Shadow Agents of Renaissance War: Suffering, Supporting, and Supplying Conflict in Italy and Beyond 9789048553327

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Shadow Agents of Renaissance War

Renaissance History, Art and Culture This series investigates the Renaissance as a complex intersection of political and cultural processes that radiated across Italian territories into wider worlds of influence, not only through Western Europe, but into the Middle East, parts of Asia and the Indian subcontinent. It will be alive to the best writing of a transnational and comparative nature and will cross canonical chronological divides of the Central Middle Ages, the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period. Renaissance History, Art and Culture intends to spark new ideas and encourage debate on the meanings, extent and influence of the Renaissance within the broader European world. It encourages engagement by scholars across disciplines – history, literature, art history, musicology, and possibly the social sciences – and focuses on ideas and collective mentalities as social, political, and cultural movements that shaped a changing world from ca 1250 to 1650. Series editors Christopher Celenza, Georgetown University, USA Samuel Cohn, Jr., University of Glasgow, UK Andrea Gamberini, University of Milan, Italy Geraldine Johnson, Christ Church, Oxford, UK Isabella Lazzarini, University of Molise, Italy

Shadow Agents of Renaissance War Suffering, Supporting, and Supplying Conflict in Italy and Beyond

Edited by Stephen Bowd, Sarah Cockram and John Gagné

Amsterdam University Press

Cover illustration: Jost Amman, Die Huren und Buben (Soldiers’ whores and children), 1573. Print. From Leonhardt Fronsperger, Kriegsbuch (Frankfurt, 1573), vol. 3, fol. LXXXIIr. Image Courtesy of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden Lay-out: Crius Group, Hulshout isbn 978 94 6372 135 6 e-isbn 978 90 4855 332 7 doi 10.5117/9789463721356 nur 684 © All authors / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2023 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book.



Table of Contents

Acknowledgements 7

I  Introduction: War and Agency Introduction 11 War and Agency Stephen Bowd, Sarah Cockram, and John Gagné

II  The Unwilling Agents of War 1 Refugees, Forced Migration and Henry VIII’s Conquest of France, 1544–46

47

2 Prisoners for War

71

3 ‘A Horse is a Feeling Animal’

95

Neil Murphy

Convicts, Slaves, and the Culture of Forced Labour in SixteenthCentury Tuscany Victoria Bartels

Interspecies Interaction and Animal Agency in Renaissance Warfare Sarah Cockram

III  The Organizers and Suppliers of War 4 Shadow Bureaucrats and Bureaucracy in Trecento Florence

123

5 Heralds and the Representational Culture of War, 1350–1600

147

6 The Diverse Agencies of Renaissance Engineers in the Shadow of War

173

William Caferro

John Gagné

Cristiano Zanetti

7 Agents of Firearms Supply in Sixteenth-Century Italy

201

8 The Invisible Trade

227

Rethinking the Contractor State Catherine Fletcher

Commoners and Convicts as Early Modern Venice’s Spies Ioanna Iordanou

IV  Women and Agency in War 9 Gender, War, and the State

253

10 Delivering Arms

277

11 Useless Mouths in Early Modern Italian Literature

303

The Military Management of Alda Pio Gambara During the Italian Wars Stephen Bowd

Noblewomen, Artillery, and the Gendering of Violence During the French Wars of Religion Brian Sandberg

Gian Giorgio Trissino and Lucrezia Marinella Gerry Milligan

Index 325

Acknowledgements The editors gratefully acknowledge the School of History, Classics and Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh; the UK Society for Renaissance Studies; and the University of Sydney-University of Edinburgh Partnership Collaboration Awards scheme for facilitating the development of this volume through discussions with scholars including Sue Broomhall, Jill Burke, Sam Cohn, Frédérique Dubard de Gaillarbois, Linda Fibiger, John Gillingham, Carolyn James, Alice König, Lisa Mansfield, Ralph Moffat, and Matthew Strickland. We would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on the typescript and Erika Gaffney and the team at Amsterdam University Press for making the process of publication so efficient and enjoyable. Edited collections sometimes come with a health warning for prospective editors, but we are happy to report that the contributors to this one have been models of collaboration, understanding, patience, and efficiency, and we reserve our highest praise for them.

I Introduction: War and Agency

Introduction War and Agency Stephen Bowd, Sarah Cockram, and John Gagné The shadow agents of war are those men, women, children and other animals who sustain war by means of their preparatory, auxiliary, infrastructural, or supplementary labour. Shadow agents often work in the zone between visibility and invisibility, existing in the shadows of history at moments when the crisis of war tends rather to police and polarize human categories and distinctions.1 This collection of essays contributes to the history of these obscured actors: women in combat, in defence of home and hearth, acting as foragers, but also as military managers; heralds and bureaucrats in key organizational roles; ancillary service workers such as armourers, merchants and arms dealers; and traditionally marginalized groups such as refugees, slaves, and animals forced into war-related activity. It is a history which is largely unwritten but can contribute to studies of agency, to the vexed and complex relationships between state, society and war, civil and military spheres, and to the history of war more broadly.2 By highlighting the work of those who crossed between civil and military areas of life the contributors to this volume map out a largely hidden world and in doing so complicate models of the relationship between the soldiers and civilians which have underpinned master narratives of the rise of the nation-state, the militarization of society and the exercise of ‘total’ war. Broadly speaking, how do the histories of para- or non-state actors in war challenge the primary role assigned to formal state institutions, including centralized bureaucracy, in the exercise of violence? To what extent do the shadow agents of war affect or respond to military institutions and to the broader militarization of society? How is the boundary between soldier and civilian constructed or complicated by these shadow agents and how might 1 Braudy, 4–5. 2 Péricard.

Bowd, S., Cockram, S. & Gagné, J. (eds.), Shadow Agents of Renaissance War. Suffering, Supporting, and Supplying Conflict in Italy and Beyond. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2023 doi: 10.5117/9789463721356_intro

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this shed light on the exercise of warfare? Indeed, how might this evidence answer the question: ‘What was the military in the early modern period?’3 The essays in this volume have been written with two distinct, but overlapping, research themes in mind. The first theme focuses on labour in recognition of the fact that war demands so much work. In addition to the labour of soldiers, the war machine has often been driven by the labour of animal bodies and by the bodies of builders, sappers, sex workers, and others. Others have employed their expertise in mathematics, technology, finance, and medicine, as well as heraldry and animal handling. This focus on labour, whether as part of the deep structure of warfare or intermittently mobilized, entails a reconsideration of the historical intersections of war-as-work: how war provoked makers and knowledge-crafters to produce practical and mental or cultural tools that could be used in violent conflict. This focus can also reveal how the demarcation of physical labour and mental expertise may often be unclear and evaluations of both often gendered. The second, closely related theme explored in this volume is experience. The reconstruction of the experiences of war is especially fraught with difficulty given the inherent problems of record-keeping at a time of social disruption, existential threat and psychological trauma. Indeed, the impact of such violence on individual or collective memories and history writing can be severe.4 This volume contributes to the process of reconstructing the experience of war by searching out and examining materials in archives and libraries written by or about shadow agents which have previously been overlooked or ignored. There is a great deal of material in the rich collections of Europe which have escaped the eye of military historians and these voices call out for some accounting and for further research as the contributors to this collection amply demonstrate.

Shadow Agency Theories of agency offer a range of ways to understand the concept of the historical agent or actor, and these have been conceived with varying degrees of intentionality and bodily control or natural force involved in shaping events. At one end of the spectrum lies a traditional idea of agency 3 This was the subtitle of a conference held in Potsdam in 2013 which led to the publication of a volume of essays: Meumann and Pühringer; Meumann, esp. 21–28. 4 For some work on the diversity of conflict memories see ‘Pluralistic Memories Project’; Kuijpers, ‘The Creation and Development’; Kuijpers and van der Haven; Kuijpers et al.

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expressed predominantly in the purposive decision-making and action of an individual with the conscious power to negotiate and transform their historical environment, typically a prime mover (such as the military strategist). The spectrum of agency may then shade into the intentional action of subaltern figures and the unintended actions of the sentient individual (each immersed in, and acting in the context of, sometimes opposition to, social structures).5 The latter figure may include those usually classed as ‘civilians’ or auxiliaries in time of war, in a process that has been described as the ‘weaponization of the civilian category’ by which men and women are brought voluntarily or unwillingly into combat and other activities, and increasingly form the bulk of the casualties of war.6 Agency may also be conceptualized on a more collective, relational level, in the actions of networks, in various configurations of actors that can be broadened beyond the human agent to include other organisms, things, and forces, without sentience as a pre-requisite.7 Such an approach can bring new perspectives to military history, deflating ‘great man’ theories and revealing the influence of a range of actors in interconnected webs of activity, subverting ‘familiar forms of power’.8 Influential models have been provided by actor network theory (ANT) and the work of Bruno Latour and John Law, as well as Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s ideas of assemblage, incorporating animals and objects as inter-related agents.9 The ‘object-oriented ontology’ of Graham Harman has recently pushed the idea of the object beyond even the boundaries defined by action or materiality, while others have sought to move beyond the idea of the agent as the master manipulator of resources and suggest how ecological, biological and environmental factors interact to produce change.10 By questioning of the contours of agency in this way, it is possible to gain a better understanding of how industries, economies, and individuals may be imbricated into the fabric of war. New possibilities also arise to reconsider the role of animals or indeed of objects in the history of war.11 In the first place, animal labour may be forced like the labour of humans,12 but the place of animals in the history of warfare and the means by which the animal body and animal behaviour affect military tactics and outcomes still require 5 For a brief introduction to the agency/structure debate see Munslow, 23–26. 6 Wilke. 7 Nash. 8 Nash, 68. 9 Latour, Reassembling the Social; We Have Never Been Modern; Law. See also Pearson. 10 Harman; Steinberg. 11 For example, see ‘War through Other Stuff’. 12 Eg. Hribal, ‘Animals are Part of the Working Class’; Fear of the Animal Planet.

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sustained scholarly attention, despite the recent ‘animal turn’ in historical studies and some scholarship on animals and modern warfare, particularly during the First and Second World Wars.13 The role of horses, including the affective and practical relationship of the horse and rider working in ‘unity’, has perhaps received most attention from medieval and early modern scholars of animal history. This topic has obvious relevance for the history of war, and Sarah Cockram’s contribution to this volume also reveals a wide array of other beasts with key roles in conflict, including oxen and dogs, which can further be understood through the socio-organizational paradigms of war.14 Since John Ellis outlined his ‘social history of the machine gun’ scholars have begun to show how objects or instruments of war were adopted or resisted according to the play of social and political priorities as much as with respect to the claims for greater technological efficacy.15 It has been recognized most recently that the spread of knowledge and especially the quantification of space and time have been as important to such innovation in war as the spread of financial capital, mobile labour and the related growth of state power.16 This dynamic relationship is explored here by Cristiano Zanetti and Catherine Fletcher in their essays on the engineer and the handgun respectively. The ‘virtual reality’ of Renaissance military engineering created by ‘superior craftsmen’ is well-known, but these engineers were also involved in economic warfare (for example, cadastre-related surveying for taxation) and, like Janello Torriani (ca. 1500–85), in the construction of instruments of intelligence, such as planetary automata and astronomical clocks used for war prognostications.17 As Catherine Fletcher suggests, the development of the hand-gun as a weapon simple and small enough to be especially mobile and covert raised fears about the spread of violence through society, and even the spectre (and reality) of female hand-gunners who would find their agency without the need for any training.

War and the State The essays in this collection focus on shadow agents during the years ca. 1400–ca. 1600, a period that has usually been considered crucial in military 13 Eg. Baldin. 14 Davis, The Medieval Warhorse; DiMarco. 15 Ellis. 16 Black. 17 Zanetti, 4 (quoting Edgar Zilsel).

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history and in the related process of state formation and imperial expansion. As the sociologist Charles Tilly (1929–2008) famously put it: ‘War made the state, and the state made war’.18 The bellicist argument that it was primarily war that made states draws on Weberian models that emphasize the importance to the state of a monopoly of legitimate violence. It has also been marked by the examples of centralized higher-capacity states which were thought to have emerged by ca. 1700 with large standing armies supported by extractive processes including taxation, and administered with complex military institutions, technologies and practices.19 This argument has overlapped with the military revolution debate as well as the notion of the ‘civilizing process’ by which the state codified and suppressed socially unacceptable forms of violence and promoted a militarized and internalized ‘social discipline’ on society.20 Charles Tilly’s socio-historical model is helpful to this volume in the way that it highlights how a broad spectrum of violence and violent actors might underpin state formation. Recent scholars have also emphasized the diversity of agents and causes that might be at work in state formation and challenged Weberian models of the state. These scholars argue that struggles over judicial and territorial authority, as much as military power, shaped the state and provoked military expansion. They furthermore argue that the instruments of state power were often weak and stress the ‘composite’ rather than ‘absolute’ nature of early modern monarchies.21 These lines of thought have important ramifications for this volume since they bring into the foreground the interaction of ideas, institutions and actors which have previously been neglected or marginalized in accounts of war and state formation, and they suggest how those traditionally considered non-state or non-military agents may be relevant, or even central to this question.22 Some of these points may be illustrated with reference to discussions of ‘militarism’. In its narrow sense this concept encompasses the values and ideals of military personnel but can also be more broadly understood to underpin a ‘militarized’ society or state through recruitment, quartering of troops, taxation, organization of supplies and labour, and creation of fortress 18 Tilly, ‘Reflections on the History’, 42. 19 Tilly, 73–74; ‘War Making’. For a helpful overview of the contributions of sociologists and historians to this topic see Gunn, Grummitt, and Cools, ‘War and the State’. 20 Elias; Oestreich. For a corrective to ‘civilizing’ views see Carroll. 21 Thompson, War and Government; ‘“Money, Money, and Yet More Money”’, 288; Elliott. 22 Gunn, Grummitt and Cools, War, State and Society; Gunn; James; Spruyt. On ‘irregulars’ and the state see Davis and Pereira.

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cities deemed necessary for war.23 The dynamic relationship between civil and military spheres has been variously presented in terms of the Weberian model of the state monopoly of legitimate violence; the Clausewitzian model of a balanced interaction of people, army, and government; and, more recently, in terms of the rapprochement between soldiers and society involving a fusion of military and civil spheres through the expansion of the ‘war zone’ and ‘total war’ or by a complementary demarcation of priorities and responsibilities.24 Studies of the modern military as a ‘total’ institution largely separated from society have now been challenged by work which shows how closely soldiers, even when they were theoretically sequestered in barracks, could be enmeshed with wider society in spatial and cultural terms.25 A considerable body of work has addressed this entanglement in early modern Europe, although largely attending to the impact of armies on wider society.26 This collection aims to redress the balance of enquiry and to show how shadow agents should be viewed alongside the soldiers who brought their ‘social baggage’ into war and their bellicose swagger into society.27 The exploration of the shadowy boundary between soldiers and civilians along these lines has already produced some reconceptualization or expansion of traditional categories. For example, the military or ‘campaign community’ has been expanded to include women and children (sometimes called, with a pejorative edge, ‘camp followers’),28 as well as ‘all the unarmed and all the impediments’ of a military camp like carpenters, smiths, horseshoers, stone-cutters, engineers, herdsmen, workers and suppliers described and illustrated by Niccolò Machiavelli in his Art of War (1521).29 A recent study of the aristocratic, well-connected and often heavily indebted ‘military enterprisers’ who provided troops and supplies in the seventeenth 23 Regan. 24 For an overview see Cornish. For some stimulating thoughts see Wilson, ‘Was the Thirty Years War a “Total War”?’. 25 Goffman; Loriga. 26 Tallett; Grimsley, and Rogers; Charters, Rosenhaft and Smith. 27 Wilson, ‘Defining Military Culture’. 28 Lynn. 29 Machiavelli, The Art of War, 124 (6.69–71). Note also the place in the battle order of ‘waggons [or baggage] and [those who are] unarmed’ shown in ibid., 172 fig. 4, 176, and the locations of private and public artisans, herds, and provisions in camp illustrated in ibid., 175 f ig. 7, 177. Machiavelli’s interlocutor in this dialogue refers in each case to the Roman army as a means to draw lessons for contemporary military practices and even mis-cites Josephus on the well-trained ‘mob that follows the camp so as to profit’ which was ‘useful in battles. For they all knew how to stay in their orders and to fight while keeping them’. Ibid., 49 (2.170).

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century has suggested a further revision to the model of the fiscal-military state in which the monopoly of legitimate violence was exercised through direct control of the state’s agents by outlining the close and persistent relationship between state and private networks in early modern Europe.30 The state’s reliance on local communities or actors for military contributions could founder on regional economic or political priorities and demands. Such tensions are illustrated in the case of Venetian reliance on its mainland empire nobles for military expertise, examined in Stephen Bowd’s contribution to this volume.31 Moreover, the relationship between the state and local agents of war was not simply bipolar (i.e. running between centres and peripheries), and the so-called ‘new’ military historians have built on the work of social, cultural, gender and labour historians to move attention beyond once-dominant institutions, centres, and figures, such as commanders and condottieri.32 This scholarship has shown how the networks of contractual relationships between subjects, rulers and armed forces operated on the ground in ways shaped by a dense web of established labour relations, feudal privilege, military competencies and entrepreneurial resource management. For example, work on the role of the central state in the territory of Venice, or in Viscontean or Sforza Lombardy, has now been balanced with studies of the work of non-state agents or local communities as they negotiated with each other, as well as with the metropole, to manage the military structure, meet ordinary and extraordinary expenses, and to supply labour in the form of soldiers or sappers.33 The role of the war agent as a go-between was critical to this activity and merits greater attention.34 While the herald, as John Gagné’s chapter reminds us, was the professional go-between par excellence, other shadow agents also served as communicators and intermediaries, moving between patrons and clients.35 Agents (or brokers as they have sometimes been called) have primarily been considered in relation to state building or ‘cultural transfer’, and their activities should also be analysed more attentively with respect to war.36 Indeed, it is clear from many of the contributions to this volume that like the agents of information, art objects, or goods which 30 Parrott, The Business of War; Wilson, ‘Was the Thirty Years War’; Fynn-Paul, ’t Hart, and Vermeesch. Compare Iordanou. 31 Glete; Thompson, ‘“Money”’, 288–90; Ongaro. 32 Citino; Bourke. 33 See, principally, Ongaro; di Tullio. See also Buono; Rizzo. 34 Hofele and von Koppenfels. 35 Eisenstadt and Roniger. 36 Kettering, Patronage; Patrons, Brokers; Fuchs and Trakulhun; Keblusek and Noldus.

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have already been well studied, the shadow agents of war were also highly networked and embedded in complex supply lines. Moreover, they were rarely confined to a single professional cadre or profession and were often valued by their patrons for an ability to move adroitly between different tasks or for their expendability, as in the case of Ioanna Iordanou’s spies.37 In a similar way, scholars of new diplomacy have complicated and expanded our understanding of the diplomat’s role and shown that the absence of an official mandate often granted unattached individuals the ability to ingratiate themselves into local networks, adopt native cultural codes, and open new lines of communication inaccessible to ambassadors who had to conform to stricter ritualistic and hierarchical behaviours.38

Economy and Labour The emphasis placed by proponents of the bellicist and military revolution theses on the contribution of war to the rise of the state in terms of fiscal extraction and ‘high capacity’ seems to have ample confirmation in the archives and in the large proportion of total expenditure most European states devoted to war.39 Mobilizing resources in this way involved a wide array of contractors, entrepreneurs, tax farmers and others whose activities have been increasingly scrutinized. However, the contributors to this volume have largely ignored such figures and financial systems, instead favouring individuals and networks whose labour tended to fall into the shadows. In this way, they contribute to discussions about the changing nature of work (both of humans and of animals) viewed in terms of the coercion, commitment, or compensation which drove it, and in terms of the end to which it was directed. In particular, contributors consider coerced and unpaid work as well as activities, including the application of thought, which might directly or indirectly transform resources for military exigencies.40 These various deployments of labour – often mobilized outside the purview of state sponsorship – not only allow us to investigate a larger ensemble of players than we usually consider, but they may also encourage historians to rethink our obsession with the state. Perhaps we pay it too much attention. 37 Cools, Keblusek, and Noldus. See Iordanou’s contribution to this volume. 38 Krischer and von Thiessen; Watkins. 39 Bonney. 40 Mocarelli and Ongaro, chap. 1.

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The contributors suggest how individual engineers, spies, spice-dealers and bell-ringers, as well as corporate bodies, could all be drawn unexpectedly, intermittently (and sometimes fatally) into ‘war-related activity’. As Victoria Bartels reminds us in her contribution to this collection, the slave and the convict rowed side by side in the Medicean war galleys, and their costs required some accounting by the state, as did the work of those forced to labour on many of the grand-ducal projects of the period. This slave economy, based on trading and raiding, has long been at the heart of warfare and in its Christian-Islamic form marked the early modern Mediterranean world. The related practice of ransoming has also been widely prevalent but the precise mechanics of this process and the relationship among ransomed, ransomers, and other shadow agents in Italy and beyond remain largely obscure despite a relative abundance of evidence. 41 For example, when a character in Machiavelli’s play Clizia (1525) recounts how the eponymous heroine was brought back to Florence ‘as plunder’ (la preda) by a French soldier following the invasion of Naples in 1494, might this suggest a form of enserfment that could arise during the Italian Wars (1494–1559) when ransoms were not forthcoming, or was Machiavelli simply being faithful to his ancient source text?42 War might bring economic benefit to some and in William Caferro’s words might act as ‘a shadow agent of [the] economy’ in the pre-modern era. 43 Caferro has built on the insights of Robert Lopez, John U. Nef, and Fritz Redlich to reveal the distinctly ‘ad hoc’ tangle of bureaucratic bodies which worked to secure supplies and labour for war in trecento Florence, and to demonstrate how war aimed to extract economic advantage using tax breaks and immunities to secure allies, or exemptions from duties to favour artisan suppliers. 44 Equally, as Caferro notes, war might purposely and directly damage the economy of the enemy. The English chevauchées or raids which inflicted violence on French civilians and their property during the Hundred Years’ War may have been a means of underlining the weakness of the Valois monarchy by demonstrating its failure to protect its people or to defeat the English in battle. The devastation of the countryside therefore went beyond the pillaging simply required to keep an army on the move (and may even have damaged supply lines) and amounted to a 41 Ulbricht; Contamine. For some examples of ransoming during the Italian Wars, with references to sources, see Esposito and Vaquero Pineiro; Bowd, 88–92. 42 Machavelli, Clizia (1996), 8–9 (I.1); Clizia (1548), sig. [Aiiiii]r. See Cavaciocchi. 43 Oral contribution to ‘Shadow Agents of War’. 44 Caferro, ‘Warfare and Economy’; ‘Military Enterprise in Florence’, 20. See also McFarlane; Redlich; Nef.

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form of economic attrition harmful to the French treasury. 45 Similarly, as Neil Murphy’s contribution shows, forced migration and strategies of depopulation brought severe economic consequences to conflict zones, as well as impacting the lives of displaced men, women, and children, and in doing so served an important military need and a necessary prelude to colonization. It was such destructive effects and failure to add ‘use value’ that led Chris and Charles Tilly to deem the actions of soldiers as ‘anti-work’. 46 However, taking the broader view of work as labour which transforms resources for a particular need, like the English razing villages in the Boulonnais discussed by Murphy, then such actions deserve attention in this light. Soldiers may also be compared with shadow agents through the ways in which they were governed, like other workers, by forms of labour relations that may be analysed in terms of coercion, commitment and compensation understood as income, duration of service and legal constraints. 47 Historians of labour have noted how soldiers’ work may be compared in this way with the work of non-combatants in early modern Europe. For example, long-distance seasonal workers such as sixteenth-century Dutch dike builders were sometimes thought to require military-style discipline, while groups like navvies were riven by nationalism, driven by the rewards of plunder, and organized in a military fashion like soldiers. At the same time, early modern military service did not preclude continuing involvement in crafts while the labour of sappers was hardly different from that undertaken by peasants in the course of their rural labours. 48 Machiavelli’s main interlocutor in his Art of War recommended ‘peasants who are used to working the land’ as the best soldiers, and observed of soldiers who were normally smiths, carpenters, farriers and stone-cutters: ‘It is useful to have many of these because their art is quite worthwhile for many things, since it is a good thing to have one soldier from whom you take a double service’. 49 This nexus of state, war, economy and labour has been enriched by analyses of gender dynamics.50 For example, contemporary models and practices of household and estate management for noblewomen in France 45 Rogers, 56–63. 46 Tilly and Tilly, 23. 47 Zürcher; Lucassen. The labour of soldiers is not considered in Ehmer and Lis. 48 Lucassen, 179, 181, 183, 186; Caferro, ‘Warfare and Economy’. For the autobiography of a seventeenth-century barber-surgeon who continued to practice in military service see Dietz. 49 Machiavelli, Art of War, 26 (1.194–97). 50 Hallenberg; Connell and Messerschmidt.

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and Italy encompassed many war-related activities and meant that they ‘constituted and represented … the warrior class’.51 As Brian Sandberg shows in his contribution to this volume, femmes fortes (strong women) who managed and directed artillery forces played a vital role in the French Wars of Religion, assisting in the organization of military campaigns, sieges, and relief attempts. Similarly, the ‘two-supporter’ model of spousal contribution to the household which has emerged from studies of early modern work, including that of soldiers’ wives, points towards a productive and socially-inclusive model for reframing military history, while some historians of the early modern household stress ‘thinking in terms of “open houses” or networks [in a way which] highlights movement, mobility, migration, and work opportunities that offered themselves to men, women, and children outside, or in the interstices between, household’.52 The contemporary judgment applied to the unlearned expertise of such skilled, but formally untrained, working women within, outside or between households may be compared with the common early modern presentation of female martial skills in a narrow or naturalized fashion.53 More broadly, in recent years as women have moved into more central positions in the study, as well as the practice, of warfare, the relationship between gender and war has also been reappraised in ways which have enormous importance to the shadow agents project.54 As Laura Sjoberg has put it: Often, people at the margins of global politics, particularly women, are affected by the socially, politically, and materially destabilizing impacts of wars long before they are declared and long after the shooting stops. Who counts as party to the war? Is it only the people and/or states who choose to make wars, or everyone who is involved in or impacted by wars? Often, the people who choose to make wars are not the only ones, or even the primary ones, who are affected by the fighting of those wars.55 51 Finley-Croswhite; Neuschel; Sandberg. 52 Ågren, 8. 53 O’Day. On 9 Mar. 1500 Isabella d’Este wrote to her husband the marchese of Mantua with a report of military intelligence that she had collected regarding the attempt by Ludovico Sforza, deposed duke of Milan and husband of Isabella’s late sister, to retake the city from the French. Nevertheless, she defers to her husband on military matters ‘because about [these things] you are learned and I am ignorant’. Este, no. 201. 54 Goldstein; Hacker and Vining; DeGroot and Peniston-Bird. 55 Sjoberg, 17.

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The ‘experience’ of war, in these terms is often much broader than a focus on political or military actors suggests, and Sjoberg argues that ‘gender makes war and war makes gender’.56 As Carol Cohn has similarly observed, ‘war and gender … [are] mutually constitutive’57 with war both drawing on and producing ideas about gender, as well as interacting with, reflecting or shaping broader social, political, or cultural structures of power relations.58 Gender can ‘encode’ power and powerlessness in war in a variety of ways, for example by means of gendercide or the slaughter of males and enslavement of women, or by acts of male and female rape which disempower men by attacking their manliness directly, or through control or subjection of wives and relations, or as a consequence of an imagined femininity, or in female words and gestures calculated to shame ‘cowardly’ men into action.59 In sum, notions of separate military and civilian spheres, or of male and female roles demarcated by combat roles, can be collapsed to open up space for the analysis of shadow agency. This wide-angled approach to the ways in which women were involved in warfare reveals how roles, occupations and institutions were inflected and socially constructed by gender, and it illuminates gendered symbolic discourses about war and peace, weaponry, and nationalism. For example, the activities of women as warriors or foragers or in other roles which blur the line drawn between civilian and combatant, raise questions about the laws and practices of war which have in the past and continue to presume that women cannot take up arms and are therefore to be classed with those groups given what might be called civilian immunity.60 Stephen Bowd’s contribution to this collection builds on all of these theoretical insights and historical revisions of the role of women in war to reveal how household and estate management f itted many women in Renaissance Italy for military management. His chapter on the Brescian noblewoman Alda Pio Gambara also shows how critical family ties and identity were for her agency, and illuminates the challenges faced by a powerful state like Venice in its attempt to monopolize the use of violence or offer protection to its subjects along the lines suggested by Tilly and others. 56 57 58 59 60

Sjoberg, 18, 24. Cohn, ‘Women and Wars’, 1. Cohn, 4. Cohn, 10; Strickland; Milligan; Goethals. On the gendering of the concept of the civilian see Carpenter.

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Agents and Civilians As attention to gender suggests, the category of ‘civilian’ is a highly unstable one and Hugo Slim, Head of Policy at the International Committee of the Red Cross, has recently suggested that while ‘rights holders’ are ‘more central to considerations of war than ever before’, the notion of ‘civilian agency’ has been eroded.61 Of course, the emergence of the civilian as a category to be distinguished from combatants and freighted with legal rights or protections is a markedly modern phenomenon most obviously enshrined in the 1949 Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War.62 But viewed in the long run of European history it is possible to see how it has been much more common for legal authorities simply to note some select groups which might be exempted from harm on a variety of specific grounds: clergy and pilgrims specially protected by the higher authority of the Church; peasants cultivating the land and vital to the needs of society; women and children deemed naturally ‘innocent’ or considered physically unable to fight; the old and the lame also regarded as generally useless in combat. In fact, such exemptions were more honoured in the breach than the observance as armies came across the children and women of besieged towns foraging for food and slaughtered them with little compunction, seeming to have regarded all subjects of the enemy as fair game.63 In their turn, townspeople, as well as peasants, might resort to arms and to guerrilla tactics to protect their crops or their homes from armies. It is clear, as Christine de Pizan wrote in ca. 1410, that those deemed to have given ‘aid and comfort’ to the enemy could be killed, and that even those who did not bear arms might be collateral damage. As she put it rather conventionally, ‘weeds cannot be separated from good plants, because they are so close together that the good ones suffer’.64 Moreover, moral and practical considerations meant that refugees, old men, children, and women (including prostitutes) might be expelled from a town by their fellow citizens in order to conserve supplies and perhaps encourage divine 61 Slim. More broadly on civilian immunity and its fragility, see Neff; Coates. 62 What follows here draws on Bowd, chap. 4. 63 Anonymous, 49–50. 64 Pizan, 171–2 (3.18). The probable source in this case was Giovanni da Legnano, 224–9. The parable of the tares (Matt. 13:24–30), or weeds gathered up among the wheat, was also cited by some fifteenth- and sixteenth-century just war theorists when they discussed the inevitability of collateral damage among innocent civilians: Reichberg, Syse, and Begby, 325, 364. For the parable’s application to early modern theories of religious toleration see Zagorin.

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favour. Gerry Milligan relates in his contribution to this volume that the fate of these ‘useless mouths’ was often dire and prompted some remarkable literary debates in early modern Italy which have resonances with discussions about political identity and the elimination of ‘useless eaters’ during the Holocaust.65 The medieval emphasis on establishing the just grounds for war ( jus ad bellum), considered as both a divine punishment on sinful humans and a means to remedy human sins, gave princes a very wide latitude of action indeed and engendered wars in which there was little or no sense of symmetry or equality between sides.66 The relative neglect of the conduct of war ( jus in bellum) in legal or theological works, and in other discussions of the art of war penned by Renaissance humanists or soldiers themselves, only very gradually reversed as the sacral character of war receded and a less one-sided and indiscriminately punitive view of non-combatants began to emerge after ca. 1700. At the same time, legally separate spheres or states of war and peace were elaborated and by the middle of the nineteenth century jurists, politicians, and military men were involved in developing rules for the conduct of war which sought to protect combatants, including the figure of the prisoner of war, from a range of harms including torture and death, ransom and forced labour, gas and other selected weapons of war. In sum, the bellicist model and its critiques together offer a useful lens through which to view this topic of pressing scholarly and public interest. Just as the increase of civilian casualties in war, genocide, ‘total’ war, and the potential for mass human destruction which emerged in the twentieth century helped to define the civilian as a protected group and focused study on their experiences, so now that the state’s monopoly of legitimate violence has more recently been eroded and an array of ‘irregular’ forces and ‘shadowy, intermittent confrontations’ or states of violence have arisen, so our attention is increasingly drawn to the shadow agents of war studied by the contributors to this work.67 Even the seemingly abstruse reflections on space by Deleuze and Guattari have influenced the ‘multidimensional warfare’ and ‘inverse geometry’ of military actions by the Israel Defense Forces in urban settings like Nablus where they have determined that the line between civilians and combatants is in constant and rapid flux.68 65 Kwiet. 66 For some illuminating discussions of this matter see Rodin and Shue. 67 Pereira, 392; Gros. 68 Weizman, chap. 7.

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Outline of Work Some aspects of the premodern history of shadow agents of war, such as the topic of women and warfare, have already received scholarly attention.69 Historians of the French Wars of Religion (1562–1629), the Dutch Revolt (1568–1648), and the Thirty Years’ War in Germany (1618–48) have led the way in examining the relationship between military and civil spheres most productively, notably with respect to the role of women, but also in relation to guerrillas and pioneers, bureaucrats and other administrators.70 By contrast, although Italy has been viewed as a crucible for the development or testing of new military technologies, including artillery and the defensive bastion, and also as a proving ground for state development in which military power and the exercise of war played critical roles, there has been relatively little work on civilians and other shadow agents.71 Until quite recently the study of war, culture and society has provided a plethora of local studies or has focused on linguistic, literary or artistic expressions of military matters.72 More recently, studies of heralds, prisoners of war, the organization of local communities for war, as well as a broader history of civilians in the Italian Wars, indicates a growing interest in the question of military-civil relations, the militarization of society, and the place of shadow agents of war in the formation of fiscal-military regional states.73 The work of the scholars collected in this volume is often, but not exclusively, addressed to the nature of shadow agents in the Italian Wars. These wars of dynastic ambition were initiated by the invasion of the French king Charles VIII in 1494 and prolonged by the leading powers of Europe who were attracted by the wealth of Italy and the opportunities afforded by a generous array of Italian princes, republics, and other states keen to form alliances and best their rivals. The international nature of this conflict was reflected in the composition of armies which were far from nationally homogenous (although it appears that the membership of squadrons and billeting may have been arranged on ethnic lines),74 and of course by the movement across regional or national frontiers by soldiers and shadow agents. 69 For example, see Ailes; Fabre-Serris and Keith. 70 Finley-Croswhite; Neuschel; Sandberg; Wilson, ‘German Women and War’; Wilson, Europe’s Tragedy; Glete. 71 Pieri; Chittolini; Aubert; Pepper and Adams. 72 Hale; Verrier, Les Armes de Minerve; Le Miroir des Amazones; Fontana et al.; Fontaine and Fournel; Franceschini; Luzzati. 73 Gagné; Tucci; Jalabert; ‘Gendering the Italian Wars’. 74 For billeting along national lines in Marseille in 1523 see de Valbelle, 1:122–3; 2:130.

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Comparisons of the experience of a range of shadow agents in Italy with that of their counterparts in France, Scotland, or elsewhere in Europe are made possible by the contributions of Neil Murphy (on refugees), Sarah Cockram (on animals), and Victoria Bartels (on galley convicts and slaves) to the first section on the ‘unwilling agents’ embroiled or forced into war. Both Catherine Fletcher (on arms suppliers) and Cristiano Zanetti (on engineers) place the organizers and suppliers of war in the context of international supply chains, while John Gagné (on heralds) pursues the manner of declaring war and the objects employed to certify the opening of hostilities. William Caferro (on shadow bureaucracy) and Ioanna Iordanou (on spies) outline the organizational parameters and personnel of war in Florence and Venice respectively. In the final section, Stephen Bowd (on female ‘military management’), Gerry Milligan (on literary reflections on the gendering of the ‘useless mouths’ expelled from besieged towns), and Brian Sandberg (on women and artillery during the French Wars of Religion) offer three new perspectives on the experiences of women in war, raising questions of agency, identity and the construction of military and political power.

Future Research Many agents remain in the shadows. If the development of organizations and the effective use of resources for the sake of war involved coercion and close co-operation with civilians and a variety of political solutions including the state, it could also involve the murkier worlds of ‘predation’ and ‘racketeering’, as Charles Tilly observed.75 Guerrillas, bandits, militias and other ‘irregulars’ or semi-private and private armies figure in many accounts of war, but their role and the nature of ‘small war’ more generally has often been obscured or dismissed as insignificant in relation to the general thrust of a military campaign even though they form part of the story of the development of state monopolies of violence and protection as much as ‘military enterprisers’.76 The clergy were prohibited from shedding blood and theoretically immune from harm, but in practice they acted as diplomats, go-betweens, spies (like the unfortunate friar Paolo Biscotto in 75 Tilly, ‘War Making’, 127. See also Lane, ‘National Wealth’; ‘The Economic Meaning of War and Protection’; Venice, 125. 76 Parrott, ‘The Military Enterpriser’; Black, 231–33; Wilson, ‘Defining Military Culture’; Wilson, Europe’s Tragedy, 278, 310, 401, 500, 533, 688, 767, 784, 792, 837–38; Pepper, esp. 195–201; Davis, ‘The Renaissance Goes Up in Smoke’.

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Ioanna Iordanou’s essay), and even took to the battlefield.77 In the internationalized wars and polyglot armies of the Renaissance the translator must have carried out a crucial task, still little understood.78 Jewish traders and lenders of goods and money also played important roles. For example, noble families equipped and managed squadrons of soldiers and sappers with the help of Jews, and lent money at interest – directly or through Jewish intermediaries – to local communities expected to provide for their own defence; soldiers naturally pawned helmets or pieces of armour or goblets, lengths of cloth and other goods (perhaps plundered) for short-term, often small loans.79 Children in modern warfare have received considerable attention, but their role in conflicts in other eras remains little known even though the bearing of arms often marked the formal entry into adulthood or youth and shaped youth fraternities.80 It is clear that children played vital roles on and off the battlefield and given their relative physical frailty have been affected more severely than other groups by developments in military technology.81 And what about veterans? For most early modern combatants the experience of war might be brief, but it offered an experience of labour migration or ‘cross-community migration’ that might shape their subsequent behaviour and outlook in ways harmful, useful or even ‘innovative’ within society, the economy and the state.82 Finally, at the microscopic end of the scale the infectious microorganism or agent might be said to have had the greatest impact on society in times of war and has indeed been considered in global terms as acting in tandem with conflict to alter human history.83 This raises the question of scale and it makes sense to view many shadow agents and sources as part of transregional and even global systems of exchange, interaction, entanglement which could 77 Jalabert and Simiz. A Franciscan friar sent to encourage the commander in Pavia to surrender in 1524–25 reportedly made appeals to his sense of honour and urged him to avoid a massacre and sack of the town. In response the commander threatened to hang the friar by his belt and ordered him to return to the French camp with the message that he would rather endure a thousand deaths than betray his lord: Taegio, sigs. Fv-Fiiiir. 78 Karttunen; Fontaine and Fournel. 79 On Jewish moneylenders and pawnbrokers protected by the Gambara family in the Bresciano see Guerrini, with letter partially quoted at 1036. On soldierly resort to Jewish moneylenders see, for example, Carpi; Gamba, 25 (1488 list of pawns); and Caferro, ‘Warfare’, 191–92. On the lease of goods to soldiers by Jewish dealers in the seventeenth-century Padovano see January and Knapton, 39. 80 Mitterauer, 55–58, 123–24, 169–72. 81 Cohn and Goodwin-Gill; Wessells; Rosen; Milton; Ronald; Barclay, Hall, and MacKinnon. 82 Lucassen and Lucassen, quoting Patrick Manning at 351. 83 Cohn, Epidemics; Green; Campbell.

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also converge upon, or diverge from, local identities.84 Milanese armourers exported their wares to the East, where an array of warlike goods were sought for expanding and technologically-innovative armies.85 In return, Ottoman weaponry and tactics made their way into Europe and military theorists like Niccolò Machiavelli developed critiques of European military practices which drew on such global examples in a process of translation and hybridization.86 More generally, as noted above, the binary models of centre and periphery or territory and frontier which have sometimes marked discussions of the construction of the fiscal-military state have been complicated by global historical methodologies, as have narratives of the evolution of early modern warfare which follow Eurocentric models of ‘great’ war versus the ‘primitive’ raiding associated with the rest of the world.87 There is also a need to deepen and broaden the array of sources from which scholars may draw. For example, as Linda Fibiger has noted the bioarchaeological record is ‘more inclusive’ than the written record in terms of gender and age distribution and may well render children, women and animals more visible.88 There have been a number of archaeological investigations of gravesites, many of them mass burials, related to medieval and early modern European battles: Naestved (1344), Visby (1361), Towton (1461), Uppsala (1520), and Lützen (1632). These skeletal remains provide many clues about types of weaponry and conflict, the prevalence of violence and the demography of warfare, and the nature of burial practices as they may have varied between soldiers and civilians; clues which are often corroborated by textual or other non-textual evidence.89 For example, the elderly and the young – who might not be considered among the expected demographic for combatants – do feature among the local people massacred at Visby. One of the mass graves related to the siege of the town of Alkmaar in 1573 contains female skeletons, a relatively larger number of older adults, and fewer signs of degenerative disease and healed ante-mortem injuries than the second mass grave. The osteological evidence suggests that the latter contains local men who undertook strenuous activities and had been injured in the past in contrast with the civilian victims of the siege, including female defenders of this type who were often noted by chroniclers. 84 Conrad; Gerritsen; Johnson, Sabean and Trivellato. 85 Necipoğlu. 86 Machiavelli, Art of War, 41, 58–59, 73 (2.81–84, 284–304; 3.123). See also the translator’s comments at ibid., xxxii–xxxiii, 195–200, 217–19. On hybridization see Burke. See also Najemy. 87 Charters, Houllemare, and Wilson. 88 Fibiger. 89 Bennike; ‘Medieval Massacre’; Nicklisch et al.; Curry and Foard.

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But the osteoarchaeological evidence may only take us so far. The chroniclers of the Italian Wars, and other conflicts, describe extensive torture of civilians and a range of killing methods from hacking and blunt weapons to falls from a height. In some of these cases skeletal trauma may be evident, but even if graves in sites of massacre and sack were to be discovered and excavated it would be very difficult to determine whether infra- or post-cranial injuries (e.g. femoral shaft fractures) were the result of conflict, while archaeologists also warn of the difficulties involved even in detecting such trauma on poorly-eroded surfaces of bone (never mind the trauma inflicted on soft tissue).90 In a similar way, the work of literary scholars on gender and the poetry of war or on the influence and interaction of battle narratives, needs to be brought into closer dialogue with historical research.91 Such verses contain many references to the plight of non-combatants, and frequently drew on or shaped contemporary chronicles and histories of war.92 At the same time, as Cristiano Zanetti notes in his essay, the productions of astrologers, which often crossed between text and image, may be mined for valuable evidence of their role as shadow agents, influencing the decisions of those commanding troops or wielding weapons. The words of combatants themselves should be carefully examined given that most were probably new to war and unlikely to live under military conditions for very long, and certainly not for any significant part of their lives.93 Their records may also bring to light the tavern owners, innkeepers and others who received weapons as pawns from soldiers, or otherwise supported their endeavours.94 The new history of war which brings in women as military managers or in other roles within artisanal households should also lead to closer attention to caches of letters, account books and other materials which have been entirely unexamined but which can reveal how women acquired and exercised knowledge of military matters. It is notable, for example, in the case of Alda Pio Gambara explored here by Stephen Bowd, how her involvement with armourers is recorded in her letters but elided in the more masculine 90 For a good discussion of varieties of bone trauma see Nicklisch et al. 91 Milligan; Alazard; McLoughlin. 92 For example, Soranzo, which provides a translation of the poem Chrysopeia (1515) in which the poet and alchemist Giovanni Aurelio Augurello refers to the destruction of the lawyer Bologni’s country house by troops in 1511: bk. 2, 603–9, while at 610 he compares refugees to Venice to those early refugees who fled Attila (and founded Venice). See ibid., 65. See also Borgo. 93 In addition to Dietz, see Martinez. 94 Caferro, ‘Warfare’, 191. The Swiss soldier Peter Falk sent letters home from Italy during the campaign of 1512–13, but these remain largely unedited: Zimmermann.

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domain of the family account books. Sources such as Books of Secrets and recipes can also broaden the traditional source base of military history to reveal secretive tactics of Renaissance warfare and provide specialist commentary on practices such as the use of invisible ink or disguising the appearance of a spy.95 The writings of military surgeons, rich in battlefield case histories, also stand to reveal more about the technical innovations that war pushed medicine to develop.96 Finally, the imagery of war which can aestheticize or otherwise shape views of conflict may exclude civilians and other shadow agents. Further work will therefore build on new methodologies and evidence, for example of objects of cultural power including armour and guns, to help us see the full picture of war and culture.97 This is especially important given the closely intertwined roles of artist and engineer or surveyor in the production of plans for fortifications and military maps (Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo), or artists as diplomats (Peter Paul Rubens) or as quasi-diplomatic agents (Gentile Bellini) during the early modern period. In conversations in Rome in ca. 1538 Michelangelo reportedly linked painting closely with the exigencies of war, noting the military commander’s desire for maps of the terrain and plans for battle arrays, and he claimed that this coincidence of war and painting was far from casual: ‘And what country under the sun is there more warlike than our Italy, or where there are more continual wars and great routs and fiercely pressed sieges? And what country is there under the sun where painting is more esteemed and prized?’98 It is worth noting, by the way, that Francisco de Hollanda, who reported these words, had been sent to Italy and France by the Portuguese king primarily to view and sketch fortifications.99 As the historian Valentin Groebner has argued, the Renaissance image of violence in war has helped to shape modern representations of conflict.100 Modern accounts of war have also been shaped by many classical, medieval and Renaissance tropes or traditions, but the place of shadow agents in such narratives has not always been recognized. As civilians find themselves in the front lines of modern conflict and form the majority of casualties of war, as war between states is replaced by states of war or violence, and as non-state actors take on war-related roles, these shadow agents have 95 Della Porta, bks. 16 and 20. 96 The bibliography here is vast. See, in the first instance, Mounier-Kuhn. 97 Groebner; Springer; Nethersole; Bendall. See Fletcher’s contribution to this volume. 98 de Hollanda, 103–5. Compare Castiglione, 173 (1.49). 99 Tavarés da Conceiçao, 148 n. 21. 100 Groebner.

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moved to the forefront of our thoughts. Consequently, the shape of the relationship between war and society in the past has begun to change and to assume a messy, fragmented, entangled appearance that has very little in common with older histories in which the large part of society simply stood by and observed as armies headed to the front, fled from the hungry and marauding soldiery, or were merely massacred.101 In short, this collection takes shadow agents from the side lines to the fray, and by doing so changes our understanding of both. In answer to the question posed at the beginning of this Introduction, ‘What was the military in the early modern period?’, it is possible to agree with the scholar who recently answered that question by asking: ‘What wasn’t war in the early modern period?’102

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Ellis, John. The Social History of the Machine Gun (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986 [1976]). Esposito, Anna, and Manuel Vaquero Pineiro. ‘Il Sacco di Roma (6 maggio 1527–febbraio 1528) nelle carte dei notai capitolini’, in 1527: Il Sacco di Roma, edited by Sabine Frommel and Jérôme Delaplanche (Rome: Campisano Editore, 2020), 27–38. Fabre-Serris, J., and A. Keith (eds.). Women and War in Antiquity (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015). Fibiger, Linda. ‘“A Great Fury”: Bioarchaeological Considerations of Women and Violence during the Irish Confederate Wars’, at ‘Women, Weapons, and War Workshop’. Finley-Croswhite, S. Annette. ‘Engendering the Wars of Religion: Female Agency during the Catholic League in Dijon’, French Historical Studies, 20 (1997): 127–54. Fontaine, Marie Madeleine, and Jean-Louis Fournel (eds.). Les mots de la guerre dans l’Europe de la Renaissance (Geneva: Droz, 2015). Fontana, Alessandro, Jean-Louis Fournel, Xavier Tabet, and Jean-Claude Zancarini (eds.). Langues et écritures de la République et de la guerre: Études sur Machiavel (Genoa: Name edizione, 2004). Franceschini, Fabrizio. Storie di eroine pisane: modelli narrativi, discorso storico, tradizioni popolari; col maggio ‘Paola da Buti’ di L. Cosci ed i bruscelli ‘La battaglia di Marti’ e ‘La discesa dei barbari’ di S. Soldani ([Pisa]: Nistri-Lischi and Pacini, 1987). Fuchs, Thomas, and Sven Trakulhun (eds.). Das eine Europa und die Vielfalt der Kulturen: Kulturtransfer in Europa 1500–1850 (Berlin: Berliner WissenschaftsVerlag, 2003). Fynn-Paul, Jeff, Marjolein ’t Hart, and Griet Vermeesch. ‘Introduction. Entrepreneurs, Military Supply, and State Formation in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Periods: New Directions’, in War, Entrepreneurs, and the State in Europe and the Mediterranean, 1300–1800, edited by Jeff Fynn-Paul (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 1–12. Gagné, John. ‘Counting the Dead: Traditions of Enumeration and the Italian Wars’, Renaissance Quarterly, 67.3 (2014): 791–840. Gamba, Aldo. Gli ebrei a Brescia nei secoli XV–XVI: Appunti per uno studio storico (Brescia: Il maglio, 1938). ‘Gendering the Italian Wars (1494–1559)’. n.d. Accessed 1 Aug. 2019. https://www. uwa.edu.au/projects/gendering-the-italian-wars. Gerritsen, Anne. ‘Scales of a Local: The Place of Locality in a Globalizing World’, in A Companion to World History, edited by Douglas Northrop (Oxford: WileyBlackwell, 2012), chap. 14. Glete, Jan. War and the State in Early Modern Europe: Spain, the Dutch Republic and Sweden as Fiscal-Military States, 1500–1660 (London: Routledge, 2001).

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Kwiet, Konrad. ‘Rehearsing for Murder: The Beginning of the Final Solution in Lithuania in June 1941’, Holocaust and Genocide Studies 12.1 (Spring 1998): 3–26. Lane, Frederic C. ‘The Economic Meaning of War and Protection’, in Venice and History: The Collected Papers of Frederic C. Lane, edited by A Committee of Colleagues and Former Students (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1966), 383–98. Lane, Frederic C. ‘National Wealth and Protection Costs’, in Venice and History: The Collected Papers of Frederic C. Lane, edited by A Committee of Colleagues and Former Students (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1966), 373–82. Lane, Frederic C. Venice: A Maritime Republic (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973). Latour, Bruno. We Have Never Been Modern, translated by Catherine Porter (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993). Latour, Bruno. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). Law, John. ‘Actor Network Theory and Material Semiotics’, in The New Blackwell Companion to Social Theory, edited by Bryan S. Turner (Chichester: John Wiley and Sons, 2009), 141–58. Loriga, Sabina. Soldats: un laboratoire disciplinaire; l’armée piémontaise au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2007). Lucassen, Jan. ‘The Other Proletarians: Seasonal Labourers, Mercenaries and Miners’, in Before the Unions: Wage Earners and Collective Action in Europe, 1300–1850, edited by Catharina Lis, Jan Lucassen, and Hugo Soly, supplement 2 to International Review of Social History, 39 (1994): 171–94. Lucassen, Jan, and Leo Lucassen. ‘The Mobility Transition Revisited: What the Case of Europe Can Offer to Global History’, Journal of Global History, 4.3 (2009): 347–77. Luzzati, M. Una guerra di popolo: lettere private del tempo dell’assedio di Pisa (1494–1509) (Pisa: Pacini, 1973). Lynn, John A. II. Women, Armies, and Warfare in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). Maffi, Davide. Il Baluardo della Corona: Guerra, esercito, finanze e società nella Lombardia seicentesca (1630–1660) (Bagno a Ripoli: Le Monnier università, 2007). Martinez, Miguel. Front Lines: Soldier’s Writing in the Early Modern Hispanic World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016). McFarlane, K. B. ‘War, the Economy and Social Change: England and the Hundred Years War’, Past & Present, 22 (1962): 3–18. McLoughlin, K. Authoring War: The Literary Representation of War from the Iliad to Iraq (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). ‘Medieval Massacre: The Battle of Gotland’. n.d. Accessed 22 Nov. 2019. https:// historiska.se/utstallningar/medieval-massacre/.

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Meumann, Markus. ‘The Military in the Early Modern World: A Critical Assessment’, in Meumann and Pühringer, 7–28. Meumann, Markus and Andrea Pühringer (eds.). The Military in the Early Modern World: A Comparative Approach (Göttingen: V&R unipress, 2020). Milligan, Gerry. Moral Combat: Women, Gender, and War in Italian Renaissance Literature (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018). Milton, Cynthia E. ‘Wandering Waifs and Abandoned Babes: The Limits and Uses of Juvenile Warfare in Eighteenth-Century Audiencia of Quito’, Colonial Latin American Review, 13.1 (June 2004): 103–28. Mitterauer, Michael. A History of Youth (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992). Mocarelli, Luca, and Giulio Ongaro. Work in Early Modern Italy, 1500–1800 (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). Mounier-Kuhn, Alain. Chirurgie de guerre. Le cas du Moyen Âge (Paris: Economica, 2006). Munslow, Alun. The Routledge Companion to Historical Studies (London: Routledge, 2006). Nabulsi, Karma. ‘Evolving Conceptions of Civilians and Belligerents: One Hundred Years after the Hague Peace Conferences’, in Civilians in War, edited by Simon Chesterman (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2001), 9–24. Najemy, John. ‘Machiavelli between East and West’, in From Florence to the Mediterranean and Beyond: Essays in Honour of Anthony Molho, edited by D. Ramada Curto, E. R. Dursteler, J. Kirshner, and F. Trivellato, 2 vols (Florence: L.S. Olschki, 2009), 2:127–45. Nash, Linda. ‘The Agency of Nature or the Nature of Agency?’, Environmental History, 10.1 (2005): 67–69. Necipoğlu, Gülru. ‘Süleyman the Magnificent and the Representation of Power in the Context of Ottoman-Hapsburg-Papal Rivalry’, The Art Bulletin, 71.3 (Sept. 1989): 401–27. Nef, John U. ‘War and Economic Progress, 1540–1640’, Economic History Review, 12.1/2 (1942): 13–37. Neff, Stephen C. War and the Law of Nations: A General History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). Nethersole, Scott. Art and Violence in Early Renaissance Florence (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018). Neuschel, Kristen B. ‘Noblewomen and War in Sixteenth-Century France’, in Changing Identities in Early Modern France, edited by Michael Wolfe (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997), 124–44. Nicklisch, N., F. Ramsthaler, H. Meller, S. Friederich, and K. W. Alt. ‘The Face of War: Trauma Analysis of a Mass Grave from the Battle of Lützen (1632)’, PLoS One, 12.5 (2017) doi:https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0178252.

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O’Day, Rosemary. The Professions in Early Modern England, 1450–1800: The Servants of the Commonweal (London: Longman, 2000). Oestreich, Gerhard. Neostoicism and the Early Modern State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). Ongaro, Giulio. Peasants and Soldiers: The Management of the Venetian Military Structure in the Mainland Dominion between the 16th and 17th Centuries (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017). Parrott, David. The Business of War: Military Enterprise and Military Revolution in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). Parrott, David. ‘The Military Enterpriser in the Thirty Years’ War’, in Fynn-Paul, chap. 3. Pearson, Chris. ‘History and Animal Agencies’, in The Oxford Handbook of Animal Studies, edited by Linda Kalof (2016): DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199927142.013.35. Pereira, Anthony W. ‘Armed Forces, Coercive Monopolies, and Changing Patterns of State Formation and Violence’, in Irregular Armed Forces and their Role in Politics and State Formation, edited by Diane E. Davis and Anthony W. Pereira (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), chap. 15. Péricard, Jacques (ed.). La part de l’ombre. Artisans du pouvoir et arbitres des rapports sociaux (VIIIe–XVe siècles) (Limoges: Presses universitaires de Limoges, 2015). Pepper, Simon. ‘Aspects of Operational Art: Communications, Cannon, and Small War’, in European Warfare, 1350–1750, edited by Frank Tallett and D. J. B. Trim (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 181–202. Pepper, Simon, and Nicholas Adams. Firearms and Fortifications: Military Architecture and Siege Warfare in Sixteenth-Century Siena (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986). Pieri, Piero. Il Rinascimento e la crisi militare italiana (Turin: Einaudi, 1952). ‘Pluralistic Memories Project: Preserving Oral History and Fostering Collective Resilience in Conflict-Torn Societies’. n.d. Accessed 9 July 2019. http://wp.unil.ch/pmp/. Redlich, Fritz. ‘The German Military Enterpriser and His Work Force: A Study in European Economic and Social History’, in Vierteljahrschrift fur Sozial und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 47–48 (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1965). Regan, Patrick M. Organizing Societies for War: The Process and Consequences of Societal Militarization (Westport, CT: Praeder, 1994). Rizzo, Mario. Alloggiamenti militari e riforme fiscali nella Lombardia spagnola fra Cinque e Seicento (Milan: Unicopli, 2001). Rodin, David, and Henry Shue (eds.). Just and Unjust Warriors: The Moral and Legal Status of Soldiers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). Rogers, Clifford J. ‘By Fire and Sword: Bellum Hostile and “Civilians” in the Hundred Years’ War’, in Civilians in the Path of War, edited by Mark Grimsley and Clifford J. Rogers (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002), 33–78.

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Zanetti, Cristiano. Janello Torriani and the Spanish Empire: A Vitruvian Artisan at the Dawn of the Scientific Revolution (Leiden: Brill, 2017). Zimmermann, Josef. ‘Peter Falk: ein Freiburger Staatsmann und Heerführer’, Freiburger Geschichtsblätter, 12 (1905): 1–151. Zürcher, Erik-Jan. ‘Introduction: Understanding Changes in Military Recruitment and Employment Worldwide’, in Fighting for a Living: A Comparative Study of Military Labour 1500–2000, edited by Erik-Jan Zürcher (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2013), 11–42.

II The Unwilling Agents of War

1

Refugees, Forced Migration and Henry VIII’s Conquest of France, 1544–46 Neil Murphy

Abstract Refugee crises in the modern era are often the products of wars launched against civilians and typically involve the targeted destruction of homes and sources of food. We find all these conditions present during the war King Henry VIII of England fought in France in the 1540s, which was directed against civilians. While historians have typically been reluctant to apply terms such as ethnic cleansing and forced migration to the medieval and early modern periods, this chapter situates the experience of the sixteenth century firmly in relation to modern examples of this type of warfare in order to give a common frame of reference for these concepts across different historical eras. Keywords: Henry VIII, France, England, refugees, violence, colonization

In the summer of 1544, the English monarch Henry VIII (1491–1547) invaded France with an army of almost 40,000 men and launched a brutal campaign against the civilian population of the Boulonnais. By the end of 1544 the region had been almost entirely depopulated. Many civilians were killed in direct attacks, though the bulk of the population was driven out of the Boulonnais by a scorched earth policy which was designed to transform the region into an artificial desert – devoid of people, buildings and sustenance. Initially taken for defensive considerations to protect his conquest of the town of Boulogne, with the conclusion of the war in the summer of 1546 Henry VIII introduced a colonial policy into these conquered lands and sought to re-settle them with his English subjects. This chapter focuses on fates of the tens of thousands of refugees who were driven out of the Boulonnais as a result of the Tudor monarch’s ambitions in France. It concludes

Bowd, S., Cockram, S. & Gagné, J. (eds.), Shadow Agents of Renaissance War. Suffering, Supporting, and Supplying Conflict in Italy and Beyond. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2023 doi: 10.5117/9789463721356_ch01

48 Neil Murphy

with some reflections on the wider significance of this material for later colonial projects. While a large body of literature examines the links between war and forced migration in the ‘Century of Refugees’ which followed the First World War in Europe, comparatively little work has been done on this topic for the pre-modern period.1 The bulk of the works on the links between war and early modern refugees focus on religious exiles, including the forced expulsions of groups such as the Sephardi Jews and Moriscos from Spanish Habsburg lands and the flight of religious groups such as the Huguenots and Anabaptists.2 There has been a reluctance by historians of pre-modern Europe to employ terms such as ‘ethnic cleansing’, an expression which came into wider usage in the 1990s following the atrocities in the Balkans and is used to describe actions taken to clear a territory of its people (or a particular group of people).3 Such twentieth-century manifestations of ethnic cleansing are typically seen as a direct product of modernity and thus not especially applicable to earlier ages: Norman Naimark, for instance, has described ethnic cleansing as ‘a product of the most “advanced” stage in the development of the modern state’. 4 Yet Henry VIII employed methods similar to those used in campaigns of ethnic cleansing in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries – including the burning of homes, hunting down of refugee populations, and destruction of archives – for essentially the same purposes: that is, to clear a territory of its indigenous population. While the histories of pre-modern refugees – especially poor refugees such as the peasants who formed the bulk of those affected by Henry VIII’s invasion of France in 1544 – can be hard to reconstruct due to a lack of written records, the wide range of contemporary sources detailing the English war in France allows us to study in detail the experience of refugees displaced from their homes for an extended period. In addition to the abundant Tudor sources, a range of continental materials provide further perspectives 1 This literature on warfare and refugees in twentieth-century Europe is vast. For prominent recent studies, see: Therr and Silijak; Bessel and Haake; Frank and Reinisch; Cohen; Ingram; Kushner. 2 Kaplan, Alternative Path, Religious Communities; Kaplan, ‘Legal Rights’; Wieglers and Garcia-Arenal; Terpstra; Muller; Janssen, Dutch Revolt, ‘Republic of Refugees’; Lachenicht, Hugenotten, ‘Empire Building’, ‘Refugee Protection’, Religious Refugees; Van der Linden; Israel; Magdelaine. Notable exceptions to this are recent works on the fate of the Jewish community in Poland-Lithuania during the 1648 Khmelnytsky rising and that of Protestant settlers in Ireland during the 1641 rebellion see: Teller; Darcy, Margey and Murphy; Ó Siochrú and Ohlmeyer. 3 In this way it is different from genocide, as forced removal rather than extermination is the aim of the violence – though there can be an overlap between the two. See: Lieberman. 4 Naimark, 4.

