selected the aged eunuch Narses (478-573) for command in Italy.
Narses refused to accept the post without adequate forces. When he marched
north from Salona, later that year, he probably had a total force of
20,000-30,000 men. Arriving in Venetia, he discovered that a powerful
Gothic-Frank army at least 50,- 000 strong, under the Goth leader Teias and the
Frank King Theudibald, blocked the principal route to the Po Valley. Not wishing
to engage such a formidable force and confident that the Franks would soon tire
of their alliance with the Goths, as they had in the past, Narses cleverly
skirted the lagoons along the Adriatic shore by using his vessels to leapfrog
his army from point to point along the coast, some going by ship, some
marching, in a manner similar to a modern truck and foot march. In this way he
arrived at Ravenna without encountering any opposition. Near Ravenna he
attacked and crushed a small Gothic force at Rimini.
Narses now began an advance on Rome. Crossing the Apennines
with nearly 20,000 men, he was met by Totila, who probably did not have more
than 15,000. In a narrow mountain valley suitable for the shock tactics of his
heavy cavalry lancers, Totila had chosen a position which Narses could not
bypass. Totila first tried to compensate for his weakness in numbers by
attempting to seize a hill from which he could outflank the enemy position, but
he was stopped by a unit of 50 Roman infantry.
The imperial general immediately deployed his army in a
concave formation. He dismounted his Lombard and Heruli cavalry mercenaries,
placing them as a phalanx in the center. His heavy Roman cavalry cataphracts
were on each flank, reinforced with all his infantry-who were foot archers. On
his left he sent out a mixed force of foot and horse archers to seize a
dominant height.
Totila delayed while waiting for an additional 2,000 cavalry
to join him, then, after attempts to draw out the Romans had failed, he
launched an attack after the midday meal.
Totila’s army was in two lines: the heavy cavalry lancers in
the front, with his archers and a line of spear and axe-wielding infantry
behind. The Goths opened the battle with a determined cavalry charge. As they
swept down the valley they first came under the fire of the advanced force on
Narses’ left, then rode into the cross fire of the archers in his concave
wings. Halted by the devastating fire, the attackers were then thrown back in
confusion on the infantry advancing behind them. Efforts of the Gothic archers
to support their cavalry were foiled by the more aggressive, more mobile
imperial horse archers on the flanks. Covered by continued fire from the foot
archers, these heavy cataphracts then swept into the milling mass of Goths in a
double envelopment. More than 6,000 of them, including Totila, were killed. The
remnants fled. Narses then continued on to Rome, which he captured after a
brief siege.
Man traditionally identified as Narses, from the
mosaic depicting Justinian and his entourage in the Basilica of San Vitale,
Ravenna.
Born in Armenia, Narses was a court eunuch in the Byzantine
imperial palace in Constantinople. In 532, when riots threatened Emperor
Justinian, he was commander of the imperial guard, but this was a court rather
than a military appointment. In 538 Narses was chosen to lead an army to
reinforce Belisarius fighting the Ostrogoths in Italy. He had no military
experience, but the ageing eunuch was intended to control Belisarius, whom
Justinian distrusted, rather than to win battles.
Yet Narses was to turn into an outstanding battlefield
leader. His first visit to Italy was short, his constant disagreements with
Belisarius too disruptive of military operations. But in the 540s he was given
a real command, in charge of an army of Heruli – Germanic troops – whom he soon
led to an important victory over raiding Slavs and Huns in Thrace.
In 552 Narses led another army to Italy to fight the
Ostrogoths once more. Unlike Belisarius he was given plenty of troops. Though a
shrivelled 74-year-old, he provided them with inspiration and organization. At
Taginae he defeated the Ostrogoth leader, Totila, retook Rome, and finally
crushed the Gothic army at a second battle in the foothills of Vesuvius. Narses
had regained Italy in a single lightning campaign. In 554 he won another great
victory, defeating the Franks and Alamanni tribes at Volturnus. He was still
defending Italy against Goths and Franks in 562, when old age ended his
unlikely military career.