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on the fate of the displaced population of the Boulonnais. The records of French towns lying on the edges of the English conquest provide us with information about the influx of refugees into these places, while the records of the French crown highlight the impact the war had on the population of the Boulonnais. Most valuable amongst these are the records which reveal the effects on the rural population, particularly the inquests detailing the impact of the war on dozens of villages.5 Sources from the neighbouring Low Countries describe the consequences of the war for civilians, particularly those written by individuals living close to Saint-Omer, which lay on the edge of the conflict zone and was one of the principal reception centres for refugees from the Boulonnais.6 Finally, we have a direct testimony from at least one of the Boulogne refugees, Antoine Morin, in addition to a journal kept by Welsh soldier and member of the Calais garrison Elis Gruffydd (1490–1552), who fought in the conflict and wrote a detailed first-hand account of the war.7 Despite being an English soldier, he was sympathetic to the impact the conflict had on the population of the Boulonnais and he provides graphic accounts of the realities of war for the peasantry, which are so often absent from the military memoirs of this period, typically written by nobles concerned with glorifying their exploits in war. Beginning with a short discussion of the character of English violence in France during Henry VIII’s invasion of 1544, this chapter will use this range of evidence to examine the effects which the conflict had on the population of the Boulonnais. It provides new insights on the actions taken by men, women and children in response to the pressures placed on them during times of conflict. This information is especially valuable because – in contrast to the extensive information available to historians of modern conflicts – materials documenting these shadow agents of war, especially those from the lower social classes, are scantier for earlier eras of history.

Violence Henry VIII pursued a military strategy in France in the 1540s designed to inflict the maximum amount of damage on the peasantry of the Boulonnais. This was 5 Paris, Archives Nationales (AN), Série J 1016 and 1017; Brésin, 275–334. 6 Brésin; Rosny, ‘Documents’. 7 Morin; Gruffydd, ‘Boulogne’, Enterprises. Unfortunately, despite this variety of contemporary documentation, we get little sense – even in the testimony left by the refugees themselves – of how they constructed their own narratives of identity, rootedness, homeland and exile. For these aspects of the modern refugee experience, see: Malkii.

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achieved in part through direct violence and we find a number of massacres of villagers, especially in the early days of the conflict. For instance, men, women and children from the villages of Audinghen and Petinghem who had sheltered in their churches were killed by Henry’s soldiers.8 Yet direct killing only affected a minority of the population of the Boulonnais and it was the implementation of a scorched earth strategy which caused widespread death and deprivation. While the burning of crops and villages was a long-standing part of warfare, the scale on which the English employed it in the sixteenth century went beyond contemporary standards. The destruction of the land was carried out by English commanders such as Thomas Howard, earl of Surrey and from 1524 duke of Norfolk (1473–1554), whose campaign in northern France in 1522 was so destructive that seventy years later peasants still remembered it as ‘the year of the great fires’. In the following year, he was appointed king’s lieutenant for the war against Scotland and set about employing the methods he had used in France to deliberately depopulate targeted parts of the borders.9 Following Howard’s systematic wasting of the Scottish borders in 1523, Cardinal Wolsey (1470/71–1530) observed that Teviotdale and the Merse were so entirely ‘devased and distroied … that ther is left neither house, forteress, village, tree, catail, corn, or other s[ucc]or for man’, with the result that the population would be forced to flee the region and be reduced to begging or else remain and die of starvation.10 The implementation of this type of warfare reached its apogee under Henry VIII in France during the 1540s, when it was employed on an extensive scale to make the Boulonnais (a highly fertile and densely populated part of France) uninhabitable.11 Civilians were not simply passive victims of violence. Rather, they utilized a range of strategies to insulate themselves (and their families, friends and communities) from violence at the hands of soldiers. Certainly, the population of the Boulonnais acted in response to the English invasion of their lands. First, some peasants resisted the soldiers in the early stages of the war when it looked as if the English were only campaigning for the season and not attempting a longer conquest. However, this typically led to the killing of the villagers who were not equipped to defend themselves against large groups of soldiers. Second, peasants could seek to mitigate the violence by collaborating with the English and act as guides or sources of 8 Deschamps de Pas, 123; Rosny, ‘Documents’, 404–5; Brésin, 179–80. 9 Rosny, ‘Enquête’, 364. 10 Kew, UK, The National Archives (TNA), State Papers (SP) 1/28, fol. 184v (Letters and Papers [L&P], 3: no. 3281). 11 This impression is confirmed in contemporary accounts of the region: Morin, 260; Deseille, 46.

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local information. Some peasants offered information such as details about routes across the land and locations where other villagers had concealed their goods. One Tudor soldier notes that men from the village of Alquines, the population of which was threatened with death, ‘were a great help in directing the host from there towards Montreuil’, while another English soldier noted how some ‘French Boyes’ helped the Spanish mercenaries fighting for Henry VIII find ‘greate botyes hydde in the grounde’.12 Yet the English went beyond seeking information about the location of goods to plunder (an action common to all warzones of the period) and sought instead to find out the remote locations to which villagers had fled. This was unusual behaviour as while peasants regularly fled to remote locations to hide from invading armies, soldiers did not normally go to the effort of pursuing them. It was not in soldiers’ interests to slaughter fleeing villagers given that pillaging was the principal motivation behind their attacks. It was easier to loot goods from deserted villages because there was no resistance to deal with. Yet in 1544 English soldiers took great efforts to hunt down and kill or drive out populations who had fled to remote places. They found many of the villages deserted, such as Wacquinghen where they found ‘the inhabitants fled … leaving the houses and mansions empty’.13 In some case, the elderly or infirm had been left behind undoubtedly because they were unable to travel or survive the privations of living in woods. These people were thus especially vulnerable, and the English pressed them for information about the locations to which their fellow villagers had fled. Elis Gruffydd reports that coming upon a village ‘they found only an old woman who told them after much trouble’ where the rest of the villagers had gone, possibly suggesting the use of force against her to obtain that information.14 Gruffydd also went on to note that Howard had a ‘sick crippled old man’ brought to him in a cart so that he could learn how to gain entry into the cave network where the villagers were sheltering.15

Displaced Populations Upon abandoning their villages, peasants could escape to a castle, though anything short of a major fortress could not hope to hold out against the 12 Gruffydd, Enterprises, 15; Leslie, 192. 13 Gruffydd, ‘Boulogne’, 52. 14 Gruffydd, ‘Boulogne’, 48. 15 Gruffydd, 49. On refugees sheltering in caves during times of war, see: Bowd, 96–97, 95, 175.

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scale of the English military presence in the region. Yet even flight to strong castles was perilous during wars of conquest. When Henry sought to extend his conquest further into France in May 1545, peasants who fled to the major stronghold of Hardelot found themselves at the mercy of the English when the castle fell.16 Fleeing to anywhere but a well-fortif ied major town was perilous. In 1544, the population of the Boulonnais fled to towns in neighbouring parts of France and the Low Countries such as Amiens, Arras, Saint-Omer and Senlis. Yet rural populations had to live close enough to a major urban centre to ensure that they could reach the security of its walls before being caught by the invading army. As such, escape to a well-defended town was impossible for many. Moreover, it was desirable to ensure that the town to which they fled did not itself come under attack. Numerous people from the eastern Boulonnais sought shelter in Saint-Omer, which was filled with refugees during the summer of 1544. This town was ideal because it lay in the emperor’s dominions and thus was unlikely to be attacked by the English as Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (1500–58) was then allied with Henry VIII (although English soldiers did attack numerous imperial villages in Artois and the Boulonnais during the war). Many people left for the Somme towns of Abbeville and Amiens and those in Oise such as Senlis. Rather than abandon the region, other peasants poured into Boulogne which for many was the closest major fortif ied urban centre.17 During chévauchée style campaigns, when armies progressed rapidly through a territory in their drive to destroy as much as possible in a short space of time, flight to urban centres generally sufficed, as these expeditions were driven by speed and armies passed by places which could not be captured quickly. Yet whereas many believed at the beginning of the invasion of 1544 that the English would just launch another short campaign lasting a matter of weeks (as had happened in 1522 and 1523), in fact Henry was intent on achieving a lasting conquest of the Boulonnais which meant that it was necessary to capture the region’s major towns.18 To this end, Henry’s armies spent months besieging Boulogne and Montreuil. While he failed to capture Montreuil, Boulogne surrendered to him personally on 13 September 1544 (Henry had joined the siege of Boulogne in July 1544), placing both the 16 TNA SP 1/210, fol. 6r–v. 17 Le Roy, 22; Archibold, 504, 506; Gruffydd, Enterprises, 55. Peasants also died while guarding the walls of Boulogne, along with women, children and members of the clergy: Morin, 142. 18 For the initial view by the French that Henry VIII was only there for a short campaign in 1544, see: Gruffydd, Enterprises, 18.

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townspeople and the large number of peasants who had fled there at the mercy of the English monarch.19 Even beyond the risk that their chosen town of refuge would fall, refugees were in a precarious situation. They had to provide for themselves and their families, which was difficult because the panicked nature of flight from war zones meant that there was often little time to gather up goods and possessions – many of which, as we saw above, were buried in the hope of being able to return quickly. Indeed, the experience of war in northeastern France meant that migrations were typically only short-lived, with peasants expecting to be able to return to their villages within weeks or months. Beyond this consideration, the burying of goods was common because refugees were prime targets for plunder. There were tens of thousands of soldiers in the Boulonnais in September 1544, English and French, as well as thousands of mercenaries from across Europe, who were fighting on either side of the conflict. During the war of 1544, French soldiers pillaged the populations of villages in the Boulonnais, many of which had already suffered at the hands of the English. While Henry VIII granted mercy to the population of Boulogne when he captured the town and permitted its inhabitants to leave with their goods, these people were later attacked and plundered by Henry’s soldiers as they made their way to Abbeville, where they were then driven away (probably because they were now destitute and unable to support themselves).20 Even those who escaped plunder could have to abandon their goods in the water-soaked roads and fields of the Boulonnais, which was afflicted by especially severe weather at the very time when the bulk of the refugees were on the road.21 Many peasants had little food or money to bring with them in the first place. This situation was made worse because food prices rose during times of conflict, particularly when, as happened in 1544, the English destroyed crops and slaughtered livestock, while the French king ordered the harvest in the surrounding regions to be gathered early or destroyed. Although relief ships with supplies of food were sent to Étaples, these were for French soldiers rather than the general population. Further strain was placed on local food supplies when the English then launched an attack on Étaples specifically to destroy these relief ships.22 The Saint-Omer chronicler Louis Brésin noted that 19 For capitulation of Boulogne, see: TNA SP 1/192, fols. 71r–73r (L&P, 19.2: no. 222); Morin, 255; Bertrand, 1:109; TNA E30/1480 (L&P, 19.2: no. 218). 20 Morin, 63, 143, 245, 248, 252, 256. 21 TNA SP 1/192, fol. 137v (L&P, 19.2: no. 270). 22 TNA SP 1/207, fol. 59r (L&P, 20.2: no. 264).

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the price of grain had risen steeply in the area surrounding the conflict zone, which intensified the effects of the burnings because towns in this region were filled with refugees from the Boulonnais.23 In all, 270 out of the 300 houses in the village of Verton were destroyed by Irish kern (light infantry) during the war ‘and the inhabitants had been taken or killed by the enemy, others were dead from disease or poverty and the rest constrained to go and beg in neighbouring towns’.24 The village of Rollencourt was destroyed by the English in July 1544 and the population fled to Saint-Omer, leaving the village abandoned.25 As food supplies ran low, the prices increased and put it beyond the reach of many. In these circumstances displaced populations had to find other ways to find sustenance. During the siege of Boulogne, for instance, peasants were forced to come out of the town at night to forage for food, with the result that many were caught and killed by the English.26 The influx of hundreds or thousands of people placed pressure on urban populations which were already suffering from the impact of the war, a situation which could led to refugees being refused admittance to towns.27 As we saw above, families who fled to Abbeville following the fall of Boulogne were driven away from the town. Abbeville lay on the edge of the theatre of conflict and the English had burned right up to its suburbs, which may have made its population less keen to accept further people. Certainly, the scale of the refugee crisis in northeastern France in the mid-1540s created major problems for towns across the region. At Amiens, the influx of refugees from the Boulonnais led to the collapse of the city’s poor relief system and caused the municipal council to organize a procession of the poor so that the ‘inhabitants of the said town can see and understand the great number of them [the poor] and have compassion for them’.28 Town governments and other civic institutions were left to deal with this refugee crisis on their own and there was no macro-level institutional response to the crisis from either the French crown or the Church, a situation which stood in contrast to the situation in earlier conflicts. For instance, during Edward III’s (1312–77) wars in France in the mid-fourteenth century, which were also highly destructive and aimed at civilian populations, both the French monarch and the Church supported displaced peoples. King Philip 23 Brésin, 190. 24 Brésin, 293. 25 Brésin, 286. 26 Archibold, 504, 506; Gruffydd, Enterprises, 55. 27 For the pressure the war placed on Amiens in the summer of 1544, see: Amiens, Archives Municipales (AM Amiens), BB 25, fols. 50r–67r. 28 AM Amiens, BB 25, fol. 137v.

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VI of France (1293–1350) compensated those expelled from Calais in 1347 following its fall, while Pope Benedict XII (1285–1342) funded emergency relief schemes to feed the inhabitants of the parts of northern France that the English destroyed in 1340.29 In contrast to the papacy’s actions in the fourteenth century, individual religious institutions were left to respond to the refugee crises in the 1540s. For instance, the Soeurs Grises of Amiens were given money by the town council to help provide food and shelter for people from the Boulonnais who had sought refuge with them.30 Beyond financial pressure of having to deal with large numbers of poor refugees without additional support, there were other reasons to turn refugees away. In particular, the armies fighting in the Boulonnais in 1544 brought a severe outbreak of plague in their wake which persisted in the region throughout the decade. Certainly, Amiens’ municipal deliberations show that cases of plague first appeared in the town by October 1544 and soon developed into a major outbreak, which necessitated the implementation of further expensive measures to combat the disease.31 Refugees were especially susceptible to disease because of the dire conditions in which they were forced to live. Upon the English invasion in 1544, flight to fortified towns was not an option for many rural dwellers for a variety of reasons and instead they fled to the woods and set up makeshift camps, as seen in the example of the village of Groffliers. Oudart du Biez (1475–1553), admiral of France, who was leading the defence of the Boulonnais, wrote that the combined effects of French, English and Irish soldiers in 1544 had forced the population of the village of Groffliers to live in the woods ‘like wild beasts’.32 His account is confirmed by the official investigations made into the impact of the conflict on peasant communities after the war, which describes how the inhabitants of Groffliers fled to the woods and sheltered in huts. Those who had not been killed by English and soldiers died from starvation or disease, leaving fewer than five people from the village’s population alive.33 The experiences of the people of Groffliers were typical of those of villages right across the region. Even in circumstances in which populations situated on the edges of the warzone were able to return to their villages because the English had not marked them out for conquest, conditions remained very difficult. For instance, the village of 29 Carolus-Barré. 30 AM Amiens, BB 25, fol. 84r. 31 AM Amiens, BB 25, fols. 86r, 106v–107r. 32 Du Biez quoted in Potter, Picardy, 213. 33 Brésin, 293.

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Clarques had fewer than ten people by 1545, and they were living in huts because their houses had been wrecked. The villagers were unable to provide food for themselves because the land and livestock had been destroyed.34 Yet for the population of the Lower Boulonnais – the highly fertile lowland region which the English had marked out for conquest (in contrast to the poorer Upper Boulonnais) – returning to their homes in early 1545 was not possible because the war was ongoing and the English kept this region barren and depopulated. During the conquest, English soldiers searched remote hiding places in the woods specifically to drive out the populations hiding there, with one soldier noting that he had ‘clensed the Woode’ of the people residing there – in other words the population had been killed or driven out.35 The villagers of Alquines turned a cave system into a hidden refuge. While this could be effective for a short period while an army passed through a region, it was of limited use in a war of conquest – which we see clearly when we compare the English invasion of the Boulonnais in 1522 with that of 1544. When Thomas Howard invaded the Boulonnais in 1522, he marched quickly through the region destroying as much as he could. While the villages Howard burned in 1522 were deserted, he took no efforts to pursue their inhabitants as he sought to progress through the territory quickly. In contrast, when he returned to the Boulonnais at the head of another army in 1544 and again found deserted villages, he took his time to hunt down the communities and drive them from their hiding places. For instance, Howard halted his entire army specifically to spend three days trying to assault, smoke out and then mine the population of the small village Alquines from their hiding place in the caves. Similarly, residents of the Scottish borders, a region which was lacking in walled towns, fled to remote hiding spots in the hills where they waited until the English had finished burning their villages. Yet the wars Henry VIII launched in this region were also aimed at depopulation, and in 1523 Thomas Howard employed 600 border horsemen from Northumberland to hunt the Scots in their remote hiding places and kill or drive them away.36 In 1542, Sir Ralph Eure (d. 1545) wanted to attack Coldstream Priory specifically to kill the men, women and children who had fled there from the surrounding region.37 Similarly, in France in 1544 the peasants of the Boulonnais fled to their village churches and many were killed as they sought shelter. A monk 34 35 36 37

Brésin, 329. Leslie, 189. London, British Library (BL), Cotton MS Caligula B/VI, fol. 374r–v (L&P 3.2: no. 3321). Bain, 1:xciii.

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from the abbey of Cysoing (which lay close to the conflict zone) recorded that during the English invasion of 1544 ‘in many places the poor people were burned in their bell towers’.38 As a result of the English drive to depopulate the Boulonnais, the population was forced from their homes and hiding places, and refugee columns traversed the roads leading out of the region. The Welsh soldier and member of the Calais garrison Elis Gruffydd, who was sent from the siege of Montreuil back to Boulogne, provides a graphic account of the appalling conditions amongst the refugees he passed on the road, which is worth quoting in full: [W]e saw a young and old people at two or three points along the road, who cried piteously in God’s name for the help of a piece of bread to keep alive some of little ones who were dying for want of food. One of the men who was with me went towards one of the women who was able to stand on her feet and offered her money telling her to go with it to buy bread until God sent more, to which she replied “God in heaven what should I do with money or anything else but bread and only a little of that so that we can eat it now, because we do not dare to store it for fear of the wild men, who if any of them get any bread or money from any of us beat us and batter us so that it would be better for us to be buried alive than to hear this banishment and live in this wretchedness. Therefore, I pray God to take us from this world in time or for the earth to open and swallow us alive”. After this we rode to the township of Neufchatel passing two or three in the same state on the way who gave us the same answers. Their words and appearance would have made the hardest heart melt in tears from pity at seeing as many as a hundred people, old and young, with not one healthy man among them, but all shivering with ague, and death in their faces from the scarcity and lack of bread to strengthen them.39

Gruffydd also provided a vivid account of the impact adverse weather had on these refugees, who were without shelter and exposed to the elements. He states that [T]here was a pitiful look on many sober men and women [walking along the road from Étaples] who were in great sadness, anger and affliction, conveying what good they had with them and especially their children of whom there was a large number, some so young that their parents 38 Rosny, ‘Documents’, 405. 39 Gruffydd, Enterprises, 28.

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had to carry them in their arms and on their backs, others fainted while walking because it was so wet that there had not been one dry hour for ten days. I was looking at them going on their way along the road leading from Étaples to Abbeville which lies four miles to the west of the camp at Montreuil. We came here from the camp and watched them going each as best he could and they lay down for the night in the ruins of a church and village which we had burnt a short time before. Many both old and young died there of cold. 40

Gruffydd’s first-hand account of the effects on war on civilians is borne out by numerous other contemporary sources. 41 For instance, Antoine Morin, one of the Boulogne refugees, writes that they were unable to find any shelter from the incessant rainfall because of the total destruction of the buildings in the region, while the Saint-Omer monk Louis Brésin writes that the refugees passed through a land that had been entirely burnt and depopulated, while many refugees drowned in rivers swollen by the heavy rains. 42 A range of contemporary sources clearly show the disproportionate effect that war had on the women, children and old people who were especially prominent in the descriptions of the groups of refugees. According to the laws of war (and the Statutes and ordynances issued to English soldiers in 1544), these people were beyond violence.43 Yet the conditions of the war the English waged in the sixteenth century saw entire populations labelled as rebels who were resisting their rightful king, Henry VIII. Thus peasants who barricaded their village church against English soldiers could be slaughtered, as could towns and castles which did not surrender when called upon to do so (we have numerous accounts of English soldiers – several of them written by the perpetrators themselves – killing women and children during the Tudor monarchy’s wars in France, Ireland, Scotland and the Low Countries). Yet the extent to which these laws of war covered refugees was uncertain. Despite the fact that Henry VIII had permitted the population of Boulogne to exit the 40 Gruffydd, 67. 41 As a Welsh soldier who knew well the impact of the English conquest of Wales under Edward I (1239–1307) in the late thirteenth century, Gruffydd may have felt particularly sympathetic portrayal towards the civilian population of the Boulonnais. More widely, he consistently displays a compassionate attitude towards the poor in his journal. See: Gruffydd, 2. 42 Morin, 260. This is conf irmed by Thomas Howard who notes that refugees going from Boulogne to Étaples drowned as they attempted to cross rivers swollen by heavy rains: TNA SP 1/192, fol. 137v (L&P, 19.2: no. 270). 43 Statutes and ordynances. For the laws of war and civilians, see: Bowd, 115–45.

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town at its surrender and thus spared them the violence of a sack, they were attacked further along the road by the English monarch’s soldiers. Women and girls, in many cases forming the bulk of refugees, were especially vulnerable and there are numerous accounts of rapes of displaced peoples. Women who exited Boulogne with other refugees were raped along the road to Étaples and Abbeville.44 Sexual violence was not restricted to English soldiers. For instance, women and girls from the imperial village of Humereuil died as a result of the injuries they sustained while being raped by French and Italian soldiers during Francis I’s (1494–1547) conquest of the region in 1537.45 Beyond the actions of individual soldiers or groups of soldiers in attacking refugees, there is also evidence that it was wider English policy to attack displaced persons. A monk from Cysoing (a village lying just beyond the conflict zone) wrote that numerous refugees fled there in 1544 because of a rumour that the English commanders had ordered the killing of men, women and children in the Boulonnais. 46 He states that when the English recruited soldiers in the Low Countries they made these men take an oath to kill women and children. 47 While it is easy to dismiss such reports as exaggerations or rumours, the nature of the warfare prosecuted in the Boulonnais meant that soldiers were ordered to kill traditional non-combatants, including women and children. From the perspective of English commanders in France there could be compelling reasons to kill women and children, particularly when they were supporting the enemy’s war effort, and there was a prevalent view that the populations living in camps in the woods were helping French soldiers, which further encouraged English soldiers to hunt them down and drive them out of the region. This highlights that these refugees were not just the passive victims of violence at the hands of soldiers but were employing their own strategies against the English invaders. Evidently, the English feared the threat from these populations and were thus determined to use violence to remove this threat. Certainly, the English had long encountered significant resistance to their invasions of France from peasant populations, including during Henry V’s (1386–1422) occupation of Normandy in the early fifteenth century. 48 Yet the desperate condition in which refugees found themselves placed them under threat from all soldiers (English, French and Imperial) and they 44 45 46 47 48

Bertrand, 101–2; Paradin, 290. Brésin, 279. Rosny, 404. Deschamps de Pas, 123; Rosny, 405. Allmand, 229–40; Wright, 87.

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provided information to all parties in a bid to avoid violence. For instance, a French woman (who had first been expelled from Calais in 1543 along with all those deemed to be ethnically French, and then forced to live in the woods of the Boulonnais when war broke out there in 1544) was discovered by a band of English troops, following which she advised them ‘to beware of going any further into the wood or the country, because every bush and brake in that district was full of soldiers who had come there suddenly from the Dauphin’. 49 As peasant women were particularly vulnerable to molestation at the hands of soldiers, the provision of information gave them a means to seek to avoid assault.

Returnees and Newcomers By the end of 1544, the English had driven the native population out of the Lower Boulonnais. They kept this region depopulated and devastated until June 1546, when an Anglo-French peace brought an end to the war and conf irmed Henry VIII’s possession of the lands he had conquered in the Boulonnais, which were now annexed to his English crown and became as much a part of England as Northumberland or Hampshire (this was in contrast to his actions in 1513 when he conquered Tournai and ruled it for f ive years as king of France). As noted above, the wars which afflicted this region in the mid-sixteenth century, while causing major displacement to local populations, had typically been of the kind which allowed peasants to return to their villages after a short period. Yet English policy towards the region meant that this dislocation lasted for years. It is diff icult to trace systematically the places where the population of the Boulonnais fled to during this time. Some of the wealthier members of Boulogne established themselves in the town of Desvres, and it is likely that other wealthy merchants were able to relocate elsewhere. We know that f ishermen from coastal settlements of the Boulonnais moved to Dieppe and Rouen and tried to establish themselves there. Yet it was diff icult for refugees to begin new lives in new lands, and following the peace of June 1546 the f ishermen from the Boulonnais appealed to the Tudor regime at Boulogne to be able to return to their former homes and take up their own trade again in return for becoming subjects of the English crown.50 49 Gruffydd, Enterprises, 30. 50 TNA SP 68/13, fol. 54r (Calais Papers, 301).

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With the conclusion of the war in June 1546, attention returned to the status of the original population of this land. Margaret of Savoy, regent of the Netherlands, reminded Henry VIII that even in circumstances in which territory had changed hands it was customary at the conclusion of a war for the original inhabitants to be permitted to return to their homes. She gave the example of Hesdin and its surrounding territory which Francis had conquered from Charles V in 1537 and then permitted the native population to return.51 Yet the English replied that Henry held the Boulonnais by the right of conquest and was not obliged to restore them to their former owners ‘such being the custom of England’.52 As Henry VIII wanted to create an English colony in the lands he had conquered in France, he refused pleas for the native population to return and began leasing out the lands he had conquered to his English subjects.53 However, economic necessity eventually forced Henry to modify his goal of having an entirely ethnically English colony. This was largely because the prospect of relocating to lands on a military frontier initially proved unpopular with his English subjects, while the commercial farmers who did take up lands in France required a labour force to till the fields. Accordingly, Henry permitted some of the native peasantry to return to the Boulonnais in the summer of 1546, though this was only a fraction of the original population. Out of a pre-conquest population of perhaps 50,000 people, 462 French peasants were readmitted to the Boulonnais by 11 August 1546.54 The opportunity to return to their farms was undoubtedly attractive as many of those who survived the war of 1544–46 would have been living a precarious existence. The English commissioners responsible for overseeing the resettlement of the Boulonnais emphasized that the French were prepared to pay considerably higher rents than the English for land in the Boulonnais.55 While the French would pay higher prices because they hoped to have the farms they had held before the conquest returned to them, the English gave them no say in the matter. For the Privy Council, the return of the French was unavoidable if these lands were to be farmed; yet, the preferred outcome was for Henry’s English subjects to settle this territory. The Privy Council told the Boulogne 51 TNA SP 1/219, fol. 118r-v (L&P, 21.1: no. 950). 52 Calendar of Letters (CSPSp), 8:449. To which Margaret instructed her ambassador to respond that ‘if such has been the custom in England itself, it cannot be allowed to extend to this side of the sea, where a different custom prevails’: CSPSp, 8:449. 53 State Papers (StP), 11:181, 185, 193. 54 TNA SP 1/223, fol. 88r (L&P, 21.1: no. 1444). 55 TNA SP 1/223, fols. 88v–89r (L&P, 21.1: no. 1444).

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commissioners that ‘the best husbandry is to get willing Englishmen to replenish the ground’ and that ‘the Picards [the blanket name the English gave the native population of northeastern France] … shuld be placed not at ther desier’ but as the commissioners think best ‘and then making ther othe to the kings majestie for want Englishmen to have land at suche price as the comissioners can bargeine with them’.56 In other words, the commissioners were to extract as much rent as possible from the French in return for lands they did not choose, in addition to which they were expected to take an oath to a monarch who had driven them from their properties in the first place. Moreover, the English introduced strict ethnic laws into the Boulonnais in 1546 restricting the movement of the French and covering aspects such as marriage and the naming of children.57 These ethnic laws formed part of a wider concern to anglicize the frontiers of kingdom under the Tudor monarchs, with similar measures being adopted in both France and Ireland. The linguistic colonialism which the Tudor monarchy imposed on the ‘Picards’ (i.e., the members of the indigenous population who were permitted to return to work the land for English masters in 1546) was similar to that proposed for other European imperial states such as Spain, with Antonio de Nebrija arguing in 1492 that the Castilian language and the kingdom’s laws should be imposed on conquered populations.58 English settlers were concentrated in the western part of the Boulonnais, which was farthest from the frontier. As such, they were less likely to have their crops and houses destroyed during border raids. As well as farming highly fertile lands and having easy access to the coast, this was the most defensible part of the Boulonnais and it was where the English constructed the bulk of their fortifications. In contrast, the French were placed along the eastern and southern land frontiers with France. As this was the most vulnerable part of the Boulonnais, the people living there could be expected to take the brunt of any French attacks. Certainly, the violent conduct of Valois soldiers towards the rural population of Boulonnais following Henry II’s (1519–59) reconquest of the region in 1549 shows that the inhabitants of these lands could not expect to be spared molestation because they were ethnically French. Many of these soldiers harassed French peasants and pillaged their goods. From the perspective of Henry II’s soldiers, these 56 TNA SP 1/223, fol. 95v (L&P, 21.1: no. 1444). 57 These were based on the 1529 laws of Guînes, which operated in the English county of Guînes in the Calais Pale: TNA SP 1/52, fols. 197v–205v. 58 Greenblatt, 22–50; Nebrija, 3.

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people were the subjects of an enemy monarch. As such, the laws of war gave Valois soldiers the right to attack these French peasants and take their goods. Certainly, Henry II’s commanders found it difficult to restrain their soldiers from attacking the French population of the Boulonnais even after English rule came to an end in the Boulonnais in 1550.59 While these French peasants had suffered considerably at the hands of the English and were now being used as a bulwark against attacks from their former master, the king of France, the opportunity to return to their lands would undoubtedly have been attractive despite the dangers, especially given that those who survived the war would have been living a precarious existence after having been driven from their homes.

Conclusion The experience of the people displaced and driven from their homes during the Anglo-French war of 1544–46 formed one part of the conflicts which devastated this region between the 1520s and the 1550s. The populations of Artois, Picardy, the Boulonnais, Hainault and southern Flanders were the principal victims, and their populations were frequently forced out of their homes to flee for safety in other towns and remote places.60 Yet the English interventions in the war, first in 1522–23 and then again in 1544–46, produced some of the most severe examples of war against civilians in this region. When Thomas Howard first invaded the Boulonnais and Picardy in 1522, the imperial commanders who fought with him were uncomfortable with the severity of the scorched earth strategy he used against the region’s peasants, while Charles de Bourbon, duke of Vendôme (1489–1537), who led the defence of the Boulonnais, condemned Howard for waging a ‘very fowle warre’.61 Yet the war the English launched in the 1540s was even more severe and was aimed at achieving the entire depopulation of a region. While refugees were a common product of warfare, the scale and duration of the forced migration of the native people of the Boulonnais by the English was longer and more extensive than other conflicts in the region. Typically, an army would pass through the territory and populations of settlements on the route would flee to woods or neighbouring towns for weeks and then return to their villages again when the campaign was over. Yet the English 59 Hauttefeuille and Bénard, 1:286–87. 60 Potter, Picardy, 200–232. 61 BL, Cotton MS Caligula D/VIII, fols. 271v–272r (L&P, 3.2: no. 2541).

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achieved destruction of a much wider scale than these other campaigns and the war lasted years rather than weeks, in addition to which Henry’s commanders depopulated the region and kept it depopulated for years, which meant that hiding in the woods was not sustainable. Moreover, England’s colonial strategy meant that even after the war only very limited numbers of the original population were able to return and even then they could not go back to their homes but were given the worst lands in the most-exposed part of the region. Henry VIII’s children employed in Ireland the model their father had used in France in the 1540s. Expansion into the midlands of Ireland from 1549 led to the depopulation of Laois and Offaly and the influx of English settlers. While Scotland was not targeted for colonization, nonetheless thousands of families from the borders were forced out of their homes by a military strategy that was designed to target civilians. The English crown employed other methods of forced migration during this time. In 1549, Protector Somerset (1500–52) deported 1,000 peasants who had taken part in the rebellions that year to the colonies in France, while a similar scheme was proposed for Ireland.62 By the early seventeenth century, the crown was ordering the forced emigration of ‘unruly’ populations of the far north of England to the colonies then being implemented in Ireland.63 Henry’s actions in the sixteenth century meet the typology of twentieth and twenty-first century forced migrations put forward by Michel Agier in his influential study of modern refugee crises.64 Certainly, the methods the English employed in France continued to be used to cause depopulation and forced migration right through to the modern era. For instance, the influx of large numbers of Russian soldiers into population of East Prussia during the First World War forced the native population to flee the region or else hide in makeshift camps in woods and marches.65 To take a more recent example, the burning of villages, destruction of crops, use of scorched earth by a large occupying force, atrocities, mass expulsion and flight (f irst to remote places such as forest and then to neighbouring territories) all occurred in the late 1990s with the Serbian invasion of Kosovo.66 Indeed, we saw earlier a Tudor soldier employ the 62 TNA SP 10/9, nos. 47, 56 (Calendar of State Papers [CSPDEd], 150, 157). For these deportation schemes, see also: TNA SP 10/8, fol. 11r (CSPDEd, 122). 63 Spence, ‘Pacification’; ‘Graham Clans’. 64 Agier, 3–4. 65 See also the severe destruction of the region under the Red Army in 1945: Clark. 66 Bade, 320–3. On this type of violence and depopulation, see also: Kushner and Knox; Snyder, 334–58.

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word ‘cleansed’ to describe his actions in using violence to drive out the indigenous population of the Boulonnais in 1544. Moreover, in the same way that Serbian soldiers followed up their conquest by obliterating the written records of the native people by destroying archives, Henry VIII systematically burned all the records he found in the Boulonnais to erase written traces of French rule.67 Historians have seen many of the key episodes of the post-First World War forced migration of peoples by warfare as a consequence of state formation, whereby nation states were established behind fixed linear borders and those not part of the ‘nation’ were expelled. While the sixteenth-century context was in many ways very different from that of the twentieth century, nonetheless a similar process of state formation was occurring from the 1540s under the Tudor monarchy which was leading to major instances of forced migration. Whereas Henry VIII was happy to rule the French as the rightful king of France during his early campaigns in France (1512, 1513 and 1523), by the 1540s he had abandoned these efforts and instead annexed land to his English crown and established overseas colonies. While the development of linear frontiers is typically seen as a product of the later seventeenth century, Henry VIII sought to achieve this in the Boulonnais by making use of the latest scientific techniques in mapping. A line was drawn on a map of the Boulonnais and all the land behind it became part of England. Henry wanted this land populated entirely by his English subjects and only reluctantly admitted French peasants to return (and then in very limited numbers).68 Finally while the existing historiography on early modern forced migration tends to stress England’s role as a ‘terre d’exile’ which welcomed refugee populations from across Europe – whether this be the Dutch Protestants who crossed the Channel during the Eighty Years’ War (1568–1648) or the Huguenots who fled to London following the 1685 Edict of Fontainebleau – an examination of Henry VIII’s wars reminds us that English monarchs were responsible for driving tens of thousands of people from their homes and creating major refugees crises in France, Scotland and Ireland during the sixteenth century, using methods which they would subsequently export to the New World.69

67 Boulogne-sur-Mer, Archives Communales, 714, 973; Hauttefeuille and Bénard, 1:247; Haigneré and Deseille, i–ii. 68 BL Cotton MS Augustus I/II, fol. 77r. 69 Cottret; Parker; Esser; Gibbs; Pettegree.

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Bibliography Primary Sources Manuscripts

Amiens, Archives Municipales BB 25 Boulogne-sur-Mer, Archives Communales MS 714, 973 Kew, UK, The National Archives E30/1480 SP 1/28, 52, 192, 207, 210, 219, 68/13 London, British Library Cotton MS Caligula B/VI, D/VIII Cotton MS Augustus I/II Paris, Archives Nationales Série J 1016, 1017

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Bain, J. (ed). Hamilton Papers, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: HMRC, 1890–92). Brésin, Louis. Chroniques de Flandre et d’Artois par Louis Brésin. Analyse et extraits pour servir à l’histoire de ces provinces de 1482 à 1560, edited by E. Mannier (Paris: Dumoulin, 1880). ‘Calais Papers’, in Calendar of State Papers, Foreign Series, of the Reign of Edward VI, 1547–1553, edited by W. B. Turnbull (London: HMSO, 1861). Calendar of Letters, Despatches, and State Papers Relating to the Negotiations between England and Spain Preserved in the Archives of Simancas and Elsewhere, edited by G. A. Berengoth et al., 13 vols. (London: HMSO, 1862–1934). Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series of the Reign of Edward VI, edited by C. S. Knighton (London: HMSO, 1992). Gruffydd, E. ‘Boulogne and Calais. From 1545 to 1550’, edited by M. B. Davies, Bulletin of the Faculty of Arts of Fouad I University, Cairo, 12 (1950): 1–90. Gruffydd, E. Elis Gruffydd and the 1544 “Enterprises” of Paris and Boulogne, edited by J. Davies and translated by M. B. Davies (Farnham: Pike and Shot Society, 2003).

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Le Roy, C. (ed). Journal du siège de Boulogne par les anglais précédé d’une lettre de Henry VIII à la reine sur les operations du siege (Boulogne: Principaux Libraires, 1863). Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, 1509–47, edited by J. S. Brewer, J. Gardiner and R. H. Brodie, 21 vols., and Addenda, 2 vols. (London: HMSO, 1862–1932). Morin, A., ‘Chroniques du siège de Boulogne, en 1544’, Revue des sociétés savantes de la France et de l’étranger, 4th series, 2 (1875): 244–61. Rosny, A. de. ‘Documents inédits ou rarissimes, concernant les sièges de Boulogne 1544–1549’, Mémoires de la Société académique de l’arrondissement de Boulognesur-Mer, 27 (1912): 380–540. Rosny, A. de. (ed). ‘Enquête faite en 1578 par le maître particulier des Eaux et Forêts de Boulonnais’, Mémoires de la Sociéte académique de l’arrondissement de Boulogne-sur-Mer, 27 (1912): 344–77. State Papers Published under the Authority of His Majesty’s Commission: King Henry VIII, 11 vols. (London: HMSO, 1830–52). Statutes and ordynances for the warre (London: Thomas Barthelet, 1544).

Secondary Sources Agier, M. On the Margins of the World: The Refugee Experience Today (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008). Allmand, C. Lancastrian Normandy 1415–1450: The History of a Medieval Occupation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983). Archibold, W. A. J. (ed). ‘A Diary of the Expedition of 1544’, English Historical Review, 16 (1901): 503–507. Bade, K. J. Migration in European History (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003). Bertrand, P. J. P. Précis de l’histoire physique, civile et politique, de la ville de Boulognesur-Mer et des ses environs, 2 vols. (Boulogne: Le Roy, 1828). Bessel, R., and C. B. Haake (eds), Removing Peoples: Forced Removal in the Modern World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). Bowd, Stephen D. Renaissance Mass Murder: Civilians and Soldiers during the Italian Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). Carolus-Barré, L. ‘Benoit XII et la mission charitable de Bertrand Carit dans les pays dévastés du nord de la France (Cambrésis, Vermandois, Thiérache)’, Mélanges de l’école française de Rome, 62 (1950): 165–232. Clark, P. B. The Death of East Prussia: War and Revenge in Germany’s Easternmost Province (Chevy Chase, DC: CreateSpace, 2012). Cohen, G. D. In War’s Wake: Europe’s Displaced Persons in the Postwar Order (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).

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Cottret, B. Terre d’exile: l’Angleterre et ses réfugiés français et wallons, de la Réforme à la Révocation de l’Édict de Nantes, 1550–1700 (Paris: Aubier, 1985). Darcy, E., A. Margey, and E. Murphy (eds). The 1641 Depositions and the Irish Rebellion (London: Routledge, 2015). Deschamps de Pas, L. F. J. (ed). ‘Pièces d’extraites d’un manuscrit de la bibliothèque communale de Lille’, Bulletin historique trimestriel. Société académique des antiquaires de la Morinie, 1 (1852–56): 122–28. Esser, R. Niederländische Exulanten im England des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Duncker and Humblot, 1996). Frank, M., and J. Reinisch (eds). Refugees in Europe, 1919–1959: A Forty Years’ Crisis (London: Bloomsbury, 2017). Gibbs, G. C. ‘The Reception of the Huguenots in England and the Dutch Republic’, in From Persecution to Toleration: The Glorious Revolution in England, edited by O. P. Grell, J. I. Israel and N. Tyacke (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 275–306. Greenblatt, S. Learning to Curse: Essays in Early Modern Culture (London: Routledge, 1990). Haigneré, D., and E. Deseille. Ville de Boulogne-sur-Mer. Inventaire sommaire des archives communales antérieures à 1790 (Boulogne-sur-Mer: Simmonaire, 1884). Hauttefeuille, A., and L. Bénard. Histoire de Boulogne-sur-Mer (Boulogne-sur-Mer: Tous les Libraires, 1860). Ingram, L. Outcast Europe: Refugees and Relief Workers in an Era of Total War 1936–48 (London: Bloomsbury, 2012). Israel, J. I. Diasporas within a Diaspora: Jews, Crypto-Jews and World Maritime Empires, 1540–1740 (Leiden: Brill, 2002). Janssen, G. H. The Dutch Revolt and Catholic Exile in Reformation Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). Janssen, G. H. ‘The Republic of Refugees: Early Modern Migrations and the Dutch Experience’, Historical Journal 60 (2017): 233–52. Kaplan, B. J., ‘The Legal Rights of Religious Refugees in the “Refugee-Cities” of Early Modern Germany’, Journal of Refugee Studies, 30 (2016): 86–105. Kaplan, Y. An Alternative Path to Modernity: The Shepardi Diaspora in Western Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2000). Kaplan, Y. (ed). Early Modern Ethnic and Religious Communities in Exile (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2017). Kushner, T. Journeys from the Abyss: The Holocaust and Forced Migration from the 1880s to the Present (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2017). Kushner, T., and K. D. Knox. Refugees in an Age of Genocide: Global, National and Local Perspectives during the Twentieth Century (London: Routledge, 1999). Lachennicht, S. (ed). Religious Refugees in Europe, Asia and North America (6th–21st Century) (Hamburg: Lit-Verlag, 2007).

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Lachennicht, S. Hugenotten in Europa und Nordamerika: Migration und Integration in der Frühen Neuzeit (Frankfurt: Campus-Verlag, 2010). Lachennicht, S. ‘Refugees and Refugee Protection in the Early Modern Period’, Journal of Refugee Studies, 30 (2016): 261–81. Leslie, J. H. (ed). ‘The Siege and Capture of Boulogne – 1544’, Journal for the Society of Army Historical Research 1 (1922): 188–99. Lieberman, B. ‘“Ethnic Cleansing” versus Genocide?’, in The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies, edited by D. Bloxham and A. Dirk Moses (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 42–60. Magdelaine, M. ‘Frankfurt am Main: Drehscheibe des Refuge’, in Die Hugonotten, edited by R. von Thassen and M. Magdelaine (Munich: Büchergilde Gutenberg, 1985), 26–37. Malkii, Liisa. ‘National Geographic: The Rooting of Peoples and the Territorialization of National Identity among Scholars and Refugees’, Cultural Anthropology, 7 (1992): 24–44. Muller, J. Exile Memories and the Dutch Revolt: The Narrated Diaspora, 1550–1750 (Leiden: Brill, 2016). Naimark, N. Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001). Parker, G. ‘Complexity and Diversity: Domestic Material Culture and French Immigrant Identity in Early Modern London’, Post-Medieval Archaeology, 47 (2013): 66–82. Pettegree, A. Foreign Protestant Communities in Sixteenth-Century London (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986). Potter, D. War and Government in the French Provinces: Picardy 1470–1560 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). Potter, D. Henry VIII and Francis I: The Final Conflict, 1540–47 (Leiden: Brill, 2011). O Siochrú, M., and J. Ohlmeyer (eds). Ireland, 1641: Contexts and Reactions (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015). Spence, R. T. ‘The Pacification of the Cumberland Borders, 1592–1628’, Northern History, 13 (1977): 59–160. Spence, R. T. ‘The Graham Clans and Lands on the Eve of the Jacobean Pacification’, Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society, 8 (1980): 79–102. Teller, A. Rescue the Surviving Souls: The Great Refugee Crisis of the Seventeenth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020). Terpstra, N. Religious Refugees in the Early Modern World: An Alternative History of the Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). Therr, P., and A. Silijak (eds). Redrawing Nations: Ethnic Cleansing in East-Central Europe (Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001).

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Thieulaine, J. ‘Un livre de raison en Artois (XVIe siècle): extraits historiques’, edited by X. de Gorguette d’Argoeuves, Mémoires de la Société des antiquaires de La Morinie, 21 (1881): 141–99. Van der Linden, D. Experiencing Exile: Huguenot Refugees in the Dutch Republic, 1680–1700 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015). Wieglers G., and M. Garcia-Arenal (eds). The Expulsion of the Moriscos of Spain: A Mediterranean Diaspora (Leiden: Brill, 2014). Wright, N. Knights and Peasants: The Hundred Years War in the French Countryside (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1998).

About the Author Neil Murphy is Professor of Medieval and Early Modern History at Northumbria University and has published three monographs.

2

Prisoners for War Convicts, Slaves, and the Culture of Forced Labour in Sixteenth-Century Tuscany Victoria Bartels Abstract In an attempt to shed light on some of history’s unwilling agents of war, this chapter examines the role of criminals in the martial initiatives of Cosimo I de’ Medici, who governed as Florence’s Duke from 1537–69 and then as the Grand Duke of Tuscany from 1569–74. The bulk of this study focuses on the crewmembers of Medicean warships. Large numbers of workers were also needed for state-sanctioned fortification and expansion projects. By presenting a more detailed picture of the involuntary personnel that fuelled Medicean military enterprises, this study aims to redefine the notion of ‘soldier’, as well as demonstrate how forced labour was sourced, organized, and deployed in service of the early modern Tuscan state. Keywords: Galleys, Prisoners, Oarsmen, Medici, Labour, Slaves

In May 1558, court artist Giorgio Vasari (1511–74) informed Duke Cosimo I of Tuscany (1517–74) that the decorations for the Sala di Cosimo I were complete.1 The room – located on the first floor of the Palazzo Vecchio – featured forty different fresco scenes illustrating the duke’s most celebrated accomplishments to date.2 One of the sala’s most prominent frescoes depicts Cosimo overseeing the construction of the fortifications on Elba, an island 1 Allegri and Cecchi, 151. 2 The complex decorative programme commemorated the Florentine duke’s rise to power, the securing of his ducal title against adversaries, and his more recent initiatives focusing on the state’s expansion and defence. Likely designed by Cosimo Bartoli, the room’s decorative schema is explained in Allegri and Cecchi, 143–53. For more on Cosimo I’s changing political strategies throughout his reign, see Cochrane; Eisenbichler; Fasano Guarini; and Hale.

Bowd, S., Cockram, S. & Gagné, J. (eds.), Shadow Agents of Renaissance War. Suffering, Supporting, and Supplying Conflict in Italy and Beyond. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2023 doi: 10.5117/9789463721356_ch02

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located in the Tyrrhenian sea approximately twenty kilometres from the Tuscan coast. After claiming the island in 1548, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (1500–58) put Cosimo I in charge of the island’s defences, awarding him control of the city of Portoferraio (later renamed Cosmopolis in 1557).3 After repeatedly persuading the emperor, Cosimo was authorized to begin construction there, since ‘that site could be easily occupied and with a small number of people, either from the pope, the French, or others, and it would then be very difficult to recover’. 4 In the fresco, Cosimo I holds an architectural plan and gestures toward the fortifications visible in the background.5 The works include a wall that was reinforced in 1548, in addition to two forts, Forte Falcone and Forte Stella. The duke is also shown with Portoferraio head architect Giovanni Camerini, fort superintendent Luca Martini, ducal secretary Lorenzo Pagni (who holds the contract issued from Charles V), and the court dwarf Morgante, whose head peeks out from the foreground.6 Positioned in the fresco’s lower right on a seahorse holding a trident is Neptune, the Roman god of fresh water and the sea. He is accompanied by a nude female figure representing Security, ‘denoting that his Excellency, in having built that place, has brought great security to his state and to its seas’.7 Portoferraio was not the only site to have benefitted from fortification works. About a decade earlier, Medici official Bernardino Pagni from Pescia was tasked with surveying all of Tuscany’s existing defensive structures.8 At each site, he recorded the food, ammunition, armour, and weapons, as well as the construction’s condition and any necessary repairs. Beginning with the fortress in Prato on 4 October 1539, Pagni examined twenty-five additional fortresses and citadels over the next four years, including fortifications located in Pistoia, Pietrabuona, Montecarlo, Pietrasanta, Motrone, 3 Due to its strategic maritime location between Corsica and Tuscany, Cosimo I had hoped to permanently keep Portoferraio, as well as take possession of Elba. In 1557, however, he was forced to relinquish the island in exchange for the possession of Siena. After striking a deal with Charles V’s son, King Philip II (1527–98), he was permitted to retain Portoferraio, along with the two Medici fortresses. The exchange was formally recognized in 1559 with the Treaty of Cateau-Cambresis. Poole, 49. 4 ‘quel sito potrebbe essere facilmente occupato et con poco numero di gente, o dal Papa o dai Francesi o da altri, et sarebbe poi molto difficile il recuperarlo’. Boido, 785. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own. 5 For more on the design and construction of Cosmoplis, see Boido. 6 Vasari, 13:191; Allegri and Cecchi, 146. 7 ‘denotando che Sua Eccellenza, nell’avere edificato quel luogo, ha apportato grandissima sicurezza al suo stato ed a’ suoi mari’ Vasari, 13:191; Allegri and Cecchi, 146. 8 For the inventories and their contents, see Romby, 14–33.

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Pisa, Volterra, Montepulciano, Arezzo, Borgo San Sepolcro, Castrocaro, Modigliana, and Firenzuola.9 Strengthening and/or building fortifications served as a major focus in Cosimo’s political strategy, and as a result, the ‘eight most principal places fortified by his excellency’, which included Florence, Siena, Livorno, Empoli, Piombino, Lucignano di Valdichiana, Montecarlo, and Scarperia were also memorialized in the Sala di Cosimo I.10 Each lunette boasted an inscription with the city’s name, in addition to the recognizable fortresses that existed there. In the portion dedicated to Livorno, for instance, the scene depicted a ‘wall built by His Excellency, and together the castle of Antignano’, which also included ‘the port and the galleys’.11 The uptick in defensive projects was a result of the increased activity in the Mediterranean in this period. City walls, forts, fortresses, bastions, bulwarks, and citadels served as instruments to protect Medici territories from plundering and unexpected occupation. Corsairs and other enemy ships were major threats to coastal villages, raiding towns and carrying off inhabitants for ransom and slavery. Establishing a Tuscan navy was another layer of defence. In addition to protecting coasts from attacks, this militaristic enterprise gave the duchy international exposure and secured merchant trade routes in and out of the family’s main port of Livorno.12 In 1547, after reviving a portion of the galley system from the fifteenth century, Cosimo constructed the Pisana, the first galley built in Florentine territory and subsequently ordered the creation of another three vessels not long after.13 Originating from around the third millennium BCE and persisting until the eighteenth century, galleys were considered ideal warships.14 They were slender, light, low in the water, and propelled by men rowing with oars, instead of wind, making them more efficient and reliable when sailing.15 The duke’s newly minted galleys were similarly honoured in the sala boasting his name, most prominently in the scene of The Defeat of the Turks at Piombino, another strategic port city at the edge of the Tyrrhenian coast. The scene represented the events of 12 July 1555, when Turkish galleys aligned 9 City walls, most often built in the quattrocento, were the f irst items strengthened with embankments or the insertion of bulwarks. Romby, 29. 10 ‘otto luoghi più principali fortificati da Sua Eccellenza’. Vasari, 13:195; Poole, 63. 11 ‘la muraglia fatta da Sua Eccellenza, ed insiememente il castello di Antignano; il porto e le galere’. Vasari, 13:195. 12 Gemignani, 171. 13 Gemignani, 171. 14 Scetti, 9. 15 Gemignani, 171; Scetti, 9.

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with the Strozzi and the French in hopes of taking control of Piombino.16 This illustration is one of the first that depicts Cosimo as a defender of the Christian faith, highlighting a victory that almost certainly helped him in his negotiations with Pope Pius IV (1499–1565) when founding his chivalric order in 1561, the Knights of Santo Stefano.17 As illustrated, the Sala di Cosimo I commemorated the duke’s proudest military accomplishments to date, promoting his martial prowess along with his ability to protect, defend, and expand the Tuscan state. Although one cannot discount the prominent role of Cosimo I or his many captains, lieutenants, superintendents, and secretaries, readers of this volume have likely come to suspect that there were many other agents driving the duke’s martial initiatives forward. In her study on Cosimo I’s first son Francesco I (1541–87) and his use of peasant labour at the Medici villa in Pratolino, Suzanne Butters observed that the site’s artificial lakes and gardens were not attributed ‘to those who physically transformed these Tuscan landscapes, however, but rhetorically, to the Tuscan prince whose enlightened rule discerned the political usefulness of reshaping nature and whose well-run public magistracies were able to execute his orders.’18 Analogously, the duke and his closest advisors were extolled for his military accomplishments (as seen in the Sala di Cosimo I), while the f igures who physically laboured in service of the state were obscured. Lurking in the shadows of Cosimo I’s fortifications and galley expeditions were the thousands of men (mostly convicts) whose bodies contributed to the physical labour of war. Thus, this chapter attempts to shed light on the involuntary personnel who fuelled Medicean martial initiatives, allowing these more marginalized actors a place in the historiography of early modern warfare. This chapter has relied on archival material to reconstruct the experience of forced labour practices in Tuscany. Most notably, it examines documents from the Medici ducal collection of letters and the criminal magistracy of the Otto di Guardia e Balia (Eight of Watch). The chapter is split into three parts. The first explores the tradition of forced labour, as well as the types of men who were routinely pressed into service. A more detailed picture of the lawbreakers who fuelled Medici warships is examined next, while the third and final section explores the organizational parameters associated 16 Cosimo hoped to acquire Piombino as well, yet he had to relinquish the city, along with the vast majority of Elba, when he acquired Siena under the treaty with Spain in 1559. Poole, 67. 17 Poole, 67. 18 Butters, ‘Pressed Labor’, 62.

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with using prisoners as labourers, including the nature of the contractual relationships that existed between lawbreakers and the state. This chapter concludes that forced labourers acted as lower-tier ‘soldiers’, carrying out their sentences via physical labour to defend and serve the very state that issued their condemnations.

Forced Labourers in Tuscany Given the undesirable working conditions involved, most early modern states relied on forced labour for the ‘tasks that free men were no longer willing to do’, including rowing on the galleys, cutting and carrying wood, stone and/or sand, mining salt or mercury, building fortifications, constructing and repairing ships, manning military garrisons, and local agricultural work.19 The legal precedent and historical tradition in Western cultures for forced labour derived from ancient Rome.20 Labourers were categorized into different sets of groups and treated with varying levels of force. Some of the most common were volunteers (bonevoglie), peasants (comandati), slaves (schiavi), and convicts ( forzati). The only men exempt from carrying out work in service of the state were citizens and those enrolled in the duke’s militia.21 Workers appeared to be interchangeable, moving from project to project based on priority and demand. In March 1550, for instance, Cosimo I inquired about the progress of a meadow being cleared in the Boboli gardens.22 He wanted to know if the slaves who were stationed there had finished with the job, as ‘the time [had] come to put them back to use on the galleys’.23 Bonevoglie entered into posts ‘voluntarily’, and as such, were considered the hardest workers, since they presumably wanted to keep their jobs and avoid being fired.24 Although bonevoglie worked willingly, for most, refusing was simply not an option they could afford. This was especially true for oarsmen, as bonevoglie were often poverty-stricken and saddled with large 19 Davis, ‘The Geography’, 61; Coates, 645–46. 20 Butters, ‘The Medici’, 250; Coates, 631. 21 Butters, ‘The Medici’, 252. For more on parameters of citizenship in sixteenth-century Medicean Florence, see Litchfield. 22 Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Mediceo del Principato (ASF, MdP), vol. 1176, fol. 825r (Medici Archive Project [MAP] Doc ID 3177). 23 ‘perché viene il tempo di rimettergli all’uso delle galee’. ASF, MdP, vol. 1176, fol. 825r (MAP Doc ID 3177). 24 Butters, ‘Pressed Labor’, 74.

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debts. In Pantero Pantera’s (1568–1625) naval treatise Dell’armata (1614), the galley admiral observed: The ones called bonevoglie are either prisoners who, after completing their sentence are kept in chains aboard the galleys until they have paid their debts … or vagrants who have sold their freedom to survive or pay their gambling debts. Among the latter, Spaniards and Neapolitans are very good oarsmen. During a battle, if necessary, they are freed from their chains and take up arms to fight; sometimes, these people have done great service.25

Galley volunteers earned four and a half scudi per month, in addition to a twenty-scudi signing bonus issued at the start of their contracts.26 After having entered into service, they were often kept on board for as long as their captains deemed necessary.27 In 1564, Cosimo I and his secretaries passed a bill allowing qualified men relief from all their debts if they agreed to row.28 Outstanding balances were cancelled by Cosimo I, even if debts were owed to private creditors.29 Comandati largely consisted of agricultural peasant workers from rural Tuscany. The legal practice for pressing subjects into labouring on public works had transferred from the Florentine Republic to the duchy when the Medici came into power in 1532.30 The state depended heavily on comandati, and as a result, devoted much time, attention, and resources to their management.31 Florentine officials liaised with parish rectors, who were tasked with wrangling up the required number of men for multiple state projects. Conscripts in this period were paid and given lodgings and meal allowances if they had to travel far from home.32 If comandati refused to work, 25 Pantera, 129; Scetti, 15 (translation). 26 A construction worker earned around thirty-three scudi annually. Considering the dangerous and treacherous life one experienced onboard, the bump in salary was hardly worth the risk. Scetti, 15; Currie, 19. Other rates, some of which equalled up to ten scudi per month, were also offered in certain bandi (public notices). For more, see Cantini, vols. 5–6. 27 Scetti, 15. 28 Brackett, 70. 29 Brackett, 70. 30 The Florentine Republic used comandati in 1528–29 to build Michelangelo’s protective wall at San Miniato. Butters, ‘The Medici’, 250, 253–54. 31 The duties fell under the responsibility of two ducal magistracies, the Nove Conservatori del Dominio e Giurisdizione Toscana and the Capitani di Parte Guelfa. For more, see Butters, ‘The Medici’, 250–51. 32 Whether the amount was equal or less than the pay given to volunteers remains unclear. For more see, Butters, 259 n. 71; Pratilli and Luigi, 163.

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they were subjected to fines and/or corporal punishment, a penalty which extended to their parish supervisors since offering bribes for dodging service commonly occurred.33 The most frequent form of physical punishment doled out were pulls on the strappato (also called the fune), which involved tying a man’s arms behind his back and then hoisting him up from his wrists with the help of a hook or pulley.34 Most of these stipulations were utilized for comandati who worked on land. In fact, an attempt by the Florentine state to recruit peasants for the galleys in the 1570s failed miserably as a result of such harsh tactics.35 Orphans were another marginal group pushed into state service. In his work on abbandonati in Florence and Bologna, Nicholas Terpstra demonstrated that officials overseeing the care of orphans in these regions eagerly sent misbehaving boys to row on the galleys.36 Galley sentences were assigned, for instance, when boys were dismissed from their masters during apprenticeships for ‘laziness, insubordination, or other difetti’.37 In 1572, prince regent Francesco I took this practice further, instructing the prior of the Ospedale degli Innocenti, Vincenzo Borghini, to send a large number of male orphans to Livorno for galley service.38 Similarly, in both France and Portugal, young male orphans were often trained as sailors.39 Deemed property of the duke, schiavi (slaves) were obliged to a lifetime of service. ‘Simply to be punished, for who they were and what they believed’, slaves were treated as human capital, bought, stolen, and sold. 40 Franco Angiolini demonstrated that slavery in Tuscany was revived in this period exclusively for providing economic and plentiful labour to power the galleys: ‘This was the factor that gave new life to the phenomenon of slavery, and for many decades it would remain the sole motive for enchaining hundreds of North Africans and “Turks”’. 41 In the years following the construction of his navy, Cosimo I gathered an assemblage of slaves. On 9 April 1549, for instance, the duke instructed his majordomo Pier Francesco Riccio to give 1,000 scudi to Lieutenant Francesco Tappia for the purchasing of slaves 33 Butters, 261. 34 The defendant was then dropped, causing his shoulders to partially dislocate, and then kept there for anywhere from twenty to sixty minutes. Brackett, 62. 35 Angiolini, 77. 36 Terpstra, 186. 37 Terpstra, 175. 38 Gavitt, 299. 39 Coates, 647. 40 Davis, ‘Geography’, 61. 41 Angiolini, 69.

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for the galleys, since he was travelling to Fiume and other places in the Holy Roman Empire. 42 About a month later, one of the duke’s secretaries informed Cosimo that twenty slaves had been purchased for that price. 43 Most of the men enslaved derived from Muslim populations, especially Turks, Arabs, and Berbers. 44 Often grouped together by contemporaries and simply called ‘Turks’, most were recognized by their shaved head with a lock of hair at the back. 45 As the sixteenth century progressed, the style of acquiring slaves shifted from commercial transactions to state-sanctioned raids and piracy. 46 This was undoubtedly due to the fruitful raids of Cosimo’s I’s chivalric order, the Sacro Militare Ordine dei Cavalieri di Santo Stefano established in October 1561. 47 As outlined in the papal bull issued by Pope Paul IV (1476–1559), the Knights of Santo Stefano were to uphold ‘the glory of God, the protection of the Catholic faith’, and ‘the defence of the Mediterranean Sea from the infidels, your own renown and the fame of your family’. 48 The order received international acclaim for its aggressive tactics and was heralded after its performance in the famous Battle of Lepanto in 1571, where twelve Tuscan galleys were present. 49 In both Christendom and Islam, state-sanctioned raids and pirateering were considered a legitimate, as well as economic, method for acquiring rowers.50 In a 1560 letter, for instance, Duke Cosimo I instructed the police captains of Volterra and the Campagna di Siena to retrieve the ‘Turks and Moors’ caught from the capture of three galley warships in Cala di Forna.51 Enslaving prisoners was such a common occurrence, in fact, that the only fleets that had more slaves than the Tuscans were the Turkish galleys and the Knights of Malta.52 Assuming they were physically capable of withstanding the role, forzati (convicts) were also forced to carry out punitive sentences on land and at sea. In fact, lawbreakers’ professions could be strategically considered when assigning posts. In January 1549, for example, Cosimo I thanked Sienese officials for sending him a prisoner skilled in the minting of coins for his 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52

ASF, MdP, vol. 638, fol. 253 (MAP Doc ID 15340). ASF, MdP, vol. 397a, fol. 621 (MAP Doc ID 19368). Davis, ‘Geography’, 59. Scetti, 15. Angiolini, 68. For more on the activities of the Knights of Santo Stefano, see Poole-Jones, ‘The Medici’. Quoted in Guarnieri, 28. Translation in Scetti, 22 n. 50. Scetti, 40. For more on European captives enslaved on the Barbary coast, see Davis, ‘Counting’. ASF, MdP, vol. 211, fol. 54 (MAP Doc ID 8696). Angiolini, 79–80.

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galleys.53 Cities of confinement were also chosen to benefit state-sanctioned projects. On 4 January 1573, ‘according to the report of secretary Ser Lorenzo Corboli per the orders of His Highness … all those stone or wood workers (scarpellini), masons, carpenters, or other similar workers, whenever they are confined, must be confined to Portoferraio’.54 Similarly, in June 1574, it was decided that lawbreaking peasants or any other men fit to do similar work would be confined to Grosseto to complete the fortifications there.55 Labourers were paid just like those who were ‘not confined’, and if they refused to work, they technically broke their imprisonment and would ‘fall into greater punishment’.56 Pardons were also offered to felons who relocated to cities in need of inhabitants, especially those in strategic maritime locations like Livorno, Portoferraio, and Grosseto. In September 1556, Cosimo I and his magnifici consiglieri issued a bando offering pardons, complete with privileges and exemptions, to anyone willing to move to Portoferraio.57 These benefits included ‘safe conduct, immunity, and security for all pecuniary fines, afflictive penalties, relegations, and confinements, except for death penalty and galley sentences’.58 In the sixteenth century, prisoners made up the largest category of oarsmen on the Medici galleys.59 In 1565, there were 988 convicts, 236 slaves, and twenty-seven volunteers on a total of eight Tuscan warships.60 When in short supply, convicts were sourced from other locales. In April 1559, Cosimo I sent letters to the Mantuan Duke Guglielmo Gonzaga (1538–87) and Cardinal Alessandro Farnese (1520–89) requesting prisoners from their 53 ASF, MdP, vol. 12, fol. 224 (MAP Doc ID 20918). 54 ASF, MdP, vol. 126, fol. 146v. ‘per referto di Ser Lorenzo Corboli secretario per ordine di S. Alt.’ ‘tutti quelli scarpellini muratori legnaiuoli o altri simili lavorati ogni volta che si hanno confinati [?] si confinno in porto ferrario’. Also cited in Brackett, 70. 55 Romby, 40. 56 ‘1574 14 giugno, Circolare et Modo di Confinare I Contadini a Grosseto, del dì 14 Giugno 1574 Ab Incarnatione’, in Pratelli and Zangheri, 152–53. 57 Law entitled ‘1556, 14 Settembre, Privilegi et Esenzioni Concessi Dall’Illustrissimo et Eccellentissimo Signore il Signor Duca di Fiorenza a Quelli Che Habiteranno Nella Sua Terra e Porto Ferraio Dell’Isola Dell’Elba del dì 14 di Settembre 1556 Ab Incarnatione’, in Pratelli and Zangheri, 94. 58 ‘E s’intenda havere et habbia salvocondotto, franchigia e sicurtà per tutte le condennazioni pecuniari e di pene afflittive, e di relegazioni, et confini, eccetto che per le condennazioni di pena capitale e della galera’, in Pratelli and Zangheri, 94. 59 With the increase in state raids and piracy in the seventeenth century, slaves would become the predominant category. Angiolini, 77. 60 Angiolini, 77.

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respective territories for his galleys.61 Pope Paul IV also furnished the Florentine duke with a steady supply of papal-state prisoners in exchange for the Medici galleys’ protection along the Roman shore from Piombino to Terracina.62

Crime, Convicts and the Medici Galleys The increased presence of Turkish ships in the Mediterranean in this period, along with the many battles that subsequently ensued between the Ottoman and Hapsburg empires, caused many European powers to fortify and grow their naval capabilities. Both Christian and Muslim forces relied on fleets of galley warships, and a result, needed to gather thousands of rowers to manoeuvre oars. Although styles and sizes varied, a typical galley in the Mediterranean in the second half of the sixteenth century measured 41 metres long and 5.5 metres wide with 24 to 30 benches fixed on each side.63 A minimum of three rowers were needed per bench to simultaneously manipulate one big oar.64 Since more men meant faster galleys, the need for oarsmen among European powers was voracious.65 Many states turned to convicts, as well as slaves, to power their galleys, but little is known about the men condemned to serve at sea. On 29 April 1555, General of the Tuscan galleys Marco Centurione received an inventory detailing the goods and passengers on board five Tuscan galleys.66 The manuscript spans 120 pages and details the nautical furnishings, goods, armaments, prisoners, and slaves on each vessel, providing an in-depth look at the men imprisoned on board. The Pisana, by this point renamed the Padrona, was one of the five examined, in addition to the Capitana, Fiorenza, Toscana, and the San Giovanni Battista (also called the Capitana Vecchia). The list of artillery and weapons carried on each ship was vast. On the Fiorenza, for instance, a number of cannons were recorded, along with a selection of cannon balls fashioned in different 61 ASF, MdP, vol. 210, fol. 74 (MAP Doc ID 8509). 62 This added protection resulted in the pope awarding Cosimo I with the title of Grand Duke in 1569. Scetti, 40. 63 Scetti and Monaga, 9, 12. 64 This style of rowing was called voga a scaloccio. Oars were twelve to fourteen metres long and weighed approximately 150 kilograms. Some ships had benches that required up to eight men. Scetti, 9, 12. 65 It has been estimated that there were 80,000 oarsmen at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571. Davis, ‘Geography’, 61–2; Scetti, 9, 12. 66 Marco’s surname also appears as ‘Cienturioni’ in the documents. ASF, MdP, vol. 627. Some folios in the volume can also be found in the MAP Vol ID 484.

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materials, and forty hand-held arquebuses, in addition to coarse and fine gun powder needed for both cannons and guns, respectively. Armour for the crew was noted, including forty morion helmets (a common style worn in this period that lacks a beaver or visor, leaving the face exposed) ‘half badly treated’, twenty-four shields, twenty-eight partisan pole arms, ten wall iron arquebuses with their necessary accoutrements, and lead bullets.67 Also included in the register were uniforms, which included 173 undershirts made from a red cloth with a lining of canvas, small berets of red wool, linen shirts and breeches, and ‘gabbani d’albagio nostrale’, cloaks made from a locally produced wool that was extremely coarse, and consequently, often used at sea.68 Hand-cuffs, shackles, and chains, used to keep the crew in place, were also listed. The second half of the inventory recorded the members of each galley’s crew, splitting them into left and right bands of ‘forzati’ and ‘stiavi’. According to a declaration made by Centurione towards the end of the report, he attested to receiving a total of 554 prisoners and 243 slaves across all five ships. Entries documenting the slaves on board most often included the man’s name, alias, place of origin, age, physical description, and any distinguishing marks used for identification purposes. Many of them appeared to originate from Turkey, Africa, and Constantinople. For example, on board the Capitana’s left band, a certain Adula di Tripoli was recorded and described as ‘a black moor [with the] alias big dick (cazogrosso)’, who possessed a tall and thin build, had a small mark near his hairline, and was missing two upper teeth.69 In order to efficiently record and keep track of prisoners, the inventory included each prisoner’s conviction number, full name, nickname if applicable, place of origin, a brief description of the crime committed, the organizational body of conviction, and the duration of the sentence. A physical description, occupation, and/or age was sometimes also recorded if available. In the f ive warships discussed in the inventory, convicts appeared to originate from several places in Tuscany, including Siena, Pistoia, Cortona, Arezzo, and Prato, as well as other cities across Italy, comprising Rome, Ferrara, Ancona, and Bologna. About one-third of the convicts committed were men who had been captured at sea, the major 67 ASF, MdP, vol. 627, fols. 11v–12r. 68 ASF, MdP, vol. 627, fol. 12v. 69 ASF, MdP, vol. 627, fol. 31v. ‘Adula di Tripoli moro negro alias cazogrosso di statura lunga e magro con poco di segnio vicino alla capellatura a dua denti manco di sopra’. (MAP Doc ID 9798).

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part stemming from the Frenchmen caught in 1553 after their ships wrecked on the island of Pianosa. One such prisoner on board the Capitana was recorded as convict number 201, ‘Ramondo of Avignon, Frenchman [who] was taken in Pianosa from the ship wreck of the French galleys, of good stature, black hair, thin face, a small cut above the right eyebrow’.70 Greek slaves that fled from Turkish warships were another oft-cited category of felon, like convict number 1201, Pagolo Greco of Ghiena of the Levant, of the age of 40 years, black hair, large stature, a small cut in the head from a blade, was taken at Elba where he had escaped the Turkish armada where he was a slave in the year 1553, [sent] by the Lords of Piombino.71

The other two-thirds of the crew had been sentenced to galley service for a wide variety of crimes.72 For instance, included on the Capitana’s right band was a certain Giovanni di Berhardino from the town of Bibbiena, who was sentenced by the vicar of Poppi to five years of galley time ‘for having taken three wives’.73 As another illustration, Bastiano di Giovanni, also known as ‘the dodgy one (il bieco)’, from Prato was allocated three years in the galleys from the town’s podestà on 25 March 1551 for having broken a peace agreement.74 Men could also be convicted on multiple charges, as was the case of Piero di Domenico alla Casa. On 25 August 1551, Florence’s Otto di Guardia sentenced Piero to three years for engaging in acts of theft, cheating, blasphemy, and sodomy.75 Once on board, men could additionally be charged with criminal offences, as was the case in November 1551 when two men were punished after being caught ‘in the dishonest act of vice of sodomy in this galley of ours’.76 The state sought to punish acts of sodomy on land as well. In a letter sent to Francesco I in December 1565, Pisa’s superintendent of the arsenal 70 ASF, MdP, vol. 627, fol. 25v. ‘206 Ramondo d’avignione franzese fu preso in pianosa del nave fragio delle galere franzese di buona statura, pel nero viso asciutto un poco di taglio sopra il ciglio destro’. 71 ASF, MdP, vol. 627, fol. 25v. ‘Pagolo Greco di ghiena di levante d’eta d’anni 40, pelo nero, statura grande un taglio in testa d’una punta piccolo fu preso nell elba che si era fuggito dal armata turchesa dove era stiavo l’anno 1553 dal Signori di Piombino’. 72 About one-tenth of the crimes committed by convicts onboard were unknown. 73 ASF, MdP, vol. 627, fol. 25v. ‘per havere preso tre moglie’ (MAP Doc ID 9775). 74 ASF, MdP, vol. 627, fol. 49r. 75 ASF, MdP, vol. 627, fol. 50v. 76 ASF, MdP, vol. 196. fol. 2. ‘esser stati trovati in atto dishonesto di vitio di sodomia in cotesta nostra galeotta’. (MAP Doc ID 16992).

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Filippo Ducci reported that a crime had occurred between two carpenters working in the naval dockyards.77 Ducci noted that the maestro Martino Stianetto and Lucio Negro, a converted Christian, were caught engaging in ‘dishonest acts’ after they drank too much.78 The former, who was thought to be around twenty-five, apologized for getting drunk, but denied the accusation (presumably of assault) made by the latter, who was approximately only sixteen years old.79 After confirming the story with other witnesses, Ducci filed a formal denunciation and detained the defendants in their rooms in chains. For men on board the galleys, violent crimes made up a noteworthy proportion of the offences committed. In May 1548 a man called Niccodemo, or Nemo Sabatino Pallai, from Pistoia, was sentenced to three years by the Otto di Guardia on an assault charge, while the Frenchman Andrea Brai similarly received three years for injuries and the use of force or ‘sforzamenti’ (likely referring to sexual assault) in July 1551.80 Serra di Batista from Campeggio in Bologna was also charged in June 1552 ‘for having taken money to kill someone’. 81 Life sentences at sea were typically reserved for more serious crimes of violence, as seen in the case of Senso di Giusto from Monterchi, who was ‘confined to the galley for life … for having raped and de-flowered a girl of thirteen years’.82 Lorenzo di Cecchaino from Carda was similarly ordered to remain in the galleys ‘for always’ after being convicted of homicide by the vicar of San Giovanni on 29 May 1548.83

77 ASF, MdP, vol. 518, fol. 852. 78 The fate of slaves who converted to the dominant religion of their captives remains unclear. Per the papal decrees issued in the period, those who converted to Christianity were supposed to have been freed. However, it appears most remained enslaved. In Livorno, for instance, conversion was not grounds for manumission, even though new believers were entitled to previously restricted benefits, such as the right to marriage. It is also possible that this transformation led to less arduous posts, as illustrated in Lucio’s case above. For more see Nadalo, ‘Negotiating’, 298; Scetti, 16–17; Davis, ‘Counting’, 115. 79 In these environments, younger men and boys were often victims of sexual assault. For this reason, young male slaves and convicts in Livorno’s bagno were supervised by a seventy-fouryear-old man. See Nadalo, ‘Negotiating’, 316 n. 53. 80 ASF, MdP, vol. 627, fols. 38r (Andrea Brai), 44r (Niccodemo). Niccodemo can also be found in MAP Doc ID 10855. 81 ASF, MdP, vol. 627, fol. 35v. ‘per havere preso danari per ammazzare uno’. 82 ASF, MdP, vol. 627, fol. 52v. ‘confinato in galera in vita’; ‘per havere sforzato et sverginato una fanciulla di tredici anni’. Given the risks involved, a ‘life sentence’ on the galleys likely equated to ten years. Coates, 644. 83 ASF, MdP, vol. 627, fol. 25v.

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Crimes against the state were penalized with especially harsh sentences. In October 1547, the Otto sentenced a certain Bastiano to a life at sea for blasphemy and speaking ill of Duke Cosimo I.84 In May 1548, Antonio di Filippo, known as ‘the curly-haired man of Arezzo (el riccio d’arezzo)’, received another life sentence for not observing the terms of his banishment set out for a previous crime.85 Treason was also dealt with swiftly. One such case dealt with a handful of men imprisoned on the Capitana Vecchia, who were convicted for their associations with the French in Florence’s war with Siena in the mid-sixteenth century. For instance, Domenico di Iacopo from Londa was charged à beneplacito (indefinitely and for however long Duke Cosimo saw f it) for having assisted French forces in Siena in April 1555.86 By far, the most oft-cited crime for prisoners was theft, as about a quarter of the oarsmen recorded were condemned for thievery. Bartolomeo di Lorenzo, known as ‘the sword maker (lo spadaio)’, was sentenced to time at sea by authorities in Orvieto on 8 May 1552 for stealing, while a weaver by the name of Mattio di Giovanni received six years for the act in February 1551 from the Otto di Guardia in Florence.87 Another prominent category noted was the charge of ‘mariuolo’, literally meaning ‘scoundrel’, which likely indicated that the felon had tricked, scammed, or cheated someone. The Neapolitan Giovaniacopo di Baldassari was convicted on this charge on 13 September 1551 for three years from authorities in Rome for pretending that he had a proper license (for what, it does not say).88 The final pages of the manuscript note the convicts and slaves judged ‘unusable’. In Livorno on 23 May 1555, Marco Centurione wished to exchange the men deemed unfit to row, leaving them in Portoferraio with the commissioner of Elba, since ‘we have seen that they are not good at the oar’.89 Reasons given were injuries, illness, and even death. One such case occurred with a certain Stefano d’Agostino from Imola assigned to the galley Padrona.90 He was ousted since he was ‘sick and stay[ed] in his room and had never rowed.’91

84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91

ASF, MdP, vol. 627, fol. 29r. ASF, MdP, vol. 627, fol. 25r (MAP Doc ID 9775). ASF, MdP, vol. 627, fol. 56r. ASF, MdP, vol. 627, fols. 36r, 40r. ASF, MdP, vol. 627, fol. 51r. ASF, MdP, vol. 627, fol. 63v. ‘noi habbiamo visto che non sono buoni al remo’. ASF, MdP, vol. 627, fol. 63v. ASF, MdP, vol. 627, fol. 63v. ‘malato, e sta nella camera, e mai ha vogato’.

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The Bureaucracy of Escaping Forced Labour No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with a chance of being drowned … A man in jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company.92

Early modern sources, even if embellished, demonstrate that galley life was treacherous. Oarsmen were infamously overworked, underfed, and mistreated. Unhygienic living conditions, limited access to health care, and an inadequate supply of appropriate clothing likely intensified the environment’s overall discomfort.93 Making matters worse were the warships’ high mortality rates, which hovered around fifty per cent, resulting in large proportions of crews perishing at sea. In his work on crime in sixteenth-century Spain, I. A. A. Thompson calculated that roughly half of the criminals sentenced to the galleys died during their stretches on board.94 The leading cause of death did not result from the perils of war, however; galleys were hotbeds of disease, causing illnesses to infect large numbers of men simultaneously.95 One such case occurred in 1564 when the crews on board three of Duke Cosimo I’s galleys became ill.96 The three crews, along with a fourth ship, were re-routed to Gibraltar where they were sent to rest in hopes of recovering.97 By the same token, Francesco I’s successor Ferdinando I de’ Medici (1549–1609) reminded a state official not to let the slaves, many of whom had syphilis, mix with the inhabitants of Livorno to avoid spreading the disease.98 Long stretches at sea also increased morbidity rates, as it became difficult to preserve and maintain supplies.99 In June 1559, for instance, Commissioner of the Tuscan galleys Piero Machiavelli notified Cosimo I that they needed twenty or twenty-five sacks of good flour a month from Pisa or the crew would die, since many were already sick from the spoiled biscuits and bread they had to eat.100 In order to improve the men’s health, Piero stated 92 James Boswell (1740–95), Scottish lawyer, diarist and biographer, quoted in Scetti, 14. 93 Fury, 294. 94 Thompson, 261; Williams, 80. 95 Williams, 80. 96 Williams, 82. 97 Wiliams, 82. 98 ASF, MdP, vol. 298, fol. 31 (MAP Doc ID 29048). 99 Fury, 294. 100 ASF, MdP, vol. 479, fol. 285 (MAP Doc ID 20244). Piero was the son of the political strategist and, among other roles, organizer of the Florentine militia, Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527).

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that he also left two barbers, a doctor, and other helpful things on board. Analogously, in 1565, the sailors on Francesco I’s galley crews ‘w[ere] reduced to sucking the sails soaked in rainwater’ due to a shortage of drinking water on board.101 Given the tough conditions, many lawbreakers who received galley sentences fled or attempted to shirk stretches at sea. For those who served, requests for pardons or reductions in sentences could be sent to the duke through suppliche (petitions). One such illustration of a galeotto who never relinquished hope was Aurelio Scetti. In 1565, the musician had been sentenced to death after brutally killing his wife at their home in Arezzo.102 In dramatic fashion, Aurelio was pardoned at the last minute, and his sentence was commuted to life on board the galleys.103 Once enlisted in galley service, Aurelio bombarded Cosimo I and Francesco I with petitions asking to be released, and in 1576, the city council of Portoferraio requested that Aurelio work as a school teacher in their town.104 He even sent Francesco I an autobiographical manuscript entitled ‘These Are All the Glorious Enterprises of the Galleys of the Most Serene Grand Duke of Tuscany’, which recounted his many trips between Livorno, Gibraltar, Tunis, and Lepanto.105 His persistence did not appear to pay off, however, as Aurelio’s petitions were repeatedly denied.106 As illustrated in the case of Aurelio, pardons from galley service were rare. The state was in desperate need of rowers, and they did not release oarsmen willingly. In fact, in April 1564, Duke Cosimo I offered pardons to bandits, exiles, and convicts who willingly served two-year sentences at sea. Thus, a path to redemption was presented to those cast from their towns in exchange for short-term, albeit extremely dangerous, labour. By promising absolution and eventual freedom, the duke gained a continual, rotating workforce to power his navy, while simultaneously eliminating these potentially threatening figures from society. The bill explained that the duke sought ‘to oppose the dangers and raids that the infidels and other Corsairs continually ma[d]e in the Mediterranean Seas’, since they ‘plunder[ed] the 101 ‘che si son ridotti a succiar le tende bagnate da l’acqua che pioveva.’ ASF, MdP, vol. 518, fol. 48 (MAP Doc ID 21939). 102 For details of the case recorded in the Archivio di Stato di Arezzo, see Scetti, 2–3. 103 Scetti’s father worked as one of Duke Cosimo’s sword makers, which likely contributed to Scetti’s commutation. Scetti, 4–5. 104 Scetti, 44. 105 Scetti fought in the Battle of Lepanto and apparently captured two Turkish slaves. See Scetti, 7. 106 It remains unclear whether Aurelio was eventually pardoned in his old age.

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Christian ships and damage[d] and burn[ed] their maritime lands’.107 Thus, ‘for the benefit of the Christian nation’, they were seeking to recruit as many rowers as possible.108 In addition to being ‘well treated’, lawbreakers would be absolved of criminal charges and have their food expenses covered.109 Even those sentenced to the gallows or other forms of capital punishment were eligible. Only rebels and assassins were barred from the offer. Another option for acquittal was to find and purchase a replacement (scambio), typically a slave or volunteer, to row in one’s place. In January 1565, a bando clarifying the procedure for scambi was issued.110 Substitutions needed to be verified and approved, and if one died, escaped, or befell an injury making him unfit to row, the defendant needed to find a replacement for the time remaining.111 Pardons would be null and void if one was unable to find a substitution.112 One such case occurred in 1577 with a bandit named Meo di Giovanni di Renzo, known as ‘the trousers (il braga)’, from the village of San Sepulcro.113 In 1556, when Meo was only twelve or thirteen years old, the supplicant explained that certain friends of his had led him to the house of a prostitute, where they entered her home and sexually assaulted her.114 Five years later, Meo was charged with killing his sister Maddalena in an attempt to preserve her honour after he realized that a certain Pierino dalla Taglina had used her ‘carnally’. After this homicide, Meo was banished ‘in contumacia’, since he failed to appear for his sentencing, and his goods and property were confiscated as a result. In 1577, he took the pardon offered by the duke that would annul his banishment from the Tuscan state in exchange for 50 scudi and two years at sea. He noted that since he had fallen ill shortly after 107 ‘Provvisione e Gratia alli Banditi, Conf inati, et Condennati dello Stato di S.E. Illustriss. Che la serviranno nelle sue Galere del dì April 1, 1564’, in Cantini, 5:104–6. For related laws, see 13 April 1564 in Cantini, 5:107; and 19 May 1564 in Cantini, 5:111–12. ‘contraporsi alle insidie, et incursioni che gl’infedeli, et altri Corsali continuamente fanno nelli Mari Mediterranei’; ‘predare li Navili de Christiani, et danneggiare, et abbruciare le loro, Terre Maritime’. 108 Cantini, 5:111–12. ‘a benefitio della nation Christiana’. 109 Cantini, 5:111–12. ‘sarà ben trattata’. 110 ‘Bando per quelli, che hanno messi li scambi su le Galere per le gratie de loro preiuditii, che vadino a riconoscere detti loro scambi, e altro, del dì 10 Gennaio 1564 [= 1565]’ in Cantini, 5:159–61. The date given in the original manuscript has been updated to reflect the modern practice of beginning the calendar year in January. 111 For other offers made to convicts already on board the galleys, see Cantini, 5:159–61. Aurelio Scetti tried to utilize this offer, but he was required to purchase two slaves, instead of the typical one. For more, see Scetti. 112 They were also liable for paying scambi. 113 ASF, Otto di Guardia, vol. 2856, fol. 395. 114 They were sentenced to paying her 30 scudi as a punishment.

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accepting the pardon, several friends had raised 28 scudi on his behalf, while the other 32 had been ‘insured in Perugia’. According to Meo, his substitution served for six months and then died, even though Otto di Guardia secretary Lorenzo Corboli could find no record corroborating this detail. Since he was ‘poor, old, and in bad health’, the supplicant requested pardons for the remainder of his galley sentence, in addition to the outstanding sum of 32 scudi owed. Each request was subsequently denied. If scambi failed to complete their contractual sentences, lawbreakers were liable for finding replacements, even if that meant completing the duration themselves. Niccolò di Luca from Colle, for instance, was condemned to pay 2070 lire, and put a certain Pietro from Cremona in the galleys to row on his behalf.115 In 1573, Niccolò submitted a petition to the duke because Pietro had escaped. Apparently, his substitution had been unfettered after two months and then sent to work in Grosseto, where he had fled. Niccolò explained that he had sold what little he had to facilitate the original exchange, and that he could not afford to purchase another substitution. Although he was sick with a type of malaria, quartan fever, the defendant asked to finish out the sentence by working in Grosseto (or any other place the duke saw fit). About six weeks after the Otto di Guardia first processed his petition, his request to work in his substitution’s place was granted. In certain circumstances, pardons for galley sentences could occur, but only for those who committed less serious offences. As an illustration, in 1571 gardener Lorenzo d’Agnolo, who worked for the convent of Santa Croce in Valdarno, was sentenced in absence with two pulls on the fune and two years on the galleys for the assault of Ser Giovanbattista, the monastery’s priest and governor.116 He also ‘spoke injurious words to the nuns that were reproaching him’.117 The local signoria asked to swap his galley sentence and pulls on the strappato for confinement in the parish where his orchard was located, so he could continue to carry out his duties. Lorenzo swore that he had officially made peace with the priest, which was corroborated in an attached letter submitted by Ser Giovambattista. In December 1571, the signoria’s request was approved, and Lorenzo was spared from the fune, and more importantly, the galleys. As seen in the examples above, the duke’s military agenda trumped the administering of justice, as lawbreakers could purchase their freedom 115 Ibid., fol. 2. The amount owed to the state is noted as 1170 lire in the Otto’s rescritto (‘sua condemnatione di lire 1170’). 116 ASF, Otto di Guardia, Vol. 2256, fol. 2, in addition to the following page which is unpaginated. 117 ASF, Otto di Guardia, Vol. 2256, fol. 2, ‘detto parole inguiriose alle dette monache che lo sgridanono’.

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through substitutions if they could afford it.118 This privilege tended to protect the upper classes from state service, further distinguishing citizens from lower-class inhabitants. Originating from the lower rungs of society, labourers appeared to share a distinct notion of otherness, whether it stemmed from religion (slaves), geography (peasants), morality (convicts), lack of familial ties (orphans), and/or financial insolvency (debtors/poor). Above all, the Medicean state needed able and anonymous bodies for the labour of war. In 1561, for instance, when discussing the Florentine duke’s use of sappers, the Venetian ambassador Vincenzo Fedeli observed [Cosimo I] has available, then, a list of 12,000 sappers, all extremely robust and strong men from the country; although they were organized for use in wartime, he uses [them] in peacetime according to his needs, to repair roads, [and] to dig ditches.119

Thus, this chapter asks that we re-examine our understanding of the term ‘soldier’, as this volume’s editors have pointed out, historians have tended to overlook agents who do not conform to their model of warlike actors.120 By the same token, ‘traditional’ soldiers often performed varied tasks, as they ‘spen[t] far more time in barracks than on campaign’ and were frequently assigned agricultural or construction work while garrisoned.121 In his study of forced labour in early modern Europe, Coates noted that before prisons became institutions for long-term punishment in the nineteenth century, ‘there was a great deal of interplay and overlapping between the terms soldier and convict’.122 Galley crews, for instance, were often outfitted in matching state liveries. This sentiment can clearly be felt in Pantera’s description of the aesthetic role of the oarsmen’s uniforms:123 For a better show, the crew of the galleys usually wears a similar attire; that is why the bonevoglie must spend their own pay to dress up like other crew members. Each galley slave receives two shirts, two pairs of cloth pants, a red shirt (it may be, however, of a different colour), a red hat, a coat made of rough cloth, and a pair of socks for the winter.124 118 Cantini alludes to this practice in his summary of the law: Cantini, 5:161. 119 Segarizzi, 2:224; Butters, ‘The Medici’, 256 (translation). 120 See above, Introduction. 121 Zürcher, 11. 122 Coates, 644. 123 Scetti, 17. 124 Pantera, 130; Scetti, 17 (translation).

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Uniforms helped to create a shared identity among crewmembers. As Jan Lucassen pointed out in his study on seasonal workers, mercenaries, and miners, a lack of solidarity was one of the biggest sources of conflict among these groups of men.125 Success, no matter what the aim, depended on their unification. This was especially true on galley warships, where a crew’s ‘success’ was inherently linked to their survival. The problematic distinction often made between ‘soldiers’ and ‘civilians’ in this period does not reflect the culture of warfare that pervaded the lives of early modern contemporaries. In May 1564, for instance, Cosimo and his magistrates issued yet another bando recruiting men to row.126 Pardons for convicts and debtors were offered, and free men were incentivized with stipends or a position in the ‘militia maritima’. The role of oarsmen was marketed as a patriotic service in ‘defence of the Christian Religion against the Infidels’.127 Convicts, slaves, and volunteers rowed side-by-side, bound together in service of the state. Although these actors were conspicuously absent from the Palazzo Vecchio’s Sala di Cosimo I, convicts and other forced labourers played a pivotal role in the military campaigns of the Medici dukes in sixteenth-century Tuscany. By recognizing and acknowledging their role, labour, and function, these men emerge from the shadows of war into the light.

Bibliography Primary Sources Manuscripts

Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Otto di Guardia e Balia del Principato. Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Otto di Guardia e Balia del Principato. Vol. 2256 Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Otto di Guardia e Balia del Principato. Vol. 2856 Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Mediceo del Principato. Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Mediceo del Principato. Vol. 12 Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Mediceo del Principato. Vol. 126 Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Mediceo del Principato. Vol. 196 Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Mediceo del Principato. Vol. 210 Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Mediceo del Principato. Vol. 211 Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Mediceo del Principato. Vol. 298 125 Lucassen, 182–83. 126 Cantini, 3:111. 127 ‘e difesa della Religione Cristiana contro agl’ Infedeli’. Cantini, 3:111.

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Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Mediceo del Principato. Vol. 397a Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Mediceo del Principato. Vol. 479 Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Mediceo del Principato. Vol. 518 Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Mediceo del Principato. Vol. 627 Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Mediceo del Principato. Vol. 638 Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Mediceo del Principato. Vol. 1176 Note: Some documents from this volume were found through the Medici Archive Project’s database ‘Bia’ (https://www.medici.org/). When this is the case, document identification numbers have been recorded in the footnotes.

Printed Sources

Baldini, Baccio, and Bartolomeo Sermartelli. Vita di Cosimo Medici, primo gran dvca di Toscana (Florence: Stamperia di B. Sermartelli, 1578). Cantini, Lorenzo. Legislazione Toscana Raccolta e Illustrata dall’avvocato Lorenzo Catini Socio di Varie Accademie, vols. I–XXXII (Florence: Albizziniana da Santa Maria in Campo, 1804). Manuzio, Aldo. Vita di Cosimo de’ Medici primo Granduca di Toscana descritta da Aldo Mannucci 1586 (Pisa: Presso Niccolò Capurro, 1823). Pantera, Pantero. Dell’armata navale, in doi libri nei quali si ragiona del modo che si ha a tenere per formare, ordinare e conservare un’ armata marittima (Rome: E. Spada, 1615). Scetti, Aurelio. The Journal of Aurelio Scetti, translated and edited by Luigi Monga (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2004). Segarizzi, Arnaldo. Relazioni degli ambasciatori veneti al Senato, 2 vols. (Bari: G. Laterza, 1912–13). Vasari, Giorgio. Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori scritte da Giorgio Vasari … Con nuovo annotazioni e commenti di Gaetano Milanesi, 9 vols. (Florence: G. C. Sansoni, 1878–85).

Secondary Sources Allegri, Ettore and Alessandro Cecchi. Palazzo Vecchio e I Medici: Guida Storica (Florence: Edizioni Scelte, 1980). Angiolini, Franco. ‘Slaves and Slavery in Early Modern Tuscany (1500–1700)’, History and Culture, 3 (1997): 67–82. Benadusi, Giovanna. ‘Career Strategies in Early Modern Tuscany: The Emergence of a Regional Elite’, The Sixteenth Century Journal, 25.1 (1994): 85–99. Boido, Cristina. Il disegno della città ideale: Cosmopolis (València: Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València, 2020).

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Brackett, John K. Criminal Justice and Crime in Late Renaissance Florence, 1537–1609 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). Bradford, Ernel. Shield and Sword: The Knights of Malta (London: Penguin, 1972). Butters, Suzanne. ‘Pressed Labor and Pratolino: Social Imagery and Social Reality at a Medici Garden’, in Villas and Gardens in Early Modern Italy and France, edited by Mirka Beneš and Dianne Harris (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 61–87. Butters, Suzanne. ‘The Medici Dukes, Comandati and Pratolino: Forced Labour in Renaissance Florence’, in Communes and Despots in Medieval and Renaissance Italy, edited by John E. Law and Bernadette Paton (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), 269–98. Coates, Timothy. ‘European Forced Labor in the Early Modern Era’, in The Cambridge World History of Slavery, vol. 3: AD 1420–AD 1804, edited by David Eltis and Stanley L. Engerman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 631–649. Cochrane, Eric. Florence in the Forgotten Centuries, 1527–1800: A History of Florence and the Florentines in the Age of the Grand Dukes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973). Currie, Elizabeth. Fashion and Masculinity in Renaissance Florence (London: Bloomsbury, 2016). Davis, Robert C. ‘Counting European Slaves on the Barbary Coast’, Past & Present, 172 (2001): 87–124. Davis, Robert C. ‘The Geography of Slaving in the Early Modern Mediterranean, 1500–1800’, The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 37.1 (2007): 57–74. Eisenbichler, Konrad. The Cultural Politics of Duke Cosimo I De’ Medici (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016). Fasano Guarini, Elena. Lo Stato mediceo di Cosimo I (Florence: Sansoni, 1973). Field, Arthur. The Intellectual Struggle for Florence: Humanists and the Beginnings of the Medici Regime, 1420–1440 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). Fury, Cheryl A. ‘Tides in the Affairs of Men: The Social History of Elizabethan Seamen, 1580–1603’, Unpublished PhD Thesis, McMaster University, 1998. Gavitt, Philip. Charity and Children in Renaissance Florence: The Ospedale Degli Innocenti, 1410–1536 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990). Gemignani, Marco. ‘The Navies of the Medici: The Florentine Navy and the Navy of the Sacred Military Order of St Stephen, 1547–1648’ in War at Sea in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, edited by John B. Hattendorf and Richard W. Unger (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2003), 169–86. Guarnieri, Giuseppe Gino. L’Ordine di S. Stefano (Pisa: Giardini, 1966). Hale, J. R. Florence and the Medici: The Pattern of Control (London: Thames and Hudson, 1977).

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Litchfield, R. Burr. Emergence of a Bureaucracy: The Florentine Patricians 1530–1790 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014). Lucassen, Jan. ‘The Other Proletarians: Seasonal Labourers, Mercenaries and Miners’, International Review of Social History 39.2 (1994): 171–94. Nadalo, Stephanie. ‘Negotiating Slavery in a Tolerant Frontier: Livorno’s Turkish Bagno (1547–1747)’, Mediaevalia 32 (2011): 275–324. Poole, Katherine M. ‘The Medici Grand Dukes and the Art of Conquest.’ Unpublished PhD thesis, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, 2007. Poole-Jones, Katherine. ‘The Medici, Maritime Empire, and the Enduring Legacy of the Cavalieri di Santo Stefano’ in Florence in the Early Modern World: New Perspectives, edited by Nicholas Scott Baker and Brian Jeffrey Maxson (London: Routledge, 2020), chap. 8. Pratilli, Giovanni Cascio and Luigi Zangheri. La Legislazione Medicea Sull’Ambiente, vol. 1: (I Bandi 1485–1619) (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1994). Romby, Giuseppina Carla. ‘Il piano di fortificazione dello stato di Cosimo’ in I Cantieri della Difesa nello Stato Mediceo del Cinquecento, edited by Giuseppina Carla Romby (Florence: Edifir – Edizioni Firenze, 2005), 11–94. Terpstra, Nicholas. Abandoned Children of the Italian Renaissance: Orphan Care in Florence and Bologna (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005). Thompson, I. A. A. ‘A Map of Crime in Sixteenth-Century Spain’, chap. 11 in his War and Society in Habsburg Spain: Selected Essays (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1992). Thomson, Janice E. Mercenaries, Pirates, and Sovereigns: State-Building and Extraterritorial Violence in Early Modern Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994). Williams, Phillip. Empire and Holy War in the Mediterranean: The Galley and Maritime Conflict between the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires (London: I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd., 2014). Zürcher, Erik-Jan. ‘Introduction: Understanding Changes in Military Recruitment and Employment Worldwide’, in Fighting for a Living: A Comparative History of Military Labour 1500–2000, edited by Erik-Jan Zürcher (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2013), 11–41.

About the Author Victoria Bartels is a cultural historian of the early modern period. She is a Research Fellow at Aalto University, where she currently works on the project ‘Refashioning the Renaissance: Popular Groups and the Material and Cultural Significance of Clothing in Europe 1550–1650’, funded by the European Research Council.

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‘A Horse is a Feeling Animal’ Interspecies Interaction and Animal Agency in Renaissance Warfare Sarah Cockram Abstract In The Art of War (1521), Machiavelli describes the horse as ‘a feeling animal’, highlighting animal individuality and human-horse understanding. This chapter explores such interspecies interaction, approaching Renaissance warfare as a multispecies experience. It considers the impact of war on animals, and vice versa, arguing that animal agency fundamentally affected the military enterprise. The chapter begins with theories of agency and, in relation to the Italian Wars (1494–1559), takes up the proposal that the well-functioning horse and rider worked as a ‘unity’. Moving beyond the equine, it examines canine, feline, and parasitic agents of war. This chapter’s more-than-human perspective calls for inclusive conception of agency, serious investigation of interrelationships among and between species, and the rethinking of traditional military histories. Keywords: Renaissance warfare, Italian Wars, historical animal studies, animals, agency, interspecies interaction

In his dialogue The Art of War, Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) has the interlocutor Fabrizio Colonna (ca. 1450–1520) argue that, ‘[m]any times it happens that a spirited man will be on a vile horse or a vile [man] on a spirited [horse]. Hence these disparities of spirit must make for disorder … a horse is a feeling animal and recognizes the dangers and enters them unwillingly. And if you will consider which forces make it go forward and which keep it back, without doubt you will see that those which keep it back are greater than those which push it on. For the spur makes it go ahead, and, on the other side, either the sword or the pike

Bowd, S., Cockram, S. & Gagné, J. (eds.), Shadow Agents of Renaissance War. Suffering, Supporting, and Supplying Conflict in Italy and Beyond. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2023 doi: 10.5117/9789463721356_ch03

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keep it back … I say that if that horse begins to see from afar that it has to hit the points of the pikes, either it checks its course on its own, so that as it feels itself pricked it will stop entirely, or as it approaches them it will turn to the right or left. If you want to make an experiment of this, try to run a horse into a wall with whatever impetus you want: rarely will you find that it goes into it’.1

Machiavelli’s well-known support of citizen armies gave him his own reasons for proposing that cavalry might be less effective than infantry in battle. Nevertheless, while he recommended that horses were best deployed for reconnaissance, breaking lines of communication and supply, and for harassment of the enemy, Machiavelli also recognized the role that horses could play on the battlefield.2 Crucially, Machiavelli suggests in this passage the significance of a mutual human-equine understanding for the efficiency of the military enterprise, and he highlights equine sentience and different temperaments. While Machiavelli’s attitude to real-life animals has yet to receive full scholarly attention,3 here Machiavelli has the experienced horseman Colonna describe the horse as a ‘feeling animal’, a view in agreement with authors of equestrian treatises and military memoirs whose writings similarly underlined the personality of horses and co-operation of horse and rider. This chapter draws on recent work in animal studies to explore such interspecies interactions and to interrogate this volume’s 1 Machiavelli, Art of War, 42 (2.90–95); Dell’Arte della guerra, 21: ‘Occorre … molte volte, che uno uomo animoso sarà sopra uno cavallo vile e uno vile sopra uno animoso; donde conviene che queste disparitadi d’animo facciano disordine. Né alcuno si maravigli che uno nodo di fanti sostenga ogni impeto di cavagli, perché il cavallo è animale sensato e conosce i pericoli e male volentieri vi entra. E se considererete quali forze lo facciano andar avanti e quali lo tengano indietro, vedrete sanza dubbio essere maggiori quelle che lo ritengono che quelle che lo spingono; perché innanzi lo fa andar lo sprone, e dall’altra banda lo ritiene o la spada o la picca.… dico che, se il cavallo discosto comincia a vedere di avere a percuotere nelle punte delle picche, o per se stesso egli raffrenerà il corso, di modo che come egli si sentirà pugnere si fermerà affatto, o, giunto a quelle, si volterà a destra o a sinistra. Di che se volete fare esperienza, provate a correre un cavallo contro a un muro; radi ne troverrete che, con quale vi vogliate foga, vi dieno dentro’. For the complex use of the persona of Fabrizio Colonna as a mouthpiece for Machiavelli’s views, see Najemy. 2 Machiavelli, Art of War, 180–89 (2.72–100). Compare Discorsi, 2.18. 3 Scholarship on the human/animal and hybridity in Machiavelli’s work concentrates predominantly on the figure of the centaur and on the value of the qualities of lion and fox in chap. 18 of The Prince, and on humanity’s self-serving, insatiable ambition as contrasted with animals’ moral superiority in harmony with the natural world in L’Asino / The Ass. See for instance Lukes, Brown, Vatter, Cimatti and Salzani. Further work across his writings on Machiavelli’s view of lived interspecies interaction would be welcome, for instance on Machiavelli’s letter to his son of April 1527 about letting loose a crazy mule (The Chief Works, 2:1006–7).

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theme of agency in the shadows of war through its application to animals and to human-animal relations. It investigates the effects of war on animal minds and bodies, and vice versa, arguing that animal agency affected the strategy, practices and outcomes of Renaissance warfare. I briefly set out theories of agency (of people, animals, and things) to adopt an approach to animal agency that calls for sentience but need not be tied to intention and, in the context of the Italian Wars, this chapter takes up David Gary Shaw’s proposal that the well-functioning horse and rider (without the ‘disparities of spirit’ described by Machiavelli) worked as a ‘unity’ of agents. There is still little research at the intersection of military history and historical animal studies,4 and a paucity in relation to Renaissance warfare and in particular to the Italian Wars (1494–1559). Over sixty-five years, this succession of conflicts was fought to assert French or imperial dominance over Italy, complicating and exacerbating tensions among Italian states, and drawing in international and peninsular powers, before Habsburg control was finally established. The Italian Wars were ‘a laboratory for new strategies, tactics, and operational models’, and while innovations co-existed with adaptations of older methods where these might bring benefits, the period in general saw increased use of firearms and changes in the military function of the traditional armoured knight.5 The Italian nobility were thus thrown doubly into crisis, facing not only ultramontane aggression and domination of Italian affairs but also, in common with the nobility beyond Italy, threat of diminishing practical relevance of the chivalric ideal. This insecurity encouraged displays of status and virtuosity through equestrian spectacle and the manège.6 Horsemanship remained a quintessential attribute of the early modern nobility, off and on the battlefield, as cavalry continued in central roles alongside infantry,7 new technologies and skills needed to be mastered by the mounted combatant on a nimble animal, and adaptable partnership with the horse could still spell the difference between life and death. Despite potential methodological challenges to researching the history of animals,8 not least in accessing specific experience of the animal through 4 See Phillips, 422–45, Hediger, ‘History of War’. Research exploring emotional connections with animals in modern military environments includes Pearson, ‘Four-Legged Poilus’; Webb et al., McEwen, Hediger, ‘Dogs of War’. 5 Jacob and Visoni-Alonzo, 61; Verrier; Hale and Mallett, 367–80. 6 Jobst, Schiesari. 7 Including in colonial context, for instance for the role of Spanish horse against Aztec and Inca forces see Jacob and Visoni-Alonzo, 34. 8 See for instance Kean, Fudge, ‘A Left-Handed Blow’ and ‘What Was it Like?’, Swart, ‘“But Where’s the Bloody Horse”’.

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human-authored sources, a rich array of evidence reveals the culture of Renaissance equestrianism and teamwork with horses. Sources also demonstrate the military roles animals played more broadly, and ideas about animals in war, giving insight into Renaissance views of animal interior life and behaviour during a period that urgently questioned the divide between human and animal.9 Valuable materials include military and equestrian treatises; histories, travel accounts and memoirs; archival documents such as muster rolls, diplomatic reports, letters and inventories; the material culture of war including saddles and armour; visual and literary sources; and archaeological and genetic evidence. While horses are the archetype, they were not, of course, the only creatures in combat and support roles. Other animal agents of Renaissance war include mules and donkeys; oxen;10 attack or guard dogs; ships’ cats; perhaps beehives used as weapons in sieges;11 and animals drawn up in the wake or the baggage of the army, including vermin and parasitic hangers on. The more-than-human perspective of this chapter not only expands the roll but then calls for inclusive conception of agency, serious investigation of interrelationships among and between species, and rethinking of traditional histories of war. As Gervase Phillips puts it, gradually ‘animals are … finding their place in military history. Yet they largely figure as passive objects of human dominion. [The historiography] has only tentatively begun to explore the possibility of embracing the animal experience as well’; ‘without acknowledging the presence and the suffering of animals is any account of war really complete?’12 The task is more than repopulating the Renaissance battlefield, camp or besieged town with animals ubiquitous there, it is also to ask questions about the labour and experience of war through the lens of interspecies interaction, including questions about co-operation and exploitation, and about what this means for the animal (for instance a horse, as in Machiavelli’s example, spurred on towards pikes). Approaching understanding of the animal perspective may require critical engagement across disciplines, for example with ethology and research into animal emotions.13 Taking the animal seriously in this way enriches Renaissance military history and shows the impact of the animal on human lives as well as what humans did to animal lives, and investigates multispecies 9 10 11 12 13

Bowd and Cockram. For oxen drawing artillery see Guicciardini, 78 (1.11). Eva Crane, 542. Phillips, 423, 428. See Fudge, ‘Milking’; Cockram, ‘Sleeve Cat’ and ‘History of Emotions’.

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entanglement. What did it mean to experience war together? Human-animal relations were changed, strengthened, or strained in response to military situations, such as in the blood-spattered heat of battle or under starvation in siege conditions. Following my research on exotics and companion animals,14 this chapter not only shows the importance of animals in the military landscape of Renaissance Italy, it also examines the agency of those animals in connections with those of the same and other species, including people. This chapter begins by considering theories of historical agency and how these might be applied to animals of war.

Historical Agency Ways of conceptualizing agency define how we understand the possibilities of the animal agent.15 As the Introduction to this volume has discussed, models of agency might be viewed on a spectrum: from the self-reflective, self-directing action of an individual with the knowing power to affect change, to a much wider, shared view of agency removed from the singular sentient being. In very broad brushstrokes, three influential approaches are as follows, beginning with the most traditional: 1. Agency is predicated on recognizable reasoned thought and intention. Agents are self-aware; they know, intend, plan, judge, and execute. They express themselves in ways historians can access and understand. This model might lead down the line of historical bias toward the autonomous individual guiding high-level military strategy, such as the general and tactician or, if more open, can incorporate conscious, calculated action of the subaltern, including if directed to different military-political goals. Following a Cartesian view, this anthropocentric model would discount the possibility of rational, thoughtful animal agency. 2. Agency requires sentience but not the same degree of intention, and does not require any awareness of traditional military objectives. Agents feel, think, and act within social/cultural systems and structures. This model allows a move away from great-man narratives or fixation on clear-cut grand plans, to see more clearly, for instance, the agency of the common soldier or group of soldiers in the melee of battle, whose contribution to 14 Cockram, ‘Interspecies Understanding’ and ‘Sleeve Cat’. 15 Howell, 197–221.

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war may be rooted in another set of incentives and understandings to those of commanders or be based in certain circumstances in shock, fear or confusion. Decisions and purpose need not be clearly defined, expressed, or even comprehensible. While social theories have been marked by anthropocentrism,16 models of agency conceived upon sentient interaction can incorporate the animal agent without being predicated on human-like decision making, and can explore what animal worldview and motivation might entail, allowing animals agency of their own species/individual kind. Animal agency within this paradigm could include, for instance, the unwitting military contribution of cats used to transport lit incendiary devices into besieged castles and cities. The value of fire-starting cats (and doves) in Renaissance warfare is discussed, and illustrated, in manuscript and print editions of the artillery master Franz Helm’s Buch von den probierten Künsten (Book of the Practical Arts), published as Armamentarium principale oder Kriegsmunition und Artillerie-Buch (Principles of Armament or Book of War Munitions and Artillery).17 Whether or not Helm’s suggestions were put into practice, they reveal contemporary ideas about uses of animals as military technology and about animal inner lives and behaviour. Helm recommends that ‘to set fire to a castle or city that you could not otherwise get’, the artilleryman should first get his hands on a cat from that place. He should make a small combustible sack, ‘and bind the sack to the cat’s back, light it, let it glow well and then let the cat go, so that it runs back to the nearby castle or town and in fear it will think to hide itself, and hiding in hay or straw these will be set alight’.18 This tactic rests on interspecies interaction, beginning with catching the animal and successfully strapping on the device. The cat needs to be a feeling, active being, and the plan works on the assumption that the weaponized cat will act as the artilleryman’s knowledge of cat behaviour predicts: heading for home rather than, for instance, towards the besiegers’ own encampment; then, as the lit sack causes increasing pain and fear, hiding somewhere quiet, and ideally highly 16 Howell, 199. 17 Helm, Buch von den probierten Künsten (1535), Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg, Cod. Pal. germ. 128 (fol. 74r) and Buch von den probierten Künsten (ca.1590) / Feuer Buech (1584), University of Pennsylvania, LJS 442 (fol. 60r) and MS Codex 109 (fol. 137r). Helm, Armamentarium principale, 48. Fraas. 18 ‘Ein Schloß, oder stadt anzünden der du sonst nicht zu kommen magst’, ‘Mach ein klein secklein wie zu einem fewer pfeyl … tracht ob du mogest Bekhomen im schloss oder statt, ein katzen so darein gehörig, unnd bind das secklein der katzen auff den Rucke, zunde es an lass wol gluen, unnd darnach die katzen Lauffen, So tracht sie dennegsten, dem schloss oder statt zw, und vor forcht gedenckt sie sich zuuerfriechenn, wo sie in scheweren hew oder stroe findt, wurtt es von ir angezundet’. See also Fraas.

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flammable. Feline agency and the cat’s relationship with human habitation are crucial. 3. In a third model, agency is relational and does not require cognition or sentience. Here the agent is interconnected, acting in various configurations of actors, with interior reflection no longer imperative. This can be valuable in military history, giving a perspective of the multiple actors in military action and their intermingled influence. Power is thus collective, dispersed and de-centred from the commander, indeed from the human. This view of agency often draws on actor network theory (ANT) and the work of Bruno Latour, and on Deleuze and Guattari’s ideas of assemblage.19 In such models, ‘agency is no longer considered as a property or possession of a few, but is rather inherent in the world and its myriad relationships’.20 For Karen Barad, ‘agency is cut loose from its traditional humanist orbit’, ‘it is an enactment, not something that someone or something has’.21 A posthumanist theoretical approach can draw on Erica Fudge’s discussion of the animal-made-object,22 extending potential for animal agency in the Italian Wars to products made of animals and their parts. These include not just meat, wool and leather but also weaponry, real or imagined, such as Leonardo da Vinci’s (1452–1519) horrif ic recipe from the 1480s of a bomb of deadly smoke, ‘fumo mortale’, to be launched at ships and containing, among other ingredients, toad venom, tarantula, and saliva of a rabid dog.23 Agency without sentience can be accorded to rotting horse carcasses after battle, and includes environmental and biological agents such as pathogens. With such options briefly set out, and in full recognition of the value of thinking about the agency of the microbial, and the dead, inanimate, or imaginary, the rest of this chapter chooses to highlight the sentient agent of war. Lived actions of individuals, human and animal, are analysed within a nexus of interactions with others of the same and different species and against a backdrop of their environment. Certainly, the labour and experience of animals at war happen within interrelationships, one type of which can be termed ‘unities’. 19 20 21 22 23

Latour, Deleuze and Guattari. See Howell, Pearson, ‘History and Animal Agencies’. Howell, 201. Barad, 826–27. Fudge, ‘Renaissance Animal Things’. Leonardo da Vinci, Codice Atlantico, fol. 950v.

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Unity of Horse and Rider David Gary Shaw’s article in a Special Issue of the journal History and Theory entitled ‘Does History Need Animals?’ unpacks the question of agency through the example of the 1st Duke of Wellington’s (1769–1852) horse Copenhagen and the Battle of Waterloo (1815).24 Shaw presents the efficient horse-and-rider, such as Wellington and Copenhagen, as a ‘unity’, two agents whose actions combine to make a pair of ‘especially close, disciplined actors’.25 The concept of a unity of this type is stimulating in consideration of the Renaissance horse-and-rider, and contemporary ideas about fusion of horse and human abound in visual sources such as Leonardo da Vinci’s Rider on a Rearing Horse (ca. 1481, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge), in which horse and rider are on the verge of merging into one body. Almost centaur-ish horse-rider hybrids can also be seen, for instance, in an engraved rock crystal cameo relief depicting a stylized, heavily classicized depiction of the Battle of Pavia (1525) by Giovanni Bernardi (ca. 1531–35, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore). Juliana Schiesari discusses the Renaissance equestrian statue, such as Donatello’s statue of the condottiere Erasmo da Narni, known as ‘Gattamelata’ (1453, Piazza del Santo, Padua), as representing ‘two beings in a close connection to each other, horse-rider, rider-horse … belonging together to the warrior class’.26 The connection between horse and human is also explored in equestrian treatises such as Federico Grisone’s Gli ordini di cavalcare (Rules of Riding) (1550). In early editions, the full title of this work goes on to advertise that it will teach ‘the ways to know the natures of horses, to fix their vices and train them for use in war and for the benefit of men’.27 The title proclaims that the reader will be given images of various types of horse bit, according to different mouths and training requirements. From the very title then this book takes into account difference between individual horses, not just physical but also in their natures, and advises that this knowledge will have practical application in warfare. Grisone puts forward clearly the precept that the effective horse and rider should work as one body, in a 24 Shaw looks to the battlefield of Waterloo in which ‘military achievement … was partially the fruit of the duke’s rational agency and in which the horse operated only in the shadows, somewhat like a secret agent’, 155. 25 Shaw, 146. 26 Schiesari, 377. See also Susan Crane, 137–68. 27 Eg. Grisone, Ordini di cavalcare, et modi di conoscere le nature de’ caualli, di emendare i lor vitij, & d’ammaestrargli per l’uso della guerra, & giouamento de gli huomini: con varie figvre di morsi, secondo le bocche, & il maneggio che si vuol dar loro (1571).

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unity akin to that proposed by Shaw (in what Juliana Schiesari describes as ‘an embodied friendship that crosses species lines’ and Karen Raber terms a ‘created language of the body’, indeed one which must be co-created to be comprehensible to both parties).28 Grisone advises his reader to think of the horse ‘that you and he are one as the same body, feeling, and will’.29 The expert horseman was able to create successful unity even on someone else’s horse, for instance Grisone tells the story of the Neapolitan Giacomo Guindazzo who borrowed a carefully-chosen mount from the Prince of Melfi the day before the battle of Cerignola (1503): When the battle commenced, the horse suffered many injuries, and so great were the deeds of the horse and of the rider, that everyone admired them, and finally, through the virtue of that horse, [Guindazzo] showed miraculous valour, and his life was saved. And both the horse and rider are worthy of having their names triumphant throughout the world and in the fifth sphere [of the planet Mars].30

Despite joint or complementary training; shared military and sensory experience; close physical contact; and perhaps a mutual affective bond, the unity might be broken. It could be ruptured by violence in combat, such as for the three horses killed under Francesco Gonzaga (1466–1519), commander at the battle of Fornovo of 1495 against the French.31 The unity might also be severed by a loss of connection between rider and mount on the battlefield, as in the case of Ferrante Gonzaga’s (1507–57) fall from his horse at the battle of St Quentin in 1557. Ferrante would die of fatigue and injuries sustained from the fall.32 These examples of Gonzaga father and son, from one of the most renowned horse-breeding families in Europe and from key battles bookending the Italian Wars, demonstrate what was at

28 Schiesari, 377; Raber, 89. 29 Grisone, Rules of Riding, 106–7: ‘che egli sia con voi un’istesso corpo, di un senso, & di una voluntà’. As John Astley’s Art of Riding (1584) would later put it in English, ‘these two severall bodies seem in all their actions and motions to be as it were but one onlie bodie’. Astley also uses similar language to Machiavelli in describing the horse as a ‘sensible creature’, motivated by ‘sense and feeling’ who will ‘shunne such things as annoy him’, 5, 3. 30 ‘cominciandosi la battaglia il cavallo hebbe molte ferrite, & talmente furono grade le opera del cavallo, & del cavaliero, che ne rimase ogn’un ammirato, & finalmente per la virtù di quello, egli mostrando mirabil valore, su salvo della vita: & l’uno & l’altro degni che hora il nome loro triunfante sia nel mondo, & nella quinta spera’. Grisone, Rules of Riding, 412–15. 31 Sanudo, 478. 32 Goselini, 429.

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stake to both horse and rider in the successful enactment of unity.33 In the quotation at the opening of this chapter, Machiavelli describes what we might consider a unity gone wrong, horse and rider mismatched, ‘with disparities of spirit’ and acting at cross purposes. Like the human party, Machiavelli gives the horse character and choice. The examples here provide a clear sense that contemporary sources accorded animals individual personalities and temperaments. Animals had a range of possibilities of action and of influence on people, other animals and circumstances around them. Military memoirs give evocative evidence of soldiers’ attitudes to partnership with horses.34 As Yuval N. Harari shows, for military memoirists a life of honourable action frequently began and ended with being able to mount a horse, ‘horses took part in their masters’ deeds, and were instrumental in performing such deeds … Consequently the horse was an extension or a part of his master’s identity, and deserved a place both in his lifestory and in history’.35 Furthermore, as well as constituting a core part of noble military identity and achievement, the horse was also a sentient individual, capable of mutual affective connection to the rider, and memoirs make clear the depth of feeling towards certain horses. For instance, in his memoirs of fighting in Habsburg service, the Burgundian Fery de Guyon details a 1542 trip to Andalusia to buy horses. His purchases included: a horse given his own name, Fery, who would go on to be the best at court, coveted by the emperor; another horse called Pacq; and Camu, ‘the best and most loyal horse that I have ever known’. Guyon describes his intense, life-threatening grief for a horse lost during the same trip.36 So that they might have future years together, Guyon later decided not to risk his favourite at the battle of St Quentin; instead he took to the field on an unreliable horse.37 The memoirs of Blaise de Monluc (c.1502–77), named marshal of France in 1574, shed light on his relationship with an excellent Turkish horse given to him in Rome near the end of the Italian Wars. Monluc describes his loss in 1562 of ‘my 33 For Gonzaga horses: Nosari and Canova, Tonni, Malacarne. 34 Harari, particularly 136–37. 35 Harari, 141–42, 147. 36 ‘De sorte que mes chevaux furent les bien venus, signament vers monsieur de Riez, lequel en eust les trois, dont il donna nom à l’un Fery, et est sorty le meilleur cheval de la cour, si bon, que l’Empereur luy en offrit cinq cents escus, ducats, lesquels il ne print pas, ains le luy donna. L’autre fut appellé Pacq en teste, il fut perdu depuis devant Ingolstat, de manière que je fus demonté de mes chevaux, et constraint d’en acheter d’autres, j’achetay lors mon Camu, qui est reüssi le meilleur et plus leal cheval que jamais j’ai cognu’. Guyon, 94–98. Harari, 3. 37 ‘Afin que soyez participant de la fin de ma vie, cedit jour mon cheval se deferra auparavant de donner bataille, monsieur de la Trolliere, mon bon seigneur et capitaine, m’en presta un des siens, le n’estoit pas des meilleurs’. Guyon, 138. Harari, 136.

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horse, whom I loved, after my children, more than anything in this world, because he saved me from death or prison three times. … I never had nor ever expect to have again such a good horse as that one’.38 Monluc is explicit in crediting the horse with preserving his life and freedom. In earlier memoirs recalling the onset of the Italian Wars, the diplomat Philippe de Commines (1447–1511) wrote of the redeeming influence of the exceptional horse ridden by the less-than-inspiring French king Charles VIII (1470–98) at the Battle of Fornovo on 6 July 1495: the noble king mounted on horseback, and called for me several times: I came to him and found him completely armed, and mounted upon the best horse I ever saw in my life. The horse was called Savoy, of the Bressian breed, and had been given him … by Charles, Duke of Savoy. It was a black horse, with but one eye, of no extraordinary stature, but tall enough for him that was to ride him. This young prince seemed that day quite another person than what one would take him to have been by his nature, proportion, and complexion. He was exceedingly bashful, especially in speaking, and is so to this day; and no wonder, for he had been brought up in great awe, and in the company of inferior people; but now, being mounted on his horse, his eyes sparkled with fire, his complexion was fresh and lively, and all his words showed wisdom and discretion.39

Just as Charles VIII had been brought down by poor human company, so this outstanding horse exerted a beneficial effect on the king, at a critical 38 ‘J’y perdus mon cheval turc, que j’aimois, après mes enfans, plus que chose de ce monde, car il m’avoit sauvé la vie ou la prison trois fois. Le duc de Palliane me l’avoit donné à Rome. Je n’eus ny n’espère jamais avoir un si bon cheval que celuy-là’, Monluc, 2:491. Harari, 136. 39 Commynes (Scoble), 207–208 (2.10); Commynes (Blanchard), 1:634: ‘monta le Roy a cheval, et me fist appeller par plussieurs foiz. Je vins a luy et le trouvay armé de toutes pieces et monté sur le plus beau cheval que j’aye veu de mon temps, appellé Savoye. Plusieurs disoient que il estoit cheval de Bresse: le duc Charles de Savoye luy avoit donné, et estoit noir, et n’avoit que ung oeil, et moyen cheval et de bonne grandeur pour celuy qui estoit dessus. Et sembloit que cest homme jeune fust tout aultre que sa nature ne portoit, ne sa taille ne sa complexion: car il est fort craintif a parler encores au jour d’uy (aussi avoit esté nourry en grande craincte) et petite personne. Et ce cheval le monstroit grant, et avoit le visaige bon et bonne couleur, et la parolle audacieuse et saige’. Grisone also describes the importance, and honourable retirement, accorded to Charles’s ‘caval morello, villan di Spagna, il quale era non solo cieco di un occhio: ma havea vinti quattro anni … tale possanza et animo dimostrò il cavallo, che il Rè molte volte disse che da lui nacque la cagione della vittoria sua: il quale cavallo essendo giunto nella città di Molina, oltre che fusse diligentemente finche visse governato, senza più travagliarsi, dopo che morì, fu per ordine di madamma di Borbona sorella del Rè, honorevolemente sepellito’. Rules of Riding, 412–13.

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moment for the welfare of French interests. As the battle unfolded, and victory proved elusive for the French forces, Commines’ memoir again accords Savoy a significant role: [A] small party of the routed enemy coming along the road, and perceiving it so thin of men, fell upon the king and the aforesaid gentleman of his bedchamber [Anthony des Aubus]; but the king, by the activity of his horse (which was the best in the world), kept them at bay till others of his men came up, who were not far off; and then the Italians were all forced to fly. 40

While Savoy could not secure the king a decisive French victory at Fornovo, he was nevertheless able to avoid the king being captured. This was a fate that Francis I’s (1494–1547) horse could not spare his rider at the Battle of Pavia. Francis’s mount was killed beneath him and the king’s capture by Habsburg forces spelled catastrophe for the French. Sometimes the horse’s agency provided valuable decision making and co-decision making on the battlefield; other times the intensity of battle was such that the animal agent was unable to escape violence and defeat any more than other combatants, or made mistakes or might (like Machiavelli’s example) refuse to go forward or follow orders. The horse-rider unity functions only because both the human and equine parties are ‘feeling’ animals, both have a mind and body which they can bend to common will and action. But what of horses that have too much mind of their own?

Recalcitrance and Collaboration Scholars have frequently attempted to locate animal agency in flashpoints of tension and resistance, in acts of refusal to fall into line, in kicks, bites, escapes, 41 or in obstinacy, obstructiveness, and day-to-day acts of disobedience and reduced labour, in what might be described, following Eric Hobsbawm, as ‘working the system to their minimum disadvantage’, or by 40 Commynes (Scoble), 215 (2.12); Commynes (Blanchard), 1:643: ‘une bande petite de quelzques hommes d’armes desrompus, venant au long de ladicte greve qu’ilz veoient toute necte de gens, vindrent assaillir le Roy et ce varlet de chambre. Ledict seigneur avoit le meilleur cheval du monde pour luy, et se remuoit et deffendit; et arriva sur l’heure de ses aultres gens qui n’estoient gueres loing de luy, et se myrent les Ytalliens a fouyr’. 41 Eg. Hribal, ‘Animals’ and Fear.

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Philip Howell as ‘footdragging (hoofdragging?)’.42 These have been important ideas in work on agency in animal studies. As Sandra Swart points out ‘on a very obvious level, animal agency surfaces with the very constraints that humans have had to apply to them: the instruments of control – reins, stables, whips, bits, chains, curbs – tell their own story’. 43 Renaissance evidence provides much food for thought, from the spurs of Machiavelli’s ineffectual horseman to Grisone’s bits. This is relational agency, on the basis of sentience and the potential for interspecific communication, here of dominance and required behaviour. Animals (in common with soldiers) might be harder or easier to connect with, might possess more or less pleasing personalities, more or less tractable natures, showing more or less resistance to following orders. 44 Grisone advises on how to train the horse to face the terrors of battle, using methods of habituation to frightening stimuli, kind handling, and intraspecific reassurance by the calm presence of experienced horses. After practice of riding among armed men acting in a loud, threatening manner, you can develop [the horse’s] bravery as well by riding him and placing him side by side with another horse, or in the middle of two horses that are old and accustomed to noise and the strikes of artillery. You want to shoot some blanks from some arquebuses and the more you reassure him, the closer you can get to these shots … And do not cease to continually reassure him with your hand, and talk to him gently. 45

The amenable horse might encourage us to consider animal labour and agency through models provided by the Belgian philosopher Vinciane Despret and by the sociological work of Jocelyne Porcher and Tiphaine Schmitt on the dairy cow’s collaboration with humans. 46 Theories of co-working and co-creation of outcomes, based on understanding between species, can offer new ways to approach Renaissance sources. Such work might 42 Hobsbawm; Howell, 205. 43 Swart, ‘Review’; Edwards, 155–75. 44 For Machiavelli on discipline of soldiers, see for instance Art of War, 146 (2.140–41). 45 Grisone, Rules of Riding, 362–63: ‘Non poco gli porgerà pur’ animo, il cavalcarlo & ponervi al costato d’un cavallo, ò ver in mezzo di due cavalli che siano vecchi, & sicuri al romore, & alle botte dell’artegliaria, & non troppo vicino a lui gli farete poi, senza palla, sparare alcuni archibusi, & quanto più si assicura, tanto più quelli segli potranno avvicinare, & sparargli da presso: & all’hora non mancherete continuamente, assicurarlo sempre con la mano, & fargli carezze con la parola, & in quanti modi si può’. 46 Despret, What Would Animals Say and ‘Do Animals Work?’; Porcher and Schmitt.

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draw attention not only to co-operation between animals, and between people and animals in the work of war, but also to the ways in which the horse might reciprocally contribute to the training of the rider in a unity.47 Renaissance Italians saw horses as individuals with complex minds, capable of forming meaningful relationships with people and working together. Horses were credited with features we would associate with sentient agency. 48 For instance, in La Gloria del Cavallo (1566), Pasquale Caracciolo describes the similarity of equine and human feelings and inner life, including in dreams, love, and memory: ‘this conformity [with human nature] is perhaps the reason that [horses] are such good friends to humans’. 49 The attribution to horses of high-level interior states is fundamental to the fine horse’s role as alter-ego of the warrior class, capable of a union – and unity – of body and mind with the noble rider. This reflects the cult of the horse in creating expectations, performances, and currencies of elite masculinity and identity, including in practices of gift-giving. However, integral to this elevation of the horse is the real-life bond of people and the horses with whom they communicated closely, in everyday interspecies understandings that were enacted in times of peace and among the stresses of war across lines of status and class, albeit in different practical comings-together for man-at-arms, groom, farrier, carter, ostler, or farmer. Turning attention to animals reveals not only non-human agents of war, but also a range of people in diverse interactions with a variety of animals. Questions of class, hierarchy, collaboration and resistance can be identified in the case of those creatures taken as spoils of war. To give two examples, at very different levels in the military pecking order: in 1525 Federico Gonzaga (1500–40) was offered some fine horses taken from Turkish prisoners by imperial troops in Serbia.50 In a less elevated, less successful example, drawn from literature and suggesting a common soldier’s perspective, the recently returned veteran depicted by Ruzante (the stage name of Angelo Beolco [ca. 1494–1542]), bemoans having been unable to take any animal plunder: 47 On training: Haraway, When Species Meet; Hearne. 48 Philip Howell argues that ‘a certain individuality and quasi-personhood has long been conferred on breed animals, animals in warfare, and many others’, 203. 49 Carraciolo, 7–8: ‘Ne maraviglia se n’è da prendere, havendo in molte cose il Cavallo somiglianza con l’Huomo, stando questi animali soggetti a tutti que’ medesimi affetti e morbi, a’ quali noi stiamo. Eglino si sognano, come noi … Et benche questa & alcune altre conditioni comuni habbiano ancor co’Cani, come la fede, l’amore, & la memoria; tutta via dimostrano apertamente, ch’essi più che altri, della natura nostra non solamente partecipi siano, ma conformi. Laqual conformità forse è cagione, ch’eglino sian de gli huomini tanto amici’. 50 Niccolo Rali to Federico Gonzaga, 16 May 1525: Archivio di Stato, Mantua, Archivio Gonzaga, busta 795, fol. 127. Tobey, ‘The Palio’, 257.

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‘Ruzante: … I was out to get my hands on a few cows or horses, I was … [downcast] but I never got lucky’.51 The high-quality booty presented to the lord of Mantua, with his retinue of skilled horsemen, would be of a different kind and enterprise to the attempts of lower ranks to seize living loot. Such animals may not oppose new ownership (and such soldiers may in any case have sound experience in handling horses and livestock, or may not); the animals may have little choice in changing hands; or they may resist and attempt to flee or fight by all methods possible.

Dogs, Cats, Rats, Lice Beyond the hoofed, sources indicate thought-provoking material on the place of dogs within Renaissance warfare, and further research will allow greater integration of canine participation in the Italian Wars, as well as investigation into Renaissance ideas about military use of dogs. Again, questions of agency, training, and interspecies communication are exposed. The Spanish set attack dogs against indigenous Americans,52 and there is evidence of dogs in camp and in support and combat functions in European conflicts. Elizabeth I (1533–1603) deployed mastiffs against the Irish,53 and her father Henry VIII (1491–1547) sent the emperor 400 English soldiers with the same number of iron-collared mastiffs, for use against the French in 1544. To quote the English translation of the work of German jurist and polymath Philipp Camerarius: It may be that Henry the VIII … had an eie to [the] prompt fidelitie of dogs, when in the armie which he sent to the Emperor Charles the fifth against the French king, there were foure hundred souldiers that had the charge of the like number of dogs, all of them garnished with good yron collers after the fashion of that country: no man being able to say, whither they were appointed to be sentinels in the night, or to serve for some stratagem for obteining the victorie.54 51 Ruzante, The Veteran, scene II: ‘A trasea a pigiar qualche vaca mi, o cavala, e sì no he mè habú ventura’. 52 Karunanithy, 97–102; Las Casas, 127. 53 In 1598 William Resould reported to Cecil from Lisbon that Essex was said to be taking 12,000 men and 3,000 mastiffs to Ireland. In 1599, John Chamberlain wrote to Dudley Carleton that there was discussion of Essex taking 200 or 300 mastiffs, with some lack of clarity as to whether these were to worry Irish people or their cattle. Calendar of State Papers, 43 (266:116) and 156 (270:25). See MacInnes. 54 Camerarius, 84.

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What such a stratagem might have been is something to explore further. It is not surprising, in a context with many of the same combatants, for dogs to feature in the Italian Wars. The Bolognese naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522–1605) discusses attack dogs, threatening, fierce, and trained from puppyhood to attack a running target.55 Such dogs might obey their handler, but would not allow themselves to be stroked. Mastiffs could thus present a danger not only to the enemy but also to their owners, as per the warning given for hunt dogs in Gaston Phébus’s fourteenth-century Livre de chasse (Book of the Hunt).56 Gaston emphasizes that the mastiff is a potentially deadly dog requiring careful training, as the mastiff ‘is better shaped and stronger for to do harm than any other beast’,57 and indeed Gaston knows of the case of a master killed by his own mastiff. As with horses, the strong attachment between people and various breeds of dogs allowed for use in a range of practical purposes at war, for instance as guard dogs or protecting supplies from rodents. Dogs could provide emotional support. To the Renaissance mind, they might even be capable of offering encouragement that tipped the scales of battle in one side’s favour, as per the opinion reported by sources including Paolo Giovio (1483–1552) and Pietro Giustiniani about the battle of Novara of 1513, which forced the French from Italy. According to this much-repeated story, here again from Camerarius: We must confesse that there is in this beast [the dog] I know not what particular sense and advice more than men know: as appeareth by a memorable example that hapned in our time at Novara in Lombardie. The Swissers and the Frenchmen being upon the point of giving a battell, a great number of dogs that had followed their masters in the war, suddenly left the campe of the French, and ran (as they had beene beaten away) to the Swissers, and being come to them, they began to lick their feet, to fawne on them with their tailes, and to lie downe before them, as presaging that they should carrie away the victory, and taking them alreadie for their masters. Which thing did the more encourage the Swissers to fight, from whence they returned victorious, with a very memorable successe.58

55 Aldrovandi, 558 (3.8). 56 Phébus, chap. 17: ‘quar il est mieulz taillé et plus fort pour fere male que nulle autre beste … j’ay veu alant qui tuait son maistre’. 57 Edward of Norwich’s translation, 116–17. 58 Camerarius, 84; Giovio, Historiarum, 1:477; Giovio, Historie, 341; Giustiniani, Rerum Venetarum, 313; Giustiniani, Le Historie Venetiane, fol. 317v (bk. 12).

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In addition to human-canine bonds in war on land, dogs may have offered companionship and psychological support in the closed environment of the Renaissance warship. For instance, the skeleton of a young brown male ratter (a terrier, named Hatch by archaeologists) was found on the Mary Rose (sank July 1545).59 Ships’ cats also performed vital pest control and while these animals had the opportunity to leave the ship in port and generally act against the wishes of the humans with whom they co-habited at sea, there is evidence of ships’ cats as valued companions and crew members on Italian vessels. In John Locke’s account of an occasion of the saving of a ship’s cat that went overboard during Locke’s sea journey to Jerusalem in 1553: It chanced by fortune that the shippes Cat lept into the Sea, which being downe, kept her selfe very valiantly above water, notwithstanding the great waves, still swimming, the which the master knowing, he caused the Skiffe with halfe a dozen men to goe towards her and fetch her againe, when she was almost halfe a mile from the shippe … I hardly believe they would have made such haste and meanes if one of the company had bene in the like perill. … This I have written onely to note the estimation that cats are in, among the Italians, for generally they esteeme their cattes, as in England we esteeme a good Spaniell.60

While cats and dogs combatted rodents that would hamper military action, pest animals of war also included parasites, whose effects would be felt by feline and canine hosts as well as human. Lice afflicting the troops in camp are described by Ruzante’s character of the veteran in dialogue with his kinsman, Menato: Menato: Don’t move, kinsman [carefully picks off and crushes a louse between his nails] I do believe this-here’s a little dicky-bird with no wings. Ruzante: Huh! Don’t talk to me about lice. When you get crumbs over you, back in camp, they up and grow feet and a mouth, and turn into lice.61

This is an intimate assemblage of human and non-human actors, with an effect on the labour and experience of war altogether different to that of 59 Zouganelis et al. 60 Hakluyt, 9:162–63. 61 Ruzante, The Veteran, scene II. ‘MENATO Stè mo, compare. A cherzo che questo sipia un sgardelin senza ale. RUZANTE Poh, de piuoci no favelè! Le fregugie del pan in campo con le caze adosso, de fato le fa i piè e ’l beco, e deventa piuoci’. For royal louse infestation see Fornaciari et al.

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the well-trained dog and owner or the horse-and-rider unity, and with very different impacts on human and animal bodies and minds. Concepts of interspecies antagonism, as well as entwinement or entanglement are useful here.62 What too of mites, fleas, tapeworms, and numerous other parasites on horses and the rest of the camp animals? These parasitic critters may mark a limit for this chapter’s focus on animal agents, without entering here the territory of the microscopic or invertebrate. We are nevertheless reminded to include the uncharismatic, unnerving and inscrutable along with the domesticated, militarized and admired in further research into animals as agents of the Italian Wars, paying attention to contemporary ideas and to our own theorizing of agency.

Conclusion Renaissance warfare was a multispecies experience, from the horse-rider unity, to co-working with other four-legged friends, to infestation with unwanted beasties typically left out of traditional military histories. Looking at human-animal relations in the Italian Wars reveals a multiplicity of connections and power dynamics. The perspective of the tapeworm is a history from within; that of the horse literally a history from below, albeit, as this chapter has shown, that some horses were accorded status and attention far beyond that offered to many people.63 But even those animals that were respected and cared for were threatened by the toil and dangers of war, as recognized by the occasional removal from battle of favoured horses. Most animals were wholly given over to the military enterprise; even companion animals might be sacrif iced. Examples of def initive break in the human-equine/human-canine bond are found in cases of soldiers forced to eat the animals closest to them, such as the starving garrison during the 1524–25 siege of Pavia driven to killing dogs, donkeys, and horses, as reported in the memoirs of the mercenary commander Sebastian Schertlin. Fery de Guyon also describes his army having to eat their horses on campaign to Algiers. Only the emperor’s horse Gonzaga was spared, in recognition of his exceptional service.64 62 Cockram and Wells, including, for entwinement, Fudge, ‘Foreword’, xvi-xviii. Haraway, Companion Species Manifesto; When Species Meet. 63 In the Venetian muster rolls horses were often described with greater attention than the men of a company, reflecting the financial and military value of the animals: Mallett and Hale, 138, 379. 64 Schertlin, 3–4, Guyon, 92. Harari, 45, 137.

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This horse’s name indicates an aspect of the intermingling of equine and human identity seen elsewhere in this chapter with the horses Fery and Savoy. The naming of excellent horses after people is a practice which could constitute an impressive reminder of an individual or dynasty at court and in the minds of powerful figures, including king and emperor, to whom such horses were gifted. This chapter has shown the horse as an extension of the rider as well as a sentient individual, and the importance of human-animal connections to the work of war, indicating emotional effects of such relationships. Further research in engagement with studies in animal emotion and animal welfare science offers opportunities to continue to evaluate the impact of war on animal minds and bodies, including in examining relationships among animals, and to continue to explore how we might loosen anthropocentric/ anthropomorphic ties to better understand agency of the canine type/feline type/equine type or any other, and the experience of war through a dog’s-eye view, horse-eye view or other species-specific perspective, multifaceted by circumstances and individual differences of myriad kinds. Other valuable areas of research on Renaissance animals of war include deeper investigation of the sensory experience and sights, sounds, smells, tastes and feel of life in a multispecies military environment, and consequences to health and wellbeing of humans and animals (including in focusing beyond elite humans and their closest animals). Further studies would be welcome on the history of Renaissance military veterinary medicine; on the results of the multispecies army on the move, taking in livestock and provision of animal food; on animals as, and integral to, military technology; on animal armour and protective garments;65 and of modification of animal bodies and training alongside changes in tactics. Such research can develop understanding of the horse-rider unity within deployment of heavy/light cavalry, interrogating foundations of ideas of ‘military revolution’, and can analyse the ways in which the making of Renaissance war was contingent on multiple interspecies interactions and was affected by animal agency of diverse kinds, keeping in mind to approach the horse – along with other creatures of war – as a ‘feeling animal’. 65 For horse armour Pyhrr, LaRocca and Breiding; Quondam; Kirchhoff. I thank Chassica Kirchhoff for discussion of protective items for dogs, such as quilted textile coats used in hunting (as found in the Vesta Coburg and in the Musée de l’Armée, Paris, and shown in the Hunts of Maximilian tapestry series in the Louvre); and Emperor Charles V’s steel dog armour, preserved in the Real Armería in Madrid.

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Aldrovandi, Ulisse. De quadrupedibus digitatis viviparis libri tres et de quadrupedibus digitatis oviparis libri duo (Bologna: Apud Nicolaum Tebaldinum: sumptibus M. Antonii Berniae, 1645). Astley, John. The Art of Riding (London: Henrie Denham, 1584). Beolco, Angelo (Ruzante). The Veteran (Parlamento de Ruzante) and Weasel (Bilora): Two One-Act Renaissance Plays, edited and translated by Ronnie Ferguson (New York: Peter Lang, 1995). Calendar of State Papers Domestic: Elizabeth, 1598–1601, edited by Mary Anne Everett Green, vols. 266, 270 (London: HMSO, 1869). Camerarius, Philipp. The Living Librarie, or, Meditations and Observations Historical, Natural, Moral, Political, and Poetical, translated by John Molle (London: Adam Islip, 1621). Caracciolo, Pasquale. La Gloria del Cavallo (Venice: Gabriele Giolito de’ Ferrari, 1566). Commynes, Philippe de. Mémoires, edited by J. Blanchard, 2 vols. (Geneva: Droz, 2007). Commynes, Philippe de. The Memoirs of Philip de Commines, Volume 2, translated by Andrew Richard Scoble (London: H. G. Bohn, 1855–56). Edward of Norwich. The Master of Game, edited by William A. and F. N. BaillieGrohman (New York: Duffield and Company, 1909). Giovio, Paolo. Pauli Jovii historiarum sui temporis (Florence: Lorenzo Torrentino, 1550–52). Giovio, Paolo. La prima parte dell’Historie del suo tempo di Mons. Paolo Giovio vescovo di Nocera, translated by Lodovico Domenichi (Florence: Lorenzo Torrentino, 1551). Giustiniani, Pietro. Le Historie Venetiane (Venice: Lodovico Avanzo, 1576). Giustiniani, Pietro. Rerum Venetarum ab urbe condita ad annum 1575 (Venice: Lodovico Avanzo, 1576). Goselini, Giuliano. Vita dell’illustrissimo et generosissimo sig. d. Ferrando Gonzaga (Venice: Francesco Rampazetto eredi, 1579). Grisone, Federico. Gli ordini di cavalcare (​Naples: Suganappo, 1550). Grisone, Federico. Ordini di cavalcare, et modi di conoscere le nature de’ caualli, di emendare i lor vitij, & d’ammaestrargli per l’uso della guerra, & giouamento

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de gli huomini: con varie figvre di morsi, secondo le bocche, & il maneggio che si vuol dar loro (Venice: Guadagnino, 1571). Grisone, Federico. The Rules of Riding: An English Edited Translation of the First Renaissance Treatise on Classical Horsemanship, edited by Elizabeth Tobey, translated by Elizabeth Tobey and Federica Deigan (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2014). Guicciardini, Francesco. Storia d’Italia, edited by Silvana Seidel Menchi (Turin: Einaudi, 1971). Guyon, Fery de. Mémoires de Fery de Guyon, écuver, bailly général d’anchin et de pesquencovrt, edited by Aimé Louis Philémon de Robaulx de Soumoy (Brussels: Société de l’Histoire de Belgique, 1858). Hakluyt, Richard. The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation, vol. 9 (Edinburgh: E. & G. Goldsmid, 1889). Helm, Franz. Armamentarium principale oder Kriegsmunition und Artillerie-Buch (Frankfurt: Ammon, 1625). Las Casas, Bartolomé de. The Devastation of the Indies: A Brief Account, translated by Herma Briffault (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992). Machiavelli, Niccolò. Dell’Arte della guerra, in Niccolò Machiavelli, Tutte le opere, edited by Mario Martelli (Florence: Sansoni Editore, 1971). Machiavelli, Niccolò. Discorsi sopra la prima Deca di Tito Livio, in Niccolò Machiavelli, Tutte le opere, edited by Mario Martelli (Florence: Sansoni Editore, 1971). Machiavelli, Niccolò. Machiavelli: The Chief Works and Others, vol. 2, edited by Allan Gilbert (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1989). Machiavelli, Niccolò. Art of War, translated and edited by Christopher Lynch (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003). Monluc, Blaise de. Commentaires de Blaise de Monluc, Maréchal de France, edited by Paul Courteault, 3 vols. (Paris: Picard, 1911–25). Phébus Gaston. La Chasse de Gaston Phoebus: Comte de Foix, edited by Joseph Lavallée (Paris: Bureau du Journal des chasseurs, 1854). Sanudo, Marino. La spedizione di Carlo VIII in Italia, edited by Rinaldo Fulin (Venice: Visentini, 1873). Schertlin von Burtenbach, Sebastian. Leben und Thaten des weiland wohledlen und gestrengen Herrn Sebastian Schertlin von Burtenbach, durch ihn selbst Deutsch beschrieben, edited by Ottmar F. H. Schönhuth (Münster, Aschendorff, 1858).

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Bowd, Stephen and Sarah Cockram. ‘The Animal in Renaissance Italy’, Renaissance Studies, 31.2 (2017): 183–200. Brown, Alison. ‘Lucretian Naturalism and the Evolution of Machiavelli’s Ethics’, in Lucretius and the Early Modern, edited by David Norbrook, Stephen Harrison, and Philip Hardie (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 69–90. Cimatti, Felice and Carlo Salzani (eds). Animality in Contemporary Italian Philosophy (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). Cockram, Sarah. ‘Interspecies Understanding: Exotic Animals and their Handlers at the Italian Renaissance Court’, Renaissance Studies, 31.2 (2017): 277–98. Cockram, Sarah. ‘Sleeve Cat and Lap Dog: Affection, Aesthetics and Proximity to Companion Animals in Renaissance Mantua’, in Interspecies Interactions: Animals and Humans between the Middle Ages and Modernity, edited by Sarah Cockram and Andrew Wells (London: Routledge, 2018), 34–65. Cockram, Sarah. ‘History of Emotions’, in Handbook of Historical Animal Studies, edited by André Krebber, Brett Mizelle and Mieke Roscher (Berlin: DeGruyter Oldenbourg, 2021), 409–22. Crane, Eva. The World History of Beekeeping and Honey Hunting (New York: Routledge, 1999). Crane, Susan. Animal Encounters: Contacts and Concepts in Medieval Britain (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013). Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, translated by Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987). Despret, Vinciane. ‘Do Animals Work? Creating Pragmatic Narratives’, Yale French Studies, 127 (2015): 124–42. Despret, Vinciane. What Would Animals Say If We Asked the Right Questions?, translated by Brett Buchanan (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2016). Edwards, Peter. ‘Nature Bridled: The Treatment and Training of Horses in Early Modern England’, in Beastly Natures: Animals, Humans, and the Study of History, edited by Dorothee Brantz (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010), 155–75. Fornaciari, Gino et al. ‘The Use of Mercury against Pediculosis in the Renaissance: The Case of Ferdinand II of Aragon, King of Naples, 1467–96’, Medical History, 55.1 (2011): 109–15. Fraas, Mitch. ‘A Rocket Cat? Early Modern Explosives Treatises at Penn’ (Feb. 2013). https://repository.upenn.edu/uniqueatpenn/6/. Fudge, Erica. ‘A Left-Handed Blow: Writing the History of Animals’, in Representing Animals, edited by Nigel Rothfels (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002), 3–18.

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Fudge, Erica. ‘Renaissance Animal Things’, New Formations, 76 (2012): 86–100. Fudge, Erica. ‘What Was It Like to Be a Cow? History and Animal Studies’, in The Oxford Handbook of Animal Studies, edited by Linda Kalof (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 258–78. Fudge, Erica. ‘Foreword’, in Interspecies Interactions: Animals and Humans between the Middle Ages and Modernity, edited by Sarah Cockram and Andrew Wells (London: Routledge, 2018), xvi–xviii. Harari, Yuval N. Renaissance Military Memoirs: War, History, and Identity, 1450–1600 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2004). Haraway, Donna. The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness (Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2003). Haraway, Donna. When Species Meet (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008). Hearne, Vicky. Adam’s Task: Calling Animals by Name (New York: Knopf, 1986). Hediger, Ryan. ‘Dogs of War: The Biopolitics of Loving and Leaving the US Canine Forces in Vietnam’, Animal Studies Journal, 2.1 (2013): 55–73. Hediger, Ryan. ‘History of War’, in Handbook of Historical Animal Studies, edited by André Krebber, Brett Mizelle and Mieke Roscher (Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2021), 571–86. Hobsbawm, Eric. ‘Peasants and Politics’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 1 (1973): 3–22. Howell, Philip. ‘Animals, Agency, and History’, in The Routledge Companion to Animal-Human History, edited by Hilda Kean and Philip Howell (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018), 197–221. Hribal, Jason. ‘Animals Are Part of the Working Class: A Challenge to Labor History’, Labor History, 44.4 (2003): 435–53. Hribal, Jason. Fear of the Animal Planet: The Hidden History of Animal Resistance (Oakland, CA: CounterPunch and AK Press, 2010). Jacob, Frank and Gilmar Visoni-Alonzo. The Military Revolution in Early Modern Europe: A Revision (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). Jobst, Jennifer. ‘How to Ride before a Prince: The Rise of Riding as a Performance Art’, in The Horse in Premodern Culture, edited by Anastasija Ropa and Timothy Dawson (Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2019), 123–43. Karunanithy, David. Dogs of War: Canine Use in Warfare from Ancient Egypt to the Nineteenth Century (London: Yarak, 2008). Kean, Hilda. ‘Challenges for Historians Writing Animal-Human History: What is Really Enough’, Anthrozoös, 25.1 (2012): 57–72. Kirchhoff, Chassica. ‘Memories in Steel and Paper: A Spectacular Armor and Its Depictions in Early Modern Augsburg’, MEMO, 4 (2019): 26–57. Latour, Bruno. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).

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Lukes, Timothy J. ‘Lionizing Machiavelli’, American Political Science Review, 95.3 (2001): 561–75. MacInnes, Ian. ‘Mastiffs and Spaniels: Gender and Nation in the English Dog’, Textual Practice, 17.1 (2003): 21–40. Malacarne, Giancarlo. Il mito dei cavalli gonzageschi: alle origini del purosangue (Verona: Promoprint, 1995). Mallett, Michael, and J. R. Hale. The Military Organisation of a Renaissance State: Venice, c.1400 to 1617 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009 [1984]). McEwen, Andrew. ‘He Took Care of Me: The Human-Animal Bond in Canada’s Great War’, in The Historical Animal, edited by Susan Nance (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2015), 272–87. Najemy, John M. ‘Fabrizio Colonna and Machiavelli’s Art of War’ in Warfare and Politics: Cities and Government in Renaissance Tuscany and Venice, edited by Humfrey Butters and Gabriele Neher (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2019), 143–60. Nosari, Galeazzo and Franco Canova. Il Palio nel rinascimento: I cavalli di razza dei Gonzaga nell’età di Francesco II Gonzaga 1484–1519 (Reggiolo: Lui, 2003). Pearson, Chris. ‘History and Animal Agencies’, The Oxford Handbook of Animal Studies, edited by Linda Kalof (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 240–57. Pearson, Chris. ‘Four-Legged Poilus: French Army Dogs, Emotional Practices and the Creation of Militarised Human-Dog Bonds, 1871–1918’, Journal of Social History, 52.3 (2019): 731–60. Phillips, Gervase. ‘Animals in and at War’, in The Routledge Companion to AnimalHuman History, edited by Hilda Kean and Philip Howell (London: Routledge, 2018), 422–45. Porcher, Jocelyne and Tiphaine Schmitt. ‘Dairy Cows: Workers in the Shadows?’, Society & Animals, 20 (2012): 39–60. Pyhrr, Stuart W., Donald J. LaRocca, and Dirk H. Breiding. The Armored Horse in Europe, 1480–1620 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005). Quondam, Amedeo. Cavallo e Cavaliere, L’armatura come seconda pelle del gentilhomo moderno (Rome: Donzelli editore, 2003). Raber, Karen. Animal Bodies, Renaissance Culture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013). Schiesari, Juliana. ‘Pedagogy and the Art of Dressage in the Italian Renaissance’, in Animals and Early Modern Identity, edited by Pia Cuneo (London: Routledge, 2017), 375–90. Shaw, David Gary. ‘The Torturer’s Horse: Agency and Animals in History’, History and Theory, 52.4 (2013): 146–67. Swart, Sandra. ‘“But Where’s the Bloody Horse?”: Textuality and Corporeality in the Animal Turn’, Journal of Literary Studies, 23.3 (2007): 271–92.

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Swart, Sandra. ‘Review of Brantz, Dorothee, ed., Beastly Natures: Animals, Humans, and the Study of History’, H-Environment, H-Net Reviews (2011). http://www.h-net. org/reviews/showrev.php?id=31301. Tobey, Elizabeth. ‘The Palio in Italian Renaissance Art, Thought and Culture’ Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Maryland, 2005. Tonni, Andrea. ‘The Renaissance Studs of the Gonzagas of Mantua’, in The Horse as Cultural Icon: The Real and the Symbolic Horse in the Early Modern World, edited by Peter Edwards, Karl A. E. Enenkel and Elspeth Graham (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 261–78. Vatter, Miguel. ‘Of Asses and Nymphs: Machiavelli, Platonic Theology and Epicureanism in Florence’, Intellectual History Review, 29.1 (2019): 101–27. Verrier, Frédérique. Les armes de Minerve: l’humanisme militaire dans l’Italie du XVIe siècle (Paris: Presses de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 1997). Webb, Thomas, et al. ‘More-Than-Human Emotional Communities: British Soldiers and Mules in Second World War Burma’, Cultural and Social History, 17.2 (2020): 245–62. Zouganelis, George D. et al. ‘An Old Dog and New Tricks: Genetic Analysis of a Tudor Dog Recovered from the Mary Rose Wreck’, Forensic Science International, 245 (2014): 51–57.

About the Author Sarah Cockram is Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Glasgow. Sarah specializes in gender history and historical animal studies, and her recent publications include work on animal emotion, companion animal health, and care of exotics.

III The Organizers and Suppliers of War

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Shadow Bureaucrats and Bureaucracy in Trecento Florence William Caferro

Abstract This chapter examines ‘shadow’ bureaucrats and bureaucracy in trecento Florence. It traces the activities of public off icials whose stated jobs (bell-ringer, accountant) suggest that they had little to do with the administration of warfare, but who in fact played major roles that reveal surprising and hitherto unknown institutional continuities. Given the frequency of warfare during the period, the evidence makes clear the need for additional research and a reevaluation of the Florentine bureaucracy that takes greater and more nuanced account of the effects of warfare. Keywords: Florence, Bureaucracy, Famiglia, Bell-ringers, Accountants, Economy

It is an historian’s unalienable right to divide her/his subject matter into subfields. They allow us to make sense of the past and to structure phenomena that would otherwise be difficult to apprehend. The rubrics are, however, admittedly artif icial and restrictive; and nowhere is this more apparent than with regard to medieval warfare, which occupies the self-contained and generally unpopular academic subf ield of ‘military history’. In his influential essay on the Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453), E. R. Bridbury sought to revise the status quo, arguing that fourteenthand fifteenth-century English warfare was so ‘relentless’ that it was not an ‘anomaly’, as typically portrayed, but a ‘regular’ practice. Bridbury described war as its own ‘institution’, which he provocatively compared to the church. The portrait has helped to soften the hard edges of warfare, but its status as a distinct institution has done little to erase the

Bowd, S., Cockram, S. & Gagné, J. (eds.), Shadow Agents of Renaissance War. Suffering, Supporting, and Supplying Conflict in Italy and Beyond. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2023 doi: 10.5117/9789463721356_ch04

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disciplinary boundaries that have separated war from its broader societal consequences.1 Warfare was most ‘relentless’ in fourteenth-century Italy. With its rich and contentious states in close geographic proximity and the involvement of ‘external’ players such as the papacy and Holy Roman emperors, the peninsula was rife with violence. Extant Italian chroniclers who witnessed the conflicts up close did not, however, see them as regular practice or as constituting their own ‘institution’, but rather as a deviation from the norm with profound social, political and economic consequences. Nevertheless, the academic boundary separating warfare from the pacific activities of trecento Italian states is the sharpest and most rigid of all. The fault lay in the first instance with Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527), whose famous condemnation of Italian states for the loss of contemporary ‘native martial spirit’ and the reliance instead on mercenary soldiers has reverberated through the centuries.2 Italian merchants and civic leaders insulated themselves from the economic and political disruptions attending war by passing it off on professionals, restricting armed conflict to its own sphere, which Machiavelli saw as a species of theatre of the absurd. Nationalist Italian historians of the nineteenth-century Risorgimento amplified Machiavelli’s conclusions, equating Italy’s lack of native martial spirit and use of mercenaries in the fourteenth century with its foreign domination in the f ifteenth century, which lasted until modern times. Ercole Ricotti (1816–83), founder of the modern study of Italian military history, depicted the trecento as the nadir of Italian military organization, when local states relied not only on mercenaries, but on large bands of hired men (compagnie di ventura), whose captains and rank and file often came from outside the peninsula. The period became known thereafter as the ‘age of the companies’, characterized by autonomous bands that had their own internal structure and chain of command that accentuated still further the distance between war on the one hand and Italian society on the other.3 A tradition was thus set in place for the study of warfare as an external feature of Italian society rather than as a fundamental part of it. The exploits of the mercenary companies caught the attention of novelists, including Arthur Conan Doyle, who relayed the chivalric deeds of the English White 1 Bridbury. 2 Machiavelli, The Prince, 38–45 (chap. 12); Discourses on Livy, 91, 175–177 (1.43; 2.20); The Art of War. 3 Ricotti.

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Company. Individual captains (condottieri) have been the subject of often lurid popular biographical accounts.4 Recent historians have revised parts of the overall portrait, but, as David Parrott has recently noted, pre-modern warfare fought with mercenaries remains consigned to the ‘dead-end’ historical category of ‘popular history’.5 Nevertheless, even the most cursory examination of the documentary evidence makes clear the profoundly limited nature of the construct. It should in fact be self-evident that in Machiavelli’s native town and object of his most forceful critique, Florence, which lacked a standing army and a modern military apparatus to manage wars, the attempt to separate warfare into a separate sphere is inherently impossible. Indeed, the very notion that Florence—or any Italian state—relied on mercenaries to allow its entrepreneurial merchants freedom from military service to earn profits should be taken prima facie as evidence of war’s inherent effect on commerce and business and the preoccupation of civic officials with the issue. Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–75) expressed the reality of the state of affairs in his Exposition on Dante’s ‘Commedia’ (1373). ‘Consider with the mind’s eye the endeavors of the merchants who are always around us’, Boccaccio wrote. ‘[They] compose not only letters, but great tomes … at the tiniest rumor of war … and are immediately fearful for the merchandise they have shipped’.6 The statement, part of Boccaccio’s explication of the Canto 3 of the Inferno, underscores the fact that wars affected the fortunes of a merchant republic like Florentine whether or not they themselves fought in them, and whether indeed the wars were fought by their own city. The famous collapse of the Florentine ‘super banks’ in the 1340s was triggered by war – the failure of King Edward III of England (1312–77) to pay his debts from the Hundred Years’ War; Florence’s expensive on-going war with Pisa; the alienation of Neapolitan barons, who withdrew funds from the Florentine firms; and the concomitant disruption of the grain trade in southern Italy.7 Meanwhile, wars required imposition of taxes and loans that necessarily affected all residents and raised tensions in already fractious communes like Florence, which employed ‘foreign’ judges (from elsewhere in Italy) to mete out communal justice from fear of factionalism. The confinement of war to its own separate sphere is still more problematic when we consider that a cycle of plague and famine coincided with war in this period, reducing the 4 Doyle; Deiss. 5 Parrott, 1–2. 6 Boccaccio, 165–66. 7 Hunt.

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labour force while increasing the pace of conflict. The combination made inevitable the overlap of military and pacific personnel.8 The steadfast aim of this chapter is to cross disciplinary boundaries and move beyond scholarly assumptions that are in fact based on little archival research.9 The chapter addresses a basic theme of this volume: to identify agents of war that have been overlooked by historians, but nevertheless played a significant role in its prosecution. It examines in particular the activities of Florentine public officials, members of the city’s bureaucracy, whose stated jobs indicate that they had little to do with war, but who in fact played major roles as part of a ‘shadow’ bureaucracy related to military activity that has been obscured by lack of scholarly inquiry.10 I chose Florence because it has been viewed as particularly backward with respect to its prosecution of war and notoriously guilty of favouring business interests over native martial spirit. Early studies of the Florentine civic bureaucracy and administrative structures have focused primarily on the chancery and Weberian notions of its developing impersonal and professionalized features. 11 Will Robins and Timothy McGee have illuminated poetic, ceremonial aspects, including performances and poetic contests among public officials for the entertainment of city executives and other officials in the palace of the priors.12 The balance of scholarship has, however, been devoted to ‘institutional arrangements’ relating to an emerging territorial state that became the most prominent political aspect of Florence in these years. It is noteworthy that this process of state-making, intrinsically related to war, has proceeded without comprehensive study of military events, apart from forceful and often impressionistic statements of the effects of ever-rising military expenditure.13 The discourse follows the general lines of Charles Tilly’s well-known thesis that ‘war made states’.14 Nevertheless, there is much that remains unknown about the Florentine bureaucracy, 8 Caferro, Petrarch’s War, 81–83, 113–77. 9 Caferro, 1–21. 10 Scholars still rely on Guidubaldo Guidi’s episodic study of Florentine bureaucratic offices, based primarily on the communal statute of 1415: Guidi. 11 Marzi; Brucker; Faibisoff. See also Lazzarini; Varanini. 12 Robins; McGee. 13 Modern discussions of the Florentine territorial state began with Marvin Becker and Giorgio Chitollini: Becker, ‘Economic Change’; Florence in Transition; Chittolini, La Formazione; Chittolini, Molho, and Schiera; Connell and Zorzi. Scholars have questioned the use of the term ‘bureaucracy’, employed freely by Marvin Becker and Gene Brucker, but more cautiously by Ronald Witt and Giorgio Chittolini, who favour ‘administrative organization’: Witt, 112; Chittolini, ‘Il “privato”’. 14 Tilly.

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particularly relating to war and the trecento, at the start of its territorial expansion. Our evidence reveals unexpected variety and continuity of service by ‘shadow’ officials.

Florentine War and Public Officials It is important to stress from the outset that Florence fought frequently during the period under investigation, waging wars against rival states in 1336–38, 1341–42, 1351–53, 1362–64, 1375–78, 1386 and 1390–92. It also battled local magnate families, who frequently joined with Florence’s enemies, and defended against ‘descents’ into Italy by the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV (1316–78), kings and barons of Hungary, papal legates and various German and French noblemen. Florence was most immediately threatened along its northern border by Romagnol lords, who, owing to the removal of the papacy to Avignon (1309–78), fought often with each other and with papal legates sent to subdue them. The actual manner in which Florence dealt with these many challenges, how it assembled its armies and military workforce, remain largely unstudied.15 Officials called out balie, ad hoc committees that allowed the city to make speedy decisions and appropriations of money, circumventing the ponderous traditional deliberative machinery of the state. The records of the extant balie, along with budgets of the camera del comune, the main fiscal office of the city, provide a detailed record of how Florence prosecuted its wars. It is from these records that our discussion is largely derived. Even the most cursory look at the extant documentary evidence makes clear the involvement of a wide array of public off icials in wars, from civic musicians to accountants to town criers to bell-ringers to notaries. Carpenters and stonemasons were employed to build field towers (bastite), reinforce town walls and service trebuchets, which were used during sieges, the most typical type of military engagement. Apothecaries (speziali) sold gunpowder and its component parts for bombarde/cannons that were used alongside trebuchets. Local artisans made weapons and armour, and repaired and recycled those picked up off the battlefield.16 The vortex of war swept into it notable figures such as Giovanni Boccaccio, who served as chamberlain of camera del comune in the winter of 1350, just before war with the Visconti, and as chamberlain of the Condotta 15 Caferro, ‘Warfare and Economy’. 16 Caferro, Petrarch’s War, 49–112.

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in December 1367, the office that oversaw the hiring of troops, prior to another war with the Visconti (and Pisa). The vernacular poet and town crier Antonio Pucci served in the Visconti war (1351–53) as a spy, along with other town criers and members of the city’s civic musical troupe.17 Espionage was critically important in wars, and Florence employed both full time spies and short-term spies, the latter known as esploratori. Pucci and the civic musicians served as esploratori to ‘gather news’. Balia records reveal that the activity was routinized. On 1 February 1353, Florence sent five official ambassadors to the town of San Gimignano to discuss peace terms with Milan. The next day, Florence sent five esploratori, including Antonio Pucci and four musicians, to San Gimignano for the purposes of covert news gathering. Florence consistently made such ‘double’ appointments throughout our period.18 As the examples suggest, Florentine bureaucracy was more complicated than it has appeared to scholars and requires much closer investigation. Critical to a more nuanced understanding is a close look at the careers of Florentine public officials themselves. I focus here on two men, who played important roles with regard to war, but who remain unstudied in the literature. They served as ‘shadow’ bureaucrats for what appears to have been a broader species of shadow bureaucracy related to war. The first is Giovanni Paoli, nicknamed ‘il schiocchino’ (stupid little one), who worked for Florence as a bell ringer at the palazzo dei priori (the palace of the priors, today the Palazzo Vecchio); the second is Spinello di Luca Alberti, an accountant for the camera del comune, who later became a chamberlain of the monte comunale (funded public debt). Both men played important roles for the city during wars, particularly with respect to diplomatic negotiations and large scale military financial dealings over a long period of time. The roles emerge from detailed archival research.

Giovanni Paoli, ‘Idiot’ and Bell-ringer Giovanni Paoli first appears, along with his nickname, in the budgets of the camera del comune for 1348, the year of the Black Death. He is listed as a ‘page’ of the communal cook who prepared meals for the executives of the city and officials who lived in the palace of the priors. In that role 17 Caferro, ‘The Visconti War’. 18 Archivio di Stato di Firenze (ASF), balie 9 fols. 5r, 8r; Caferro, ‘Ser Matteo di Biliotto’. See also Iordanou’s contribution to this volume.

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Paoli belonged to the so-called famiglia (family) of the priors, a group that consisted of eleven public officials: six servitori or donzelli, two bell ringers of the palace of the priors, the cook and his two pages. Precisely why these men are grouped together is unclear and the current literature provides little guidance. Florence also employed two bell ringers to ring the bell at the palace of the podestà, who are not listed as part of the famiglia. Gene Brucker, who went the furthest in studying the workforce, counted the berrovieri or policemen, who protected the palace of the priors, as part of the famiglia. The men were indeed referred to as famiglia at this time, but not with respect to the priors and executives, but as famiglia of their own specific captain. In any case, scholars have described the famiglia as ‘orderlies’, low-level employees, who, in the words of Nicolai Rubinstein, were ‘personal servants’ of the priors, who ‘tucked them into bed at night’.19 In 1349, Giovanni Paoli became a bell-ringer of the palace of the priors, a species of promotion that increased his salary from three lire a month to four lire a month, which nevertheless left him at the bottom of the civic fiscal hierarchy, but still as a member of the famiglia of the priors. The sources show that our erstwhile page cum bell-ringer Giovanni Paoli did not merely ‘tuck’ the priors into bed or ring the palace bell. Paoli served Florence as ambassador during the years immediately after the Black Death, during the great contraction of the Florentine workforce. And contrary to his nickname (‘little idiot’), Paoli was employed in high level, high stakes, long distance embassies to Florence’s most important allies and adversaries. Indeed, already while still a page of the communal cook in 1348, ‘il schiocchino’ went to Genoa as ambassador for sixty-four days.20 After his appointment as bell ringer in 1349, Paoli served Florence continuously until 1351: as ambassador to the papacy in Avignon, the Holy Roman emperor in Germany and to the Angevin king in Hungary. In the space of little more than a year, from 1349 to 1350, Paoli spent 275 days on embassy to Puglia, Avignon, Hungary, Germany, and Milan, during which he earned significant additional pay and dealt with key (albeit unknown) diplomatic issues.21 Budgets of the camera del comune indicate that Giovanni Paoli’s ambassadorial career ended in 1353, perhaps as Florence adjusted to the demographic displacements attendant to the plague. But Paoli’s career as bell ringer at 19 Rubinstein, 21. 20 ASF, Camera del comune, Camarlinghi uscita 49, fol. 306v. 21 ASF, Camera del comune, Scrivano di camera uscita 23, fol. 10r; Camera del comune, Camarlinghi uscita 35, fol. 21r; Camera del comune, Camarlinghi uscita 60, fol. 424v.

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the palace of the priors continued uninterrupted for the next thirty-two years. His non-bell-ringer related service to the city also continued. Indeed, Paoli emerged as a central figure in Florentine military affairs in the 1360s. In 1363, during Florence’s bitter war with Pisa, Paoli appears in the documents, now with the nickname ‘schiocco’ (full-fledged idiot), as intermediary between Florence and Francesco Carrara (1325–93), lord of Padua. Paoli negotiated receipt of a large loan from Cararra, as well as logistical help in hiring the Swabian German nobleman/mercenaries Hugh Montfort-Tettnang and Rudolf von Hapsburg for the Florentine army. Paoli’s negotiations were of crucial importance to Florence. Pisa had just hired John Hawkwood (ca. 1323–94), the premier captain of the day, with the English White Company, the most feared mercenary company of the day. The hire tilted the war in Pisa’s favour. Florence desperately sought both funds and soldiers as a counterweight to the imposing English band. Paoli successfully contracted the loan from Carrara, who also helped arrange the hire of the Germans. After the war, Paoli oversaw the repayment to Carrara, and personally brought 28,000 florins to Padua in 1364, at the end of the war. Paoli himself received 2,000 florins for his work, a sum that again dwarfed his official salary, which remained at four lira a month.22 Giovanni Paoli was clearly an important public official, who had the confidence of the Florentine executives, who entrusted him with duties that went far beyond his day job as a bell-ringer. Indeed, the sources show that the priors used Paoli for a wide array of financial affairs related to the Pisan war. According to city council records Paoli took part in a complex financial transaction in June 1364 involving the Florentine bankers Tedaldino de’ Ricci, Galeazzo da Uzzano, Bartolomeo di Carroccio Alberti, Filippo di Ser Giovanni, Francesco Rinuccini, Jacopo Dini and Davanzato and Manetto Davanzati. The men lent money to Florence for the war through bank branches in Avignon and performed ‘exchanges of currency’ in February/ March 1363. The council records indicate that Florence intended to repay and compensate the bankers at Avignon through the services of another Florentine banking firm, that of Stoldo di Bindo Altoviti and Dino Geri. Paoli traveled to Avignon to oversee the transaction, which apparently did not go as planned (or perhaps he went because it did not go as planned). Paoli then returned to Florence and personally coordinated repayment to the bankers in the city. Tedaldino Ricci’s firm’s received 8,000 florins; Galeazzo Uzzano, 5,300 florins; Bartolomeo Caroccio Alberti, 2,000 florins; Filippo di

22 ASF, Camera del comune, Scrivano di camera uscita 23, fols. 3r, 10r.

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Ser Giovanni, 1,000 florins; Francesco Rinuccini, 1,000 florins; Jacopo Dini, 500 florins; and Davanzato and Manetto Davanzati, 300 florins.23 The complicated nature of the transaction and involvement of the many firms is itself noteworthy. Comparatively little is known of the actions of Florentine banking firms at this time and still less about the ways in which they were involved in Florentine public finance and war. The documents show that Paoli did additional business in Avignon with the firms of Stoldo di Bindo Altoviti and Dino di Gieri, Tedaldino de Ricci, Michele di Vanni di Ser Lotto and Andrea di Segnino Baldese. In 1364 he arranged for the ‘completion’ of a payment to Andrea di Segnino Baldese in Avignon worth 3,407 florins. The precise nature of the transaction is again unclear. Afterward Paoli received 1,351 florins from Baldese, which he transferred to the Florentine condotta, the office responsible for hiring and paying soldiers.24 In the last month of the Pisan war (August 1364), Paoli brought 500 florins to the town of Barga, a Florentine territory on the road to Pisa, to pay for the repair of damages to local fortifications during the war.25 And in that same month, Paoli’s name (replete with the nickname ‘schiocco’) appears in misfiled folio sheets of the Miscellanea Repubblicana records, which list him as the city’s main representative responsible for disbursing bonus pay to Florentine soldiers who had fought successfully in the decisive battle of Cascina (1364).26 The extent and importance of Paoli’s financial dealings and his mobility again appear thoroughly inconsistent with the responsibilities of a public bell-ringer. Nevertheless, Paoli remained a busy man. When tensions between Florence and Pisa flared again in the spring of 1367, the city called upon Paoli to arrange for the hire of ships for battle on the seas. Florentine officials worried not only about Pisa, but the expected arrival of the pope from Avignon. Paoli spent 3,000 florins in March and another 6,000 florins in April 1367.27 When war broke out two years later, Florence sent Paoli to Genoa in September 1369 to recruit and pay for 200 crossbowmen from the city.28 Florentine officials dispatched Paoli again to negotiate with Francesco Cararra of Padua for loans and help with hiring German mercenaries. Paoli secured a 40,000 florin loan and the services of the prominent captains 23 24 25 26 27 28

ASF, Provvisioni, registri 51, fols. 156r–57r. ASF, Camera del comune, Scrivano di camera entrata 23, fols. 25r–29r. ASF, Provvisione, registri, 52, fol. 3v. ASF, Miscellanea Repubblicana 120, fol. #7. ASF, Camera del comune, Scrivano di uscita 28, fols. 3r, 4r; 25r, 25v. ASF, Camera del comune, Camarlinghi uscita 43, fol. 26v.

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Count Lutz von Landau and Count Konrad Weitingen.29 Paoli again received impressive personal compensation: 1,000 florins for his efforts, suggesting that he was an exceedingly well compensated ‘idiot’ bell-ringer.30 As the war progressed, Paoli returned to Genoa in 1370 to recruit additional Genoese crossbowmen.31 Giovanni Paoli remained active in Florentine military affairs throughout the social and political dislocations attendant the famous Ciompi revolt (1378–82) in the city. Indeed, it is a mark of Florence’s administrative continuity with regard to military affairs that Paoli, who remained a bell-ringer, continued to provide these services amid political and administrative turmoil that resulted in major changes in the government and the exile of many prominent citizens and public officials. Nevertheless, Paoli served in 1379–80 as a representative of the city to the mercenary company led by the Englishman John Hawkwood and the German Konrad von Landau, which had descended on Tuscany.32 The budgets of the camera del comune show that Paoli provided one of the corporals of the band, John Thornbury, with a ‘loan’ (more likely a bribe) of 1,000 florins, intended to separate him from the others.33 A year later, when a Hungarian army led by Charles of Durazzo (1345–86) came to Italy to fight in Naples, Florence employed Paoli to give a 10,000 florin loan to their representative, Baldassare Spinola of Genoa, who gave the sum to the Hungarian captain John Ban, head of Durazzo’s forces.34 The actions of Paoli in this and other instances reveal not only a surprising continuity of service of a ‘shadow’ bureaucrat, but also previously unknown aspects of the way Florence financed wars and the defence of its state. The involvement of the Genoese in the descent of the Hungarian army into Naples in 1379–80 is itself not an established historical fact. And if indeed Paoli rang the bell of the palace of the priors, it is difficult to imagine how he found the time to do so. His stated job and meager official wage provide little evidence of the actual services Paoli performed. Meanwhile, Paoli was joined in these military activities by Spinello di Luca Alberti, who appears 29 ASF, Camera del comune, Scrivano di camera uscita 46, fol. 16v; Camera del comune, Scrivano di camera uscita, 35, fol. 8r; Camera del comune, Scrivano di camera uscita 51, fol. 25v. 30 ASF, Camera del comune, Camarlinghi uscita, 46 fols. 16v, 20r. 31 ASF, Camera del comune, Scrivano di camera uscita 43, fols. 3r, 26v. 32 ASF, Camera del comune, Camarlinghi uscita 249, fol 5r; Camera del comune, Camarlinghi uscita 238, fol. 10r; Camera del comune, Camarlinghi uscita 243, fol. 10v (1380); Camera del comune, Camarlinghi uscita 254, fol. 3r. 33 ASF, Provvisioni, registri, 68, fols. 92r–94v. 34 Capitoli del comune di Firenze, 348.

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by the 1370s to have taken from Paoli a leading role in Florentine military affairs.

Spinello ‘della Camera’, Accountant The example of Spinello di Luca Alberti both reinforces the above portrait and nuances it. Spinello is first listed in Florentine cameral budgets in 1349, a year after Giovanni Paoli, as one of two accountants (ragionieri) responsible for keeping public accounts. Spinello was preceded in the job by his father Luca Alberti, who appears in budgets from 1344 until 1348, when he perhaps died from the plague.35 Like Paoli, Spinello Alberti remained in Florentine employ for the long run, serving the city for at least thirty-five years until 1384. Also like Paoli, his actual role transcended his titular job and involved extensive ‘shadow’ activities as part of Florence’s military/ financial/diplomatic administration. Indeed, Spinello’s actions in this regard often coincided with those of Giovanni Paoli, with whom he worked during Florence’s war with Pisa (1362–1364) and during the days of the Ciompi in 1378–82. Spinello’s official public job was more prestigious than Paoli’s. Spinello was not a member of the famiglia of the priors; he was an accountant of the camera del comune. The position required a level of fiscal sophistication and knowledge that was reflected in Spinello’s salary, which was ten lire a month in 1349, a modest sum, but still more than twice that of a bell-ringer. Spinello’s surname similarly indicates a degree of status above that of ‘il schioccho’. Spinello was a member of the well-known mercantile Alberti clan that was deeply involved in international banking and trading. Spinello does not, however, appear in the genealogy of the family provided by Raymond de Roover or Armando Sapori in their studies of the Alberti business enterprises.36 Documents published by Giuseppe Müller in the nineteenth century mention a Barna di Luca Alberti, who was a ‘mercante f iorentino’, working in Famagusta in Cyprus in 1345.37 And Florentine documentary sources record a Pazzino di Luca Alberti, who sold 100,000 Genoese crossbow bolts to Florence in 1391.38 35 ASF, Camera del comune, Camarlinghi uscita 7, fol. 204r; Camera del comune, Camarlinghi uscita 13, fol. 511r; Camera del comune, Camarlinghi uscita 25, fol. 590r; Camera del comune, Camarlinghi uscita 32, fol. 717v. 36 De Roover; Sapori, I Libri degli Alberti, lxxx–xcii. 37 Müller, liii. 38 ASF, X di balia, Deliberazioni, condotte e stanziamenti 5, fol. 67r.

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Spinello remained communal accountant for much of his career, working together initially in that job with Lapo Schutiggi. Both men served also as inspectors of the city’s troops in the lower Valdarno in August 1349 and again in 1351.39 By the 1350s the number of accountants of the camera del comune expanded to three: each an ‘expert and faithful’ citizen, whose terms lasted a full year. 40 Unlike Paoli, Spinello’s pay rose; by the late 1360s he earned twelve florins a month, which was more than that of the other accountants and suggests that Spinello likely distinguished himself in the job.41 The increased number of accountants of the camera was accompanied by the formation of new committee of overseers (regolatori) of the budgets, who re-examined communal accounts, making sure of their accuracy. The regolatori, as Lorenzo Tanzini has shown, maintained authority over a variety of financial issues and their creation should be understood as a reaction to the increasingly heavy expenditure by the state for war, and the inherent difficulty of keeping track of the many streams of revenue and disbursements of funds. 42 In 1371, Spinello was appointed a chamberlain of the funded public debt, the monte, a job he appears to have retained until 1380. 43 His pay again increased, now to fourteen florins a month. In February 1373 Spinello also oversaw the repayment of the so-called ‘fifteenth prestanza’ (forced loan) enacted in that year. 44 As was the case with Paoli, Spinello frequently served Florence in the immediate aftermath of the Black Death as an ambassador. His missions were, however, shorter-term and covered less distance than those of Paoli. Florentine officials sent Spinello to neighbouring states, including Arezzo, Pisa and Perugia in the 1350s. 45 The missions were likely related to negotiations for military leagues (taglie) with those states against growing Visconti hegemony and the activities of roving mercenary companies. Thus, although Spinello’s destinations were closer to home and seeming less august than those of Paoli, his negotiations were likely no less important. In 1369/70, Spinello went as ambassador to Pisa, the lower Valdarno and to Lombardy and in this instance the documents make clear that his service 39 ASF, Camera del comune, Scrivano di camera uscita 7, fol. 56v; Camera del comune, Camarlinghi uscita 82 bis, fol. 37v. 40 ASF, Provvisioni registri, 43, fol. 73r. 41 ASF Provvisioni, registri, 50, fols. 17r; Camera del comune, Scrivano di camera uscita 42, fol. 11v; Camera del comune, Scrivano di camera uscita 46, fols. 12r–12v. 42 Tanzini; ASF, Camera del comune, Scrivano di camera uscita 42, fol. 10r. 43 ASF, Provvisioni, registri, 61, fol. 3v; Camera del comune, Camarlinghi uscita 243, fol. 13r. 44 ASF, Provvisioni, registri, 60, fol. 174r. 45 ASF, Camera del comune, Scrivano di camera entrata 7, fol. 33r.

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was specifically ‘on account of war negotiations’ involving the German mercenary captains Konrad von Weitingen and Lutz von Landau, whom, as we have seen, Giovanni Paoli had helped recruit, alongside soliciting a loan from Francesco Carrara in Padua. 46 The hire of Weitingen and Landau is interesting from a military perspective. The captains organized their bands of cavalrymen in lance units, consisting of three men and three horses. To this point, Florence had arranged its cavalry in banner units, consisting of twenty-five individual contingents linked together. In 1369/70, Florence shifted decisively to lances, which became the standard cavalry unit in Italy and throughout Europe. Florence had first begun hiring captains with small lance units in the winter of 1367. The captains were English, and indeed the Florentine chronicler Matteo Villani (1283–1363) credited the English with bringing the formation to Italy. Scholars have debated the precise meaning of the lance in an Italian context: whether it aided the dismounting technique used successfully by the English cavalry against the French in the Hundred Years’ War or whether it was primarily an administrative reform. 47 In any case, Weitingen’s contract with 300 lances (January 1370) bears Spinello di Luca Alberti’s signature. 48 Spinello’s ‘shadow’ service to Florence in military affairs mirrors that of Giovanni Paoli. Spinello negotiated and arranged the pay of mercenary soldiers and was involved at times in complicated transfers of funds. Spinello worked together with Giovanni Paoli back in 1363 in negotiations with Francesco Carrara of Padua. 49 In the summer of 1364, Spinello was with Paoli disbursing bonus pay (paggia doppia) to soldiers who fought in the victorious battle of Cascina. The documents indicate that Giovanni Paoli oversaw the transactions along with a chamberlain of the camera del arme, the office that maintained the communal arsenal. Spinello served in a secondary role, earning the modest sum of forty-two lire for twenty-one days of work.50 Spinello’s career emerges most prominently from the sources during the War of Eight Saints (1375–78), when Florence and its allies fought the papacy. Scholars have viewed the war as a key moment in Florentine trecento history, pitting the city against its traditional ally. It was likewise a key point in Spinello’s career, when his activities drew the attention of chroniclers 46 47 48 49 50

ASF, Camera del comune, Camarlinghi uscita 47, fol. 33r; Provvisione registri, 57, fol. 119r. Selzer, 56–57; Caferro, John Hawkwood, 88. Canestrini, 70–71. ASF, Provvisioni, registri, 50, fol. 17r. ASF, Miscellanea Repubblicana 120, #7; Provvisioni, registri 52, fol. 30r.

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and writers, who lauded his service to the city. Spinello was entrusted with the all-important task of negotiating with the English condottiere John Hawkwood, whose raid on Tuscany in the summer of 1375 set off the conflict. Florence dispatched Spinello to Hawkwood and his company immediately upon their arrival in Florentine territory. The circumstances were exacerbated by the concurrence of plague and famine. Hawkwood demanded a large bribe in return for leaving peacefully. Spinello met the Englishman along with Simone di Ranieri Peruzzi, a wealthy citizen and scion of the famous banking clan, who had played a prominent role in Florentine politics since 1339 and had previously negotiated with Hawkwood, boasting in the surviving fragments of his ricordanze that his knowledge of English from his business career aided his efforts.51 It is unclear if Alberti also knew English, but the documents show that Alberti took the lead negotiating with Hawkwood throughout the war. Officials meanwhile sent Peruzzi as ambassador to various important destinations, including to the papacy, whom Florence accused of sending Hawkwood upon them. Spinello’s negotiations with Hawkwood also included the Milanese ambassador Ruggiero Cane, who, like Peruzzi, had long dealt with Englishmen and was said to have a special rapport with him. Alberti ultimately arranged a truce with Hawkwood on 21 June 1375. The condottiere agreed to leave Florentine territory in return for an enormous bribe of 130,000 florins. Hawkwood received a lifetime pension of 1,200 florins for himself.52 The pension is noteworthy because it constituted the start of an on-going relationship between the captain and the city that would ultimately result in Hawkwood’s employment by Florence during the last decade of his career. Diplomatic dispatches show that negotiations with Hawkwood were difficult and frustrating. Florentine officials counseled Spinello to act with ‘prudence’ in handling the wily Englishman, whose Italian nickname ‘acuto’ was not a mispronunciation of his name but a nod to his acuity and skill at dissimulation.53 Spinello clearly followed the advice he received and gained the attention of the Florentine diarist Giovanni di Pagolo Morelli, who refers to Spinello in his Ricordi (written between 1393 and 1411) as ‘a very loyal and faithful man’ (‘un uomo molto leale e fedele’).54 Indeed, Morelli 51 ASF, Camera del comune, Camarlinghi uscita 221, fol. 15v. On Peruzzi, see Caferro, John Hawkwood, 176–78. Armando Sapori reproduced the surviving fragments of Ranieri di Simone Peruzzi’s ricordanze: Sapori, I Libri di commercio di Peruzzi, 514–24. 52 Caferro, John Hawkwood, 176. 53 ASF, Signori-Carteggi Missive I Cancelleria 15, fol 1v; Caferro, John Hawkwood, 176. 54 Morelli, 316.

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claimed that John Hawkwood was so impressed by Spinello’s comportment in these meetings that he gave back to Spinello 3,000 florins of the bribe to keep for himself. Spinello, according to Morelli, then gave the money to Florence to help refill communal coffers. The fifteenth-century Florentine writer Giovanni Cavalcanti repeats this story in his Trattato Politico-morale, adding dialogue and a claim that the sum given by Hawkwood to Spinello was 6,000 florins.55 Cavalcanti similarly praises Spinello for his ‘lealtà’, and went still further, describing Spinello as a paradigm of moral virtue, who abjured personal wealth in favour of public service. Despite Spinello’s professional job as ‘administrator of the riches’ of Florence, Cavalcanti wrote that Spinello rejected worldly riches in his personal life and ultimately died poor, ‘without a bedsheet to cover his corpse’.56 Morelli also states that Spinello died poor, ‘owing to the poverty of his family’, and added that on account of this he was denied a proper burial.57 Spinello’s notoriety, which clearly continued after his death, stands in sharp contrast to the lack of attention afforded him by modern scholars. And it was not his service as accountant or chamberlain of the communal monte that defined him to contemporaries, but his service relating to war (which was undoubtedly enhanced by his knowledge of Florentine finances as accountant and chamberlain of the monte). During the War of Eight Saints, Spinello performed numerous tasks. He oversaw the distribution of supplies to the army in 1376, using money from the proceeds of the gabelle on butchered meat in the city and contado.58 In that same year, Spinello (like Giovanni Paoli in 1363) was involved in repayment of ‘merchants, money changers … and other men in many various places’ for ‘exchanges and interest on exchanges’ with regard to ‘great quantities of money’ lent by them to Florence. Here, as with Giovanni Paoli in 1363, we see the participation of the economic elite in war financing, but once again the mechanism is unclear and underscores the need for more research. The money lent by merchants was used to pay stipendiaries and the necessities of war. Tommaso Michele Rondinelli, listed in budgets as ‘accountant and treasurer of the camera del comune’, paid Spinello, who then disbursed the sums to the merchants and money changers.59 The compensation appears related also to payments Spinello made to Breton mercenaries, who fought for the papacy during the war.60 55 56 57 58 59 60

Cavalcanti, 40, 78, 80, 119, 124, 214, 215, 217; Caferro, John Hawkwood, 164–65, 176–77. Cavalcanti, 119, 217. Morelli, 316. ASF Camera del Comune, Scrivano di camera uscita 57, fol. 18v. ASF, balie 15, fol. 57v. ASF, balie 15, fols. 57v, 58v–59v.

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By this point in his career, Spinello acquired a nickname. He is referred to as Spinello ‘della camera’, a sobriquet that doubtless derived from his job as accountant for the camera del comune, the city’s chief fiscal office. Morelli calls Spinello by this nickname in his Ricordi, and mentions also that a portrait of Spinello was painted on the wall of the room in which the camera del comune met, owing to Spinello’s notoriety (‘per fama’).61 The nickname brings Spinello in line with ‘il schiocchino’, also identified by a sobriquet, and mirrors also that of Spinello’s colleague in public service, the long-serving notary of Florentine ‘internal legislation’ (‘Riformagione’), Ser Piero di Grifo of Pratovecchio, who is well known to scholars, and was called Piero ‘della Riformagione’.62 By the end of the war in 1378, both Florence and the papacy descended into chaos. The Ciompi revolt broke out in Florence in the summer of 1378, resulting in a popular regime that endured various transformations and exiled many political opponents. The papacy meanwhile descended into schism after the death of Pope Gregory XI in March 1378. French cardinals chose their own pontiff, Gregory XI (ca. 1329–78), in opposition to the Italian pope Urban VI (ca. 1318–89). The discord coincided with renewed civil war in the kingdom of Naples, exacerbated by the involvement of mercenary bands that attracted Florentine exiles, who had joined them to pressure the government at home.63 Amid the chaos, Spinello di Luca Alberti continued his leading role in military matters. When John Hawkwood returned to Florentine territory with the German mercenary Konrad Landau in 1379 at the head of a mercenary company, Spinello Alberti met them and negotiated together with Giovanni Paoli, now in the lesser role. The negotiations involved diplomats from the cities of Perugia and Siena and representatives of Pope Urban VI. Spinello traveled with Hawkwood and Landau to Bologna, where they spent twelve days, before moving on to Cortona and Città di Castello. The Florentine delegation included Ser Benedetto di ser Lando Fortini, who was then an assistant (‘coadjuctor’) of the famed chancellor Coluccio Salutati (1331–1406) and would later become Florentine chancellor himself.64 The talks dragged on for a full three months. An agreement was finally made at the town of Torrita on 10 June 1379.65 Apart from the 61 Morelli, 316; ASF, Provvisioni, registri, 68, fol. 94r; Camera del comune, Camarlinghi uscita 238, fols. 28r–30v. 62 Witt, 118; Marzi, 82–83. 63 Stefani, 322–23. 64 De Rosa, 7–8. 65 ASF, Camera del comune, Camarlinghi uscita 238, fols. 6v, 10r; Caferro, John Hawkwood, 207–8; ASF, Provvisioni registri 68, fols. 92v–94r.

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usual bribe, the contracting parties – Florence, Siena, Perugia and Città di Castello – agreed to hire the soldiers of the company for eight months for local service. The captains themselves departed and went their separate ways; Hawkwood to lands in the Romagna given to him by the pope. An anonymous Florentine diarist reported that the agreement was unpopular in Florence and that both ‘grandi’ and ‘popolani’ called upon Spinello to explain its terms. There was concern about the length of time the captains would refrain from returning to Florentine territory and the manner in which the new mercenary hires would be used in the city at a time when internal peace was quite tenuous.66 It is important to stress Spinello’s prominence in these chaotic years. Along with Giovanni Paoli, Spinello worked closely with the Florentine political elite and served the city in public office through changes in Florentine governments, from the Guild regime of 1343–78 to the tumults of the Ciompi and beyond. At the same time, however, other long-serving contemporary public figures such as Simone di Ranieri Peruzzi, with whom Spinello first negotiated with Hawkwood in the 1360s, had his house burned down by Ciompi rioters in July 1378 and was then exiled to Spoleto.67 Grifo ‘della Riformagione’, the long-time notary of ‘internal legislation’, also had his home burned down during the Ciompi revolt and was exiled along with his sons.68 Peruzzi expressed bitterness about his fate in his ricordanze, complaining that Florence had treated him unfairly, especially given the many years of service that he had provided for the state. Nevertheless, the same fate did not befall Spinello Alberti or Giovanni Paoli. The latter remained a bell-ringer of the palace of the priors and the former an official of the monte through these years. And for all the anger that Simone di Ranieri Peruzzi expressed toward the Florentine government, he described Spinello Alberti as his ‘amicho di tutto’.69 Clearly, Spinello’s reputation rose above the intense factionalism of the day. Spinello’s service on behalf of the Florence during the tumultuous Ciompi days can only be described as feverish. He joined Giovanni Paoli in advancing 10,000 florins to Baldassare Spinola of Genoa in 1379 on behalf of the Hungarian army that was headed to Naples to do battle with French 66 Caferro, John Hawkwood, 208. 67 Stefani, 322, 398. 68 Stefani, 322, 323. For the vicissitudes of exile, see Ricciardelli, 181–99. 69 Sapori, I Libri di commercio di Peruzzi, 523; ASF, Camera del comune, Camarlinghi uscita 238, fol. 9v; Camera del comune, Camarlinghi uscita 241, fol. 1v; Camera del comune, Camarlinghi uscita 243, fol. 13r.

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forces.70 In the same year, Spinello paid 1,000 florins to a procurator of the Holy Roman Emperor Wenceslaus (1361–1419), who had been elected several years earlier, and whose role in the complex series of unfolding events is not entirely clear.71 In April 1380, Alberti paid 600 florins to a German mercenary captain.72 Spinello’s most enduring achievement occurred the next year, in 1381, when he arranged a ‘condotta in aspetto’ with John Hawkwood in Assisi. The contract placed Hawkwood in Florentine employ, but allowed him to pursue other opportunities when they presented themselves.73 One of the Florentine priors at this time, Giovanni Amerigo, specifically recommended Alberti for the negotiations on the grounds that ‘Spinello is the one who knows Hawkwood’s intentions best’. From that point on, Hawkwood and his troops played a key role in Florentine affairs, keeping the public peace after the fall of the popular Florentine government in 1382, and protecting the city from external threats, most notably the Visconti in 1390–92.74 By 1384, both Spinello and Giovanni Paoli disappear from the documents relating to war.75 The latter continued to appear in budgets of the camera del comune as a bell-ringer; the fate of the former is unclear.

Shadow Bureaucrats, Ambiguous Bureaucratic Structure and Balie The overall scope of Florence’s ‘shadow’ bureaucracy and degree to which public employees participated in war related activities apart from their ‘official’ duties awaits further research. Our evidence makes clear, however, that at the very least Florentine administrative structures were more ambiguous and personal than scholars have supposed. And precocious evidence exists that still more public off icials performed unexpected functions relating to war and diplomacy. Numerous members of the famiglia of the priors participated in long term, international embassies in the immediate aftermath of the Black Death. Arrigho Mazzei, a donzello of the priors, served as ambassador for 346 days from 1349 to 1350, traveling to Germany, Hungary and Avignon.76 Another donzello of the priors, Matteo Chiti, went on embassy 70 Capitoli di Firenze, 348. 71 ASF, Camera del comune, Camarlinghi uscita 238, fol. 4r. 72 ASF Camera del comune, Camarlinghi uscita 243, fols. 4r, 12r. 73 Caferro, John Hawkwood, 224–25. 74 Molho and Sznura, 22–42. 75 ASF, Camera del comune, Camarlinghi uscita 243 fol. 13r 76 Caferro, Petrarch’s War, 160–75.

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to Apulia for forty-one days during the war with Milan in June 1351, remained a donzello over the next decade and emerges in documents relating to the Pisa war in 1362. Chiti furnished the Florentine army with provisions and arms at the fortress of Peccioli, the site of a key early battle. Chiti also oversaw the hire of ships by Florence to fight the Pisans on the sea off the Tuscan coast.77 At the same time still another donzello of the priors, Jacopo Vocati, delivered 4,500 florins in loans to mercenary soldiers fighting Pisa on land.78 The poet/town crier Antonio Pucci was, as we have seen, employed as a spy and as an ambassador to local towns and places.79 The donzello of the priors, Francesco Neri, arranged payment for food and wine to ambassadors and soldiers in 1377 during the War of Eight Saints.80 Jacopo Salimbene, herald of the city – a job that entailed performing and reciting verses at the meals of public officials in the palace of the priors – went on numerous embassies over his long career (1352–75).81 And Compagno Bertini, a member of civic musical troupe who played the naccherino, a small kettle drum, served as an ambassador and spy during the war with the Visconti (1351–53) and regularly rode out with armies to perform alongside other civic musicians at sieges and battlefield celebrations.82 Bertini offers yet another example of the longevity in public office of such employees. He appears in the first extant cameral budget from 1343 as a naccherino player, and he remained in communal service until at least 1391.83 Future research must look more closely at the relationship between the shadow bureaucrats/bureaucracy and the ad hoc balia that officially oversaw wars. The activities of Paoli, Alberti and the others appear in extant balia registers. But the registers also show that Florence appointed specific chamberlains to take charge of the disbursement of funds. The eighteen-man balia called out in December 1350 for war against the Visconti appointed Gianozzo Lambucci as chamberlain to conduct financial affairs.84 The eight-man balia of 1364 appointed Domenico Guigni as its chamberlain, and the eight-man balia that directed the War of Eight Saints appointed 77 ASF, Camera del comune, Camarlinghi uscita 79, fol. 677v; Provvisioni, registri, 50, fols. 23r–23v. 78 ASF, Camera del comune, Scrivano di camera uscita 15, fol. 15v; balie 18, fol. 26v. 79 ASF, balie 9, fol. 5r; Camera del comune, Camarlinghi uscita 104, fol. 38r. 80 ASF, Camera del comune, Scrivano di camera uscita 57, fol. 4r; balie 13, fol. 187. 81 McGee, 69–104. ASF, Provvisioni, registri 39, fol. 133r. See also Gagné’s contribution to this volume. 82 ASF, Camera del comune, Scrivano di camera uscita 10, fol. 8v. 83 ASF, Camera del comune, Camarlinghi uscita 2, fol. 44r; Camera del comune, Camarlinghi uscita 13, fols. 500v, 505r; Camera del comune, Camarlinghi uscita 238, fol. Di 5r. 84 ASF, balie 10, fols. 2r, 5v; Provvisioni, registri 50, fol. 1r.

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Simone Bartoli Berti in that role.85 But the registers also show that there were still other men involved in a wide array of financial transactions, who were not chamberlains. During the War of Eight Saints, two officials, Agnolo Guelfi and Gennaio Naldi, oversaw large payments to the captain of war Bartolommeo Smeducci, to mercenaries in loans and salaries, and for the purchase of food and wine for the bishop of Volterra, who came to Florence to deliver the pope’s absolution from interdict at the end of the war in 1378.86 The registers show that the men also served as spies during the war.87 Neither, however, appears in the budgets of the camera del commune as members of the famiglia of the priors or as public officials.88 An intriguing question in this regard is the effect of the enactment of the so-called Dieci di balia after 1384, the year that both Paoli and Alberti disappear from public service. Florence first called out the Dieci in October 1384 to deal with the descent of French noble Enguerrand Coucy into Italy.89 Owing to the constant military threats that followed (including the rise of Giangaleazzo Visconti of Milan [1351–1402]), the Dieci di balia became a species of permanent institution, consistently renewed by the city, although the membership of the Dieci changed from balia to balia.90 The Dieci worked in conjunction with the priors; their election involved a regular legislative decree, initiated by the priors and sent to the city councils.91 The balia of 1384 included an official described as ‘famulus of the priors’, Matteo Guidoni of Pratovecchio, who disbursed funds to troops, merchants, artisans.92 Matteo Guidoni does not appear to have been either a chamberlain of the balia nor a formal member of the famiglia of the priors in the camera del comune budgets. The same is true of the ‘famulus’ Nanni Mati, who worked for the series of balie from 1388 to 1392, and performed many of the same duties as Guidoni.93 It is unclear whether the Dieci, which fell under the direction in 1393 of the Ottantuno, a permanent government office with extensive jurisdiction over the commune’s fiscal affairs, brought military finance and its officials out from the ‘shadows’ into more distinct and visible positions.94 What is 85 Gherardi, 117–26; ASF, Camera del comune, Scrivano di camera uscita 57, fol 11r; balie 12, fol. 5v; balie 13, fol. 186v; balie 14, fol. 3r. 86 ASF, balie 13, fols. 4r, 49r, 178r–179r; balie 14, fols. 13r, 15r, 25r; balie 15, fols. 32v–34r. 87 ASF, balie 13, fol 162r. 88 ASF, Camera del comune, Scrivano di camera uscita 57, fols. 4r–5v. 89 ASF, Provvisioni, registri, 73, fol.102v. 90 Molho, 30. 91 Molho, 31. 92 ASF, X di balia, Deliberazioni, condotte e stanziamenti 1, fol 19v. 93 ASF, X di balia, Deliberazioni, condotte e stanziamenti 5, fols. 66v, 181r. 94 Molho, 31–32.

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certain, however, is that Florence’s shadow military bureaucracy was, until 1384, a surprisingly stable one. Civic workers, whatever their stated jobs, took charge of martial matters over the long run. The degree of continuity is striking in a Florentine administration characterized by what Ronald Witt has called ‘a massive and regular turnover in office holding’, and defined also by its famous fractiousness (to return to Machiavelli).95 Florentine officials had notoriously short tenures, with restrictions on their reappointments. The priors served two-month terms, the twelve good men served for three months and the sixteen gonfalonieri for four months.96 It may indeed be in the administration of war, in ways wholly unexpected, that Florence maintained a species of professionalized bureaucrat, even if he does not look like we would expect. Our examples in any case dramatically highlight the fallacy of separating war into its own sphere. Neither Giovanni Paoli nor Spinello Alberti nor any of the public officials we have described above appear at first sight to have had anything to do with war; only a deep dive into the archives reveals the degree to which they in fact were. The evidence raises additional questions about Florence’s self-definition in these years as a ‘bastion of republican liberty’ in contrast to the tyranny of lordships. In terms of war, the city relied on officials with close ties to the ruling priors in a manner that recalls the personal retainers employed in fact by lordships.

Bibliography Primary Sources Manuscripts

Archivio di Stato di Firenze (ASF) Balie 9–10; 12–14, 18 Camera del comune, Camarlinghi uscita 2, 7, 13, 15, 23, 25, 28, 32, 35, 43, 46, 49, 60, 79, 104, 238, 243, 249, 254 Camera del comune, Scrivano di camera uscita 15, 57 Miscellanea Repubblicana 120 Provvisioni, registri 39, 50–52, 68, 73 X di balia, Deliberazioni, condotte e stanziamenti 1, 5

95 Witt, 113. 96 Molho, 29.

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Printed Sources

Alle Bocche della Piazza, edited by Anthony Molho and Franek Sznura (Florence: Olschki, 1986). Boccaccio, Giovanni. Exposition on Dante’s Commedia, translated and edited by Michael Papio (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009). Capitoli del comune di Firenze, edited by Cesare Guasti, vol. 2 (Florence: M. Cellini, 1893). Cavalcanti, Giovanni. The Trattato Politico-Morale of Giovanni Cavalcanti (1381–1451), edited by Marcella T. Grendler (Geneva: Droz, 1973). Machiavelli, Niccolò. The Art of War, translated by Ellis Farnesworth, introduction by Neal Wood (New York: DaCapo Books, 1965). Machiavelli, Niccolò. The Prince, edited and translated by David Wootten (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1995). Machiavelli, Niccolò. Discourses on Livy, translated by Harvey Mansf ield and Nathan Tarcov (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). Morelli, Giovanni di Pagolo. Ricordi, edited by Vittore Branca (Florence: Le Monnier, 1969). Stefani, Marchionne di Coppo. Cronaca Fiorentina, edited by N. Rodolico in Rerum Italicarum scriptores, edited by L. A. Muratori, 30.1 (Città di Castello: S. Lapi, 1910).

Secondary Sources Becker, Marvin. ‘Economic Change and the Emerging Florentine Territorial State’, Studies in the Renaissance 13 (1966): 7–39. Becker, Marvin. Florence in Transition 2 vols. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1968). Bridbury, A. R. ‘The Hundred Years War: Costs and Profits’ in A. R. Bridbury, The English Economy: From Bede to the Reformation (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1992), 218–29. Brucker, Gene. ‘Bureaucracy and Social Welfare in the Renaissance: A Florentine Case Study’ The Journal of Modern History 55.1 (1983): 1–21. Caferro, William. John Hawkwood: An English Mercenary in the Fourteenth Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006). Caferro, William. ‘Warfare and Economy in Renaissance Italy, 1350–1450’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 39 (2008): 167–209. Caferro, William. Petrarch’s War: Florence and the Black Death in Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). Caferro, William. ‘The Visconti War and Boccaccio’s Florentine Public Service in Context, 1351–1353’, Heliotropia 15 (2018): 161–82. Caferro, William. ‘Ser Matteo di Biliotto and Florentine Diplomacy in the Fourteenth Century’ in La Firenze del età di Dante negli Atti di un Notaio Ser Matteo Biliottto,

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1294–1314, edited by Andrea Barlucchi, Franco Franceschi, Franek Sznura (Florence: Studi Storici Elio Conti, 2020): 111–32. Canestrini, Giuseppe. ‘Documenti per servire alla storia della milizia italiana dal XIII secolo al XVI’, Archivio storico italiano 15 (1851): i–549. Chittolini, Giorgio. La Formazione dello stato regionale e le istutuzioni del contado (Turin: Einaudi, 1979). Chittolini, Giorgio. ‘Il “privato”, il “pubblico”, lo Stato’ in Origini dello stato: processi di formazione statale in Italia fra medioevo ed età moderna, edited by Giorgio Chittolini, Anthony Molho, and Pierangelo Schiera (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1994), 553–89. Chittolino, Giorgio, Anthony Molho, Pierangelo Schiera (eds.), Origini dello stato: processi di formazione statale in Italia fra medioevo ed età moderna (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1994). Connell, William J. and Andrea Zorzi (eds.), Florentine Tuscany: Structures and Practices of Power (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). De Roover, Raymond. ‘The Story of the Alberti Company of Florence, 1302–1348 as Revealed in Its Account Books’, The Business History Review, 32.1 (Spring, 1958): 14–59. De Rosa, Daniele. Coluccio Salutati e il pensatore politico (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1980). Deiss, Joseph Jay. Captains of Fortune: Profiles of Six Italian Condottiere (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1967). Doyle, Arthur Conan. The White Company (New York: Cosmopolitan Book Corporation, 1922 [1891]). Faibisoff, Leah. ‘Chancery Officials and the Business of Communal Administration in Republican Florence’, Unpublished University of Toronto Ph.D. thesis, 2018. Gherardi, Alessandro. La guerra dei Fiorentini con Papa Gregorio XI detta la Guerra degli Otto Santi (Florence: Cellini, 1868). Guidi, Guidubaldo Il governo della citta di Firenze del primo quattrocento 3 vols. (Florence:Olschki, 1981). Hunt, Edwin. The Medieval Super-Companies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). Lazzarini, Isabella. ‘Records, Politics and Diplomacy: Secretaries and Chanceries in Renaissance Italy (1350–c.1520)’ in Secretaries and Statecraft in the Early Modern World, edited by Paul M. Dover (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016), 16–36. Marzi, Demetrio. La Cancelleria della Repubblica Fiorentina (Rocca San Casciano: Cappelli, 1909). McGee, Timothy J. The Ceremonial Musicians of Late Medieval Florence (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009).

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Molho, Anthony. ‘The Florentine Oligarchy and the Balie of the late Trecento’, Speculum 43 (1968): 23–51. Müller, Giuseppe. Documenti sulle relazioni delle città toscane coll’Oriente cristiano e coi. Turchi fino all’anno MDXXX (Florence: Cellini, 1879). Parrott, David. The Business of War: Military Enterprise and Military Revolution in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). Ricciardelli, Fabrizio. The Politics of Exclusion in Early Renaissance Florence. Late Medieval and Early Modern Studies 12 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007). Ricotti, Ercole. Storia delle compagnie di ventura in Italia 2 vols. (Turin: Giuseppe Pomba, 1844–5). Robins, William. ‘Poetic Rivalry: Antonio Pucci, Jacopo Salimbeni and Antonio Beccari da Ferrara’ in Firenze alla vigilia del Rinascimento, edited by Maria Bendinelli Predelli (Fiesole: Cadmo, 2006), 319–22. Rubinstein, Nicolai. The Palazzo Vecchio, 1298–1532 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). Sapori, Armando. I Libri di commercio di Peruzzi (Milan: Fratelli Treves, 1934). Sapori, Armando. I Libri degli Alberti del Guidici (Milan: Garzanti, 1952). Selzer, Stephan. Deutsche Söldner im Italien des Trecento (Tubingen: Max Niemayer, 2001). Tanzini, Lorenzo. ‘Una pratica documentaria tra sovrabbondanze e silenzi: i Regolatori e le scritture d’ufficio a Firenze tra XIV e XV secolo’, Reti medievale (2008): 1–29. Tilly, Charles. Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990–1992 (New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 1992). Varanini, Gian Maria. ‘Public Written Records’ in The Italian Renaissance State, edited by Andrea Gamberini and Isabella Lazzarini (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 385–405. Witt, Ronald G. Hercules at the Crossroads: The Life, Works, and Thought of Coluccio Salutati (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1983).

About the Author William Caferro is Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of History at Vanderbilt University and the author of numerous works on war and the Italian Renaissance including the award-winning John Hawkwood: An English Mercenary in Fourteenth-Century Italy (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), and Mercenary Companies and the Decline of Siena (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998).

5

Heralds and the Representational Culture of War, 1350–1600 John Gagné

Abstract Heralds, among other duties, announced hostilities to adversaries. This essay unpacks the agency of heralds by figuring them as vessels of the sovereign’s auratic personhood. Heralds were ciphers, but potent ones. That potency served them in international disputes as harbingers of war, particularly when delivering the gage of battle – commonly a bloody glove – to opponents. As became clear by the fifteenth century, the ancient Romans once had a college of priests, the fetials, to declare war and manage treaties. This discovery extended the claims that modern heralds made about their role in war; they could supplement fanciful ancestries of their profession with solid ancient precedent. We conclude with a case study of a herald at work in the Italian Wars. Keywords: Herald, Distributed Personhood, Bloody Glove, Gage of Battle, Fetial, ius fetiale

In matters of war, ‘only heralds should deliver the challenge’. So insisted a Burgundian herald at the turn of the sixteenth century.1 The challenge he meant was the ‘déffiance’, or in Latin, the diffidatio: the formal articulation of a grievance against an adversary that launched warfare.2 Borrowed from noble feuds, this ritual often took the form of a declaimed letter accompanied by a token, or gage, of battle – usually a glove. That heralds arrogated to themselves this pivotal duty in war-making and interstate relations points 1 Simonneau, ‘Le héraut bourguignon’, 919. ‘Les seulz herauldtz doibvent pourter deffiance’, quoting from the treatise of Toison d’Or (Thomas Isaac), in Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 7223. 2 Kaminsky, 62.

Bowd, S., Cockram, S. & Gagné, J. (eds.), Shadow Agents of Renaissance War. Suffering, Supporting, and Supplying Conflict in Italy and Beyond. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2023 doi: 10.5117/9789463721356_ch05

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to their self-image as ministers of organized conflict. As such, heralds saw themselves as embodiments of princely power, which entailed subsuming their own personae into the ruler’s. This unique relationship between signified (prince) and signifier (herald) produced a shadowy agency that this chapter unfolds and interprets. In the wake of some pathbreaking studies in the mid-twentieth century, recent research has expanded significantly our knowledge about the activities of heralds in premodern culture as it has pulled them from the musty antiquarian garrets back into socially embedded milieux.3 In so doing, this wave of scholarship reveals how heralds and heraldry belonged to a cultural project to build and sustain the image of noble power. 4 As officers of such systems, heralds propagated mythologies about those elite classes and provided them with representational tools.5 Those tools were visual, but also material and mystical: the herald manifested his sovereign’s presence like a glittering spark of the ruler’s flame. But let us return to shadows for a moment. This recent literature has even remarked upon the way that heralds worked in the penumbra of war as messengers, spies, organizers, and explorers.6 They attended the armies on the field as much as they tended the ideological machinery of conflict. This chapter f irst revisits the history of heralds to help us see their purpose and self-understanding as elite avatars and to interrogate their agency as living fragments of the ruler’s grandeur. It then turns to the material trigger of war – the gage of battle that heralds delivered to adversaries – to explain its role in conf iguring war-making as the consummation of a contractual obligation. With contracts and pacts in mind, the essay retraces the steps of heraldic history a second time, but via the rediscovery of the priests of war in Roman antiquity, the fetials, whose charge was officiating interstate treaties and conflicts. Like heralds, fetials ministered war through rituals, codes, and objects. Their resurfacing in the f ifteenth century freshly reframed heraldic activities in international relations as a kind of law. We conclude by turning from theory to practice, and to a case study of the brash harbingers of combat in the Italian Wars (1494–1559). War for the princely state was an argument, a ritual, a litigation; and the herald was its declaimer, its magus, its prosecutor. 3 Paravicini; Stevenson; Bock, Die Herolde; Couhault. 4 Pastoureau. 5 Contamine; Keen. 6 Simonneau, ‘D’ombre’; Nadot; Jones, 155–56.

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The Origin and Function of Heralds Heralds initially belonged to the world of itinerant courtly entertainers in the company of minstrels and troubadours.7 When they emerged in the twelfth century, heralds served in festive tournaments as criers and adjudicators of valiant deeds. As such they arbitrated victory and defeat in the martial games of their social superiors and celebrated the champions.8 They were thus also encomiasts, inflating the prestige of the men whose courts they attended.9 Much of the thirteenth-century poetic literature in which they appear taunts them for this flattery, portraying them as sycophantic carousers.10 Over generations, heralds built themselves a greater profile at court, spearheading the ‘mediatization of nobility’ in word and image: they penned and declared celebratory poetry and orations, and developed the ever-complexifying art of heraldic imagery.11 Gradually, heralds began to shed their lowly status and assume prestige by polishing, reflecting, and absorbing the splendour of nobility, but also by organizing themselves as a corps. The most elite heralds styled themselves ‘kings’ and lesser heralds trained apprentices known as poursuivants.12 French heralds founded a confraternal-style chapel in 1407; their English counterparts chartered a chapter in 1420.13 They strove to protect their status, often complaining about the absence of suitable, intelligent trainees. One fifteenth-century French supplication to the king requested protection against debasement, demanding that apprentices spend a minimum of six or seven years as poursuivants before rising to the rank of herald.14 Such records reveal the articulation of a professional status (the supplication calls the herald an ‘office’) as well as an institutional self-image grounded in knowledge and experience. One fifteenth-century treatise highlighted not just the discernment that heralds exercised in adjudicating jousts, tournaments, and obsequies, but also in matters of war: assaults, battles, and sieges. The herald’s duty was to make such historical events known widely, encourage the nobility to seek glory, tell the truth in matters of arms, and bestow honours upon 7 Faral, 270–71; Peters; Bock, Die Herolde, 60–79. 8 Bock, Die Herolde, 62. 9 Stanesco. 10 Foehr-Janssens, 100–110; Peters, 237. 11 Melville, ‘Pourquoi’, 501. 12 Mérindol; Hiltmann, ‘Les “autres” rois’. 13 Contamine, 311, for France; Wagner, 64, for England. 14 ‘Lettre de supplication’ (1408) in Sicile, 107–15, at 109.

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those who had earned them.15 This commitment to speak and report the truth registered in the epithet ‘voir-disant’, or ‘truth-teller’ (‘voir’ was an early French synonym for ‘vrai’, i.e., something true).16 The cult of sincerity undergirded heralds’ credentials and explains why a chronicler like Jean Froissart (1337–1405) praised their reporting from battlefields and built his accounts of the Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453) upon their descriptions.17 From the twelfth century, heralds carried the official declaration of war to the adversary, demanded submission before a siege, and reconnoitred enemy territory. On the battlefield, they mustered troops and often rode at the head of the army with the standard-bearers. In the aftermath of battle, they parsed heraldry to identify elite corpses, organized spoils, and eventually relayed tidings of peace.18 In sum, the herald declared publicly the opening and closing of hostilities and manoeuvred throughout the conflict to supplement strategic information and police the terms of engagement between disputants.

The Question of Agency How might we think historically about the agency of officers such as heralds? They were clearly invested organizationally in most aspects of war-making, but in this section I will focus on one of the defining particularities that made such work possible: their symbiotic relationship with authority. By serving as representatives of their lords, heralds acted as vessels of majesty rather than agents in their own right. By that I mean that their physical presence carried the aura of sovereignty. Augmented by brilliant heraldic garb and empowered by princes to pronounce official declarations, heralds who appeared at court or on the field of battle were avatars of their illustrious senders. In that sense, they were more than representatives, they were themselves representations: when heralds went on missions, they became embodied fragments of majesty. To see heralds as mere receptacles of preordained dicta is to recognize how, on one level, they were agentively neutered as professional messengers. Theirs was not the charge of captains, engineers, or ambassadors to formulate 15 English and French versions of this text survive. For this passage, see Pannier, 1 (for French) and 56 (for English). 16 Boudreau, ‘Messagers’. 17 Ainsworth, 76–85. 18 An excellent overview appears in Simonneau, ‘Le héraut bourguignon’. See also Bock, ‘Entre pratiques guerrières’.

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strategies or invent novel approaches to war. Instead, they were drones of the prince, belonging to the rank of servants who performed the will of superiors. Rulers entrusted heralds with strictly prescribed tasks – including the declaration of war – and expected them to perform such assignments to the letter. There was consequently not much room for personal distinction or individual action in the official duties of heralds. The objective was to extend the fictive presence of the ruler and his word. With this representational duty came an imperative for the herald: to meld himself, in a manner of speaking, with the prince. Heraldic institutions supported this process of soldering the personae of sovereigns to their heralds. The most elite heralds, for instance, assumed office through a coronation ceremony that echoed the regal one.19 In it, the crowned herald swore oaths of fidelity to carry out the sovereign’s will and to represent him faithfully. The herald then became a ‘king of arms’ (roi d’armes, re d’armi, rey de armas, Wappenkönig) and he assumed a traditional name, recycled through generations, and frequently borrowed from a subject territory of his lord. The French king’s herald was, from the 1380s forward, often called Montjoye.20 Once installed, the herald wore a luxurious surcoat (tabard) advertising the monarch’s insignia and he often carried his lord’s escutcheon hanging from his arm.21 He slept close to his master so he could be deployed at a moment’s notice.22 The herald could not renounce or be stripped of his office: it was his for life.23 By becoming a princely doppelgänger, the herald both enriched his status as a sovereign presence and simultaneously emptied out his own personality to act as a mobile container for overbrimming majesty. On a second level – one entangled with the scenario I have just described, and one that acknowledges a redoubtable thread of agency – the herald was a potent force in the representational apparatus of elite power. Like a deus ex machina, he appeared to pronounce bold declarations and thereby generate pivotal moments in international relations.24 And more fundamentally, he constructed the formative substratum of European noble culture because he wielded the tools that made it institutionally legible. Having emerged alongside chivalric culture as the witness and narrator of 19 Melville, ‘et en tel estat’. 20 Melville, ‘Le roy d’armes’, 597. 21 Hablot. 22 Adam-Even, 8. 23 Sicile, 94. There were three exceptions to this rule, according to one source: if he became a knight, committed a crime, or were subject to capital punishment. 24 Parry.

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glorious deeds in tournaments and at war, the herald built a reputation as a valorous and truthful reporter, a master of precedence, and thus a protector of the arcane status of nobility. The watchman of aristocratic history, of genealogy, emblems, protocol, and ritual, he had access to the mystifying world of eminence and primacy because he was himself the mystifier. He was the supreme technician of this creed, the theologian of noble status.25 Surely this was what Maurice Keen meant when he called heralds the ‘lay priesthood’ of chivalry.26 One of the signal features of the herald is precisely the shadowing of the sovereign’s own agency. The prince insisted upon that mirroring by dressing his herald ‘as his own self’ (‘comme sa personne mesme’, wrote Calabre, the early fifteenth-century King of Arms of Anjou) and by authorizing him to pronounce the prince’s own official dicta (he must not ‘say or report anything else than what he has been charged to say, without altering or abbreviating it’, insisted another heraldic author).27 The way that heralds both generated and embodied princely figuration makes them a node of premodern mediatization, and thus an inviting subject to interpret through the lens of critical visual culture studies, which pays specific attention to these questions of representation. The signal efforts of the British anthropologist Alfred Gell (1945–97) to theorize the agency of art seem suggestively resonant in thinking about the herald’s role in European culture. It may be true, as critics point out, that Gell’s analysis – for all its generative energy in art theory over the past two decades – can be frustratingly messy in argumentation and overambitious in outlining what agency means.28 Leaving aside such concerns for now, here I wish just to draw upon one of Gell’s most recognized proposals, what he calls ‘distributed personhood’: a notion treating persons ‘not as bounded biological organisms, but … [as] all the objects and/or events in the milieu from which agency or personhood can be abducted’. A person can be ‘a dispersed category of material objects, traces, and leavings’ that ‘in aggregate, testify to agency’.29 In other words, Gell places personhood on a spectrum of social and material relations, in which one’s agency can be extended through a network that distributes (i.e., ‘abducts’) it. Personhood 25 Gert Melville points out that ‘organized presentation’ was central to all the herald’s duties. Melville, ‘Pourquoi’, 498. 26 Keen, 142. 27 This moment of dressing identically occurred during the herald’s coronation. See Melville, ‘Der Brief’, 112. On speech, see Sicile, 42. 28 Bowden; Davis. 29 Gell, 222. I thank Jason Scott-Warren for a very generative discussion about Gell.

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can travel beyond the body, can disperse. And if we think specifically of powerfully auratic persons like rulers, whose bodies were vectors of law and sites of transcendent majesty, the distribution of their person across media – and even into avatars – would be a potent strategy of rule and a promise of perpetuation across space and time. In describing ‘distributed personhood’, Gell employs a telling example by turning explicitly to the scenario I outlined just a couple of lines ago. Invoking the archetypal princely avatar, he observes that an ambassador is a ‘spatio-temporally detached fragment of his nation’. Although these sovereign envoys are ‘real people, they are also “fictions”, like pictures’.30 Whether he knew it or not, Gell was here echoing the Italian jurist Baldo degli Ubaldi (1327–1400) who called papal legates the ‘image of the prince’ (imago principis).31 One seventeenth-century theorist extended the metaphor to call envoys the ‘image and shadow of the prince’ (imago principis et umbra).32 We have just seen how heralds, by twinning the sovereign persona in order to represent it, may have fit that description even better than ambassadors did. While Gell’s book aims to illustrate that a work of art is agentive, I want simply to invert the polarities and argue that a human agent can be a work of art. A herald can be a living picture of his lord, a fiction of the prince, a ‘detached fragment’. Here I simply reiterate Baldo’s legal articulation and Gell’s own analogy. Scholars of diplomacy have observed in other contexts this phenomenon of distributing the ruler’s personhood through envoys or even through their written letters.33 The herald thus fits into a wider system of lordly emanation of authority. His role in amplifying and disseminating the persona of the monarch highlights the seemingly contradictory agency of the herald as a potent cipher: a shadow of elite power who transmitted substantive effects.

Throwing Down the Gauntlet A pivotal ritual moment that embodied heraldic agency was the challenge to war. By delivering a bloody glove to the opponent, the herald performed a wager borrowed from the chivalric duel: he literally ‘threw down the gauntlet’ to defy the enemy and provoke him to action. We find the gesture in the duelling treatises of the Burgundian courtier Olivier de la Marche 30 Gell, 98. 31 Fedele, Medieval, 310 n. 13; Fedele, Naissance, 507–18, esp. 515 n. 186. 32 Wieland, 377. 33 Fletcher, 109; Giudici.

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(1426–1502), who described the glove thrown by a challenger and picked up by his opponent while a heraldic marshal observed and officiated the confrontation.34 The Neapolitan jurist Paride dal Pozzo (1411–93) also mentioned the bloody glove as a token often sent by means of ‘an officer of arms, that is, a herald, or trumpeter’ if the challenger could not confront his adversary personally.35 If the opponent could not easily be found on the field of battle, dal Pozzo urged the herald to publicize the challenge to the army and find the missing (or hidden) opponent, whether in city, court, or castle; if necessary, he should even call upon notaries or judges to register the gage of combat.36 Evidence also records the bloody glove’s role in fourteenth-century Italian battles. In 1372, Bernabò Visconti (1323–85), lord of Milan, wrote to the army of Marquis Niccolò II d’Este of Ferrara (1338–88) that he was sending the glove to trigger hostilities. The Este captains replied later the same day: ‘we received the bloody glove as a sign of war from your trumpeter’.37 In 1358, the German captain of the mercenary Great Company, Konrad Landau, challenged the Florentine army in the same fashion: ‘On 12 July, [the Great Company] sent their trumpeters blaring with great clangour in person to the Florentine encampment with a thorny bough topped with a bloody glove, cut up all over, and a letter asking for battle. It said that if [the Florentines] accepted the invitation, they should take the bloody glove from the prickly bough. With great rejoicing and happiness from the army, the captain, laughing, took the glove’.38 (A show of mirth or joy seems often to 34 See de la Marche’s two treatises in Prost: the ‘Livre de l’advis de gaige de bataille’ (1–54, with glove challenge at 23–26), and the ‘Epistre pour tenir et célébrer la noble feste du Toison d’Or’ (97–133, with glove challenge at 165). 35 Dal Pozzo, Duello, sig. b iiii r: ‘Dico che per precepto Militare se ha da domandare lo guagio, o segno dal rechiedatore per officiale de arme; cioe araldo; o trombetta vn guante per signale de battaglia, qual se nominara guante sanguineo de battaglia’. See also the Latin treatise upon which the Italian volgarizzamento is based: Dal Pozzo, Tractatus, fol. iii v: ‘plerumque cirotecam quod pignus tunc belli sanguineum nuncupabitur. Destinabitur quoque absenti per araldum preconem aut nuncium publicum’. 36 Dal Pozzo, Duello, sig. l ii v. 37 Glénisson, doc. 1, 246: Bernabó (20 April 1372): ‘mandamus vobis … illum guantum in signum belli’; doc. 2, 247: Este captains: ‘Per tubettam vestrum in signum belli guantum sanguinulentum destinatis quem, leta facie et jucundo animo, acceptavimus una cum vestris litteris patentibus nobis per tubettam antedictum transmissis …’ 38 Villani, Cronica, 288. ‘A dì dodici del mese di luglio in persona loro trombetti mandarono con grande gazzarra trombando nel campo de’ Fiorentini con una frasca spinosa, sopra la quale era un guanto sanguinoso e in più parti tagliato con una lettera che chiedea battaglia, dicendo, che se accettassono l’invito togliesseno il guanto sanguinoso di su la frasca pungnente; il capitano con molta festa e letizia di tutta l’oste prese il guanto ridendo’.

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have accompanied accepting the glove, a sign of the challenger’s confidence and preparedness for combat.39) By the sixteenth century, the portentous ghostly armies that clashed in Italy’s night sky – described in rumours, letters, and printed pamphlets – initiated their infernal skirmishes at the very moment that the wraith king threw his iron glove into the air. 40 Why a glove, though? Opinions varied. It stood for the votive gesture of the gentleman’s hand in pledging faith, suggested one French historian in 1611. 41 The Neapolitan dal Pozzo described the right-hand gauntlet as the noblest piece of armour and the most useful defence in swordwork. To be without it (‘la mano nuda’) was to open oneself to danger, presumably a sign to the opponent of the high stakes of the wager. 42 The herald and antiquarian André Favyn (1560–1620) traced the glove back to ancient Jewish rituals of property transfer: in the biblical Book of Ruth, such transactions were legalized when a man removed his sandal and proffered it to the other party. ‘I know well that the usual version describes a shoe and not a glove’, Favyn admitted, ‘but the Chaldean and Syriac paraphrase I use to interpret this passage of Holy Scripture mentions a glove and not a shoe’. 43 In focusing on this thread of precedent, Favyn highlighted not so much the provocation as the juridical act. He related how the ancients used pieces of grass or divots of earth as markers of land exchange; the sixth-century Salic Laws recorded blades of straw ( festuca).44 These were, to Favyn, primordial tokens of reciprocity intended to guarantee serious engagement between both parties. The bloody glove was likewise the sign of an obligation that needed to be discharged. The glove and the herald who carried it thus bring us to the heart of the complex world of gift-giving, feudal pledges, and legal contracts. A theoretically valuable piece of personal protection (the glove) sent to an adversary was, in a way, a gift. But – bloodied and mutilated – it functioned explicitly to generate conflict, which is what Marcel Mauss’ classic 1925 study supposed all gifts aimed to suppress. 45 Either way, the object called 39 See the passage quoted above in n. 37. For a sixteenth-century instance, see da Porto, 587. 40 Niccoli. 41 Dupleix, 279–80. 42 Dal Pozzo, Duello, sig. b iiii r. 43 Favyn, 2:1692–3: ‘Ie sçay bien que la commune version porte vn Sovlier, & non le Gand: mais la Paraphrase Chaldaïque, & Syriaque, de laquelle ie me sers en interpretant quelque passage de l’Escriture Saincte porte le Gand, & non pas le Sovlier. Dixit Redemptor ipsi Boos, in possessionem venito, tibique possideto: Tunc tuli Boasus thecam dexterae illivs, & in possessionem venit’. 44 Favyn, 2:1692. On this phenomenon, see Pardessus. 45 Mauss, 74. It is now also worth rethinking the frames of Mauss’ analysis and his use of ‘primitive cultures’ to forge general principles. For a stimulating critique, see Geary.

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for a reckoning of the relations between parties. What is perhaps most Maussian about the glove would also have interested Alfred Gell: ‘to present something to someone’, Mauss recognized, ‘is to present something of oneself’. 46 The gage of battle was a tool further to extend the challenger’s presence and demand action from a rival. And if we follow Favyn’s reasoning, its efficacy relied upon traditions of archaic customary obligations. Whether he was right or not, ideologies of war in Europe were undergoing signif icant shifts between the fourteenth and the sixteenth centuries. The aristocratic culture of performative honour faced growing resistance from a public culture of inscribed jurisprudence, and both of them sought to claim the ultimate expertise over war. 47 If war increasingly had to be pursued like a legal case, then the herald was the nobility’s bailiff in the court of conflict. As we will see in the next sections, that legal role would come to seem truer even as the herald’s battle duties began to diminish in the later sixteenth century.

Mythical Foundations and the Lessons of Antiquarianism Heralds told their own histories about the origins of their office.48 Such tales valorized their many functions and anchored them in ancient pasts. The herald Jean Courtois (d. 1437), known as Sicile, who served Neapolitan King Alfonso V (1396–1458), described how the Assyrian king Bellus established the office of arms for military communication and he charged two men, ‘the most fluent, clever, and wise of his lands’ with the task, ‘one of whom spoke as the other witnessed’. 49 Sicile thereby figured prudent speech and careful observation as the foundational virtues of the profession. Nor was the office, at least in antiquity, reserved only for men. The Amazons elected the best educated and most eloquent virgins to the office, since warrior queens required envoys (‘messagières d’armes’) to serve them.50 Another popular narrative traced the origin of the heraldic office to virginal noblewomen 46 Mauss, 72. 47 Cavina. 48 Boudreau, ‘Les hérauts d’armes’; Hiltmann, ‘Vieux chevaliers’. 49 Sicile, 19. ‘Celui Bellus … mantint moult bien le royaulme des Assyriens, et fut le premier qui institua homme pour porter messaige de guerre, et fut le premier fondateur dudit office d’armes. Car il ordonna hommes, deux sans plus, les mieulx enlangagiés, subtilz et preudhommes de ses pays, auxquelz il chergoit à faire ses messaiges et ambassades, dont l’ung proposoit et l’aultre tesmoingnoit’. 50 Sicile, 21–22.

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chosen for their truthfulness and immaculate reputations.51 Sicile tells us that the Romans employed female heralds (‘messagières et ambassaderesses d’armes’) until the Punic Wars, after which time all trace of them vanished.52 The account of heraldic foundations with the widest manuscript tradition in the fifteenth century was not about clever and eloquent young women but about grizzled male war veterans.53 Warriors from Julius Caesar’s campaigns, debilitated by wounds and age, found themselves unable to fight any longer. Caesar, recognizing that their bodies had weakened but their judgment remained sharp, organized them into a college. He ‘ordered some portable wooden castles to be built’, and arrayed the old knights ‘quite far from battles so that they could watch and advise on the merits or demerits of the fighters, and bestow on each man what they thought he deserved’.54 This tale, unsupported by any classical author, imagined the herald’s profession as one grounded in the transfer of manual experience to observational wisdom. The tale both explained why modern heralds did not fight and shielded them from suspicion of cowardice: they were descendants of wizened battlers who formed an imperial ‘college of sages’ selected for their unimpeachable discernment. Genuine ancient sources, however, also had lessons to teach about heralds. A variegated corpus of texts on war was becoming the subject of focused antiquarian study, translation, and circulation, especially at the court of Alfonso V of Naples, a sovereign with particular interest in antique military treatises.55 Sicile had died before most of them became available in the 1450s. Among these texts we can count not just the De re militari of Vegetius (already well known), but also Frontinus’ first-century Stratagematicon liber, and Aelian’s second-century Tactica theoria. In the latter – a Greek text translated into Latin for Alfonso by Theodore Gaza (1398–1475) – Aelian laid out the structure of ancient armies, whose sub-formations included what he called five supernumeraries: the standard-bearer, rear commander, trumpeter, aide-de-camp, and a herald (stratokerux), a term Gaza rendered 51 Boudreau, ‘Les hérauts d’armes’, 462; Hiltmann, ‘Vieux chevaliers’, 514–16. 52 Sicile, 29–30, 35. 53 Hiltmann, ‘Vieux chevaliers’, 512. See a similar variant text edited in Houwen and Gosman, especially 494–95. 54 Sicile (in a story borrowed from the widely circulated Ditz des philosophes), 50. ‘Adont le empereur … ordonna à estre fais aulcuns chasteaux de bois portatifz, et … les fist tenir assés loingz des battailles, adfin qu’ilz veissent et advisassent les mérites ou desmérites dez battaillans, et que à chascun ilz attribuassent ce que il aueroient déservy’. On the textual tradition, see Boudreau, ‘Les hérauts’, 460–61. 55 Bentley, 326–30; Fiaschi, 132.

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in Latin as ‘praeco’, a properly ancient word.56 Araldus or heraldus was, by contrast, a Germanic coinage only recently latinized.57 If modern heralds needed any authoritative ratification that they belonged on battlefields, Aelian provided it. War captains were soon experimenting with Aelian’s battle formations around 1500.58 In fact, the writings of many other ancient authorities were littered with figures who resembled latter-day heralds. The best-known case of humanist research into heraldic antiquities is also the most arcane. Enea Silvio Piccolomini (1405–64), later Pope Pius II, responded in 1451 to a German friend’s letter asking about the origin of heralds. In his response the future pope claimed to have drawn some of his facts from an old manuscript of Thucydides he discovered in London.59 We now know his narrative’s real source was probably Arrian’s second-century Indica, a text that makes no reference to heralds but whose narrative setting clearly inspired our author.60 In invoking Thucydides, Enea was perhaps embroidering a joke about ancient sources and winking at his German correspondent.61 If that is true, Piccolomini’s antiquarianism was no better than Sicile’s. Moreover, he offered a bogus etymology for the word (proposing that the root of ‘herald’ was ‘hero’ – thereafter much repeated) and described how the god Dionysus had founded a line of herald kings in Asia from retired soldiers.62 If Piccolomini intended this short heraldic genealogy as a bit of ironic fun, very few readers caught the joke. His letter appeared in translation across Europe, adding new (albeit false) ballast to tales of ancient heraldic origins.63

Heralds and Fetials Although Piccolomini’s treatise has drawn significant scholarly attention, more fruitful avenues into heraldic antiquarianism remain to be traced in 56 Aelian, Aeliani … opus, fol. 6r, for Gaza’s translation. The later Latin translation by Francesco Robortello also uses the word praeco. See Aelian, Aeliani … liber, 11. For the modern edition of the Greek text with English translation, see Aelian, The Tactics, chaps. 9, 16. 57 Kluge, 305. 58 Del Ben, 595. 59 Fürbeth, 437–39. 60 Fürbeth, 441; Tournoy. 61 Rundle, esp. 30–31. 62 See Latin text as edited in Fürbeth, 468–88: at 470 for etymology; at 472–74 for the retired soldiers. Although Arrian’s Indica mentions retired soldiers, it does not discuss heralds or messengers. 63 Moll, 420–21.

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another theatre of fifteenth-century humanist research: ancient Roman institutions. The key office – a college of twenty fetial priests (pl. fetiales, a word rooted in the noun foedus, meaning treaty) – appeared throughout the corpus of accessible ancient texts, in Livy, Cicero, and many others.64 Cicero described how Rome’s King Tullius Hostilius formulated a code of just war and instituted the fetial priests to protect its protocols and ritually declare hostilities.65 ‘As for war’, he wrote in On Duties, ‘humane laws touching it are drawn up in the fetial code of the Roman People under all the guarantees of religion; and from this it may be gathered that no war is just, unless it is entered upon after an official demand for satisfaction has been submitted or warning has been given and a formal declaration made’.66 The priests wore special garb, carried sacred herbs, declared formal scripts to enemies, oversaw the arrangement of treaties, and elected a superior whom they called the pater patratus (literally the ‘father who fulfils’).67 The historical fetials, even more than the military heralds of Aelian or the invented ones of ‘Thucydides’, resonated meaningfully with the charge of latter-day officers of arms in the courts of European princes: to transact pivotal passages in international relations and guarantee a just war. But who knew of the fetials in the post-classical world? Despite a capacious just war tradition, medieval European jurisprudence seemingly made no substantive reference to them despite their appearance in familiar classical texts.68 It took f ifteenth-century antiquarians’ efforts to comprehend ancient Roman institutions to reintroduce them to readers. The Florentine Andrea Fiocchi (ca. 1400–1452), writing under the pseudonym Tiberius Lucius Fenestella, whom many readers took for an ancient authority, penned On the Powers of the Romans in the 1440s, a study of Rome’s magistracies and priesthoods.69 Fiocchi’s younger colleague Giulio Pomponio Leto (1428–98) followed shortly thereafter with a similar treatise.70 The celebrated antiquarian Biondo Flavio (1392–1463) was chasing similar leads to compose his Rome in Triumph (1459).71 Each of their works described the role of the 64 See Sgarbi for etymology. 65 Cicero, On the Republic, 138–39 (2.17). 66 Cicero, On Duties, 38–39 (1.11). 67 Santangelo, Zollschan. 68 Russell, 6, makes only passing reference to the fetials; none of the specialist scholarship considers fetials’ post-classical reception. 69 Fiocchi, fols. 10r–11v, for the fetials. See also Laureys, 26, on the original title of the treatise: more likely De potestatibus Romanorum than the commoner De sacerdotiis et magistratibus Romanorum. 70 Pomponio Leto, fol. 14r–v. 71 Biondo, 86.

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fetials, making their import in ancient Roman public life accessible to a vast Latinate readership. One of the fetials’ solemnest duties was to declare war. It was a complex procedure involving travel to the edge of enemy territory and a ritual demand for satisfaction, followed by a waiting period and a consultation of the senate, after which one fetial carried ‘to the bounds of the other nation a cornet-wood spear, iron-pointed or hardened in the fire’, declared hostilities open, and ‘having said this, he would hurl his spear into their territory’.72 Livy’s Latin is hard to parse in this passage, particularly the characteristics of the cornet-wood spear (hastam sanguineam), which reads misleadingly as a blood-smeared javelin rather than a ritual tool made of red dogwood.73 Sixteenth-century philologists, too, struggled with the passage.74 The easier (and incorrect) reading tended to win out, perhaps because the fetial rite echoed so exactly the bloody gauntlet that heralds were still delivering around 1500. The Neapolitan nobleman Belisario Acquaviva (1464–1528), in his On Military Affairs and Single Combat (1519), discussed battle provocations in his own day by invoking the fetials, ‘whom nowadays the commonfolk uncouthly call heralds or kings of arms’, and in the next sentence he cited the delivery of the bloody glove, ‘said to be the gage of war’.75 Acquaviva is one of the earliest writers I have yet found who explicitly identified the fetial priests with latter-day heralds.76 He was certainly not the last. By the 1530s, the fruits of Roman antiquarianism had ripened in a French manuscript treatise on heraldic origins by Louis de Perreau (1489–1553).77 Perreau, gentleman in ordinary to King Francis I (1494–1547), served as an envoy in Italy and later in England.78 His Discourse is a summa of all the heraldic origin tales we have examined so far, including extensive commentary on the fetial priests drawn from Fiocchi, Pomponio Leto, 72 Livy, 118–19 (1.32). ‘Fieri solitum ut fetialis hastam ferratam aut praeustam sanguineam ad fines eorum ferret … id ubi dixisset, hastam in fines eorum emittebat’. 73 Bayet, esp. 29–40. 74 Turnèbe, fol. 214v (11.17). 75 Acquaviva, sig. c ii r (2.10): ‘Atque ut sine ullo tabellarii periculo id fiat phaecialibus (qui nunc barbare Araldi uel armorum reges uulgo nuncupantur) tradendae commictendaeque hinc inde litterae erunt ut fidelius omnia pertractentur militumque dignitas conseruari magis possit. Si autem is qui iniuria lacessitus prouocatusque est Chirotecam (quod belli pignus dici solet) sanguineam maxime acceperit (quamuis etiam litterae non processerint) pugnam prouocatus renuere nullo modo debebit’. 76 An earlier mention appears in Lorenzo Valla’s Deeds of King Ferdinand of Aragon ca. 1445–46; this biography circulated at the court of Naples. See Mackenzie, 100–103. 77 Perreau. 78 Kaulek, ix–xvi.

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and other ancient sources. Perhaps because Perreau was himself a royal envoy, he paid particular attention to the ambassadorial activities of the fetials, tracing their privileges and legations throughout the classical corpus. He also described the spear-throwing ritual, transmitting the lexical uncertainty about it (‘a pike, lance, or iron-clad polearm covered in blood, or a bunch of herbs, wand, or partially burned coat of arms’).79 Perreau’s treatise appeared posthumously in print in 1555, only slightly altered but now presented as if authored by Jean Le Féron (1504–70), jurist and parlementaire of Paris.80 Thus by mid-century, the proposition that modern heralds had inherited the legacy of the fetials – and their role in international relations – had begun to circulate in print under the imprimatur of men of law. Fully to trace that reception is a task for another essay, but it is worth noting one key example from the 1580s sitting at the hinge in legal theory between war and diplomacy.81 Alberico Gentili (1552–1608), Italian lawyer and Regius Professor at Oxford, focused extensively on the fetials and their rites in his Three Books on Embassies (1585).82 In assessing the legal implications of their ancient duties, he compared them at times to the heralds of his own day, notably in terms of their role as sovereign representatives. After discussing the fetials’ ‘impressive garb with awe-inspiring insignia’, Gentili reflected: ‘At the present time we call those who go forth to declare war heralds (araldos). They are dressed in a distinctive garb marked with the insignia of whom they are sent. But whether it is their custom to put this dress on before they have arrived at the place where they are to state their mission, I do not know’.83 (This chapter’s next section will offer an answer.) In the margin, Gentili cited the seventh book of Francesco 79 Perreau, fol. 31v. ‘Quant ses fecialz denoncoient la guerre portoient vne picque lance ou pertuisane ferre et plaine de sang ou vne saguine ceryce ou cotte darmes bruslee en partie. Laquelle en la presence de trois ou quatre Jeunes enfans gectoient dedans la ville ou limittes de ceulx auquelz signifioient la guerre selon Titeliue, ab vrbe condita, et Ammian Marcellin et Virgille’. There is some uncertainty here about the word ‘saguine’ which may either derive from the Latin sagmen (sacred herbs, which the fetials also carried), or from sanguine, presumably a French vernacular rendition of cornet-wood. Here I have translated it as herbs, in accord with the later alteration made in Le Féron’s printed version. 80 Le Féron. For the passage about the spear, see fol. 25v. 81 Note also the Three Books on the Law of War (1583), by the jurist Balthazar Ayala (1548–84), which began with a consideration of fetial law. Ayala, 1:fols. 1r–4v, and in English: 2:3–6. 82 Here I use the 1594 edition. Gentili, (bk. 1, chaps. XI–XIII, XVIII–XX), 1:28–36, 49–59, and in English: 2:26–33, 45–53. 83 Gentili, 1:49–50 (English); 2:55 (Latin). ‘Hodie, qui bellum denunciare proficiuntur, Araldos dicimus. Hi veste velantur distincta, signataque illius principis insignibus, a quo mittuntur. Eam autem nescio si antea induere soleant, quam eo peruenerint, vbi exponere legationem debent’.

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Guicciardini’s History of Italy (1540). There, we find the Italian historian describing a procession in 1508 – led by heralds carrying the unsheathed imperial sword – in which Emperor Maximilian I (1459–1519) officially declared war against Venice.84 Gentili, although he understated his reflections on ‘recent history’, showed himself sensitive to the parallels between ancient rituals and those seen in his own day. For a moment, it may have seemed to him as though the fetials lived on.

Montjoye Challenges the Doge of Venice, 1509 Gentili’s Italian homeland had seen over sixty years of conflict during the Italian Wars: they constituted, essentially, the plot of Guicciardini’s history. Heralds played a part in those struggles, as Guicciardini and others remind us. And yet, the deployment of heralds in those wars, and in Renaissance Italy more generally, remains to be fleshed out. We must learn more about the organization and activities of heralds in the Italian peninsula between 1350 and 1550 beyond their work in festive contexts.85 Part of the difficulty inheres in the commodious semantic field of araldo: readers will have noticed already that Italians frequently used vernacular synonyms such as nuncio (messenger) or trombetta (trumpeter). Whether the duties and self-image of these officers overlapped substantially with heralds is unresolved. Even if it does not definitively answer this question, a survey of the fifty-eight-volume Diarii of the Venetian chronicler Marin Sanudo (1466–1536) offers some insights into the Italian scene, at least from the vantage of Venice in the first third of the century. Sanudo – who attended senate sessions, haunted the secret archive, and collected copious correspondence – almost never employed or reported the word araldo to describe envoys of Italian powers. In Sanudo’s usage, the term described agents of the great kingdoms: overwhelmingly France, but also the Holy Roman Empire and England.86 A trombetta, by contrast, generally represented lesser princes, churchmen, war captains, and other political entities. Still, Sanudo sometimes hesitated and reached for synonyms: a ‘herald, or messenger’ of Emperor Maximilian; a ‘trumpeter of the [French] 84 Guicciardini, 681–82 (7.12). 85 Meanwhile, see Trexler; Cirri. 86 Across Sanudo’s Diarii, I recorded over ninety mentions of heralds from France; over forty from the Empire, under thirty for England, and under ten for Spain. The preponderance of French heralds may partially reflect Venice’s ongoing military and diplomatic relations with France, both as ally and adversary.

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king, or herald’.87 When he differentiated them, Sanudo occasionally recorded these emissaries travelling together: a herald with his trumpeter; an orator accompanied by his herald; a herald with two trumpeters and some archers.88 For celebrations and funerals, officers of arms abounded (‘infinite heralds’ attended the baptism of the French dauphin in 1518), but as interstate representatives we see them usually in small numbers rarely higher than three at once.89 One Spanish herald, helping his sovereign prepare for war, even purchased large volumes of armour in Milan in 1509.90 But heralds’ charge was most often to deliver official declarations (letters patent or cartelle) and personify the monarch’s majesty. In Sanudo’s chronicle, the herald presented himself in situations that required a reckoning: he delivered an ultimatum in pivotal moments. In military conflicts, the herald demanded surrender at court, on the field, or at the walls of a city.91 He threatened dire consequences (‘fire and sword’) for inaction or refusal.92 And he triggered hostilities by presenting the gage of battle, either in words or deed.93 Recipients of such messages could deflect the inexorable aggressions by rebuffing the herald before he could recite. In Paris in 1512, an English herald arrived to declare war ‘publicly, in his tabard, as was the norm’, but the French refused to allow it, nervous of how Parisians would react.94 In 1528, the French king declined to hear the emperor’s herald on a technicality, ‘for not having declared where battle would take place’.95 For their part, heralds could insist to see the sovereign in person rather than deal with lesser intermediaries.96 That was, after all, what made them superior messengers: the authority to penetrate the sanctum of princes in the name of fellow potentates. 87 Sanudo, 7:25 (‘araldo, over nuntio’); 8:294 (‘uno trombeta dil re, over araldo’). All references to vols. and cols. 88 Sanudo, 4:76; 3:489; 22:550. 89 Sanudo, 25:405 (‘infiniti araldi’). 90 Sanudo, 8:76. 91 Sanudo, 3:45; 7:290; 8:294, 354; 48:79. 92 Sanudo, 8:294, 354, 37:173; 48:184. The phrase is usually some variant of ‘foco e ferro’. 93 The verbs Sanudo often used for declaring war were intimare and disfidare. Intimare: Sanudo: 24:620, 644; 41:566; 45:104, 106. Disfidare: Sanudo, 14:168, 214; 16:674; 33:295; 46:659; 47:10, 238–39; 49:20. Sometimes also notificare, as in Sanudo, 8:89. 94 Sanudo, 14:194. ‘Par che habi aviso di Franza, ivi esser zonto lo araldo dil re di Ingaltera, qual ha intimado la guerra al Roy; e perchè voleva publicamente con la sopravesta, in similibus, publicar, non l’hano lassato per dubito de li populi’. 95 Sanudo, 48:518. François ‘non havea voluto dar audientia a lo araldo di l’Imperator per non li haver dechiarito dove ge voleva dar il campo’. 96 Sanudo, 3:549.

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Authorities knew that a herald’s arrival could generate public commotion, and they strove to curb it. On 15 April 1509, during the War of the League of Cambrai (1508–16), French armies crossed into Venetian territories. Venice’s senate learned that a royal herald – Montjoye, in fact – was already en route to the city. Later the same day, Venice’s Collegio dei Savi debated what to do about this herald.97 When Montjoye arrived, incognito, on the island of San Giorgio two days later, the senators resolved to hear him in secret and then immediately send him away, ‘so as not to stir up the people’; otherwise, the herald risked being ‘killed if he were to be seen’.98 That evening after dinner, Sanudo reported, the Collegio reconvened with the doge presiding, and hangers-on were chased away so as not to glimpse Montjoye. In the antechamber, the herald donned his fleurdelisé tabard and entered preceded by a trumpeter, who acted as his interpreter. Montjoye presented his letter of credence and declared that King Louis XII (1462–1515) was coming to wage war against Venice, a territorial usurper. The doge, alluding to a longstanding alliance, replied that France would have no land in Italy at all if not for Venice. He enjoined Montjoye to tell Louis that God never abandoned Venice or anyone just and upright. Secretaries then accompanied Montjoye to the Council of Ten’s barge, and they urged its captain not to speak to anyone as he rowed away.99 Montjoye’s appearance in Venice answers Alberico Gentili’s query on the ‘special garb’ of modern heralds: the visual power of a herald-in-tabard could generate tumult. For the sake of public order in times of impending war, heralds occasionally travelled incognito and preserved their regalia for the moment they delivered their charge. In a letter to his uncle during the same days, the Vicentine Luigi da Porto (1485–1529) described Montjoye arriving in a leather cloak, disguised like a pilgrim.100 In da Porto’s telling, Montjoye punctuated the diffidatio by saying: ‘“here is the sign of the challenge”, and with this said, he threw the bloody glove at the doge’s feet’, adding that ‘he intended to go and throw this same sign in the piazze of the entire populace, threatening them with the cruellest of wars’.101 Both Sanudo and da Porto, in different ways, recognized the catalytic quality of the heraldic 97 Sanudo, 8:89. 98 Sanudo, 8:93. ‘Et inteseno esser zonto a San Zorzi Mazor, venuto incognito di Ferara via, l’araldo di Franza; et fo terminato aldirlo secrete poi disnar in colegio, et remandarlo subito indriedo, per non commover li populi, el qual etiam saria stà fortasse amazato si’l fosse stà visto’. 99 Sanudo, 8:95. 100 Da Porto, 353. 101 Da Porto, 353, ‘“Ed eccoti il segno del disf ido.” E questo detto gittò ai piedi del Duce l’insanguinato guanto; dicendo che intendeva quello stesso segno andare gittando sopra le piazze ai popoli tutti minacciando loro crudelissima guerra’.

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provocation: it not only precipitated the war, but his mere presence had the potential to upend civic calm.

Conclusion In 1509, Luigi da Porto disdainfully characterized Montjoye as a figure of pure arrogance who refused even to salute Venice’s most august assembly when entering its audience hall. He spoke with ‘unbearable presumption’, and even his gait da Porto described as ‘proud’.102 Such bearing gave heralds a radiant sublimity which they often paired with scornful taunts. In 1494, King Charles VIII’s herald, facing a league of Italian battle forces, announced ‘that his king wanted to cross freely, otherwise he would do it over the corpses of Italians’.103 That bravado was already concerning statesmen around 1500. One imperial legate worried that he knew of no herald with ‘the required circumspection’ for delicate missions, adding that the Venetians held heralds in little esteem.104 A fulcrum of diplomacy, Venice prided itself on its own ambassadors’ prudence and sobriety. Theirs was a different breed of representative persona, one whose office continued to grow through the sixteenth century. The expansion of that cadre of professional interstate negotiators challenged heralds’ role in international relations. Over centuries, heralds had made it their business to police the codes of noble interchange in peace and conflict. In building a reputation as truth-tellers and enactors of sovereign rites, they also made themselves, crucially, redeemers of the moral value of war. They contributed to a vision of war as a necessity of noble governance and imbued it with a complex system of signification in which violence subtended honour. What heralds did, in that regard, was to arbitrate the customary law of the battlefield. As witnesses and declaimers, they fabricated victory and defeat; they adjudged honour and shame through their rituals, embassies, and encomia. And yet, like the fetials of antiquity, heralds were essentially ritualistic proclaimers.105 Their codes pertained to decisive yet quite prescribed oc102 Da Porto, 353, ‘… e con fiero passo entrato nella Sala senza alcun segno di riverenza, o di saluto, con insopportabile prosunzione, e con fiera voce disse …’ 103 Corio, 2:1576. ‘Rispuose lo araldo il suo re volere libero il transito, altramente che lo farebbe sopra li cadaveri de Italiani’. 104 The legate was Matthäus Lang (1469–1540). See the letter of Agostino Somenza in Überling to Ludovico Sforza in Milan, 3 May 1499, in Pélissier, 154–55. 105 Livy, 84–85 (1.24); Hiltmann, ‘“Or oyez …”’

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casions; jurists were gradually filling in the white space around them. And this is perhaps why the legacy of the fetials became a subject of curiosity in the sixteenth century: it offered a way to reframe heraldic ritual through a classical forensic lineage when heralds’ utility seemed imperilled by other forms of interstate relations. Change was afoot. Negotiations and paperwork were sidelining proclamations and bloody gloves; the state itself as a font of eminence began to rival the prince. In 1758, the Swiss jurist Emer de Vattel (1714–67) described the law of nations (ius gentium) as ‘the law that must obtain between nations or sovereign states’. Yet in surveying Roman tradition, he also acknowledged fetial law (ius fetiale), ‘which was nothing other than the law of nations with regard to public treaties and particularly to war. The fetials were the interpreters, guardians, and in some fashion the priests of public faith’.106 But by Vattel’s day, the obscure idea of fetial law had already largely slipped back into the shadows as theorists continued to gloss and expand the law of nations. The early modern progress of the ius gentium and diplomacy, in a way, mirrored the slow eclipse of the ius fetiale and heralds in warcraft.

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Marion Steinicke and Stefan Weinfurter (Cologne-Weimar-Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2005), 137–61. Melville, Gert. ‘Pourquoi des hérauts d’armes? Les raisons d’une institution’, Revue du Nord 366–67.3 (2006): 491–502. Mérindol, Christian de, ‘Rois d’armes et poursuivants à la cour d’Anjou au temps du roi René’, Revue du Nord 366–67.3 (2006): 617–30. Moll, Richard J. ‘From Piccolomini to Sandford: Contextualizing Irony in “The Originall of Herawldes”’, Modern Philology 118.3 (2021): 418–31. Nadot, Sébastien. ‘Des voyageurs de l’ombre: le rôle des hérauts d’armes dans les combats chevaleresques du XVe siècle’, Actes des congrès nationaux des sociétés historiques et scientifiques – Les voyageurs au Moyen Âge 130–31 (2008): 50–60. Niccoli, Ottavia. ‘I re dei morti sul campo di Agnadello’, Quaderni storici 17.51(3) (1982): 929–58. Paravicini, Werner. ‘Le héraut d’armes: ce que nous savons et ce que nous ne savons pas’, Revue du Nord 366–367.3 (2006): 465–90. Pardessus, Jean-Marie. ‘De la formule Cum stipulatione subnexa, qui se trouve dans un grand nombre de chartes’, Bibliothèque de l’École des chartes 2 (1841): 25–36. Parry, Christophe. ‘Les hérauts d’armes dans les relations internationales’, Revue d’histoire diplomatique 114 (2000): 251–59. Pastoureau, Michel. Traité d’héraldique, 4th edition (Paris: Picard, 2003). Peters, Ursula. ‘Herolde und Sprecher in mittelalterlichen Rechnungsbüchern’, Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 105.3 (1976): 233–50. Rundle, David. ‘Heralds of Antiquity: Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini and the British “Thucydides”’, in Essays in Renaissance Thought and Letters in Honor of John Monfasani, edited by Alison Frazier and Patrick Nold (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 23–35. Russell, Frederick H. The Just War in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975). Santangelo, Federico. ‘The Fetials and their “Ius”’, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 51 (2008): 63–93. Sgarbi, Romano. ‘A proposito del lessema latino “fetiales”’, Aevum 66.1 (1992): 71–78. Simonneau, Henri. ‘Le héraut bourguignon et la guerre à la fin du Moyen Âge’, Revue du Nord 402 (2013–14): 915–44. Simonneau, Henri. ‘D’ombre et de lumière. Le héraut, intermédiaire privilégié de la guerre’, in La part de l’ombre. Artisans du pouvoir et arbitres des rapports sociaux (VIIIe–XVe siècles) (Limoges: Presses universitaires de Limoges, 2015), 169–82. Stanesco, Michel. ‘Le héraut d’armes et la tradition littéraire chevaleresque’, Romania 106.422(2) (1985): 233–53. Stevenson, Katie (ed). The Herald in Late Medieval Europe (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2009).

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Tournoy, Gilbert. ‘La storiografia greca nell’umanesimo: Arriano, Pier Paolo Vergerio e Enea Silvio Piccolomini’, Humanistica Lovaniensia 55 (2006): 1–8. Trexler, Richard. The Libro Cerimoniale of the Florentine Republic (Geneva: Droz, 1978). Wagner, Anthony Richard. Heralds and Heraldry in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956). Wieland, Christian. ‘Diplomaten als Spiegel ihrer Herren? Römische und florentinische Diplomatie zu Beginn des 17. Jahrhunderts’, Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 31.3 (2004): 369–79. Zollschan, Linda, ‘The Ritual Garb of the Fetial Priests’, Museum Helveticum 68.1 (2011): 47–67.

About the Author John Gagné is Cassamarca Senior Lecturer in History and Director of the Medieval and Early Modern Centre at the University of Sydney. Much of his research focuses on cultural problems in the history of premodern war, especially the Italian Wars of the early sixteenth century. He is the author most recently of Milan Undone (2021).

6

The Diverse Agencies of Renaissance Engineers in the Shadow of War Cristiano Zanetti1

Abstract Early Modern military engineers are quite obvious ‘shadow agents’ of war: not necessarily present on the battlefield, their impact on the art of war was nevertheless considerable. The complexity of the professional profile of Renaissance military engineers during the ‘military revolution’ still makes their identity a historical riddle. In this chapter, I will try to address two issues concerning Renaissance military engineers from the standpoint of the history of science and technology: the cultural models behind their apparent polymathesis – here intended as a wide-ranging learning freely pursued independently from cultural models – and their agency in lesser-known military affairs such as technological propaganda, intelligence and astrology. Keywords: Military Astrology, Renaissance Polymath, Renaissance Engineering, Superior Craftsman, Vitruvian Artisan

Ennoblement of the Military Engineer According to Mario Biagioli, it was early modern warfare (ca. 1450–ca. 1600) which gave Italian mathematicians, among them the ‘traditional empirical military engineer …, the chance to ennoble themselves and their discipline by partaking in the high social status of the milites’, a term referring to the traditional feudal warrior aristocracy. Biagioli argued that ‘the cannon-syndrome and the introduction of the bastion forced the 1 This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 101025015.

Bowd, S., Cockram, S. & Gagné, J. (eds.), Shadow Agents of Renaissance War. Suffering, Supporting, and Supplying Conflict in Italy and Beyond. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2023 doi: 10.5117/9789463721356_ch06

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milites … to begin to rely less on their horses and more on Euclid for their survival as a distinct social group’.2 Biagioli identified two ‘disciplinary and professional types of mathematical practitioners’, who were ‘socially distinct’ and together generated the early modern military engineer, whose profession become so appealing for the noble. Not only were there ‘upperclass’ astrologer-physicians,3 but Biagioli also listed the socially inferior groups of the bookkeepers, land surveyors, engineer-masons, and the urban teachers of arithmetic and geometry in the abacus schools. These mathematicians often interacted with the local authorities because of their expertise as ‘empirical-engineers’. 4 Biagioli focused on the cultural and social processes taking place especially between the time of the mathematician and engineer Niccolò Tartaglia (1499–1557) and Galileo Galilei (1564–1642), but he did not deal with the earlier interactions between these social classes of mathematicians. As Paolo Galluzzi lamented, the collaboration between these socially distinct groups, in the figures of the artists-engineers and the humanists, is a crucial problem that has not sufficiently been emphasized.5 Following Galluzzi, I here attempt to demonstrate that the encounter between these two groups on the topic of ancient engineering was perhaps of even greater consequence for the rise of practical mathematics and its practitioners than the aristocratic cultural appropriation of the competences of the empirical engineers, a process that seems to have already started in earlier periods.6 If increasing numbers of the nobility, whose expected place in society was mainly at war, found the role of military engineering attractive, then perhaps this was because the discipline had become increasingly respectable following the revival of interest in muchadmired authors and engineers such as Archimedes and Vitruvius, whose aura had already elevated the reputation of practical mathematicians at war. 2 Biagioli, 44–45. 3 Strangely, Biagioli does not quote the most important work on medical astrologers and practical mathematics: White, 295–308. 4 Biagioli, 44. 5 Galluzzi, 14–17. Galluzzi’s call has produced some new inquiries into the relation between the Renaissance engineer and humanist: Long, Openness, chap. 4; Artisan/Practitioners; Maffioli, 197–228; Valleriani; Zanetti, ‘Erudite’; Janello Torriani. 6 See, for instance, the twelfth-century Cremonese consul Tinctus Musa de Gata, son of a count palatine, and the hidalgo Pedro Navarro (1460–1528): Caretta and Degani, 23; Sandoval, 253. However, it is still mistakenly believed that these two were ennobled engineers of lower social roots: Purton.

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The Medieval Tradition A first surprising thing to emerge at the time of the Italian Wars (1494–1559) is that, although there were officials denominated ‘engineers’ in many Italian administrative structures, there was no such thing as a ‘military engineer’. There were no semantic distinctions between military and civil engineers and in practice they often moved between military and civil projects. In order to avoid this disorientating fact, scholarship tends to project the concept of the ‘polymath’ as if it was the naturally determined effect of the Renaissance encyclopaedic interest to explain – albeit, without explaining it – a very complex historical problem.7 From the late eleventh century the term ingenierus, with very inconsistent spelling, makes its appearance in contemporary documents.8 Even if there was no guild or school through which one could become an engineer – the first guild appears in sixteenth-century Milan – there was a tradition in medieval northern Italian urban administrations to have a public office for such a function with that specific name, although it remained interchangeable with other designations – for instance, master or leveller of the waters, surveyor, civic evaluator, and so on.9 Most of the time, engineers came from the guilds associated with the arts of building (carpenters and masons) and metallurgy, as well as from arsenals, mining sites, and sometimes monasteries and cathedral schools. Engineers could be educated in drawing at scriptoria and painters’ workshops. Geometry – one of the four branches of the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astrology and music) – was a necessary mathematical skill for the design and development of mechanical structures, as well as for representing nature: a vivid example of this trend is represented by the famous thirteenth-century illustrated notebook by the northern French expert of constructions, Villard de Honnecourt.10 By the fourteenth century, with the expansion of the Visconti lordship in northern Italy, we find the creation of the office of ‘ingeniarii et architecti’ in every city subject to their rule. In such cases, two public engineers were constantly employed with a higher salary than that of masons or carpenters.11 7 For example, see Lenman. 8 Settia, De re militari, 18–19. For a thorough investigation of the history of the engineer see: Vérin. 9 Settia, ‘L’ingegneria militare all’epoca di Federico I’, 69–85; L’ ingegneria militare, 272–89; Zanetti, Janello Torriani, 331–32. 10 Villard de Honnecourt. 11 Poli.

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Humanists at War During the fourteenth century, humanism became a strong and visible feature of Latin Christian cultural elites. By humanism, we mean that non-institutionalized cultural movement that, starting from a Christian perspective, devoted its study to the classical literary tradition that came to be known under the Ciceronian term of studia humanitatis. The literary, historical, philological and antiquarian interests of the humanists brought to the systematic recollection and analysis of classical culture – considered the highest of all models of learning – political success and poetic elegance.12 In 1364, writing to the condottiere Luchino dal Verme about a good education in the arts of war, Petrarch (1304–74), the most influential humanist poet, explained how the excellent warrior needed to exercise also in peacetime, taking lessons from history and the experiences of veterans and from a more elevated type of ‘militaris disciplina’. This he could find in ‘books on strategy’ that the Greeks called ‘stratagematici’ and the Latins ‘rei militaris’ – ‘of military matters’.13 Petrarch’s approach to education in the art of war in the form of a chiasmus (practice-theory-theory-practice) here reflected the classical literary commonplace of excellence reached through a mixed education, a central element in the rise of the Renaissance engineer. It appears that physicians – many of them from the universities of Padua or Bologna – employed in courtly settings formed the group of humanist scholars most often responsible for the analysis of the ancient texts devoted to natural philosophy, practical mathematics and ‘rei militaris’, which provided the most important theoretical fields underpinning the transformation of Renaissance engineering. It seems that their employment at court brought them into privileged contact with the warrior nobility, stimulating their interest in military engineering.14 The progressive discovery of ancient Greek, Byzantine and Arabic scientific texts and their translation into Latin turned the simple traditional mathematical curriculum of the quadrivium, into more challenging fields of practical experimentation, such as mechanics, optics, observational astronomy, cosmography and other fields of applied mathematics that Aristotelians called ‘mixed sciences’, positioned between theory and practice.15 12 On humanism, see the classic essay by Mommsen and the more recent synthesizing work by Celenza. 13 Settia, De re militari, 24. On humanism and Renaissance Italian military culture, see also: Verrier. 14 White. 15 Helbing, 573–92; Høyrup, 459–77.

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The mixed science of mechanics embraced the art of designing and constructing machines. This made it a particularly attractive branch of knowledge for rulers and provided curious and ambitious physicians with a means of gaining a better social position in their service. Dominion over both nature and the enemy was the ultimate cause of the princely patronage of mechanics. The classical tradition, both historical and mythological, offered several famous examples of ingenious authors of military and civil engineering in the service of distinguished political figures with whom the modern ruler liked to identify himself: Pericles and Artemon, Attalus I and Biton, Hiero II and Archimedes, Augustus and Vitruvius, Trajan and Apollodorus of Damascus, King Minos and Daedalus, Alexander the Great and Dinocrates, not to mention those technicians of medieval legend who enabled Alexander to dive under the sea and fly into the skies.16 One of the earliest known medieval Latin illustrated tracts on siege warfare displaying military contrivances was written by a northern Italian physician: Guido da Vigevano (ca. 1280–ca. 1349), the author of the Modus acquisicionis Terre Sancte (The Means of Acquiring the Holy Land). This was contained inside his Texaurus regis Francie, which also dealt with medical issues and aimed at preserving the king’s health during his attempt to militarily conquer the Holy Land. Most likely educated at the University of Bologna, Guido worked at the courts of the Holy Roman Emperor and the king of France. Several classical works inspired Guido’s work: De re militari by Sextus Julius Frontinus (ca. 40–104), the Epitoma rei militaris by Publius Vegetius Renatus (ca. 383–450), Byzantine tracts – such as the tenth-century Parangelmata Poliorcetica by Hero of Byzantium, modelled on Apollodorus of Damascus’s Πολιορκητικά (ca. 100) – and the anonymous De rebus bellicis.17 The German physician Konrad Kyeser (1366–after 1405), who had studied at the University of Padua, wrote a popular illustrated book on military machines: the Bellifortis (ca. 1405). This work was created for a ruler: it was first dedicated to King Wenceslaus of Bohemia (1361–1419) and then to Rupert of the Palatinate (1352–1410), the Rex Romanorum. Kyeser also worked for Emperor Sigismund (1368–1437) and for Francesco of Carrara, Lord of Padua (1325–93).18 The Venetian Giovanni Fontana (ca. 1390– post 1454), who had also studied and taught at the University of Padua, wrote several illustrated works 16 Høyrup. 17 Apollodorus of Damascus; Allmand; Settia, L’ingegneria militare all’epoca di Federico II, 84–85; ‘Guido da Vigevano’. 18 Allmand; Kyeser.

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on civil and military machines (e.g. Instrumentorum bellicorum liber). Fontana seems to have been working far from courtly settings, although he dedicated the latter book to an anonymous influential character, perhaps a condottiere.19 The German Konrad Gruter von Werden (ca. 1370–after 1424) wrote another important illustrated book, mainly focussing on hydraulic machines. Gruter studied at the University of Cologne between 1391 and 1393, before moving to Italy, where he worked at several courts including that of Pope Boniface IX (1350–1404). Gruter, who may have had connections with the University of Padua, wrote his tract in nearby Venice at the behest of the Scandinavian king, Erik VII (1381–1459), who was, at that time, resident in the city.20 One of the most famous physicians of the University of Padua was Giovanni de’ Dondi (ca. 1330–1388), a friend of Boccaccio and Petrarch, from whose library he had copied Vitruvius’ De Architectura and Pliny’s De Naturalis Historia.21 De’ Dondi was the first to build a functioning planetary automaton, the most complex machine of the day: the Astrarium.22 This machine was made for the Visconti lords of Milan. He wrote an illustrated tract on the construction of this device, the Tractatus Astrarii, several copies of which are preserved.23 As we shall see, this topic was also relevant for military problems. Not all university-educated humanists interested in engineering were linked to university medical faculties, but it seems that all of them were connected to courts: the Sienese notary and sculptor Mariano di Jacopo, nicknamed il Taccola (1381–1453), wrote two influential illustrated treatises on civil and military machines, titled De Ingegneis and De Machinis, and he was involved with the imperial and papal courts. Roberto Valturio (1405–75), perhaps the most refined humanist involved with military engineering, if we exclude Leon Battista Alberti’s (1404–72) contributions to the art of fortification, wrote the bestseller De re militari, which was the first printed book on machines (published in 1472).24 Valturio taught rhetoric and poetry at the University of Bologna before joining the courts of Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta (1417–68) and his son Roberto (1441–82) at Rimini and Fano – the latter being the only known place where Vitruvius had erected a building. Valturio created this book as an illustrated manuscript in around 19 Battisti and Saccaro Del Buffa. 20 Gruter et al. 21 Petrarch; Pesenti. 22 In England, Abbot Richard of Wallingford (1292–1336) designed and partially built a similarly complex machine, but without completing it: North. 23 Dondi dell’Orologio. 24 Settia, De re militari, 47–48; Bevilacqua and Williams.

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the mid-fifteenth century and several copies circulated among powerful rulers.25 Valturio’s sources were classical and they also included non-military machines, such as the Vitruvian water clock.26 The striking characteristic of these works is the large iconographical apparatus that is sometimes the real core of the tracts. Art historian Eugenio Battisti has noted how this tradition of technical illustration seems to be connected with the milieu of the University of Padua.27 The complexity of mechanical contrivances could not be explained with a purely verbal language, clearly decipherable only to a scholar specialized in natural philosophy and mechanical problems. This was probably the crucial moment at which the university-trained scholar came into contact with the skilful and ambitious artisan. The craftsman could provide the scholar with technical knowhow in construction and illustration. Considering the astrological interests of the medieval and Renaissance physician, the observational mixed science of astronomy had to be a prominent ‘trading zone’ to attract the medical scholar and the craftsman.28 The construction of mathematical astronomical instruments was the cross-discipline that required both scholarly and practical skills. Contrivances used in clocks, cranes and military machines drew upon the same mathematical knowledge: as the mathematician Luca Pacioli (1445–ca. 1517) noted, ‘all military machines, artilleries and fortifications were made according to mathematics’.29 From the time of Campanus of Novara (ca. 1220–1295), some physicians had learned to create mathematical instruments to find the position of the celestial bodies in the zodiac: paper volvelles named ‘equatoria’ (i.e. plural for equatorium).30 During the fourteenth century, certain medical scholars even acquired the technical skills to produce them in metals, and even to have them geared to mechanical motors.31

Archimedes and Vitruvius More often, the interaction between scholars and craftsmen caused a transfer of knowledge in the other direction: talented and ambitious craftsmen 25 Settia, De re militari. 26 Zanetti, ‘Ctesibio’. 27 Battisti and Saccaro Del Buffa, 40. 28 Long, Artisan/Practitioners, 94; Long, ‘Trading Zones’, 5–25. 29 Pacioli, 23. 30 Campano da Novara. 31 Zanetti, Janello Torriani, 87–100.

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learned mathematical theoretical knowledge from humanists (and sometimes also from abacus teachers, such as Niccolò Tartaglia)32 who translated classical Latin and Greek scholarship into the vernacular. The engineer’s ambition to gain a higher social status through the acquisition of a superior knowledge was also supported by classical moral philosophy (true nobility comes from virtue rather than blood) and by Hellenistic models of mixed knowledge.33 There were many possible sites for interaction between the humanist and the craftsman, including these places of discussion, and for the realization of civil and military projects commissioned from talented artisans in charge of mathematical public offices, such as the public clockkeeper and the civic engineer. This process of interaction is exemplified by the careers of two of the most successful Renaissance engineers concerned with the invention and construction of machines: Filippo Brunelleschi (1377–1446) and Janello Torriani (ca. 1500–1585). It appears that they had both been tutored in mathematics by medical astrologers: Brunelleschi by his younger friend Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli (1397–1482), who had graduated from the University of Padua. Although the first document about Torriani dates only to the year 1526 – when, following the crushing siege of Cremona,34 he was employed there for several years to restore and maintain the public clock – there is a later reliable account stating that, when still a child, he had been educated in astrology by Giorgio Fondulo (fl. 1470–1550), a physician who had graduated from the University of Pavia.35 This humanist milieu pushed artisans not just to imitate, but even to challenge ancient models: Brunelleschi’s dome of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence overcame in size the hitherto unsurpassed models of the Pantheon in Rome and Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. Works of this kind were broadly encouraged because they brought honour and prestige to the entire civic community, and to the prince and his court. Janello Torriani’s planetary automata made for Emperor Charles V (1500–58) and the colossal hydraulic machine he made for King Philip II of Spain (1527–98) reflected the magnificence and power of the patrons. We should note that during the fifteenth century, as a token of the fact that machines, as much as books, were increasingly being recognized as intellectual products of individual ingenuity, the practice of granting privileges for invention spread in Europe.36 32 Sgarbi. 33 Skinner, 132–33. 34 Zanetti, Janello Torriani, 327. 35 Zanetti, ‘Erudite’. 36 Molà; Zanetti, Janello Torriani, 238–51.

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Within this cultural turn, the term ‘engineer’, etymologically connected to the concept of ingenuity to solve difficult practical problems, was now considered a divine gift.37 Moreover, during the fourteenth century, both in medieval Latin and vernacular Italian, the semantic difference between the traditional medieval term of ‘engineer’ and the classical – therefore more prestigious – ones of ‘architect’ and ‘mechanician’ disappears.38 For the learned scholar even the latter ambiguous term, traditionally used to describe all manual professions, becomes clearly connected with the mixed science of mechanics. Ancient sources never addressed Archimedes, a renowned author, as ‘engineer’ – a medieval term – but as machinator and mechanicus and ‘inventor’.39 For example, Tommaso Garzoni (1549–89), supported by classical authorities, among them Plato and Plutarch, wrote that ‘mechanic is a most honourable word’, and he united the three terms (architect, engineer and mechanician) under the sign of intellectual ingenuity. The term ‘architect’ was to enjoy an even greater fortune. 40 Among Garzoni’s quotations we also find the Italian translation of a passage from Alberti’s introduction to his De re aedificatoria, which reads ‘the architect should be the engineer able to discuss intellectually’. 41 The Latinized Greek term ‘architectus’ or ‘architector’ means ‘chief constructor’. Vitruvius’ influential work titled De Architectura had circulated in dozens of manuscripts during the Middle Ages. However, it was in the Renaissance that its vernacularization, illustration and dissemination through numerous printed editions made it one of the more influential technical treatises of the period. Vitruvius was machinator (constructor of ballistic machines) to Emperor Augustus and dedicated his book to him. De Architectura did not refer to the art of the edification of buildings alone (aedificatio), but also to the construction of sundials and clocks (gnomonice), and civil and military machines (machinatio).42 In this work Vitruvius expressed the concept that the true architect (understood as an inventor-constructor who directed subaltern workers) ought to be well educated in both theory and practice. 37 Zanetti, 334. On early modern concepts of ingenuity, see: Marr et al. 38 In Latin: ingeniarius, ingeniator, etc.; architectus, architector, etc.; and machinator, mechanicus. 39 Livy, 6:282 (24.34.3). 40 Long Artisan/Practitioners, 62–93. On the term ‘architect’ see: Merrill. On the complexity of the institutional situation of architects-engineers in Renaissance Milan, see: Repishti; Bossi, Langé and Repishti. 41 Garzoni, 769–73. 42 Vitruvius Pollio, bk. 1, chap. 3: ‘Partes ipsius architecturae sunt tres: Aedificatio, Gnomonce, Machinatio’.

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The man who only mastered practical knowledge would be a mere executor of other people’s projects, while the man who relied solely on theoretical knowledge would only be able to design a project and would need somebody else to turn it into reality. 43 The marvellous stories about Archimedes’s military machines and Vitruvius’s role as a constructor of ballistae for the first Roman emperor provided powerful models for the engineer involved with war, and were eagerly read by scholars and rulers interested in classical culture. This process of identification with classical technicians contributed to the creation of the image of the Renaissance polymath. Writing about mechanics, Pappus of Alexandria (fl. 300–350), who was popular with Renaissance humanists, stated that: The science of mechanics … is held by philosophers to be worthy of the highest esteem …. The mechanicians of Heron’s school [Heron of Alexandria (fl. f irst century AD) was the most famous Alexandrian author on the topic of automata-making] say that mechanics can be divided into a theoretical and a manual part; the theoretical part is composed of geometry, arithmetic, astronomy and physics, the manual of work in metals, architecture, carpentering and painting and anything involving skill with the hands. The man who had been trained from his youth in the aforesaid sciences as well as practised in the aforesaid arts, and in addition has a versatile mind, would be, they say, the best architect and inventor of mechanical devices.… Of all the [mechanical] arts the most necessary for the purposes of practical life are: (1) that of the makers of mechanical powers, they … lift great weights; (2) that of the makers of engines of war …; (3) in addition, that of the men who are properly called makers of engines—for by means of instruments for drawing water which they construct, water is more easily raised from a great depth; (4) the ancients also describe as mechanicians the wonder-workers, of whom some work by means of pneumatics, as Heron in his Pneumatica, some by using strings and ropes, thinking to imitate the movements of living things, as Heron in his Automata and Balancings, some by means of floating bodies, as Archimedes in his book On Floating Bodies, or by using water to tell the time, as Heron in his Hydria …; (5) they also describe as mechanicians the makers of spheres, who know how to make models of the heavens, using the uniform circular motion of water. Archimedes of Syracuse is acknowledged by some to 43 Vitruvius Pollio, bk. 1.

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have understood the cause and reason of all these arts; for he alone applied his versatile mind and inventive genius to all the purposes of ordinary life …. 44

Because of this epistemological model, successful ‘superior craftsmen’ (a phrase coined by the sociologist of science Edgar Zilsel to describe these craftsmen with a double education, practical and theoretical)45 willing to challenge all these fields of mechanics were often hailed as the new Archimedes. 46 It is important to remember that the classical tradition, although especially strong in Latin Christendom, traversed the Mediterranean world, as we can see when considering the mechanical interests of the Byzantine scholar Bessarion (1403–1472), later to become a Catholic cardinal, 47 the professional trajectory of the most prolific early modern architect of the Ottoman Empire, the renegade Sinān (ca. 1490–1588), or of the Mantuan Jew Abramo Colorni. Sinān, an Armenian Christian who converted to Islam, started his career as a carpenter in the Sultan’s army to become commander of the Janissary catapults, and therefore imperial architect and author. He produced autobiographical books on his constructions by dictating them to a friend. Abramo Colorni (ca. 1530–99), the famous escapologist, clockmaker and inventor of mechanical objects, served many important rulers around Europe as military engineer, inventor of new guns, alchemist, and author of books. 48 Leonardo da Vinci’s career is a paradigmatic example of the social elevation of an artisan thanks to the humanist appreciation of painting and classical mechanics. Leonardo (1452–1519) is said to have demonstrated an early predisposition towards drawing. However, his status as the illegitimate son of a notary would have prevented him from pursuing his father’s respectable career: the guild of notaries ‘excluded illegitimates from their ranks’. 49 The workshop of a painter such as Andrea del Verrocchio (1435–88) was probably one of the highest respectable solutions for a ‘bastard’, as Leonardo legally was: classical works such as Pliny the Elder’s Natural History and Diogenes Laertius’ Lives of Eminent Philosophers, which had a great impact 44 Pappus of Alexandria, 615–18. Author’s emphases in italics (except for titles of works). 45 Long, Artisan/Practitioners, chap. 1; Zanetti, Janello Torriani, Introduction. 46 Zanetti, Janello Torriani, 190–92. 47 Keller; Ghisetti Giavarina. 48 Necipoğlu; Toaff. 49 Kuehn, 80.

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on Renaissance Florence, gave painters and sculptors a high level of dignity among craftsmen.50 However, Leonardo pursued a career beyond painting: his successful application for a position at the court of Milan in 1482 must have represented for Leonardo a precious opportunity for further social elevation. At court, the fiscal and professional obligations of the guilds were irrelevant, and traditional epistemological boundaries could be dissolved by the will of the prince. Among the professional competences in his controversial application were listed, first of all, engineering and architectural works for both wartime and times of peace, then sculpture, and, eventually, the only competence he actually possessed officially in the guild system of Florence: painting.51 Nevertheless, the professional skills he picked up at the wide-ranging workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio (Verrocchio himself had been trained in different workshops as a goldsmith, painter and sculptor) were multifarious.52 As in the case of Leonardo, many Renaissance engineers had been educated as painters since this craft was closely linked to the study of geometry. Especially from the time of Brunelleschi’s development of linear perspective, any engineer who wanted to give a convincing appearance to his ideas needed to employ Brunelleschi’s technique, which was rapidly acquired by the best painters’ workshops.53 It has been observed that even far less realistic illustrations were considered as pieces of technological intelligence: the naïve representations of war chariots by Guido da Vigevano and Valturio drew upon extant north Italian tactical machines.54 The power of these less realistic images of machines is also confirmed by the story of a manuscript copy of Valturio’s De re militari sent as a gift by Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta to the Sultan Mehmed II (1432–81). The book never reached its intended recipient: in fact, it was seized by the Venetians, who were afraid it would reveal critical technological secrets to the Turks. The Venetian government described the manuscript as ‘a marvellous thing and a most valuable possession on account of the novel and important military information found in its text and drawings’.55 As a recent archival find by Daniele Conti confirms, even barely functional Renaissance military 50 Vecce, 112–22. See Pliny, vols. 9–10 (bks. 33–36); Diogenes Laertius, 281. 51 Leonardo da Vinci, fol. 1082r. On Leonardo at war, see: Brioist. 52 Caglioti. On the circulation of mechanical knowledge in Renaissance Florence: Bernardoni, 143 n. 16. 53 On the functions of early modern drawings of machines, see: Lefèvre. On Leonardo’s drawings of machines: Laurenza. 54 Settia, ‘L’ingegneria militare all’epoca di Federico II’, 84–85; ‘Guido’; De re militari. 55 Gatward Cevizli.

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machines had a remarkable power to inspire: in a short manuscript dated August 1515, Francesco Guicciardini described a tank propelled by three rockets invented by Francesco Barducci Chierichini for the ruler of Florence, Lorenzo di Piero de’ Medici (1492–1519).56 Guicciardini held the employment of engineers during war in great esteem: at the time of a possible invasion of Italy by the Turks, he wrote that, given the impossibility of bringing together all the Italian princes, the skills of an engineer (employed in hydraulic and military tasks) were the only hope for stopping them. The Republic of Venice had previously employed Leonardo for a similar task.57 In Milan, Leonardo was employed as ‘painter and engineer of the Duke’,58 then as ‘architect and general engineer’59 to Duke Cesare Borgia (1475–1507). Finally, in France he was known as the ‘noble Milanese, first painter, engineer, royal architect and state mechanician’.60 Leonardo’s employment at the Sforza court provided him with the impressive yearly salary of 500 golden scudi, which in France was increased to 700 golden écus, where the king also gave him the use of a small castle at Cloux.61 The apotheosis of the commoner bastard craftsman was complete: Leonardo died a gentleman thanks to his reputation as a painter and engineer, a title that also allowed him to investigate natural philosophy.62 Although Leonardo never published, he had constantly dreamed of becoming, like Archimedes or Vitruvius, an author-engineer,63 as his friend Luca Pacioli clearly testified in 1498.64 Leonardo’s story seems to contradict the claim recently made by Bruce Lenman in a recent collection of studies on military engineering that ‘bureaucracy does not breed polymaths’.65 On the contrary, Renaissance courtly bureaucracy seems to have done this, if by ‘polymathesis’ we mean the entire classical range of mechanical competences of the Renaissance

56 Barducci’s rocket-propelled tank was meant to break up the enemy lines: ‘apta a rompere exerciti’ (‘fit to break armies’). One drawing of the machine was secretly shown by the author to Francesco Guicciardini and Lorenzo di Piero de’ Medici, and then poorly sketched by the untrained hand of the historiographer, who, luckily enough, also described it in writing: Conti. 57 Guicciardini, 80–81; Bernardoni, 84–85. 58 Heydenreich. 59 Starnazzi, 41. 60 Houssaye, 311. 61 Maffei, 211; Ferri, 302. 62 Bernardoni, chap. 4. 63 Vecce, 65–76, 123–42. 64 Pacioli, 33. 65 Lenman.

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engineer: applied geometry, the principles of statics and dynamics, and the empirical study of materials.

Engineers in the Shadow of War Given that, as Cicero wrote, ‘the sinews of war’ consist of a ‘limitless supply of money’,66 it is also important to remember that Renaissance engineers were involved in supporting the economy far from the battlefield: new powerful pumping systems were developed to drain mines, water fields and supply cities. Canals were created to transport goods and to carry water to power mills and other machines used in industrial processes. Early modern administrations employed an increasing number of engineers to improve agriculture (irrigation and land-reclamation),67 measure the land for taxation through large cadastre surveying projects,68 and to solve conflicts through demonstrative mathematical persuasion. For example, in 1377, during a territorial controversy between Venetians and Paduans, Giovanni de’ Dondi used a map to find a solution based on measured arguments in order to avoid a conflict between the pretenders, while in 1459, the ducal engineer Aristotile of Bologna (ca. 1420–ca. 1486) convinced the worried inhabitants of Soncino about the safety of a hydraulic project.69 The self-representation of power through engineering was also a tool of ‘psychological warfare’. For example, Federico da Montefeltro (1422–1482), duke of Urbino, enjoyed being seen as a new Caesar: for instance, in an official portrait with his son (ca. 1475, attributed to Justus van Gent, now in Urbino, Galleria nazionale delle Marche), the duke is represented reading a book while wearing plate armour. The Duke of Urbino also hired one of the most talented painter-engineers of the time: the Sienese Francesco di Giorgio Martini (1439–1501), author of splendid manuscripts on machines that greatly inspired Leonardo.70 In the dedicatory letter of the Opusculum de Architectura, another of Francesco’s technical manuscripts, addressing the duke – to whom the tract was dedicated – he wrote that just as Alexander the Great did with Dinocrates of Rhodes, and Caesar Augustus with Vitruvius, 66 Cicero, 202–3 (5.2). 67 On Renaissance hydraulic engineering and land reclamation, see: Fiocca, Lamberini, and Maffioli; Cazzola, 15–35. 68 See the impressive organization of teams of engineers that surveyed the state of Milan at the time of Emperor Charles V: Jacopetti; Maffioli, 207–8. 69 Pesenti; Zanetti, Janello Torriani, 333. 70 di Giorgio Martini, ‘Trattato’.

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Federico himself had also to consider employing an architect who was expert in machines – i.e. Francesco di Giorgio.71 The duke ordered his craftsmen to create bas-relief sculptures based on a series of drawings of ancient and modern civil and military machines commissioned from Francesco, which would be placed on the facade of his ducal palace: a successful ruler, like Augustus, had to be a patron of mechanics, also called ‘mathematical magic’, so as to dominate both the enemy and the natural elements.72 The message was clear and loud, and influential mathematicians such as Luca Pacioli celebrated this iconographic programme as a tribute to the promotion of practical mathematics.73 Emperor Maximilian (1459–1519), more entitled than any Italian petty tyrant to represent himself as a Caesar, also made use of the image of mechanical devices as symbols of the military might of his state machine, as can be seen in a wonderful series of woodcuts by Hans Burgkmair (1473–1531) of an imperial triumphal procession where mechanical allegorical carts representing imperial victories are driven by muscular Landsknechts on board, pulling on cranks and walking on treadmills.74 In reality, it seems that triumphal processions adopted mechanical devices for propaganda purposes, such as when King Louis XII of France (1461–1515) used Leonardo’s lion automaton to celebrate his military victory over Venice in 1509.75 Magnificence was a necessary component to the representation of power, and Renaissance engineers were also involved in the creation of machine tools for the production of luxury goods or military equipment. On a macro-scale and with a view to celebrating claims to universal authority, new hoisting devices were created by engineers to erect colossal buildings, such as the royal compound of San Lorenzo El Escorial (1563–1585), the new basilica of St Peter (1506–1626), and the ancient fallen obelisks in Rome. European clockmakers can be considered engineers working on a micro-scale. As architects and engineers, clockmakers did not have specific guilds until the second third of the sixteenth century. Filippo Brunelleschi, educated as a goldsmith, made clocks: apparently, it was because of this skill that he could invent hoisting machines to elevate great buildings.76 European clockmakers invented new mechanical devices, including timepieces and other clockworks, which were also presented as diplomatic gifts to impress 71 di Giorgio Martini, ‘Opusculum’. 72 Grafton, ‘Magic and Technology’. 73 Pacioli, 23, 37–38. 74 Burgkmair, Aspland, and von Burtsch. 75 Burke. 76 Zanetti, Janello Torriani, 329.

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competing civilizations, such as the Ottomans, Persian, Indians, Chinese, and Japanese.77 More efficient steel springs were created and employed in different devices: they provided the common ground for the developing fields of both watches and clocks and triggering mechanisms for crossbows and firearms. John Gagné, in a pioneering study, has shown how, during the Italian Wars, specialists in mechanical constructions provided bombardiers – who often lost their hands in battle – with prosthetic mechanical iron surrogates.78 Renaissance engineers such as Aristotile of Bologna were highly valued during both peace and war. Aristotile’s travels to several European states (outside of Italy, to Hungary and Russia) seem to be strictly connected to the diplomacy of the time promoted by Cardinal Bessarion, with an anti-Turkish perspective. Aristotile was able to move stone towers with his machines and oversaw the construction of large cathedrals and the new fortifications of the Kremlin, besides being in charge of the mint and commanding Ivan III’s (1440–1505) artillery.79 These engineers were capable of transferring knowledge, and even of stealing it in their occasional capacity as spies.80 They could also provide security against spies: a cryptographic tool or ‘small volvelle for enigmatic writing’ was created by the Jewish Renaissance engineer Abramo Colorni, to help rulers establish a safe communications system.81 Engineers were also involved with military astrology, an important practice in Renaissance European warfare. 82 One manuscript copy of Taccola’s De re militari et machinis bellicis opens with an illustration of a physician holding an astrolabe and the caption: ‘On the [best] time to start a war according to astrology’.83 It was believed that every physical phenomenon and human activity was under the influence of the stars, including war.84 Although the Roman Catholic church and some Protestant theologians could not accept the most extreme consequence of judiciary astrology (i.e. predestination), the doctrine of physical influences was 77 For example, in relation to the Turks see: Mraz. 78 Gagné. 79 Ghisetti Giavarina. 80 Adams, Lamberini, and Pepper. See also Iordanou’s contribution to this volume. 81 Toaff, chap. 8. 82 For a detailed view of astrological practices at Renaissance courts: Oestmann, Rutkin, and Stuckrad; Azzolini; Hayton. 83 Taccola, fol. 6v. 84 For some Renaissance examples of the astrological influences of Mars on military predisposition, see: Verrier, 140.

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widely accepted, legitimizing electional and inceptional astrology: man could change the ill influences of the stars, which impelled rather than compelled.85 Arabic and Latin treaties containing techniques of military astrology were in wide circulation: these could be employed to prognosticate the outcome of a battle; to interrogate the stars about the qualities of an army, its soldiers and their commander; or to choose a propitious moment for military action.86 In 1404, it was the Florentine Republic’s astrologer who chose the right moment for the army to attack the castle of Vicopisano. Moreover, Renaissance Florentine military leaders were traditionally elected to office following the pronouncements of astrologers on the correct alignment of the stars. Florentines also elected in point of astrology the most propitious moment to commence the construction of their fortifications.87 In Naples, the medical astrologer Agostino Nifo (ca. 1470–1538) claimed that he had been able to predict ‘the unexpected political and military events of 1504–1505 for his master’ el Gran Capitán Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba (1453–1515).88 Luca Gaurico (1475–1558), another famous astrologer, was proud to have publicly predicted King Francis I’s (1494–1547) victory at Marignano (1515) and his defeat at Pavia (1525).89 The powerful psychological implications of astrological prognostications probably explain why Giovanni II Bentivoglio (1443–1508), lord of Bologna, after commissioning a horoscope from Gaurico, ordered him to be tortured: the poor astrologer had imprudently prognosticated the lord’s future defeat, which eventually occurred, increasing Gaurico’s reputation.90 Even a sceptic like Emperor Maximilian I was aware of the power of prognostication in war and it seems that he made use of it as a diplomatic tool.91 However, because of a technical caveat, the basis of such prognostications was often perceived as weak: besides using unstable instruments for direct observations such as astrolabes, astrologers consulted astronomical tables or ephemerides which were, as Pacioli lamented, nine times out of ten imprecise

85 Grafton, Cardano’s Cosmos. On the Roman Catholic church’s censorship of astrology see: Tarrant. On Lutheran views see: Thoren, 83–84, 216–18. 86 Burnett; Hand; Orbán, 134–35. 87 Casanova. I thank Dr Maurizio Arfaioli (Medici Archive Project) for pointing me to Nardi, 87. 88 Grafton, Cardano’s Cosmos, 52–53. 89 Grafton, 99 90 Grafton, 124. 91 Hayton, 2.

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and also diverging, therefore affecting the accuracy of the predictions.92 Moreover, the simultaneous consultation of these tables for all seven wandering stars was not an easy task. This is why the aforementioned Campanus had developed the equatorium. Nevertheless, Gerolamo Cardano (1501–76), the celebrated medical astrologer, still refused to offer precise predictions about upcoming wars remarking that ‘there is no part of astrology harder than this one’.93 This problem called for more accurate astronomical tables and for expensive and complex mechanized planetary equatoria, which allowed the instantaneous vision of the whole celestial configurations in real time. Only a few states could afford the expenses and find the engineering knowhow, and the cutting-edge astronomical knowledge to develop such automata, which were the most complex machines of the Renaissance. The prototype of such automata was the abovementioned Astrarium,94 which, during the Italian Wars, became thoroughly worn out. Its reconstruction was undertaken by the engineer Janello Torriani. He completed this task in around the year 1550, after two decades spent designing it. This complex cosmomorphic automaton, called the Microcosm, the Emperor’s Large Clock, or Caesar’s Sky (made for Emperor Charles V, after the devolution of Milan), was a technological prodigy. The emperor granted Torriani a privilege whereby he called him ‘mathematician’, a synonym of astrologer. Torriani, when asked by the emperor how he would like to be named on a celebratory portrait, replied ‘architect of clocks’, revealing the Vitruvian model of his aspirations (he owned three copies of Vitruvius).95 After Charles’ death, Torriani entered the service of his son, King Philip II. When the court historiographer Ambrosio de Morales (1523–91) asked Torriani about his planetary automata, the artisan said that he had always wanted to create ‘a clock with all the movements of the sky, so that it would be more than the one made by Archimedes’.96 These automata, together with other impressive technological achievements – e.g. the construction of the Ingenio de Toledo, the first giant machine of history – won him the name of ‘new Archimedes’.97 92 Pacioli, 23 93 Grafton, Cardano’s Cosmos, 41. 94 Bedini and Maddison. 95 Zanetti, Janello Torriani, 197. 96 ‘El comprehendio en la imaginacion hazer un relox con todos los movimientos del cielo, assi que fuesse mas que lo de Archimedes que escrive Plutarco, y que lo de otro Italiano destos tiempos …’. Morales, fols. 91r–94r (quotation at fol. 92v). 97 Zanetti, Janello Torriani.

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At first sight, Torriani’s brilliant career seems to exclude military practice, aside from the construction of a ballista (most probably the Roman catapult described by Vitruvius), which was more of an antiquarian than a military enterprise.98 However, some clues point in the opposite direction: the first known document testifying to his employment in the administration of the State of Milan (1544) was related to a payment to one ‘engineer’, Torriani, for ‘staying by His Majesty’s army in Piedmont’.99 Considering his excellence in hydraulics and planetary horology, his expertise as army engineer could have related to fortification, hydraulic engineering, or military astrology. The latter seems more probable, if we consider that, on the one hand, the first two accounts connecting Janello to hydraulic engineering (by Marco Girolamo Vida and Gerolamo Cardano) both date back to a later period: 1550.100 On the other hand, according to the doctrine of Great Conjunctions (every twenty years Saturn and Jupiter appear closer in the heavens), astrologers were expecting major historical changes for that very year of 1544,101 and the astrologer Cardano tells us that at this date Torriani was already working on planetary automata.102 Shortly after, in 1547, Charles V commissioned the construction of a cosmomorphic automaton to Torriani. The imperial librarian and counsellor Willem Snouckhaert von Schauberg (1518–1565), in his biography of Emperor Charles V, wrote that the ruler was strongly against prognostication (iudiciis illis Astrologoru[m] quam maxime adversabatur)103 but at the same time he believed deeply in the selection of favourable astrological moments for his actions. Snouckhaert, adopting the rhetorical model of Cicero’s De divinatione, asked: Is it not true that this Caesar among all kings, emperors and monarchs was the greatest astrologer and mathematician? And that when he was in Ulm … he summoned Janello Torriani of Cremona, who arrived on the very day of Charles V’s forty-seventh birthday? And immediately after listening to him, he ordered the task of building the instrument of the motion of the eighth sphere [i.e. the Microcosm]? And that instantly afterward, there was a [military] progress in Saxony almost as a prophecy of the future victory? What then does the knowledge of the stars have 98 Viganò. 99 Viganò, 275. 100 Viganò, 34. 101 Grafton, Cardano’s Cosmos, 5, 38–55. 102 Zanetti, Janello Torriani, 206. 103 Snouckhaert von Schauberg, 148–49.

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to do with the discussion on war, what did it have in common with it? It is the great spirit of the emperor, who always despises human activities, and only respects the divine and the celestial ones.104

According to Snouckhaert, the arrival of the engineer on the very day of the emperor’s birthday was seen as a good omen, and it appears that the discussions about the mechanical commission involved some electional astrological practice that supported certain actions in the war against the Protestants. These actions brought about an immediate success in Saxony, which according to Snouckhaert was perceived as propaedeutic to the great imperial victory of Mühlberg two months later in April 1547. According to the Spanish royal librarian Jose de Sigüenza, the choice of the place for Charles V’s retirement was also made by ‘his engineer Janello, who was very knowledgeable in astrology’.105 After 1552, when the Emperor had this powerful astrological machine completed, we witness between 1554 and 1568 three of the foremost Lutheran princes investing in a similar technology, namely: Elector Count Palatine Ottheinrich of the House of Wittelsbach (1502–59); Prince William the Wise of Hesse (1532–92), who later became William IV Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel; and Elector Augustus of Saxony, of the House of Wettin (1526–86).106 The involvement of these Lutheran princes with astrological speculation emerges from several documents.107 Further north, King Frederick II of Denmark (1532–56) granted the noble Tycho Brahe, friend of Wilhelm IV of Hesse, large state funds to support his astrologic-astronomic-alchemic observatory and laboratory at Uraniborg.108 The theme of alchemy recalls another important techno-scientific and cultural shadow agency of war, which unfortunately cannot be discussed here. To conclude, I believe that the confusing traditional reading of the Renaissance engineer as a polymath can be explained through the popularity 104 ‘Sed hic Caesar an non omnium Regum, & Caesarum, & Monarcharum maximus fuit Astrologus, & Mathematicus? an non cum ulmae Suevorum … anno quadragesimo septimo vitae suae, Ianellum Turrianum Cremonensem ad se accersivit? Ac is quidem die natali Caaesaris ad eum venit? ac statim illi (auditus cum esset) instrumenti de octavae spherae motu conficiendi curam mandatumque inunxit? Mox in Saxoniam profectus est futurae quasi victoriae prescius? Quid autem habet astrorum cognitio cum belli tractatione sociale, quid coniunctum habebat? Magnus igitur Caesaris animus, qui humanas actiones semper contemnens: divinas, coelestesque solas semper est admiratus’. Snouckhaert von Schauberg, 149. 105 Zanetti, Janello Torriani, 168. 106 Oestmann; Zanetti, ‘The Microcosm’; Janello Torriani, 156–73. 107 Moran, 218; Oestmann. 108 Thoren; Christianson.

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of the classical epistemology of mechanics promoted by humanist culture. The Archimedean and Vitruvian model of the intellectual military engineer is the key to understanding the evolution of this profession with no specific curriculum but with a precise range of f ields of action, as clearly listed by Pappus of Alexandria. This is why the labours of the Renaissance military engineer were diverse and extended far beyond the broadly acknowledged construction of war machines and fortif ications. In the shadows, far behind the lines, rulers recognized the importance of other forms of engineering to sustain the increasing costs of war. Renaissance engineers were also employed in perhaps the most shadowy of all military agencies: the creation of intelligence instruments for cryptography and military astrology.

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Caretta, Alessandro, and Alessandro Degani. ‘In margine ai restauri della Cattedrale di Lodi’. Arte Lombarda 5.1 (1960): 22–26. Casanova, Eugenio. ‘L’astrologia e la consegna del bastone al Capitano generale della Repubblica fiorentina’. Archivio Storico Italiano 5.7 (1891): 134–144. Cazzola, Franco. ‘Le bonifiche cinquecentesche nella valle del Po: governare le acque, creare nuova terra’, in Arte e scienza delle acque nel Rinascimento, edited by Alessandra Fiocca, Daniela Lamberini, and Cesare Maffioli (Venice: Marsilio, 2003), 15–36. Celenza, Christopher S. The Italian Renaissance and the Origins of the Modern Humanities: An Intellectual History, 1400–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021). Christianson, John Robert. On Tycho’s Island: Tycho Brahe, Science, and Culture in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). Conti, Danele. ‘Una “machina … apta a rompere eserciti” in una sconosciuta scrittura autografa di Francesco Guicciardini’. Rinascimento 60 (2020): 157–74. Piñeiro, Mariano Esteban. ‘Las academias técnicas en la España del siglo XVI’. Quaderns d’història de l’enginyeria, 5 (2002): 2. Ferri, Luigi. Leonardo da Vinci scienziato e filosofo: vita e scritti secondo nuovi documenti (Florence: Direzione della Nuova Antologia, 1873). Fiocca, Alessandra, Daniela Lamberini, and Cesare Maffioli (eds). Arte e scienza delle acque nel Rinascimento (Venice: Marsilio, 2003). Gagné, John. ‘Emotional Attachments Iron Hands, Their Makers and Their Wearers, 1450–1600’, in Feeling Things: Objects and Emotions through History, edited by Stephanie Downes, Sally Holloway, and Sarah Randles (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), chap. 8. Galluzzi, Paolo. Gli ingegneri del Rinascimento. Da Brunelleschi a Leonardo da Vinci. Ediz. Illustrata (Florence: Giunti Editore, 1998). Gatward Cevizli, Antonia. ‘Mehmed II, Malatesta and Matteo De’ Pasti: A Match of Mutual Benefit between the “Terrible Turk” and a “Citizen of Hell”’. Renaissance Studies 31.1 (2017): 43–65. Ghisetti Giavarina, Adriano. ‘Fioravanti Aristotele (Fieravanti)’, in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, 100 vols. in progress (Rome: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana, 1960–present), 48. Grafton, Anthony. Cardano’s Cosmos: The Worlds and Works of a Renaissance Astrologer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999). Grafton, Anthony. Magic and Technology in Early Modern Europe (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Libraries, 2005). Hand, Robert S. ‘The Use of Military Astrology in Late Medieval Italy: The Textual Evidence’. Unpublished PhD Dissertation, The Catholic University of America, 2014.

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Hayton, Darin. The Crown and the Cosmos: Astrology and the Politics of Maximilian I (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015). Heydenreich, Ludwig H. Leonardo da Vinci, 2 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1954). Helbing, Mario. ‘La scienza della meccanica nel Cinquecento’, in Il Rinascimento italiano e l’Europa, vol. 5: Le scienze, edited by Antonio Clericuzio and Germana Ernst (Costabissara [Vicenza]: Angelo Colla Editore, 2008), 573–92. Houssaye, Arsène. Histoire de Léonard de Vinci (Paris: Libraire Académique Didier et Cie, 1876). Høyrup, Jens. ‘Archimedes: Knowledge and Lore from Latin Antiquity to the Outgoing European Renaissance’, in Jens Høyrup, Selected Essays on Pre- and Early Modern Mathematical Practice (Cham: Springer International, 2018), 459–77. Jacopetti, Ircas Nicola. Il territorio agrario-forestale di Cremona nel catasto di Carlo V (1551–1561). Annali 31 (Cremona: Biblioteca Statale e Libreria Civica di Cremona, 1980). Keller, Alex G. ‘A Byzantine Admirer of “Western” Progress: Cardinal Bessarion’. Cambridge Historical Journal 11, no. 3 (1955): 343–48. Kuehn, Thomas. Illegitimacy in Renaissance Florence (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2002). Laurenza, Domenico. ‘Disegno e progetto, Leonardo e gli ingegneri’, in Il Rinascimento italiano e l’Europa, vol. 5: Le scienze, edited by Antonio Clericuzio and Germana Ernst (Costabissara [Vicenza]: Angelo Colla Editore, 2008), 513–27. Lefèvre, Wolfgang (ed.) Picturing Machines 1400–1700 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004). Lenman, Bruce P. ‘Introduction: Military Engineers from Polymath Courtiers to Specialist Troops’, in Military Engineers and the Development of the Early-Modern European State, edited by Bruce P. Lenman (Dundee: Dundee University Press, 2013), 1–43. Long, Pamela O. Openness, Secrecy, Authorship, Technical Arts and the Culture of Knowledge from Antiquity to the Renaissance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001). Long, Pamela O. Artisan/Practitioners and the Rise of the New Sciences, 1400–1600 (Corvallis, OR: Oregon State University Press, 2011). Long, Pamela O. ‘Trading Zones: Arenas of Exchange during the Late-Medieval/ Early Modern Transition to the New Empirical Sciences’. History of Technology 31 (2012): 5–25. Maffei, Giuseppe. Storia della letteratura italiana (Florence: Felice Le Monnier, 1853). Maffioli, Cesare. ‘A Fruitful Exchange/Conflict: Engineers and Mathematicians in Early Modern Italy’, Annals of Science 70.2 (2013): 197–228. Marr, Alexander, Raphaële Garrod, José Ramón Marcaida, and Richard J. Oosterhoff. Logodaedalus: Word Histories of Ingenuity in Early Modern Europe (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019).

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Merrill, Elizabeth. ‘The Professione di Architetto in Renaissance Italy’. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 76.1 (2017): 13–35. Molà, Luca. ‘Privilegi per l’introduzione di nuove arti e brevetti’, in Il Rinascimento italiano e l’Europa, edited by Philippe Braunstein and Luca Molà, vol. 3: Produzione e tecniche (Treviso: Angelo Colla Editore, 2007), 533–72. Mommsen, Theodore E. ‘Petrarch’s Conception of the “Dark Ages”’, Speculum, 17 (1942): 226–42. Moran, Bruce T. ‘Prince, Machines and the Valuation of Precision in the 16th Century’. Sudhoffs Archiv, 61.3 (1977): 209–28. Mraz, Gottfried. ‘The Role of Clocks in the Imperial Honoraria for the Turks’, in The Clockwork Universe: German Clocks and Automata, 1550–1650, edited by Klaus Maurice and Otto Mayr (Washington, DC; New York: Smithsonian Institution; N. Watson Academic Publications: National Museum of History and Technology: Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, 1980), 37–48. Necipoğlu, Gülru. The Age of Sinan: Architectural Culture in the Ottoman Empire (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007). North, John David. God’s Clockmaker Richard of Wallingford and the Invention of Time (London: Hambledon Continuum, 2006). Oestmann, Günther. ‘Astrologi und Mechanici im Umkreis Ottheinrichs’, in Von Kaisers Gnaden: 500 Jahre Pfalz-Neuburg, edited by Suzanne Bäumler, Evamaria Brockhoff, Michael Henker (Augsburg: Haus der Bayerischen Geschichte, 2005), 256–260. Oestmann, Günther, Darrel H. Rutkin, and Kocku von Stuckrad. Horoscopes and Public Spheres: Essays on the History of Astrology (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2012). Orbán, Áron. ‘Astrology at the Court of Matthias Corvinus’. Terminus, 17.1 (2015): 113–46. Pesenti, Tiziana. ‘Dall’Orologio, Giovanni de Dondi’, in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, 100 vols. in progress (Rome: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana, 1960–present), 41. Poli, Valeria. Architetti, ingegneri, periti agrimensori: le professioni tecniche a Piacenza tra XIII e XIX secolo (Piacenza: Banca di Piacenza, 2002). Purton, Peter. The Medieval Military Engineer: From the Roman Empire to the Sixteenth Century (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer Ltd., 2018). Repishti, Francesco. ‘Sufficientia, experientia, industria, diligentia e solicitudine. Architetti e ingegneri tra Quattro e Cinquecento in Lombardia’, in Formare le professioni: ingegneri, architetti, artisti (secc. XV–XIX), edited by A. Ferraresi and Monica Visioli (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2012), 41–58. Sandoval, Prudencio de. Historia del emperador Carlos V, rey de España (Madrid: P. Madoz y L. Sagasti, 1847). Settia, Aldo A. ‘L’ingegneria militare all’epoca di Federico II’. Studi Storici 32.1 (1991): 69–85.

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Settia, Aldo A. ‘L’ ingegneria militare’, in Federico II, vol. 2: Federico II e le scienze, edited by Pierre Toubert and Agostino Paravicini Bagliani (Palermo: Sellerio, 1994), 272–89. Settia, Aldo A. De re militari: pratica e teoria nella guerra medievale (Rome: Viella, 2011). Settia, Aldo A. ‘Guido da Vigevano’, in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, 100 vols. in progress (Rome: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana, 1960–present), 61: 433-36. Sgarbi, Marco. ‘Aristotele per Artigiani, Ingegneri e Architetti’. Philosophical Readings 2 (2016): 67–78. Skinner, Quentin. Visions of Politics, vol. 2: Renaissance Virtues (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Starnazzi, Carlo. Leonardo cartografo (Florence: Istituto geografico militare, 2003). Tarrant, Neil. ‘Reconstructing Thomist Astrology: Robert Bellarmine and the Papal Bull Coeli et Terrae’, Annals of Science 77 (2020): 26–49. Thoren, Victor E. The Lord of Uraniborg: A Biography of Tycho Brahe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). Toaff, Ariel. Il prestigiatore di Dio: avventure e miracoli di un alchimista ebreo nelle corti del Rinascimento (Milan: Rizzoli, 2010). Valleriani, Matteo. Galileo Engineer (Dordrecht: Springer, 2010). Vecce, Carlo. La biblioteca perduta: i libri di Leonardo (Rome: Salerno Editrice, 2017). Vérin, Hélène. La gloire des ingénieurs: l’intelligence technique du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Albin Michel, 1993). Verrier, Frédérique. Les armes de Minerve: l’humanisme militaire dans l’Italie du XVIe siècle (Paris: Presses de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 1997). Viganò, Marino. ‘Parente et alievo del già messer Janello’, in Leonardo Turriano, ingeniero del rey, edited by Alicia Cámara Muñoz, Rafael Moreira, and Marino Viganò (Madrid: Fundación Juanelo Turriano, 2010), 203–27. White, Lynn Townsend, Jr. ‘Medical Astrologers and Late Medieval Technology’. Viator 6 (1975): 295–308. Zanetti, Cristiano. ‘The Microcosm: Technological Innovation and Transfer of Mechanical Knowledge in Sixteenth-Century Habsburg Empire’. History of Technology 32.3 (2014): 35–65. Zanetti, Cristiano. ‘Erudite Cultural Mediators and the Making of the Renaissance Polymath: The Case of Giorgio Fondulo and Janello Torriani’. Renaissance and Reformation 39.2 (2016): 111–27. Zanetti, Cristiano. Janello Torriani and the Spanish Empire: A Vitruvian Artisan at the Dawn of the Scientific Revolution (Leiden: Brill, 2017). Zanetti, Cristiano. ‘Ctesibio, la clessidra e il salvagente’, in Leonardo e Vitruvio. Oltre il cerchio e il quadrato, edited by Francesca Borgo, with a contribution by Paolo Clini (Venice: Marsilio; Fano: Centro studi vitruviani, 2019), 118–23.

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About the Author Cristiano Zanetti received his PhD from the European University Institute (2012), with a prize-winning dissertation on Renaissance court-related technology. He has been a fellow at several research institutions (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science; Villa I Tatti; the University of Milan, as a member of Tacitroots) and is now a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellow at Ca’ Foscari University (Venice) and Caltech (Pasadena).

7

Agents of Firearms Supply in Sixteenth-Century Italy Rethinking the Contractor State Catherine Fletcher

Abstract This chapter investigates the people and organizations involved in the supply of firearms for military use in sixteenth-century Italy, as guns became a key technology in European warfare. Agents of supply ranged from gunmakers (including the Beretta firm) to ropemakers, from bankers to customs officials, from city captains to leatherworkers and scrap metal dealers. Through a ‘bottom-up’ exploration of this chain of supply and maintenance, considering both formal and informal processes, the chapter offers new perspectives on the functioning of the contractor state. It argues that the state’s ability to purchase arms effectively depended on local patrons and connections and that the contractor state’s development should be considered across the space spanned by supply chains as well as over time. Keywords: Firearms, Guns, Contractor State, Arms Industry, Military Revolution

Introduction On 16 August 1571, less than two months before the Battle of Lepanto, the Papal States contracted with Bernardino Busle of Brescia for the supply of 1,500 arquebuses. The contract, concluded by Bartolomeo Bussotto, Treasurer of the Holy See, stipulated the length of the gun barrel (four Roman palms), that it should be well-worked and reinforced at the breech and that it should be suitable for three-quarter ounce shot, as well as

Bowd, S., Cockram, S. & Gagné, J. (eds.), Shadow Agents of Renaissance War. Suffering, Supporting, and Supplying Conflict in Italy and Beyond. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2023 doi: 10.5117/9789463721356_ch07

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detailing how the accompanying powder flask and priming flask should be supplied.1 This may seem a straightforward transaction, but the reality of fulfilling such contracts was complex, even while they were essential to early modern warfare. In the military context, states frequently contracted out elements of defence, buying in not only weapons but also the services of mercenaries. Military entrepreneurs, whether producers or brokers, and their employees or sub-contractors, fulfilled this demand. The term ‘contractor state’ is used to describe the state in this role as purchaser of services: this concept is closely related to that of the f iscal-military state, which aims to account for how the state raised money to fund this activity.2 Behind the entrepreneurs who supplied the contractor state, however, were many more individuals and organisations. Those involved in the supply of firearms for military use in sixteenth-century Italy ranged from gunmakers to ropemakers, from bankers to customs officials, from city captains to leatherworkers and scrap metal dealers. Through an exploration of the chain of supply and maintenance, this chapter offers a ‘bottom-up’ analysis of the contractor state’s practical functioning. It investigates the power of producers in the face of competition between states, the role of middlemen and the signif icance of their personal connections, and state attempts to monitor key processes. Its findings point to new lines of enquiry concerning the relevance of firearms to the ‘military revolution’ debate and to our understanding of the contractor state in early modern Italy and beyond. There is a considerable literature on late medieval and early modern guns, but it is not well-integrated and the arms industry per se has received limited attention. Developments in Italy have been rather marginal to the debate about a ‘military revolution’,3 and in any case that debate has generally regarded handguns as significant primarily in relation to shifting battlefield tactics and the consequent need for different types of military 1 Zanelli: the document is in Archivio di Stato di Roma (ASR), Archivio Notarile 3460, notaio Antonio Guidotti (1571), vol. 2, p. 167. ‘Che la canna dell’archibuso debba essere longa palmi quattro di Roma, ben lavorata, et rinforzata alla culata et di tre quarti d’oncia di palla, con la mira aperta ed il focone, grandi, incassati alla spagnola con gran calcio a proportione della canna si come si costuma in simile sorta d’archibusi. Le fiasche che portino da diciotto in venti oncie di polvere per ciascuna, con la cargatura in proportione della palla che porta l’archibuso, come si costumano coperte di corame bono con cordoni et fiocchi di filo et così li fiaschettini, bene inchiodate et ben ferrate alli canti acciò stiano saldi come si costuma’. 2 Fynn-Paul, esp. the Introduction by Fynn-Paul, Marjolein ‘t Hart and Griet Vermeesch, 1–12; Parrott; Wilson and Klerk. 3 Pezzolo.

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management and training.4 Until recently much literature on Italian handgun production focused on the identification of gunfounders, although there is also an important history of the Beretta firm,5 while local histories of Brescia and Valtrompia, the most significant production area, provide further information.6 The work of Michael Mallett and John Hale on the military organization of the Venetian state set this in wider context,7 as have subsequent studies of the Italian Wars (1494–1559).8 In these broader analyses the role of arms manufacturers, who served a clear purpose for the state in the military context, but also had their own interest in promoting weapons use and encouraging the expansion of firearms technology, has often been lost, but this has begun to be remedied with the publication of several important studies: Luca Mocarelli and Giulio Ongaro on the arms industry in seventeenth-century Brescia; Fabrizio Ansani on artillery production in Florence; and Walter Panciera on the gunpowder industry in Venice. To these should be added the work of David Parrott, who takes a broader European view on the question of military enterprise.9 The sources for the history of handguns in sixteenth-century Italy are fragmentary. Regime change in the large centres of Bologna, Florence and Milan disrupted institutions and record-keeping.10 Indeed, there are few military archives with consistent series through the Italian Wars (that of the duchy of Ferrara, in Modena, is an important exception). The records of Brescia and Venice, which might shed light on handgun production, likewise have numerous lacunae: the earliest sixteenth-century Brescian ducal register covers the years 1528–33, but consistent records begin only in 1546.11 Nonetheless, taken together these sources provide a good deal of information about the practicalities of arms exporting, and for corroboration I have looked more broadly, including at the ‘conti straordinari’ of the fond ‘Soldatesche e Galere’ in the Archivio di Stato di Roma, which concern papal military campaigns, and at documents from Florence and Modena. 4 For key readings see Rogers; more recently Jacob and Visoni-Alonzo have rejected the idea of a military revolution altogether. 5 Barbiroli; Morin and Held. 6 Bolognini; Bossini and Galeri; Armi e cultura nel bresciano (esp. Morin); Antologia gardonese; Odorici; Cominazzi. 7 Mallett and Hale. 8 Sherer; Arfaioli; Mallett and Shaw; Shaw; Pellegrini; Bowd; Butters and Neher. 9 Mocarelli and Ongaro; Ansani; Panciera; Parrott. 10 The difficulties are compounded by the fact that the Florentine military archive does not even have an index. 11 Archivio di Stato di Brescia (ASBs), Cancelleria prefetizia inferiore, Registri ducali (Canc. pref. inf., Reg. ducali).

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I am particularly concerned to investigate what scholars of present-day small arms proliferation call ‘weapons flow’: in other words, the flow of guns from the original source of production (where they are generally produced for some legal purpose) to their end use (which may or may not be legal). While we do not have access to all the techniques used today to track weapons, the method makes clear that then as now these flows are complex and involve multiple actors.12 This essay focuses on one route along which weapons moved: the legitimate military supply chain, considering five stages of firearms supply: production, purchase, transport, distribution, and the supply of ancillary goods such as match-cord, powder-flasks and shot. The terminology of small arms requires some explanation. In the sixteenth-century context, ‘arquebus’ typically refers to guns that can be fired from the shoulder without a support to steady them. The archibusone (literally, ‘large arquebus’) required a stand and is generally listed alongside heavier artillery in the records. Handguns were also known as stioppi or in smaller sizes schioppetti; this weapon is sometimes (but not necessarily) distinguished from the arquebus by the fact that an arquebus has a trigger while a schioppetto requires both hands to fire. Guns came in three sections, which were produced, and could be bought and sold, separately: a lock (the f iring mechanism), a stock (the wooden case) and a barrel. Military guns were most often fired with what was called a matchlock, which brought a long, slow-burning cord – the match – into contact with the gunpowder. An alternative mechanism, the wheellock, was developed late in the f ifteenth century and became a source of signif icant social anxiety because it could be concealed beneath clothing. States legislated to ban wheellocks, particularly on shorter guns, but most of them allowed exemptions: exempt groups included elite bodyguards, and sometimes (though not invariably) individuals of high rank. Nonetheless, over the course of the sixteenth century, wheellocks proliferated to the point that they became the weapon of choice for both bandits and travellers seeking protection from attack.13 Most soldiers, however, continued to use matchlocks, with the exception of elite cavalry for whom the advantage of firing one-handed outweighed the cost and reliability problems associated with the wheellock. The proliferation of small firearms in Italy began in the fourteenth century. One was used in a homicide in 1440s Bologna.14 They were increasingly 12 The present-day process of tracking arms flows (and the challenge even twenty-first century sources pose) is discussed in Jenzen-Jones and Schroeder. 13 Further findings are forthcoming in Fletcher, ‘Firearms and the State’. 14 Dean, 86.

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deployed in military contexts: a Niccolò d’Este (probably the claimant to the marquisate of Ferrara) bought fifty schioppetti in 1469, and in 1483 the castellan of Casale sul Po described the fortress as ‘well-supplied with bombards and arquebuses’.15 A 1490s inventory of the fortress at Valiano (near Montepulciano) included a variety of firearms, among them fourteen schoppietti ‘between good and worn-out’ ( fra buoni e tristi).16 The militia in Friuli, where Venice bordered Ottoman territory, were equipped with handguns from the 1490s.17 The first battle of the Italian Wars in which firearms proved decisive (in this case to Spanish victory) was the Battle of Cerignola (1503).18 With its combination of firearms and disciplined troops, the Spanish army made the running in the use of the new technology; Spanish and German instructors were hired to train the Florentine militia, who were required to drill with f irearms from 1508.19 Skills in f irearm use were quickly acquired, however, and the schioppettieri in the Duke of Urbino’s service in 1505 were predominantly from the surrounding region.20 Firearms are listed in substantial numbers in the fortresses of the duke of Ferrara in 1509,21 although that same year Pope Julius II (1443–1513) hired 300 Swiss schioppettieri for his army,22 suggesting that a case could still be made for importing expertise. Lists of schioppettieri drawn up for the duke of Ferrara in 1521 are dominated by Italian names, not only from the duke’s own territories but from Milan, Bergamo and Bologna among other locations.23 The Battle of Pavia (1525), in which Spanish arquebusiers played a significant role in the defeat and capture of King Francis I of France (1494–1547) is – for its dramatic outcome – often seen as a turning point in the history of firearms.24 However, so far as the arms industry is concerned one might equally look to the following year: the first archive reference to the involvement of the Beretta family in the arms trade is from 1526, when 15 Gelli, 60, 62. For further background on the use of firearms in fifteenth-century Italy see Mallett, 156–59. 16 Archivio di Stato di Firenze (ASF), Otto di Pratica del Principato, 121. 17 Pepper, 94. 18 Mallett and Shaw, 64–65. 19 ‘Documenti per servire alla storia’, 392, 429, 477. ASF, Nove conservatori di ordinanza e milizia, distribuzione di armi, 1. 20 Archivio di Stato di Roma, Soldatesche e Galere (ASR, SG) 86 (Conti straordinari, 1478–1540), insert (ins.) 2. 21 Archivio di Stato di Modena, Archivio Segreto Estense (ASMo, ASE), Cancelleria Ducale, Archivi militari 267, Libro di munizioni delle fortezze del duca di Ferrara, 1509. 22 ASR, SG 86 (Conti straordinari, 1478–1540), ins. 3, fols. 6r, 30v. 23 ASMo, ASE, Cancelleria ducale, Archivi militari 269. 24 Le Gall, 118–27; Sherer, 220.

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Bartolomeo Beretta sold 185 gun barrels to the Venetian state for the sum of 296 ducats.25 The Roman census of the same year documents the presence in the city of an arquebusier named Guillelmo, and two schioppettieri, Francisco and Andrea.26 The attachment of these individuals to those roles was clearly considered sufficient (by them or by the census-taker) to merit specific mention in the records. The 1557 infantry muster rolls from Ferrara suggest that arquebusiers generally accounted for about a third of the infantry and confirm that by this point the personnel involved were primarily Italian.27 By the end of the century some specialist militia units in Savoy included as many as fifty per cent arquebusiers and a further twenty-five per cent musketeers.28 As firearms grew in importance as a military technology that necessitated an increase in supply.

Gunmakers Gun production in Italy was concentrated in Gardone Valtrompia, located in the hills north of Brescia in the Italian Lakes area and for most of this period under Venetian rule. Gardone had an ideal environment for the industry, with easy access to iron mines, to water and wood. In the fifteenth century there seems to have been some import of German firearms technology and migration of technicians into Italy, but the skills were quickly acquired locally. Arms were being exported from Brescia and Gardone from early in the sixteenth century,29 and Gardone tradition has it that in 1509 Pietro Franzini developed a water-powered mill that enabled quicker and more effective production of arquebus barrels.30 A Venetian estimate of 1520 placed the population of Valtrompia at 50,000.31 In 1526 the marquis of Mantua – whose request to export gun barrels had been refused by the 25 Beretta; Sabatti, 165. 26 Lee, entry numbers 5525, 5528, 7020. 27 ASMo, ASE, Cancelleria Ducale, Archivi militari 45. By comparison, a 1571 muster of Spanish troops in the Netherlands included about thirty per cent arquebusiers. Parker, 50 n.11. 28 Quarenghi, 1:239. 29 Quarenghi, 1:149 cites a reference to a Ferrarese purchase of Brescian arms and armour, including schiopetti in the 1508 Cronaca of Tomasino de’ Bianchi; Morin and Held, 24, identify a 1505 reference to Gardone arms production in Archivio di Stato di Venezia (ASV), Consiglio dei Dieci, Dispacci Rettori Brescia, busta (b.) 19, fol. 50. 30 Antologia gardonese, 15; Sabatti, 160 n. 26 notes there is no source for this claim, but it is repeated in interpretative material at the Museo delle Armi e della tradizone armeria di Gardone Valtrompia. See Museo delle Armi. 31 Sabatti, 163, citing Tagliaferri, 3.

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Brescia rectors – wrote to the Venetian authorities asking for permission to buy 200 a year.32 By 1562 Paolo Correr, the Venetian podestà in Brescia, estimated that Valtrompia had eight furnaces and forty forges, producing 25,000 schioppi for export each year.33 The demand for wood to produce charcoal and thereby smelt the iron required for gun-making was such that in the previous decade it had caused problematic price increases.34 By 1572, according to the relazione of Girolamo Priuli, Venetian captain in Brescia, Valtrompia had twenty-four furnaces and 200 forges; the valley was producing 300 arquebuses a day (close on 100,000 a year) and was ‘most famous’ for that industry.35 This was midway through the Fourth Venetian-Ottoman War (1570–73), a likely impetus for the surge in production. Small arms were distinctive in having this heavy concentration of production in one place: the same could not be said of artillery, which was more typically produced in state foundries. Guns, moreover, were not made in a centralized factory. Once the iron ore had been extracted, the supply chain involved a series of micro-businesses: a description of 1609 outlines the roles of different masters, responsible for large and small furnaces, for the barrel’s production, drilling, finishing and sanding.36 Those people in turn depended on the labour of others to supply f irewood for smelting and routine supplies of food and drink: the valleys were not self-sufficient and relied on trading their products for food supplies from the plain below.37 In any case, this was an industry that engaged (directly or indirectly) entire valley communities besides artisans in Brescia itself. Different people might produce the lock, stock and barrel of any individual gun. While the barrels came from Gardone, as Priuli explained, ‘the stocks are then made in Brescia, Milan, and other places where the barrels are taken’; he made use of the export licensing system to limit the export of barrels in favour of completed guns, giving Brescian stock-makers a competitive advantage over rivals.38 The gunmakers of Valtrompia were well aware of their value to the Venetian state, and worked collectively in negotiations with the Venetian representatives in Brescia to conf irm their historic tax privileges and 32 Bertolotti, 541. 33 Tagliaferri, 79–80. 34 Tagliaferri, 48. 35 Tagliaferri, 117. 36 Bolognini, 16–19; Morin, 70–71. 37 Sabatti, 165, citing the 1527 relation to the Senate of Antonio Tiepolo, podestà of Brescia, in Tagliaferri, 16–17. 38 ‘Relazione di Domenico Priuli’, in Tagliaferri, 115–50 (quotation at 117).

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negotiate exemptions (for example) from militia drills.39 This was not solely a consequence of their military importance: Brescian comuni had been conceded a certain level of autonomy following the establishment of Venetian rule in 1426, 40 and had played an important role in resisting the French invasion in the 1510s. 41 On the other hand, the community’s autonomy sometimes proved a headache for the Venetian officials, not least when religious radicalism took hold and in 1553 the rector Cattarino Zen wrote with evident frustration that: ‘Everyone carries an arquebus and … they’re not content with one, but even the women carry two, one in their hand and the other in their belt, both wheellocks, and they’re a bad breed, untameable overbearing Lutherans’. 42 The Valtrompia gunmakers’ role in production, however, undoubtedly gave them leverage. Venice needed the weapons they could supply, but in order to maintain that capacity between conflicts it had to permit exports.43 During the 1540s, Milan, Spain, the Papal States and England all purchased Gardone weapons. In 1547, for example, the Papal States obtained a licence to purchase 3,000 arquebuses, although as we will see this did not guarantee that supplies would be available.44 As early as 1505 Venetian officials had been concerned by reports that certain Gardone masters were leaving Venetian territory, 45 and the problem persisted. By 1545 the Sienese authorities were purchasing ‘Archibusi di Lucca’, strongly suggesting that production had been established there. 46 The Venetians tried to prevent poaching of their artisans, refusing permission to Battista Riccabello in 1548 to take diversi maestri (various masters) to Florence, and threatening any who had already left with the confiscation of their goods if they failed to return. 47 There were limits to their power, however: in 1542, Cosimo de’ Medici (1519–74), duke of Florence, had attempted to poach Battista del Chino of Brescia, and the duke succeeded in obtaining his services by 1551, when he was engaged to provide Florence with an annual supply of 900 arquebuses and 100 muskets 39 For examples of the privileges see ASBs, Canc. pref. inf., Reg. ducali 1, fols. 91–92r; 103r; 146v; 202r–v; 205r–v. 40 Ferraro, 32; Montanari, esp. pt. 2, chap. 2, 161–83. 41 Sabatti, 160. Pepper. 42 Morin and Held, 44, citing ASV, Collegio, Relazioni, b. 37, fol. 4r–v, published in Tagliaferri, 40–41. 43 For the continuation of this problem into the seventeenth century see Mocarelli and Ongaro. 44 ASBs, Canc. pref. inf., Reg. ducali 2, fol. 44v. 45 Sabatti, 159. 46 Documenti inediti, 579–80. 47 ASBs, Canc. pref. inf., Reg. ducali, 2, fol. 77v.

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(muskets are a larger firearm). 48 Battista del Chino also supplied hundreds of firearms to Siena following that city’s rebellion against imperial rule in 1552. 49 By 1560 Cosimo had further succeeded in headhunting the Brescian master Nicodemo Magnano, who received a five-year contract to produce arquebuses and other ironwork for Cosimo at a factory in the Florentine subject town of Pistoia.50 While there were gunmakers elsewhere in Italy, Gardone expertise was clearly attractive, not only on the Italian peninsula but for the production of weapons to be exported across Europe.

Middlemen and the Process of Purchase Guns, however, did not sell themselves and transactions between the contractor states and producers depended on the work of middlemen. This is often hidden from sources like the 1571 contract cited at the beginning of this chapter, but becomes evident with a closer reading of account books and correspondence. The accounts for the papacy’s 1551–52 military campaign for Mirandola (a small duchy situated midway between Ferrara, Mantua and Modena) illustrate their significance in arms purchasing. Some entries show payments to individuals for weapons: for example, 33 gold ducats and 30 bolognini to Jacopo da Como, ‘for many arquebuses had from him’.51 Other entries were more specific: Maestro Fabian dalle Ballestre had 30 gold ducats and 60 bolognini as payment for 24 arquebuses; Nicolo da Prati had 225 gold ducats for 200 arquebuses ‘for the use of the army’.52 While it is not out of the question that these consignments may have come from individual forges – Correr’s figures suggest that by 1562 each of the forty Gardone forges was producing an annual average of 625 gun barrels – these quantities suggest multiple producers were involved. The accounts also illustrate something of the distribution process. Fabiano dalle Ballestre received 20 gold ducats and 20 bolognini for 17 arquebuses ‘which on the orders of His Excellency went to the Count of Mondoglio’.53 Arms supply was typically subcontracted to individual captains, who then provided a certain 48 Targioni-Tozzetti, 233. ASF, Mediceo del Principato (MdP) 638, fol. 353 (Medici Archive Project [MAP] Doc ID 15371). 49 Documenti inediti, 587–88. 50 Targioni-Tozzetti, 234. 51 ASR, SG 88 (Conti Straordinari, 1541–52), volume on the Mirandola war; p. 1 of the account book bound into this volume. 52 ASR, SG 88, volume on the Mirandola war, pp. 2 and 4. 53 ASR, SG 88, volume on the Mirandola war, p. 4.

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number of arquebusiers with their weapons. For example, on 10 January 1552, Captain Giovanbattista d’Arezzo was paid 260 ducats as a month’s wages for 30 cavalrymen armed with arquebuses.54 In order to ensure their men were adequately armed, commanders might purchase a large consignment of weapons, but in some cases recruits supplied their own guns and were responsible for them. Spanish arquebusiers, at least, received a higher rate of pay than other men-at-arms, but this wage had to cover the cost of their match, powder and shot.55 The picture is not straightforward, but it is fair to say that small arms were more likely to be regarded as the individual soldier’s responsibility than were artillery. The role of middlemen in the purchasing process is conf irmed in a case from 1552, when the Papacy was preparing defences in advance of an imperial army passing through the Papal States on its way north from Naples to Siena. The payments for 15 December include one to a Florentine merchant, Antonio Ubertini (for 1,500 ducats at ten giulios per ducat) for a consignment of 300 arquebuses, 3,000 morions (a type of helmet typically worn by arquebusiers), 400 corsalets (upper body armour), 200 muskets, 3,000 iron pikes and 200 halberds, which the pope had tasked Camillo Orsini, a prominent condottiere, with bringing from Brescia for use in Rome.56 A rare piece of archive serendipity allows us to pick up the trail of this transaction in Brescia, where it is discussed in the correspondence of Giovanni Battista Porcellaga, a member of a prominent local noble family, who appears to have been acting as agent for another aristocratic family, the Martinengo.57 In a letter to Orsini dated 24 May 1553, Porcellaga explained that as soon as Giovanni Finardo da Bergamo had arrived (from the context this must be Orsini’s agent), he had ‘jollied along the arms bosses as much as I could’ so that Finardo could bring the weapons to Orsini straight away.58 54 ASR, SG 88, volume on the Mirandola war, p. 8. 55 Sherer, 36; Mallett and Shaw, 208. 56 ASR, SG 88, volume entitled ‘Conto delli denari che si spenderanno nelle cose della militia per presidio et securezza dell’Alma Città di Roma per il passaggio che havrà da fare l’essercito Imperiale come si dice per la impresa di Siena’, unpaginated entry in Uscita for 15 December 1552: ‘À messer Antonio Ubertini mercante fiorentino mille Cinquecento di giulij x: per ducato a buon conto delle infrascritte arme che N. S. ha dato carico all’Illustrissimo Signor Camillo Orsino di far venire da Brescia per uso di quest’alma Città di Roma cioè 300 archibugi 3000 Morrioni 400 Corsaletti 200 moschetti 3000 ferri di picche et 200 alabarde’. 57 Porcellaga was entitled to bear arms in both Brescia and Venice: see ASBs, Canc. pref. inf., Reg. ducali 3, fol. 14v. On the Brescian elite see Ferraro, 33–34. 58 ‘subbito gionto messer Gio: Finardo da Bergomo lo haggio agrezato quanto ho possuto cosi i patroni delle arme à mandarli subbito, et venir lui dreto con esse’. ASBs, Archivio Martinengo dalle Palle, b. 91, fol. 61r.

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It is notable that he refers to the patroni collectively: this was evidently not a transaction that could be completed by dealing with a single master. Sources for the precise ways that this group organized are lacking, but it is possible that given the dominance of arms production in the valleys the comuni of Valtrompia and nearby Valsabbia effectively functioned as cartels. The significance of the role of middlemen in Brescia and Gardone is borne out by evidence of an agent of another prominent local family, the Gambara, acting to facilitate an arms deal in 1537.59 Porcellaga, in fact, had acted as middleman for Orsini in another transaction some eighteen months earlier, liaising with the captain of Brescia to request permission for the export of muskets.60 That, along with his social connections in the patriciate also raises questions about whether these middlemen might have had the influence to exert pressure on the Venetian rectors or even circumvent them. For neither Porcellaga nor the Gambara agent, however, does arms dealing appear to be a regular occupation, rather something that they might pick up on an occasional basis. Palazzo da Fano, an acquaintance of the Florentine exile Ruberto Strozzi, did likewise, securing arms and armour for Strozzi in Brescia during the 1540s, but also finding him copies of madrigals.61 These cases would fit the broader pattern of generalist agents in the period, and more specifically contemporary diplomatic practice, in which local fixers might play important roles.62 This stage of the supply chain alone, then, involved a financier (Ubertini), the condottiere Orsini, his agent Giovanni Finardo, the agent in Brescia Giovanni Battista Porcellaga, and a group of ‘patroni delle armi’. The contractor state could not simply rely on supplies being available: it depended on agents to negotiate, lobby and charm. Once the agents had arranged the purchase, the specifics of the weapons to be provided would be set out in a contract with the Brescian patron, as we saw in the contract of 16 August 1571, and is reflected in other examples, such as the 1546 deal between Pier Luigi Farnese and Venturino del Chino, which likewise specified details relating to production quality and accessories.63 The attention to detail and insistence on quality is evident, and in some cases might be checked in advance via a sample sent from supplier to purchaser: a Florentine inventory of arms from 1554–55 refers to two large arquebuses 59 ASBs, Archivio Storico Civico di Brescia, Archivio Gambara, b. 608, unnumbered account book. See also Bowd’s contribution to this volume. 60 ASBs, Archivio Martinengo dalle Palle, b. 91, fol. 5v, letter of 4 Nov. 1551. 61 Blackburn, 30–34. 62 Cools, Keblusek and Noldus; Fletcher, Diplomacy, esp. chaps. 2 and 4. 63 Zanelli; and see above, n. 1. Quarenghi, 1:184 cites Cominazzi but does not provide an archival source for the additional contract text presented.

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(literally archibusi da mura, which would be fired while rested on a wall) with walnut stocks ‘as a sample of a larger number that is to be produced’.64 Porcellaga’s role as liaison with the captain of Brescia leads us to the next step of the arms supply chain: the export licensing process, in which contractor states might be either licensor or licensee. As with the Gardone masters’ interaction with Brescian officials, tensions between different layers of authority become apparent. Any state purchase of arms required an export licence from the Venetian off icials in Brescia. In the case of the 1552/3 transactions the pope had obtained a licence for the export of 3,000 arquebuses in 1547/8, but according to the records of the Venetian rectors in Brescia had only purchased 1,689, so it is possible that Orsini’s consignment of a further 300 guns was to be set against this outstanding allowance.65 It was common for states and princes to obtain permission for a large export to be divided into smaller transactions undertaken by their captains or their captains’ agents. In July 1532, for example, the Marchese del Guasto obtained permission to export from Brescia 4,000 arquebuses, 4,000 breastplates and 500 muskets for the imperial army, which were transported in sixteen different consignments, the quantities of guns in each ranging from just seven to 464.66 The number of guns supplied to any individual town or captain was often lower than the total number authorized, suggesting there may have been problems of supply, or at least insufficient surplus to make the Venetian authorities confident that exporting was wise. For example, on 20 March 1528, Bartolomeo Mazzoli, an agent of the duke of Milan’s ambassador, was licensed to export 150 cannon (columbrina) balls, 200 arquebuses and fifty some67 of steel for the duchy of Milan. However, while Mazzoli got the entire quantity of cannon balls on 21 April, he was restricted to the export of just twenty arquebuses and three some of steel; the following day he was permitted to export a further fifty arquebuses; still, this was barely more than a third of the number requested. On an unspecified later date export of a further twenty-eight some of steel was permitted, but that 64 ‘per campione di piu somma che si ha a fare’. ASF, Guardaroba Medicea 31, fol. 69. 65 ASBs, Canc. pref. inf., Reg. ducali 2, fol. 44v, Pontificio Stato, export licence, including list of subsequent separate consignments, 28 February 1547; fol. 46v, Pontificio Stato, export licence, and consignment details (though not for arquebuses) 9 Mar. 1548. 66 ASBs, Canc. pref. inf., Reg. ducali 1, fol. 184r–v. There may be a seventeenth consignment listed on a damaged part of the MS. 67 The 1612 edition of the Vocabolario della Crusca says that strictly speaking a soma is the load that may be borne by a beast of burden. Under the metric system soma was specified as a hectalitre (10 litres).

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still left the steel export short of the total.68 The context for these limits was a certain anxiety about ensuring adequate supplies for the defence of Venetian territory: while Venice had only limited involvement in the land wars of Italy after its defeat in 1509 at Agnadello it had every reason to be cautious about French ambitions on the peninsula, not to mention the threat from the Ottomans to its territories in the Balkans and eastern Mediterranean. On 8 April 1529, Bartolomeo Parino of Valtrompia received permission from the doge to export 200 arquebuses to Venice. The doge, however, was clearly displeased when only 154 arrived, and on 14 April wrote back to the rectors demanding ‘the largest possible quantity of arquebuses’ for Venice, and forbidding exports elsewhere.69 In August of that year he allowed infantry captains in Venetian service to stock up on arquebuses according to their contract (condotta, i.e., their general contract to supply military services) but without a specific permit, ‘so that I don’t have to write to you [the rectors] about this every day’. Still, he required the rectors to be ‘diligent’ that the arrangement was not abused, and to apply ‘such limitations as seem prudent’.70 There was a balance to be struck between control and efficiency. When the Viceroy of Sicily was authorized to export 1,500 arquebuses in August 1532, the rectors were told to advise him that he could not have any greater quantity.71 The context for at least some of this growth in demand for firearms was the decision by the Venetian state to establish arquebus companies in its territories,72 but this in turn created new bureaucratic challenges for the Brescian authorities. Guns purchased by the comuni of Venetian territories for their arquebusiers were exempt from customs duty (datio), but as the doge explained in a letter of 3 May 1529, this meant that the rectors had to require security from the comune for which the consignment was intended that the order was official, and that the guns were not intended for sale or for any other purpose. They should note on the licence what the buyer was permitted to export, ‘so that no fraud ensues’.73 An earlier letter from the doge authorising one Sanctino de Rhodian (de Rodiano) da Salò to export firearms gives a more detailed illustration of the ways such problems were dealt with. The rectors had apparently prevented Sanctino from exporting 68 ASBs, Canc. pref. inf., Reg. ducali 1, fol. 17r 69 ASBs, Canc. pref. inf., Reg. ducali 1, fol. 33v. 70 ASBs, Canc. pref. inf., Reg. ducali 1, fol. 47v. 71 ASBs, Canc. pref. inf., Reg. ducali 1, fol. 195v. 72 Angelucci, 76; Mallett and Hale, 353. On the earlier use of firearms by more irregular Venetian forces see Pepper. 73 ASBs, Canc. pref. inf., Reg. ducali 1, fol. 43r.

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firearms, telling him that they were acting on the orders of the Council of Ten. The doge queried this, insisting that if the rectors had such an order they should produce (literally servar or serve) it with diligence, but that if not they should permit the export, making sure, however, ‘that he will bring the whole [of it] to Venice and nowhere else’. The rectors were not to release the surety without confirmation from the Arsenal that the entire quantity had arrived; they must not allow themselves to be ‘deceived and tricked’.74 Bartolomeo Parino, whom we encountered above exporting 200 guns to Venice was permitted to do so only having provided ‘sufficient security’ (sufficiente cautione).75 By requiring a financial guarantee, the state could mitigate against the possibility of exports going missing en route, but not without imposing an additional administrative burden. Delays in authorising exports could cause frustration for purchasers, as is apparent in a letter of 10 May 1554 from Ercole Poeta, an agent of the duke of Ferrara. A Milanese man, whom Poeta met at a local friary, complained that the supply of morions he was meant to be obtaining for Genoa had been held up while the rectors sought confirmation from the Council of Ten in Venice that the export was acceptable.76 Poeta had other problems. Tasked with purchasing armour in Brescia, rather than guns, he had arrived to f ind the workshops quite empty (le boteghe tanto sfornite). This was due to the fact that in recent days the supplies had all been bought up by ‘various merchants, who had taken them out of town’ (diversi mercanti, che le hanno condotte fuori). Besides the agents purchasing directly on behalf of states, then, there were also private merchants, not restricted by the export licensing regime, quite possibly reselling to commanders and presumably engaging in this trade because it was profitable. The silence of the state records on the activity of these merchants poses significant problems for a thorough analysis of arms transactions in this period. An export licence alone, moreover, was often not sufficient: permission was also required for transit of arms consignments through third party states which necessitated further diplomacy. In the 1571 Papal States-Brescia case, the guns were to be delivered to Ancona by the makers, and the contract provided for the possibility of delays in transit via Mantua or Ferrara.77 Examples of transit licences may be found in the Mantuan archives: on 74 ASBs, Canc. pref. inf., Reg. ducali 1, fol. 29r. 75 ASBs, Canc. pref. inf., Reg. ducali 1, fol. 33v. 76 ASMo, ASE, Camera, Amministrazione della casa, Armeria, b. 1, carteggio diverso, unnumbered letter. 77 Zanelli.

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31 January 1543, for example, Captain Belantonio Corso was granted an exemption from the customs duty in respect of a ‘certain quantity of arms and armour’ to be brought from Brescia for Pier Luigi Farnese; they also survive in Florence, where in 1552 the Sienese authorities requested a similar transit permit for Brescian arquebuses.78 There were, however, ways around the licensing system. In 1531, a warrant was issued for the arrest of two former Brescian constables (one responsible for the gate of San Nazaro and the other for the gate of San Giovanni), who along with a local shop-owner and the wife or son of one of the constables, had been allowing a variety of contraband goods, including not only guns but also wheat, to be smuggled out of the city.79 Local constables and captains were another significant group of actors in the course of any arms sale, and their trustworthiness or otherwise was a key factor in the state’s ability to regulate arms exports. The authorities, therefore, faced a tricky challenge in balancing the efficient internal distribution of arms with their control and monitoring, while simultaneously authorizing sufficient foreign exports to maintain capacity.

Transport, Distribution and Monitoring Once weapons had been purchased, they had to be transported, which required further contracting. The account book for the papal fortresses, 1541–42, illustrates a variety of payments for the transport of goods, for example to ‘Morgante porter for the transport of the said arquebuses from the Ripa customshouse to the barge’, incidentally revealing the involvement of customs officials in the process.80 It also shows the book-keeper’s expenses for going to Paliano and returning with two horses and two servants (literally, boche or ‘mouths’) on the orders of the Treasurer to take these munitions to the Rocca. There are further payments for carts, in one case eighteen of them. An account of the distribution of arms to communities in the Papal States in 1549 includes payments to muleteers, for carts, and for other unspecified transport as well as for paperwork such as a licence.81 While the 1571 contract specified that transport to Ancona was the responsibility of the producer, other documentation from Rome suggests this was not invariably the case. 78 79 80 81

Bertolotti, 584. ASF, MdP 1850, fol. 612 (MAP Doc ID 20156). ASBs, Canc. pref. inf., Reg. ducali 1, fols. 150v–151r. ASR, SG 646 (Miscellanea di carte sciolte) 1541–42 account book for papal fortresses. ASR, SG 88, ins. 3, ‘Armi distribuite e vendute alle comunità Stato Ecclesiastico nel 1550’.

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Considerable administrative effort went into managing the transport process. Guns were valuable, and a threat to public order in the wrong hands. A bill from 1575 for 591 boxes of various arms dispatched from Brescia to Ferrara, including 9,300 arquebuses, shows that each box was numbered.82 These inventory numbers were subsequently used for reference during the transport process, with notes taken of who had custody of which numbered boxes.83 This was not a system unique to Brescia: inventory numbering is apparent in the Ferrarese arms records too.84 Moving a 1575 consignment from Pesaro to Ancona alone involved an official at each end of the chain, and payments to a number of different bargemen, some of whom made more than one trip. Giovanni Matteo Bruciaferro took forty-eight boxes of arms and armour on his barge on 4 May 1575, and payment is documented both to the bargeman and the porters for unloading and carrying. On the same day Giovanni dal Cesenatico took twelve boxes in his barge and Gironimo Rossi of Chioggia took thirty. On 5 May Bastiano Sbisa took fifty boxes; on the 7th Gaspar Fabbri of Pesaro took forty and on the 8th Terentio Bruciaferro (perhaps a relative of Giovanni Matteo) took a hundred. Almost a week later, on 14 May, Alessandro Ferrarese took fifty boxes and Gironimo Fornaro took sixteen. It is possible that this Gironimo is the same bargeman who transported twelve boxes on 4 May; Alessandro Ferrarese also did a second trip, moving thirty-four boxes on 18 May. Later in the year, on 20 August, Alessandro Ferrarese took another 172 boxes, a further seventy-nine on the 29th and another seventy-two on 1 September. On 11 September he moved seventy, on 1 October another seventy, on 22 October seventy-eight, on 26 October fifty-five and forty-three on 22 November. There are different ways to interpret this change of pattern: it may be that a large initial consignment was divided between whoever could be contracted at short notice, but that subsequently one barge operator became the preferred provider; on the other hand, it is possible that in the autumn one operator took responsibility for the contract as a whole but then sub-contracted sections. Once again, this stage of the arms supply process points to the number of people involved: not only those at either end of the supply chain but the bargemen and porters, plus whoever made the boxes in the first place and the notary Andrea Martini who eventually audited the accounts. For weapons to be effective, the logistics were vital. 82 ASR, SG 90, unnumbered ins. 83 ASR, SG 4, ins. 3, ‘Conto d’arme ricevute e distribuite alle battaglie di Nostro Signore de la Reverenda Camera 1575’. 84 See for example the 1544 inventories of fortresses in ASMo, ASE, Cancelleria ducale, Archivi Militari 271.

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The next step in the chain was distribution. In the Papal States local massari (town captains) were responsible for purchase of weapons on behalf of their communities and then their issue. Along similar lines to the arrangements made for the distribution of firearms to the arquebus companies in the Veneto, in 1550, each commune received (and was required to pay for) arquebuses, pikes and halberds. Toscanella got fifteen arquebuses, as did Corneto; Civitavecchia on the coast got twenty, as did Tolfa; Bolsena thirteen, San Lorenzo f ifteen again, Acquapendente twenty-f ive, Orte fourteen and so on.85 Lists produced in Florence and Ferrara during times of siege (or feared siege) show the process of monitoring who received firearms and other weapons from central supplies (or already had their own).86 The prospect that supplies might disappear or be removed from stores weighed on the minds of rulers. In May 1531, following the smuggling incident in Brescia, the doge of Venice ordered that inventory be taken of supplies in all the castles and fortresses of the Brescian territory, recording the quality, quantity, number, weight and measure of everything present, ‘so that no-one can commit fraud in any part of the aforesaid stores’. The three keys for the castle grain stores in Brescia were to be held by the city captain, the castellan, and a trusted servant of the doge.87 While the explicit concern here was about grain, missing guns were certainly a problem. A 1558 inventory of the fortress at Perugia included a list of ‘everything that isn’t in the armoury’. Among the missing objects were six arquebuses. In some instances, the record-keeper recorded that the missing items had been given out, but in other cases he appears to have been ignorant of the stock’s fate.88 While careful record-keeping could not prevent the loss of firearms, it is evidence for the level of attention accorded to monitoring weapons supply and distribution.

Ancillary Services A wide variety of ancillary roles also attached to f irearms production. Guns came with accessories: armour adapted for arquebuses (made by armourers), holsters (by cloth and leather-workers), ramrods and moulds 85 ASR, SG 88, ins. 3, fol. 26. 86 ASF, Otto di Pratica del Principato, 121. ASMo, Archivio Segreto Estense, Camera, Amministrazione della casa, Armeria, b. 1, reg. 5 1552, ‘Nota delle persone che dicono sono provviste delle armi a loro tassate’. 87 ASBs, Canc. pref. inf., Reg. ducali 1, fol. 161r–v. 88 ASR, SG 4, inventory of the fortress at Perugia, unpaginated.

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for producing shot (smiths and metalworkers). The records refer to ropemakers (Rome), maintainers/repairers (acconciatori, Florence), scrap metal merchants (Rome), recyclers of old guns (Bologna), and flask-makers (Brescia). Morions were also produced in Brescia, as we saw with the Poeta order mentioned above. There were gunpowder factories in Venice, Padua and Brescia.89 Export licences issued in Brescia frequently include alongside guns reference to both powder-flasks and the smaller primingflasks (used to measure the appropriate dose of powder for the weapon) as well as the helmets and breastplates (morioni and celate) typically worn by arquebusiers. When the papacy purchased arquebuses in 1575 they also accounted for both sizes of flask.90 Matchlock arquebuses, moreover, required supplies of match cord, which was purchased sometimes from people specifically identified as rope-makers, such as ‘Federicho funaro in borgho’, who supplied 163 pounds of hemp for the fortress of Paliano in 1541–42.91 On other occasions, however, hemp was purchased from merchants or indeed from other states. For example, in 1538 during preparations for a naval campaign against the Ottomans to depart from the Dalmatian port of Zara (now Zadar, Croatia) the papacy purchased hemp from two prominent Venetian patricians: 340 libbre from the Magnifico Messer Paulo Giustiniano, provveditore, and a further 140 libbre for the production of arquebus cord from the Magnif ico Messer Alessandro Contarino.92 As with the arms purchases in Brescia that were facilitated by local noblemen so when the papacy was preparing a joint armada to depart from Venetian territory it made sense to allow the allies on the spot to arrange supplies; there may also have been political considerations in the choice of supplier. Besides match-cord, the records detail a range of purchases of ironwork, including in 1541 from two Jewish ferrari in Rome, Abramo and Iosepho.93 Iosepho supplied mattocks and pickaxes,94 the type of tools that could have been used to dig the earthworks often used in combination with f irearms during battle. Another Jewish supplier, Salamon, provided ‘a used cauldron of 56 1/2 pounds … for munitions’, possibly an unredeemed pawn.95 89 Panciera, 106. 90 ASR, SG 646 (Miscellanea di carte sciolte), unpaginated accounts for 1575. 91 ASR, SG 646 (1541–42 account book for papal fortresses), fol. 9v. 92 ASR, SG 87, ‘Conto di riscossioni e pagamenti per l’armata di S. S., 1538–39’, fols. 50r, 54r. 93 ASR, SG 88 (Conti Straordinari, 1541–52), ins. 7 (Guerra di Paliano), p. xl. 94 ASR, SG 88 (Conti Straordinari, 1541–52), ins. 7, p. 41. 95 ASR, SG 646 (1541–42 account book for papal fortresses), 18r. On pawning see the Introduction to this volume, above 27, 29.

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The maintenance of firearms also required labour. In a 1549 account of artillery in the Rocca at Carpi there were thirty-eight large arquebuses ‘unhappy, in poor order’ (infelizi, male in ordine) and only seven ‘good and well in order’ (beli et ben in ordine); another undated note in the same file recorded the state of arquebuses in various fortresses, noting that water damage had ‘ruined’ all the arquebuses in Modena.96 A payment of 1529 by the Florentine Nove conservatori di ordinanza e milizia included the cost of powder and shot but also of ‘achoncare’ or ‘fixing up’ arquebuses.97 While Roberts may be correct that firearms were ‘forcing the soldier to be a primitive technician’,98 the existence of private maintenance contractors a century prior to his main case-study prompts questions about how much maintenance was expected from an individual soldier and how much might be contracted out. A reference to cleaning of halberds in the Rome records includes a rare mention of a woman involved in the arms trade: on 9 August 1549 two ducats were paid for this purpose to ‘Madonna Elizabetta, the wife of Maestro Angiolo, a swordsmith’.99 It seems equally plausible that cleaning of guns might have been sub-contracted, and indeed that many of the payments to men found in the records will also incorporate work done by women. Whether there was modification of arquebuses beyond the basics of maintenance is another outstanding question, but this certainly happened in the civilian context (often to facilitate concealment of weapons)100 and it is quite possible that soldiers also attempted to improve their own kit. In short, the use of firearms generated demand for a wide variety of goods and services, some specific to guns (repairs and modifications) and some of general commodities which had other civilian uses (provision of hemp for processing into match-cord). The involvement of ropemakers, ironmongers and scrap metal dealers in the broader arms supply process raises important questions about producers’ choices. Did they make a conscious decision to turn towards military supply in the hope of profit? Were they obliged – officially or in practice – to supply the state? The sources at hand do not permit a clear answer: rather they highlight the shifting pattern of demand during wartime and the need for states to find supplies to match. 96 ASMo, ASE, Cancelleria, Archivi Militari, 139, unnumbered ‘Relacione delle municioni da Guerra’. 97 ASF, Nove conservatori di ordinanza e milizia, Entrata e uscita/Debitori e creditori, 19, p. 44. 98 Roberts, 15. 99 ASR, SG 88, ins. 3, ‘Armi distribuite’, fol. 12v. ‘Madonna Elisabetta Donna di Maestro Angiolo spadaro che haveva netto piu Alabarde che si distribuirno alle Comunita’. 100 Archivio di Stato di Bologna, Legato, Bandi 1, fols. 242v–243r, bando of 16 October 1555: ‘alcuni hanno trovato modo d’usare gli Archibugietti piccioli, senza Ruota, portandoli coperti in diversi modi’.

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Conclusion The picture of handgun supply that emerges from the archive sources is one of complexity. It involved numerous transactions: raw materials had to be purchased for the gun mill, the stock and lock added to the barrel of the weapon, and suitable accessories obtained. The Brescian patroni dell’armi then dealt with local f ixers, with customs off icials, with the city rectors and via them the Venetian state and third-party state actors. A purchasing condottiere might himself employ an agent; one or both of them would deal with the treasurer of the state for whom the condottiere worked. Transport staff were required to assist with distribution, and officials to manage the final distribution to militia or armies; clerks and auditors ensured this purchase was monitored along the way. Ropemakers, gunpowder suppliers, holster-makers and scrap metal merchants contributed supplies; maintenance staff assisted with repairs. It would not be exceptional to find twenty-odd different steps involved in getting a gun from raw materials to end user. Many of these steps are found in other supply chains of the period, but the specialist nature of gun barrel production combined with the need to safeguard supplies in the interests of defence and public order, made the management of this one an unusually charged matter. On the production side, the role of the state here was primarily one of manager and regulator of private contracting, but this required a high degree of bureaucracy to be effective. It is here as much as in the tax-raising process that we might look for a ‘military state’. The state’s interactions with its citizens and subjects were not only about extracting money, nor issuing contracts, but about creating and monitoring a system in which multiple actors could each play their part in the state’s defence. However, informal processes were also significant. The state’s ability to purchase effectively depended on local patrons and connections, and at times profiteering merchants seem to have taken advantage of state weakness. The private firms involved in arms production used their leverage to extract and maintain concessions and privileges from the state. Along the supply chain for firearms, there are places (as in the monitoring of transport and arms distribution) where the state seems to have been relatively strong. Elsewhere, it seems barely present. Elsewhere still, it is present, but circumvented by corrupt officials or profiteers. Each of the multiple actors involved had distinct interests. Some, like the Valtrompia producers, had reason to co-operate. Others, like the Venetian rectors, approached transactions with suspicion. In short, what emerges in the

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military context is a picture of patchy and uneven development of state control of firearms supply, combined with a substantial element of private contracting that functioned on an international scale. In attempting to understand the ‘military revolution’ in early modern Europe, Clifford Rogers borrowed from discussions of evolution the concept of ‘punctuated equilibrium’, proposing that this revolution did not flow smoothly, but combined long-term change with period of more urgent development.101 The study of firearms supply points to the importance of considering this process of change not only across time but also space. At any given point along the supply chain for weapons the military state might be at different stages of development, its success in contracting dependent on multiple variables.

Bibliography Primary Sources Manuscripts

Archivio di Stato di Bologna Legato, Bandi 1 Archivio di Stato di Brescia Archivio Gambara, busta 608 Archivio Martinengo dalle Palle, b. 91 Cancelleria prefetizia inferiore, Registri ducali, 1, 2, 3 Archivio di Stato di Firenze Guardaroba Medicea 31 Mediceo del Principato 638, 1850 Nove conservatori di ordinanza e milizia, distribuzione di armi, 1 Nove conservatori di ordinanza e milizia, Entrata e uscita/Debitori e creditori, 19 Otto di Pratica del Principato, 121 Archivio di Stato di Modena Archivio Segreto Estense, Cancelleria Ducale, Archivi militari, 45, 139, 267, 269, 271 Archivio Segreto Estense, Cancelleria Ducale, Camera, Amministrazione della casa, Armeria, b. 1 101 Rogers, 76–77.

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Archivio di Stato di Roma Archivio Notarile 3460, notaio Antonio Guidotti (1571), vol. 2 Soldatesche e Galere 4, 86, 87, 88, 90, 646

Printed Sources

Documenti inediti per la storia delle armi da fuoco italiane, ed. Angelo Angelucci (Turin: Cassone, 1869); labelled vol. 1, pt. 1; no further parts published. ‘Documenti per servire alla storia della milizia italiana dal XIII secolo al XVI raccolti negli archivi di Toscana’, special edition of Archivio Storico Italiano, ser. 1, vol. 15 (1851). Tagliaferri, A. (ed.), Relazioni dei Rettori Veneti in Terraferma. XI: Podestaria e Capitanato di Brescia (Milan: Giuffrè, 1978). Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca (Venice: Appresso Giovanni Alberti, 1612).

Secondary Sources Angelucci, Angelo. Il tiro al segno in Italia dalla sua origine sino ai nostri giorni (Turin: Baglione, 1865). Ansani, Fabrizio. ‘The Life of a Renaissance Gunmaker: Bonaccorso Ghiberti and the Development of Florentine Artillery in the Late Fifteenth Century’, Technology and Culture 58 (2017): 749–89. Antologia gardonese (Brescia: Apollonio, 1969). Arfaioli, Maurizio. The Black Bands of Giovanni: Infantry and Diplomacy during the Italian Wars (1526–1528) (Pisa: Edizioni Plus/Pisa University Press, 2005). Armi e cultura nel bresciano, 1420–1870 (Brescia: Ateneo di Brescia, 1981). Barbiroli, Bruno. Repertorio storico degli archibugiari italiani dal XIV al XX secolo (Bologna: CLUEB, 2012). Beretta: Italian Firearms Manufacturing Company. n.d. About. ‘… Since 1526’. https:// www.beretta.com/en-uk/world-of-beretta/since-1526/. Accessed 21 May 2020. Bertolotti, Antonio. ‘Le arti minori alla corte di Mantova’, Archivio storico lombardo ser. 2, vol. 5, anno 15 (1888): 491–590. Blackburn, Bonnie. ‘Cipriano de Rore’s Early Italian Years: The Brescian Connection’, in Cipriano de Rore: New Perspectives on his Life and Music, edited by Jessie Ann Owens and Katelijne Schiltz (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016), 29–74. Bolognini, Pierantonio. ‘La produzione e l’organizzazione del lavoro nelle fucine gardonesi’, in Armi antiche a Gardone edited by Cesare Calamandrei (Brescia: Fondazione Negri, 2008), 14–24. Bossini, F., and M. Galeri (eds). Valtrompia nella storia (Roccafranca: Compagnia della Stampa, 2007).

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Bowd, Stephen D. Renaissance Mass Murder: Civilians and Soldiers during the Italian Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). Butters, H. C. and Gabriele Neher (eds). Warfare and Politics: Cities and Government in Renaissance Tuscany and Venice (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020). Cominazzi, Marco. Cenni sulla fabbrica d’armi in Gardone di Valtrompia (Milan: Sentinella, 1845). Cools, Hans, Marika Keblusek and Badeloch Noldus (eds). Your Humble Servant: Agents in Early Modern Europe (Hilversum: Verlorum, 2006). Dean, Trevor. ‘Eight Varieties of Homicide’ in Murder in Renaissance Italy, edited by Trevor Dean and K. J. P. Lowe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 83–105. Ferraro, Joanne M. ‘Feudal-Patrician Investments in the Bresciano and the Politics of the Estimo, 1426–1641’, Studi Veneziani 7 (1983): 31–57. Fletcher, Catherine. Diplomacy in Renaissance Rome: The Rise of the Resident Ambassador (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). Fletcher, Catherine. ‘Firearms and the State in Sixteenth-Century Italy: Gun Proliferation and Gun Control’, forthcoming in Past and Present, 2023. Fynn-Paul, Jeff (ed.) War, Entrepreneurs, and the State in Europe and the Mediterranean, 1300–1800 (Leiden: Brill, 2014). Gelli, Jacopo. Gli archibugiari milanesi (Milan: Hoepli, 1905). Jacob, Frank and Gilmar Visoni-Alonzo. The Military Revolution in Early Modern Europe: A Revision (London: Palgrave, 2016). Jenzen-Jones, N. R. and Matt Schroeder (eds). An Introductory Guide to the Identification of Small Arms, Light Weapons and Associated Ammunition (Geneva: Small Arms Survey, 2018) http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/resources/publications/ by-type/handbooks/weapons-id-handbook.html. Le Gall, Jean-Marie. L’honneur perdu de François Ier: Pavie 1525 (Paris: Payot, 2015). Lee, Egmont (ed). Descriptio Urbis: The Roman Census of 1527 (Rome: Bulzoni, 1985). Mallett, Michael. Mercenaries and Their Masters: Warfare in Renaissance Italy (London: Bodley Head, 1974). Mallett, Michael, and Christine Shaw. The Italian Wars 1494–1559: War, State and Society in Early Modern Europe (Harlow: Pearson, 2012). Mallett, Michael, and J. R. Hale. The Military Organization of a Renaissance State: Venice, c. 1400 to 1617 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). Mocarelli, Luca and Giulio Ongaro. ‘Weapons Production in the Republic of Venice in the Early Modern Period: The Manufacturing Centre of Brescia between Military Needs and Economic Equilibrium’, Scandinavian Economic History Review 65 (2017): 231–42. Montanari, Daniele. Quelle terre di là dal Mincio: Brescia e il contado in età veneta (Brescia: Grafo, 2005).

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Morin, Marco. ‘La produzione delle armi da fuoco a Gardone V. T.’, in Armi e cultura nel bresciano, 67–76. Morin, Marco, and Robert Held. Beretta: The World’s Oldest Industrial Dynasty (Chiasso: Aquafresca, 1980). Museo delle Armi e della tradizione armiera di Gardone Valtrompia. 2010. ‘Il Percorso’. http://www.museodellearmi.net/index.php?section=artigianale& m=percorso&pan=1. Odorici, Federico. Cenni storici sulle fabbriche d’armi della provincia bresciana (Brescia: [unknown], 1860). Panciera, Walter. ‘Venetian Gunpowder in the Second Half of the Sixteenth Century: Production, Storage, Use’, chap. 5 in Gunpowder, Explosives and the State: A Technological History, edited by Brenda J. Buchanan (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 93–122. Parker, Geoffrey. ‘The “Military Revolution”—A Myth?’ in Rogers, 37–54. Parrott, David. The Business of War: Military Enterprise and Military Revolution in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). Pellegrini, Marco. Le guerre d’Italia 1494–1530 (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2009). Pepper, Simon. ‘Patriots and Partisans: Popular Resistance to the Occupation of the Venetian Terraferma by the Forces of the League of Cambrai’, in Butters and Neher, 79–103. Pezzolo, Luciano. ‘La “rivoluzione militare”: una prospettiva italiana 1400–1700’, in Militari in età moderna: la centralità di un tema di confine; Milano, 20 giugno 2004, edited by Alessandra Dattero and Stefano Levati (Milan: Cisalpino, 2006), 15–62. Quarenghi, Cesare. Tecno-cronografia delle armi da fuoco italiane, 2 vols. (Naples: Nobile, 1880–81). Roberts, Michael. ‘The Military Revolution, 1560–1660’, in Rogers, 13–35. Rogers, Clifford J. (ed.) The Military Revolution Debate: Readings on the Military Transformation of Early Modern Europe (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1995). Sabatti, Carlo, ‘La Valtrompia nel ’500’, in Valtrompia nella storia, edited by F. Bossini and M. Galeri (Roccafranca: Compagnia della Stampa, 2007), 157–201. Shaw, Christine (ed.) Italy and the European Powers: The Impact of War, 1500–1530 (Leiden: Brill, 2006). Sherer, Idan. Warriors for a Living: The Experience of the Spanish Infantry during the Italian Wars, 1494–1559 (Leiden: Brill, 2017). Targioni-Tozzetti, Giovanni. Notizie sulla storia delle scienze fisiche in Toscana (Florence: Biblioteca Palatina, 1852). Wilson, Peter H. and Marianne Klerk. ‘The Business of War Untangled: Cities as Fiscal-Military Hubs in Europe (1530s–1860s)’, War in History (3 Dec. 2020) https://doi.org/10.1177/0968344520913583. Zanelli, Agostino. ‘Un contratto di acquisto di archibugi bresciani per conto della Santa Sede nel 1571’, Brescia nelle industrie e nei commerce, anno 5 (Mar. 1925).

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About the Author Catherine Fletcher is Professor of History at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her books include Diplomacy in Renaissance Rome and The Beauty and the Terror: An Alternative History of the Italian Renaissance. She is grateful to the Arms and Armour Heritage Trust and Swansea University for supporting the research for this chapter.

8

The Invisible Trade Commoners and Convicts as Early Modern Venice’s Spies Ioanna Iordanou Abstract Venice was home to one of the earliest centrally organized state intelligence services which was overseen by the Council of Ten. Intelligence was collected both ‘from above’ and ‘from below’. From above, the Ten relied on semi-professional informants such as ambassadors and governors, who picked up information through elite networks and social circles. From below, the Council employed a secret army of amateur spies, often with disreputable backgrounds and motives, who worked either for profit or to have criminal convictions overturned. This chapter discusses the meaning and function of a spy in the early modern period, raising questions about the lack of professionalization that placed spies in the shadows of warfare. Keywords: Venice; spies; espionage; intelligence; profession; popolani

In the winter of 1572, in the midst of a thundering confrontation between the Ottoman Empire and Venice, the governor of the Venetian stronghold of Trau (now Trogir, Croatia), received a letter destined for the Venetian resident ambassador (bailo) in Constantinople.1 The letter had been forwarded to the governor by the Council of Ten, the governmental committee overseeing the domestic and foreign security of the Venetian state.2 Detailed instructions contained in the letter charged the governor with soliciting the services of a Turkish spy who had been in his employ for the past few months. The spy was to deliver the letter to the bailo who, due to the Ottoman-Venetian 1 On the Venetian bailo in Constantinople, see, amongst others, Bertelè; Preto, ‘Le relazioni dei baili’; Coco and Manzonetto; Dursteler, ‘The Bailo in Constantinople’; and Hanß. Specifically on baili as spymasters, see Gürkan, ‘Laying Hands on Arcana Imperii’. 2 On the Council of Ten, see Macchi; Finlay.

Bowd, S., Cockram, S. & Gagné, J. (eds.), Shadow Agents of Renaissance War. Suffering, Supporting, and Supplying Conflict in Italy and Beyond. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2023 doi: 10.5117/9789463721356_ch08

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war, was under house arrest in the Venetian embassy in Constantinople. The instructions for the Turk were multiple and direct. He was to hide the letter in a waterproof piece of cloth, supplied by the Ten specifically for that purpose. The concealed epistle should then be stitched up as a secret compartment inside his clothes. Upon arrival in the Venetian embassy, he would be able to hand the letter to the bailo through a window, under which he would have to wait until the bailo appeared, collected the letter, penned a response, and handed it back to the spy, who was then to bring it back to Trau. To ensure that the job would be carried out in its entirety, the governor was ordered to pay only a fraction of the spy’s compensation, withholding the remaining sum until the completion of this undertaking, when the spy would bring back the response from the Venetian legate.3 It goes without saying that the spy had to be sworn to strict secrecy in order to carry out his mission. Aside from the instructions on his assignment, nothing else is known about this Turkish spy. This episode is emblematic of the obscurity that surrounds the meaning and function of a spy in the early modern era. While there is not a sizeable historiography on early modern espionage, there are some signif icant works on spies operating in England, 4 Spain,5 France,6 the Ottoman and Habsburg Empires,7 and the Republic of Venice.8 Most of these publications provide systematic narrative accounts of spycraft and the operations of spies as seekers and keepers of secrets. My newly published history of early modern Venice’s state intelligence organization, however, has broken from this historiographical tradition by focusing not on the revelatory value of clandestine communication and missions but on the social processes that generated them.9 Espousing this approach, this chapter explores the time specific meaning and function of a spy in the early modern period, with a particular focus on the quasi-direct yet active role of the popolani in political affairs. Combining archival material with relevant historiographical sources and contemporary concepts and theorizations from sociology, the chapter discusses the invisibility of early modern spies as shadow agents of war, focusing, in particular, on the lack of professionalization of the craft 3 Archivio di Stato di Venezia (ASV), Consiglio di Dieci (CX), Deliberazioni Secrete, Registro (Reg.) 10, fols. 73v–74r. (14 Nov. 1572). 4 Marshall; Martin; Akkerman. 5 Carnicer García and Marcos Rivas. 6 Bély. 7 Gürkan, Sultanın Casusları. 8 Preto, I Servizi Segreti. 9 Iordanou, Venice’s Secret Service.

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of espionage. The chronological and geographical focus of the chapter is sixteenth-century Venice, an emblematic case of an early modern state that had pioneered a centrally organized state intelligence service.10 Nevertheless, despite this emphasis on the Venetian Republic, the notion of the spy discussed and analysed here was universal across early modern Europe.11 The chapter starts by exploring the meaning and function of early modern spies, emphasizing the negative connotations of espionage as an unchivalrous craft. Focusing on the Republic of Venice, the chapter then delineates the different types of spies and informants in the employ of the Venetian authorities. It proceeds by considering the two main reasons why Venetian spies remained in the shadows of warfare – as well as diplomacy and politics – and, in consequence, on the margins of historical accounts: plausible deniability and expendability. Engaging with contemporary debates on the role of the popolani in the ‘political construction of Venetian society’,12 the chapter concludes with a brief sociological discussion on professionalization, advancing the argument that there was no established, institutionalized profession of a spy in the early modern era. This would gradually emerge at the turn of the twentieth century, as a result of ‘the twin forces of industrialization and ideology’, which accelerated the professionalization of espionage, turning it into the ‘institutionalized activity we began to call intelligence in World War I’.13 Until then, espionage remained an obscure, invisible trade.

Spies in the Early Modern Era In a treatise initially published in 1585, Tommaso Garzoni (1549–89) described spies as ‘the sort of people that, in secret, follow armies and enter cities, exploring the affairs of enemies, and reporting them back to their own people. And even if the profession is infamous and, if found, they are hanged by the neck, these people are essential, as History and practice have shown’.14 As Garzoni’s description indicates, in the early modern period, 10 Iordanou. 11 For a general overview of early modern spies in various early modern Italian and European states, see Iordanou, 37–53. 12 Judde de Larivière, 81. 13 Warren, 334. 14 ‘Il nome poi di spia particolarmente significa quella sorte di persone, che van secretamente per gli esserciti, dentro alle città, esplorando i fatti de nemici, per referirgli ai suoi, et benche l’ufficio sia infame, et perciò tali persone ritrovate s’impendino per la gola; con tutto ciò son

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the craft of espionage had negative connotations. Spying was deemed to be a ‘necessary evil justified only by the exigencies of wartime’.15 This is because, while deemed essential, especially during times of war, spying was associated with dishonesty, treachery, and cowardice, conducted by loathsome individuals who ‘did not seek honor in battle against worthy opponents but skulked in the shadows’ to betray and deceive their enemies.16 This unsavoury view of espionage endured throughout the centuries, prompting the French philosopher Montesquieu to voice the oft-quoted statement: ‘Spying would perhaps be tolerable if it could be exercised by honest people, but the necessary infamy of the person [i.e. the spy] can make the thing [i.e. espionage] be judged infamous’.17 For Venetians, in common with vernacular terms for spy used by other early modern Europeans, the word spia or spione also carried negative connotations. It was most commonly used to indicate an enemy’s (secret) informant or a dishonourable individual who reported on the potentially suspicious behaviour or dealings of fellow citizens.18 In the 1570s, for instance, the Venetian authorities made numerous attempts to poison an ‘important and most astute’ spy (spia importante et astutissima) sent to Venice as a formal legate by the Ottomans.19 It took them several botched endeavours and about two years to have him executed by a paid assassin.20 As a timely coincidence, the spy was eliminated during a devastating plague that claimed one-quarter to one-third of the city’s population in the course of two years.21 His death, therefore, was conveniently attributed to the deadly epidemic, in order not to aggravate the Ottoman authorities.22 Similarly, a 1613 anonymous denunciation accused a certain Fausto Verdelli of being a spione, speaking of Venice in a despicable manner and reporting on Venetian affairs to the ambassadors of Savoy, Lorraine, Flanders, and Spain.23 necessarie, come dall’ Historie et dalla praticca si conosce’. This excerpt is from the 1587 edition of the book: Garzoni, 705. 15 Warren, 11. 16 Warren, 15. 17 ‘L’espionnage serait peut-être tolérable s’il pouvait être exercé par d’honnêtes gens; mais l’infamie nécessaire de la personne peut faire juger de l’infamie de la chose’. Montesquieu, 326. 18 Preto, I servizi segreti, 42. 19 ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 11, fol. 7r./v. (6 April 1574); fol. 9v. (29 April 1574); fols. 32v.–33r. (6, 10 Oct. 1574); fol. 34r. (19 Oct. 1574); fol. 35v. (24 Oct. 1574). 20 ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 11, fols. 101v.–102r. (19–20 July 1576); filza 19 (19 July 1576). 21 On the 1575 plague and its consequences, see Preto, Peste e società. On the plague’s devastating impact on Venice’s population, see Luzzatto, 257; Beltrami, 57. 22 ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 11, fol. 103r./v. (18 Aug. 1576). 23 ASV, Inquisitori di Stato (IS), busta (b.) 608, 10 Oct. 1613.

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While other early modern European states seem to have used the term spy to denote both one’s own and an enemy’s secret agent,24 the Venetians distinctively styled spies in their employ confidenti, a positive term that replaced the medieval Latin idiom explorator/esploratore.25 A confidente was a reliable informer tasked with gathering valuable intelligence for the benefit of the state. In 1563, for instance, the Venetian authorities warned their bailo in Constantinople not to reveal any vital intelligence to his confidente, a Turkish slave in the employ of the Ottoman Grand Vizier – the Sultan’s prime minister, after they discovered that he was originally from Genoa. As Genoa was Venice’s perennial commercial rival, this caution was instructed in case the confidente was acting as a double agent for the Genoese.26 In this context, confidenti were expected to perform a variety of intelligence functions, including political and military espionage, and, generally, informing the authorities on any matter of state security, activities that were worthy of praise and acclaim. As the Florentine humanist Benedetto Varchi (1503–65) affirmed in his Storia Fiorentina, written in the late 1540s and 1550s but not published in Florence until 1721,27 ‘to spy on the secrets of the enemy is one of the most important and laudable things that one can do’.28 This distinct terminology, denoting the diverse perceptions of spie, confidenti, and even esploratori, implies that, while the act of espionage was generally understood across cultures, the actor – that is, the spy – operating in the shadows in an effort to remain unrecognized, was a more obscure concept. For the purpose of this chapter, a spy is defined as an individual actively recruited, authorized, instructed, and compensated to obtain information for intelligence purposes or to cause physical harm and destruction.29 Indeed, in the early modern period, spying entailed ‘both jobs, reporting on events and affecting them by stealth’.30 A spy was a mercenary agent, who was marginally different to an informer (or 24 In a letter to the Vatican in 1574, for example, the papal nuncio (envoy) in Venice refers to his own spie, whom he sent to Friuli in search of a wanted man. See Archivio Apostolico Vaticano (AAV), Segreteria di Stato, Venezia, b. 14, fol. 63r. (1 May 1574); b. 16, fol. 76r. (1 May 1574). 25 Still, the term ‘explorator’ continues to be used in the sixteenth century: ASV, Capi del Consiglio di Dieci (CCX), Lettere Secrete, filza 8 (26 Jan. 1573). See also Caferro’s contribution to this volume for medieval usage. 26 ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 7, fol. 115v. (21 April 1563). 27 See Brancato. 28 Varchi quoted in Preto, I servizi segreti, 26. 29 On physical harm and destruction caused by spies, see Iordanou, Venice’s Secret Service, 201–3. 30 Warren, 13.

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‘intelligencer’) – a person who voluntarily engaged in information-gathering initiatives in the hope of a reward and, on occasion, a formal appointment by the government. In other words, an informer would hope to become a spy in the formal employ of a paymaster. An informant, on the other hand, was someone who reported to the authorities information that they were privy to out of a sense of duty.31 Resident ambassadors or travelling merchants, as it will become clear further down, fell within this category. The Republic of Venice, which had created a meticulously organized state intelligence service by the sixteenth century, benefitted from the services of all these types of agents.

Spies in the Service of Venice’s State Intelligence Organization The Republic of Venice, which in the sixteenth century encompassed large parts of Northern Italy, the Balkan Peninsula, and several parts of what is now Greece, was one of the first early modern states to have created a centrally administered state intelligence organization. Headed by the Council of Ten, the exclusive committee responsible for the security of the Venetian state, the Council was made up of seventeen men, including ten ordinary members, six ducal councillors, and the Doge of Venice.32 Within its jurisdiction were secret affairs, public order, domestic and foreign policy.33 Moreover, as part of their responsibilities, the Ten oversaw the central administration of intelligence gathering and espionage in Renaissance Venice. For this reason, they created and managed a complex network of intelligence gatherers. More specifically, Venetian ambassadors, governors and consuls, who served the Republic across the European continent, Anatolia, and even Northern Africa, played the part of professional informants. A similar role was performed in an amateur capacity by merchants and tradesmen who took it upon themselves to supply the motherland with vital intelligence they came across during their travels.34 Yet, on account of their professional and social standing, those individuals were precluded from active involvement in espionage activities, due to the afore-mentioned negative connotations that spying carried in that period. For this reason, since acting 31 For the semantic challenges posed by the variety of terms, see Marshall, 4–5. 32 Cozzi, 308. 33 Finlay. 34 On professional and amateur informants serving the Council of Ten, see Iordanou, ‘What News on the Rialto?’; Venice’s Secret Service, 164–79.

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as an outright spy was professionally and diplomatically unacceptable, the Venetian authorities resorted to procuring the services of amateur, mercenary spies who emanated from the social order of the popolani, the lowest tier in the Venetian social hierarchy. The Venetian popolani – or commoners – were a social group distinct from the higher orders of Venetian society, namely the patricians and the citizens.35 As a social entity, they comprised the mass of Venetian residents and subjects who enjoyed no legal status and were divided into two categories, the popolo minuto and the popolo grande. The former group were ‘the city’s workers, whether skilled or unskilled’, who served the numerous industries that flourished in Venice. The ‘skilled’ category included textile workers, glassmakers, shipbuilders, bakers, barbers and tavern owners. Within the semi-skilled or unskilled ranks, there were boatmen, domestic servants and fishermen. The latter group, the popolo grande, were ‘the well-to-do commoners’, the more financially secure amongst the greater labour force who owned workshops and property and employed workers.36 Venetian popolani were commonly known to be lured by the thrill and potential payoffs of engaging in amateur espionage activities. This engagement spanned the entire spectrum of intelligence gathering, from unsubstantiated chatter and gossip to outright espionage.37 Apothecaries, for instance, whose merchandise was usually quite costly and, as a result, attracted a more refined, prosperous clientele, more often than not became privy to information that could be of particular interest to the Venetian authorities. Barbers, whose establishments welcomed men of any rank during their daily grooming routine, became hubs of political conversations and were, thus, frequented by several information gatherers seeking the latest gossip or even more valuable information.38 These information gatherers supplemented the work of travellers, soldiers, and immigrants, who were actively encouraged to share news about national politics and international affairs, particularly focusing on news about war.39 The Council of Ten handpicked brash individuals who were willing to risk their life in exchange for a monetary sum or a privilege, including an office offering a steady salary for a fixed period of time, or the revocation of a criminal conviction. 35 On social classes in Renaissance Venice, see Romano. 36 Romano, 30–37. 37 Iordanou, ‘What News on the Rialto?’; Venice’s Secret Service, 179–87. 38 De Vivo, ‘Pharmacies’; Information and Communication, 98–106. 39 De Vivo, Information and Communication, 91. See, for example ASV, Notarile Atti, b. 4854, notary Giovanni Nicolò Doglioni (10 May 1578) for mercenary soldiers reporting on gruesome crimes committed by the Ottomans against Venetian subjects in the Levant.

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Such recruitment was particularly common during times of impending war. In the early 1570s, for instance, the imminent war with the Ottoman Empire and the ensuing loss of Cyprus compelled the Council of Ten to spend ‘as much as needed’ on the recruitment of spies, who would be shipped to Constantinople and other parts of the Mediterranean in order to gather intelligence on the military preparations of the Ottomans. 40 The recruits were selected in a variety of ways, the most prominent of which was direct recommendation to the Ten. In December 1570, for example, as the Ottomans were planning their attack on Venetian possessions in Anatolia, an anonymous Venetian citizen recommended the appointment of the Armenian Soltan Sach as a dexterous spy who could travel to Constantinople to spy on the Ottoman military preparations. His assignment also included delivering letters to bailo Marcantonio Barbaro, who, as already noted, was under house arrest in Pera, the Constantinopolitan suburb where the Venetian embassy was located. 41 Soltan’s mission was communicated to him in the middle of the night, when he was called into the doge’s Palace under the mantle of strict secrecy. His service to the Venetian Republic would be reimbursed with the sum of 100 ducats, of which 20 was handed to him directly in order to cover the expense of his trip, while the remaining sum would be paid upon completion of his mission. To put his reimbursement into perspective, a professional cryptanalyst working for the Venetian government at the same period was offered an annual salary between 48 and 120 ducats, depending on his professional expertise and rank. 42 Sach accepted his mission instantly but appealed for a higher compensation, arguing that the expense for such a lengthy and perilous journey was greater than the amount paid.43 While his request was denied, Sach completed his mission and was reimbursed in full nearly seven months later.44 The Ten were deeply aware of the extreme peril involved in espionage missions to the Ottoman capital at the time, which, more often than not, led to the spy’s capture and execution. For this reason, a few days later, they appointed another Armenian named Simon de Iacomo to travel to Constantinople with the same instructions. He was promised 140 ducats in total, of which 100 ducats were paid upon completion of his mission, six months after his appointment. 45 40 41 42 43 44 45

ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 9, fol. 102r. (17 Nov. 1570). Arbel, 77. ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, filza 15 (23 Nov., 30 Dec. 1571); Reg. 19, fol. 18r./v. (14 July 1636). ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 9, fol. 108r./v. (3 Dec. 1570). ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 9, fol. 164r./v. (30 June 1571). ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 9, fols. 113v–114r. (22 Dec. 1570); fol. 164r. (16 June 1571).

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For espionage missions inside the Ottoman Empire, the Ten recruited locals who hailed either from Anatolia or, mainly, from Venetian strongholds in the Balkans and the Mediterranean. 46 The Ten valued their local knowledge, in combination with their command of native languages and regional dialects. Such individuals proved particularly useful during the War of Cyprus (1570–73), primarily because they could pass for Turks, which rendered them valuable in the Venetians’ attempt to infiltrate Ottoman terrains. Two weeks after he completed his first espionage assignment to Constantinople, for which he received a special commendation for his valour and courage, 47 the aforementioned Simon de Iacomo was presented with a new mission to the Ottoman capital, as more letters had to be delivered to the captive bailo. This time, however, the hazard of such an enterprise had increased exponentially. During his previous mission, de Iacomo had witnessed one of the bailo’s messengers – most probably the Franciscan friar Paulo Biscotto48 – impaled on a spike, as a result of having been caught trying to smuggle letters to the bailo. Fearful that he might be recognized by the Ottoman authorities and have a similarly gruesome ending, the Armenian turned down the offer for 140 ducats as being incommensurate with the extremely high risk involved in his second assignment. The Venetian secretary who acted as the interpreter in the Armenian’s dealings with the Ten – as Simon had an excellent command of Turkish but spoke very little Italian – managed to convince him that, upon completion of his mission, he would have earned the right to petition the authorities for a permanent off ice for him and his descendants, which would provide him with a steady salary for life. This proposition was enough to persuade him to accept the assignment, which entailed another journey of six months to the Ottoman metropolis. 49 Sadly, records do not reveal whether his return visit to Constantinople was a success or a mission too far. What becomes apparent from the above-mentioned instances of spies working for the Venetian Republic is that the most unexceptional men were conscripted for the most exceptional service. Those men, hailing from the social order of the commoners – the popolani – were audacious enough to defy 46 AAV, Segreteria di Stato, Venezia, b. 8, fols. 6r–7v. (8 July 1570). 47 ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 9, fols. 113v–114r. (22 Dec. 1570); fol. 164r. (16 June 1571). 48 Gürkan, ‘The Efficacy’, 19. 49 ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 9, fols. 164v. –165r. (1 July 1571). See also Preto, I servizi segreti, 251. Preto seems to conflate the two cases of Armenian spies. Diego Guzmán de Silva also related the incident to King Philip II of Spain (1527–98), see Archivo General de Simancas, Estado, Legajo 1329 (21 June 1571).

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any fear of imminent risk or danger.50 They were, more often than not, convicts or banished criminals who were willing to exchange their banishment for freedom or a monetary prize. As a consequence, they were quite easy to recruit. One such emblematic case is that of the Cypriot Manoli Soriano and his comrades. In November 1570, on the eve of the war with the Turks, Soriano’s mission involved attacking the Ottoman settlements in the Dalmatian town of Skradin and setting the Ottoman fleet stationed there on fire.51 The Ten rewarded brazen acts in a variety of ways, including the revocation of exiled criminals’ sentences.52 In fact, in comparison with preceding and succeeding periods of peace, there was an exponential increase in the overturning of banishments in exchange for participation in intelligence operations and espionage missions during and immediately following the War of Cyprus.53 To carry out his mission, Soriano requested and was offered a squadron of 300 men, most of whom were exiled criminals and convicts. To secure their cooperation, the Ten promised them the revocation of their banishment upon the successful completion of their mission.54 Once again, however, the modesty of their origins and social status precluded their survival in archival records. Alas, aside from marginal information about their mission, compensation and, more often than not, a personal identifier, such as a name, nothing else has been recorded. It is evident that, for the Venetian authorities, these men were expendable in direct proportion to the risk of the mission. A note needs to be made here about the potential existence of female spies serving the Venetian Republic. On the whole, a detailed study on the information gathering activities of women is still missing from Venetian historiography, following an archival tradition that remains silent on female spies and intelligencers in the early modern era. A recent and arresting study on female intelligencers in seventeenth-century Britain is one of the few exceptions to this scholarly lacuna. As Nadine Akkerman has aptly shown, the mere existence of the court offered British women of high social status ample opportunities to engage in espionage activities due to the ‘invisibility’ conferred on them by their gender. Additionally, their elevated social status rendered them more likely to survive in archival memory, compared to their lower-order counterparts.55 By contrast, the lack of an established court in 50 Preto, I servizi segreti, 247. On amateur agents and early modern ‘diplomacy from below’, see articles in Van Gelder and Krstić. 51 ASV, CCX, Lettere Secrete, filza 7 (25 Nov. 1570). 52 ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 9, fols. 88r.–89r. (13 Sep. 1570). See also, Canosa, 53. 53 See, for instance, ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 10, fols. 115r. –116r. (15–25 April 1573). 54 ASV, CCX, Lettere Secrete, filza 7 (25 Nov. 1570). 55 Akkerman.

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Renaissance Venice, which could have allowed patrician women a more active part into the diplomatic and political circles of the period, is one of the reasons why archival records remain mute with regard to the espionage and information gathering activities of Venetian women. The most important reason for this lacuna, however, is that the women who have allegedly engaged in information gathering and espionage activities in that period are the type of lower-class females who either do not feature in the surviving historical record or were never documented in the first place. Indeed, in his detailed study of the Venice’s intelligence services in the early modern era, Preto mentions a handful of instances of prostitutes acting as amateur spies in the eighteenth century but makes no reference to female espionage activities in the 1500s and 1600s, primarily due to lack of surviving evidence.56 As mentioned above, Venetian and, when necessary, non-Venetian commoners, especially banished convicts and criminals seeking cash or favours, were recruited as a result of personal recommendations to the Ten. Another way they expressed their wish to act as spies was by means of a raccordo. A raccordo was a formal proposal, made directly to the Council of Ten, for an invention, a service, or a revelation of a secret that could benefit the state, in exchange for a favour. An exemplary case of a banished convict who offered his services as a spy to the Ten through a raccordo is that of Giovanni Antonio Barata. Barata is one of the few individuals employed by the Venetian authorities as an agent for whom we have enough information to sketch his biography as a spy. Barata was originally from the town of Savigliano in Piedmont but, at the time of his recruitment, he lived in Milan.57 In late 1569, Barata requested an audience with the Ten to inform them of some rumours he had heard the year before, when he was in Constantinople. The rumours involved the trial of explosives in the residence of Grand Vizier Sokollu Mehmet Pasha (1506–79), with the intention of setting the Venetian Arsenal – Venice’s renowned shipbuilding factory – on fire. Barata related to the Ten how in June of that year he communicated these rumours, in person, to the Venetian legate in Milan, who dismissed them as unsubstantiated fabrications. When the Arsenal was, indeed, set ablaze in September of that year, Barata reached out to the envoy again, only to be brushed off once more.58 The advent of the War of Cyprus, however, in the early 1570s, provided the impetus for Barata’s enlistment.59 56 Preto, I servizi segreti, 479–481. 57 ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 9, fol. 48r. (2 Jan 1570); fol. 64r./v (31 March 1570). 58 ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 9, fol. 48r./v. (2 Jan 1570). 59 ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 9, fol. 64r./v. (31 March 1570); fol. 65r. (7 April 1570).

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Barata’s formal recruitment took place in January 1571, with a compensation of cash and the revocation of his exile upon successful completion of his mission. The extensive description of his job includes a ‘self-made’ codebook – in order to communicate secretly in commercial jargon with the authorities – and instructions on the use of invisible ink, both of which tools he could use to communicate with the Ten during his sojourn in Constantinople.60 It goes without saying that he was expected to carry out his mission under strict secrecy. For this reason, according to the Ten’s instructions, Barata was supposed to pass for a textile merchant, called Gioan Pessaro, who was, allegedly, on a business trip to the boisterous Ottoman capital. Any letters from Barata to the Ten were to be addressed to Pessaro’s brother and business partner, Ottavio Pessaro in Paris. It is highly probable that Ottavio was a real textile merchant living and trading in Paris, who, for whatever reason, was known to the Council of Ten. Thus, unbeknownst to him, they used his name to render Barata’s fake professional assignment plausible, in order to disguise his identity and, by extension, the real reason why he was in the Ottoman capital. The Ten knew that any letters from Constantinople to Paris would have to be sent via the Venetian embassy in Constantinople, and, by extension, Venice, meaning that the Ten would have the opportunity to open and read them.61 During his perilous mission, the Venetian authorities relocated Barata’s wife and young children from Milan to the Venetian city of Bergamo and furnished them with a monthly stipend, which turned into a permanent yearly pension for Barata’s widow when, nearly one year later, Barata was captured and decapitated in Constantinople.62 A few years after his death, his wife successfully petitioned for a pension increase and eventually secured for her fatherless children a lifetime income stemming from a small office.63 The main reason why more substantial personal information on Barata has survived is because he took the effort to provide it in his numerous written raccordi to the Ten. Still, just like all the other anonymous or barely known spies enlisted by the Venetian authorities, he was another one of those unremarkable men thrown into the most remarkable of circumstances by the Council of Ten, with no formal training or risk assessment for the 60 ASV, CCX, Lettere Secrete, f ilza 7 (17 Feb. 1571); ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 9, fols.126v. –127r. (26 Jan. 1571). 61 ASV, CCX, Lettere Secrete, filza 7 (17 Feb. 1571). 62 ASV, CCX, Miscellanea, b. 6 (13 Feb. 1571); ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 9, fol. 198r. (15 Dec.1571). 63 ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 11, fol. 78v. (26 Jan. 1577).

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hazardous missions they were expected to undertake. It was the commonly accepted knowledge of the immense risk and danger of such missions that induced the Council of Ten to include clauses for posthumous provisions for the recruit’s spouse and dependants in the verbal or written agreement between the Ten and an aspiring spy. For instance, when during the Siege of Corfu (by the Ottomans) in 1537, a Venetian subject from Crete offered to lead a team of men to the island, in order to help restore Venetian rule over Corfu, he was offered a monthly salary of ten ducats for life, which, in the event of his death while on duty, would increase to twelve ducats for his dependants. His men were also promised a lifetime compensation of four ducats per month, which their children would inherit, if the conscripts lost their life while serving the Republic.64 On the whole, as extant documents reveal, looking after the family of a deceased ‘serviceman’ was an obligation that the Ten took seriously.65 In a similar way to employing mercenary spies, the Ten offered benefits and favours to those who volunteered to support their state surveillance operations by means of exposing potential firebrands. More specifically, from the fourteenth century ordinary Venetians were encouraged to inform the Council of Ten on any potential threats to the security of the Venetian state, with a particular focus on breaches to official state secrecy. One of the ways in which the Republic urged them to do so was through leaving anonymous or eponymous denunciations in public places, including churches, entrances to state buildings, and even the doorsteps of government officials. By the mid-sixteenth century this practice had become so popular that the Venetian authorities started to install wooden post-boxes in prominent locations about the city and the wider Veneto area, which were gradually replaced with well-crafted stone-carvings in the shape of masked faces or, more commonly, lions’ mouths, from which they were styled bocche di leone.66 This invitation to Venetian commoners to denounce anyone threatening the domestic or foreign security of the Venetian state revealed a long established ‘open door’ stance upheld by the Council of Ten towards anyone wishing to contribute to Venice’s socio-political and, by extension, economic, stability. According to one such denunciation, the Ten were informed that ‘my ill-born brother, whose name will shortly be revealed to you, is a traitor of our motherland. He reveals the most important secrets of the negotiations of our councils 64 ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 4, fols. 79v. –80r. (15 Sept. 1537). 65 On several instances of petitions or supplications for recompense made by individuals who served the Republic during the Italian Wars (including those acting as spies), see Bowd, 109, 175. 66 Preto, Persona per ora secreta.

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to Zuane Pecchi, who lives in calle Sporca in the neighbourhood of San Luca, on the bank of the Grand Canal, and then he [Pecchi] communicates them to his compatriot, who is the servant of the Holy Roman Emperor’s ambassador. [The ambassador] uses the servant in order to be accurately informed of what is discussed in the Senate. Unless your excellencies want rumours to spread in the Republic, you should act upon this notice’.67 Additionally, the Council of Ten recruited self-proclaimed amateur spies to eliminate potential criminals who conspired against the Venetian state. In 1525, for instance, in the years between the Second (1499–1503) and Third (1537–40) Ottoman-Venetian Wars, the Ten decided to exterminate a man who had been proven to act maliciously against the Venetian Republic. For that reason, they offered a sizeable army of 300 men, freedom from banishment, and, even more generously, a pension for life to any banished criminal who would volunteer to assassinate the culprit.68 In essence, the Council of Ten presented aspects of state security missions as business propositions to their recruits with mutual benefits for both parties. This entrepreneurial acumen is not difficult to comprehend, considering the idiosyncrasy of the Venetian ruling class who, both as merchants and statesmen, were seasoned in business negotiations and transactions. In this respect, the Council of Ten normalized such extraordinary measures either by reinforcing their necessity for state security and, by extension, the greater good of the community, or by presenting them as opportunities to extract further benefits. Accordingly, in early modern Venice espionage activities and intelligence operations were not only a rigid, top-down process of authority and control but also a concoction of flexible undertakings of multiple frontline and supplementary operations that depended upon the ‘bottom-up’ contributions of lay individuals.

Spying in Early Modern Venice: An Invisible Trade The instances of amateur spies discussed in this essay are only a fraction of the multiplicity and variety of secret agents and covert operatives that were 67 ‘… il mio malnato fratelo è traditore della Patria, il nome di cui tra poco le sarà paleso; egli confferisce i segreti più importanti delle negoziazioni de Consegli a Zuan Pecchi, sta in calle Sporca a San Luca su la fondamenta al canale Grande, e questo poi li comunica al suo patriotto, che è il magiordomo del inbassador del Imperador, quale se ne serve di questo mezo per sapere puntualmente quello si fa in Pregai. L’Eccellenze Vostre proveganoa questo, se non desiderano novità nella Republica, e se ne servano dell’aviso …’ ASV, IS, b. 643 (undated anonymous denunciation). 68 ASV, CX, Deliberazioni Secrete, Reg. 1, fol. 23v. (9 Oct. 1525).

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deployed by the Council of Ten to enable Renaissance Venice’s intelligence gathering and espionage pursuits.69 While offering an essential service to their paymasters, the nature of their work, involving the use of unsavoury sources and methods, compelled them to operate in the shadows, in order to maintain the secrecy of their operations. On account of their capacity for betrayal and deception, they were stigmatized by society as unchivalrous actors lurking in the shadows of warfare. As a result, they were engulfed in a pervasive aura of negativity. Importantly, since they were as disposable as any mercenary operative was to the authorities, these spies were obscure actors oscillating between visibility and invisibility. They were, thus, the quintessential shadow agents of war. The deployment of undistinguished, even invisible, commoners to carry out some of the most elaborate espionage activities on behalf of the Venetian state is redolent of what Scott Lucas termed ‘state-private networks’.70 In a broad sense, the concept of the state-private network describes the cooperative partnership between the state and independent civilians in pursuit of intelligence gathering, consensus-building, and even propaganda. Much as this term applies to contemporary politics, deriving primarily from Lucas’s work on the CIA and various cultural groups during the Cold War,71 it is hard to overlook the similarity with the Venetian state, where nominally private citizens or subjects acted as intelligence gatherers and spies at the behest of the state, in order to ‘obscure the source of government activity’.72 Under the mantle of their amateur status, social and political invisibility, however, they stood a better chance of securing plausible deniability for the Venetian authorities. This was a worthy cause for lurking in the shadows. To be sure, the more daring the mission of infiltrating foreign courts and other loci of strategic significance, the higher was the need for obscurity and anonymity. Still, the mass of these mercenary spies – most of whom defied the grisly risks of espionage for financial rewards, other material privileges, or simply the evasion of political convictions – remained in the shadows not simply because the Venetian authorities had grasped the significance of invisibility, and, in consequence, plausible deniability. In reality, these individuals’ invisibility – both in the eyes of the authorities and, by extension, in the archival records – emanated from their expendability. In other words, the intrepid nature that enabled them to take on the 69 70 71 72

See Iordanou, Venice’s Secret Service, esp. chap. 5. See Lucas, Freedom’s War, esp. chap. 7. Lucas, ‘Mobilizing Culture’. Pullin, 554.

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hazards of their daring missions mattered more than their actual identity and life story. In fact, the more daring the enterprise, the greater the need for a random mercenary spy rather than a professional state representative, such as an ambassador or other type of envoy, who acted as a professional informant to the authorities. By and large then, it is evident that in early modern Venice there was spying rather than professional spies. This is because unlike other established professions such as those of the chancery secretary or the cryptologist,73 or other ‘professionals of oral and written communication’ who were involved in public administration,74 there was no established and institutionalized profession of a spy. This is surprising, granted both the systematization of diplomacy and intelligence, and the gradual proliferation of stand-alone professions in sixteenth-century Italy.75 Despite these developments, the practice of spying did not meet any of the established criteria of a profession set by sociologists and historians. These criteria include several professional attributes such as reliance on theoretical knowledge and practical skills; systematic training for skills development; a professional ethic; a sense of commitment; an appeal to expertise; and a perceived esprit de corps.76 In other words, while systematizing the organization of intelligence operations and despite professionalizing the art of cryptology,77 Renaissance Venice failed to establish a profession of espionage based upon ‘cognitive specialization’, that is, some kind of formal training which transcended the boundaries of apprenticeship, a quality that has been deemed inherent to the process of professionalization.78 Indeed, while, in the realm of systematized intelligence and espionage, the Council of Ten went to great lengths to provide rigorous training and development opportunities to professional cryptologists and other chancery secretaries (including continuing professional development activities and frequent examinations for the purpose of updating their technical knowledge and expertise),79 formally appointed spies were offered no such developmental opportunities and were not subjected to the same 73 On professions and professionalization in the early modern period generally, see O’Day, 18–43. Specifically on ‘conventional’ professions in Renaissance Italy, see Biow, Doctors, Ambassadors. On Venetian state secretaries, see Trebbi; Neff; Zannini; Galtarossa. On professional chancery secretaries and cryptologists, see Iordanou, Venice’s’ Secret Service, 139–57. 74 Lazzarini, 115, 202. 75 Biow, On the Importance, 39. 76 O’Day, 4. See also Larson. 77 Iordanou, ‘The Professionalization of Cryptology’. 78 Larson, 3–4. 79 Iordanou, Venice’s Secret Service, 110–11, 142; ‘The Professionalization of Cryptology’.

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robust organizational structures as others serving in the Venetian secret service were.80 The fact that their only benefit was a salary or other perk which they would receive upon completion of their mission reinforces the argument of their expendability in the eyes of the Venetian authorities. And indeed, a brief but thorough survey of espionage in other early modern European states shows that spies were treated with the same condescension in all parts of the early modern world.81 It is not accidental, therefore, that many of these mercenaries acted as double spies, bestowing their allegiance to any master who would offer them a hefty compensation.82 This, then, is the second and most prevalent reason, aside from the insignificance of their social status, that detailed documented narratives of those amateur intelligencers are lacking. Despite the lack of such documented narratives, what is evident from the above is that the Venetian government – here, the Council of Ten – were keen to involve ordinary commoners who, in theory, were categorically excluded from political participation,83 with actions that were directly related to the implementation of political decisions and public policy.84 This quasi-direct participation of ordinary Venetians in political statecraft was not fortuitous. It was a deliberate act of ‘conflict regulation and political tension between the patricians and the popolani’. 85 Offering ordinary individuals this type of supervised political agency enabled the authorities to manage and control public behaviour and keep the populace on their side.86 The result was a calculated attenuation of socio-political tensions,87 which was so fervently – yet not always successfully – pursued by the Venetian ruling class.88 On the whole, the obscurity of their work, partly due to the invisibility of their existence that served the purpose of plausible deniability on the part of the authorities, and partly due to the lack of professionalization, 80 On the organizational structure of Venetian state intelligence, see Iordanou, Venice’s Secret Service. 81 Iordanou, Venice’s Secret Service, 37–54. 82 Iordanou, Venice’s Secret Service, 186. 83 On the sociopolitical standing of the popular classes in Renaissance Venice, see Romano. The literature on revisionist perspectives on the role of the popular classes in early modern Venice is gradually growing. For apt examples, see Iordanou, ‘Pestilence’; Judde de Larivière and Salzberg; and several of the essays in Van Gelder and Judde de Larivière. 84 Judde de Larivière. 85 Judde de Larivière, 82. 86 Horodowich, 25. 87 Judde de Larivière. 88 See, for instance, Van Gelder and De Vivo.

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which rendered them expendable, led to a complete absence of documented narratives of Venetian mercenary spies. This is deeply regrettable, as this gap deprives us of a glimpse into a spy’s perception of the work they performed for the Council of Ten, casting a shadow on our understanding of any sense of professional identity they might have constructed. Nevertheless, even despite any documented testimony of an emerging professional identity, surviving narratives of early modern spies suffice to support the claim that, as a service, espionage in the early modern period had not been subjected to formal organization of work, just like other established professions.89 Viewed from this light, early modern espionage resembled early modern diplomacy in its multiple and, as such, flexible manifestations.90 The above-mentioned ruminations raise a notable question: why did a territorial state like Venice that was pioneering in its creation of a systematic, centrally organized state intelligence service fail to cater for the professional development of specialist spies? Were not these individuals, who sacrificed their lives for the Venetian Republic’s intelligence gathering pursuits, worthy of such an opportunity? The answer to this question may lie in the political context of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. More specifically, the four devastating Ottoman-Venetian wars between 1463 and 1573, in combination with Venice’s shattering defeat by the League of Cambrai at Agnadello in 1509,91 led to an aggressive ‘realpolitik policy of neutrality, a balancing act between the French, the Habsburgs, and most importantly, the Ottomans’.92 The progressive loss of its maritime possessions as a result of these events, in combination with its stance of neutrality led Venice to resort to military action only when absolutely necessary,93 investing, primarily, in a robust network of fortifications to protect its prized possessions in the Eastern Mediterranean.94 As a result, Venice’s foreign policy centred on ‘disarming’ enemies by keeping up appearances, while maintaining secrecy and, eventually, even manipulating information. Within this political context, while spying remained a vital political and diplomatic activity, professionalizing it in any way could have had grave implications for the Republic’s foreign 89 Burke, 393; Iordanou, Venice’s Secret Service, 188. 90 On a revisionist study of early modern diplomacy as a flexible activity, see Lazzarini. 91 The League of Cambrai was an alliance between Pope Julius II (1443–1513), Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I (1459–1519), King Louis XII of France (1462–1515), and Ferdinand II of Aragon (1452–1516). As a result of her defeat by the League at Agnadello, Venice was forced to forfeit a significant portion of its Italian mainland territories. 92 Dursteler, ‘Power and Information’, 616. 93 Arbel, 142. 94 Mallet and Hale, 429–60.

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policy and, by extension, domestic security. In this respect, keeping spies in the shadows as obscure, inconspicuous agents, advanced Venice’s strategic stance of neutrality. In this context, then, espionage became an invisible trade.

Conclusion Early modern Venice’s secret agents were drawn from all strata of Venetian society. Representing the patriciate, Venetian ambassadors and governors acted as semi-professional informants with restricted intelligence gathering activities, strictly demarcated by the socially acceptable norms of diplomatic decorum. Venetian merchants also offered their services as amateur intelligencers, reporting to the authorities any information of potential value that their professional activity enabled them to obtain during their journeys across Anatolia, the Adriatic, and beyond. For the most outright and daring espionage missions, however, when the spy had to remain unrecognized in order to infiltrate foreign lands, the Council of Ten handpicked runof-the-mill mercenary spies who were willing to risk their lives for a cash prize, an official privilege or a political favour. And while their hazardous assignments necessitated a variety of specialist skills, the Ten did not see the need to offer any specialist training or professional development to these individuals, most probably in order to maintain a much-needed stance of political neutrality. On the contrary, the Ten’s strategy was to deploy as many such men as needed, in the hope that some of them would carry out their mission successfully. The only skills required were knowledge of local languages (or dialects), culture, and lands. Undeniably, to the authorities, these agents were as expendable as their actions. This is the second reason, besides the need for plausible deniability, why these spies nearly always remained in the shadows, somewhere in the zone between visibility and invisibility, resulting in a lack of information on their identity and personal circumstances, except for, occasionally, a name and, more rarely, their place of origin. One significant aspect of these actors’ recruitment was their compensation. Indeed, in order to secure their cooperation, the Ten turned to the quintessential Venetian trait, business dealing. Intelligence gathering and espionage, therefore, turned into a business transaction between the government and those governed by them, in the sense that the former offered some kind of benefit or compensation for services offered by the latter. Compensating for services rendered by means of gifts has been deemed

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a remnant of the patronage system that proliferated in the Renaissance period.95 Yet, ordinary Venetians’ and non-Venetians’ active involvement in espionage missions transcended the realm of patronage to assume political overtones. More specifically, through this transactional nature of espionage, mere commoners, who were categorically excluded from participation in politics, assumed a political purpose within the state. This political purpose, however, was camouflaged in the form of a business deal, seeking some kind of benefit for espionage assignments.96 The obscurity of the prototypical early modern spy, as depicted in this essay, demonstrates the flexible and multifarious nature of early modern espionage which, while not properly professionalized, materialized in a variety of systematic and unsystematic ways. Importantly, the very lack of visibility of early modern spies emphasizes the signif icance of their contributions as shadow agents of war. While acting in the shadows, these lay individuals’ ‘bottom-up’ contributions to the state they served are redolent of espionage ‘from below’, which is fundamental for our understanding of early modern intelligence gathering and espionage pursuits. To be more specific, exploring these actors’ missions and assignments, as well as the methodological challenges inherent in such scholarly endeavours, offers rich historical insights into the profound entanglement of state and society in the early modern period. Accordingly, despite its methodological restrictions, the study of early modern spies as shadow agents of war is significant because it allows us to focus on the political and social interactions between the government and those invisible agents. This, in turn, might enable us to realize that the study of early modern intelligence and espionage is as much a people’s history as it is a history of the elites.

Bibliography Primary Sources Manuscripts

Archivio Apostolico Vaticano Segreteria di Stato, Venezia, bb. 8, 14, 16

95 Kettering, 192–206. 96 Iordanou, ‘What News on the Rialto’? On the subtle, yet vital political role played by commoners in the diffusion of information, see De Vivo, Information and Communication.

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Archivo General de Simancas Estado, Legajo 1329 Archivio di Stato di Venezia Capi del Consiglio di Dieci, Lettere Secrete, filze 7, 8; Miscellanea, b. 6 Consiglio di Dieci, Deliberazioni Secrete, regg. 1, 4, 7, 9, 10, 11, 19; filze 8, 15 Inquisitori di Stato, bb. 608, 643 Notarile Atti, b. 4854 (Giovanni Nicolò Doglioni)

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Garzoni, Tommaso. La piazza universale di tutte le professioni del mondo (Venice: Gio.Battista Somasco, 1587). Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat. De l’esprit des lois, vol. 1 (Geneva: Barrillot & Fils, 1749).

Secondary Sources Akkerman, Nadine. Invisible Agents: Women and Espionage in Seventeenth Century Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). Arbel, Benjamin. Trading Nations: Jews and Venetians in the Early Modern Mediterranean (Leiden: Brill, 1999). Beltrami, Daniele. Storia della popolazione di Venezia dalla fine del secolo XVI alla caduta della Repubblica (Padua: CEDAM, 1954). Bély, Lucien. Espions et ambassadeurs au temps de Louis XIV (Paris: Fayard, 1990). Bertelè, Tommaso. Il palazzo degli ambasciatori di Costantinopoli a Venezia (Bologna: Apollo, 1932). Biow, Douglas. On the Importance of Being an Individual in Renaissance Italy: Men, their Professions, and their Beards (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015). Biow, Douglas. Doctors, Ambassadors, Secretaries: Humanism and Professions in Renaissance Italy (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2002). Bowd, Stephen D. Renaissance Mass Murder: Civilians and Soldiers during the Italian Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). Brancato, Dario. ‘Varchi censurato. Interventi sui materiali d’autore della Storia fiorentina’, in Firenze nella crisi religiosa del Cinquecento, edited by Lucia Felici (Turin: Claudiana, 2020), 25–56. Burke, Peter. ‘Early Modern Venice as a Center of Information and Communication’, in The History and Civilization of an Italian City-State, 1297–1797, edited by John Martin and Dennis Romano (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 389–419.

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Canosa, Romano. Alle origini delle polizie politiche: Gli Inquisitori di Stato a Venezia e a Genova (Milan: Sugarco, 1989). Carnicer García, Carlos J., and Javier Marcos Rivas, Espías de Felipe II: Los servicios secretos del Imperio español (Madrid: La esfera de los libros, 2005). Coco, Carla, and Flora Manzonetto. Baili veneziani alla Sublime Porta: Storia e caratteristiche dell’ambasciata veneta a Constantinopoli (Venice: Stamperia di Venezia, 1985). Cozzi, Gaetano. ‘Authority and the Law’, in Renaissance Venice, edited by John R. Hale (London: Faber & Faber, 1973), 293–345. De Vivo, Filippo. ‘Pharmacies as Centres of Communication in Early Modern Venice’, Renaissance Studies, 21/4 (2007): 505–21. De Vivo, Filippo. Information and Communication in Venice: Rethinking Early Modern Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). Dursteler, Eric R. ‘The Bailo in Constantinople: Crisis and Career in Venice’s Early Modern Diplomatic Corps’, Mediterranean Historical Review, 16.2 (2001): 1–30. Dursteler, Eric R. ‘Power and Information: The Venetian Postal System in the Early Modern Eastern Mediterranean’, in From Florence to the Mediterranean: Studies in Honour of Anthony Molho, edited by Diogo R. Curt, Eric R. Dursteler, Julius Kirshner, and Francesca Trivellato (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2009), 601–23. Finlay, Robert. Politics in Renaissance Venice (London: Ernst Benn, 1980). Galtarossa, Massimo. Mandarini veneziani: La cancelleria ducale del Settecento (Rome: Aracne, 2009). Goldthwaite, Richard. ‘The Practice and Culture of Accounting in Renaissance Florence’, Enterprise and Society, 16.3 (2015): 611–47. Gürkan, Emrah Safa. ‘The Efficacy of Ottoman Counter-intelligence in the 16th Century’, Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, 65.1 (2012): 1–38. Gürkan, Emrah Safa. Sultanın Casusları: 16. Yüzyılda İstihbarat, Sabotaj ve Rüşvet Ağları (Istanbul: Kronik Kitap, 2017). Gürkan, Emrah Safa. ‘Laying Hands on Arcana Imperii: Venetian Baili as Spymasters in Sixteenth-Century Istanbul’, in Spy Chiefs, vol. 2: Intelligence Leaders in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, edited by Paul Maddrell, Christopher Moran, Ioanna Iordanou, and Mark Stout (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2018), 67–96. Hanß, Stefan. ‘Baili and Ambassadors’, in Il Palazzo di Venezia a Istanbul e i suoi antichi abitanti/İstanbul’daki Venedik Sarayı ve Eski Yaşayanları, edited by Maria Pia Pedani (Venice: Edizioni Ca’ Foscari, 2013), 35–52. Horodowich, Elizabeth. ‘The Gossiping Tongue: Oral Networks, Public Life and Political Culture in Early Modern Venice’, Renaissance Studies 19.1 (2005): 22–45. Iordanou, Ioanna. ‘Pestilence, Poverty, and Provision: Re-evaluating the Role of the Popolani in Early Modern Venice’, The Economic History Review 69.3 (2016): 801–22.

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Iordanou, Ioanna. ‘What News on the Rialto? The Trade of Information and Early Modern Venice’s Centralized Intelligence Organization’, Intelligence and National Security, 31.3 (2016): 305–26. Iordanou, Ioanna. ‘The Professionalization of Cryptology in Sixteenth Century Venice’, Enterprise and Society, 19.4 (2018): 979–1013. Iordanou, Ioanna. Venice’s Secret Service: Organizing Intelligence in the Renaissance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019). Judde de Larivière, Claire, and Rosa Salzberg. ‘“Le peuple est la cité”. L’idée de popolo et la condition des popolani à Venise (XVe-XVIe siècle)’, Annales: histoire, sciences sociales 68.4 (2013): 1113–40. Judde de Larivière, Claire. ‘Political Participation and Ordinary Politicization in Renaissance Venice. Was the Popolo a Political Actor?’ in Popular Politics in an Aristocratic Republic: Political Conflict and Social Contestation in Late Medieval and Early Modern Venice, edited by Maartje Van Gelder, and Claire Judde de Larivière (Abingdon: Routledge, 2020), 69–87. Kettering, Sharon. Patrons, Brokers, and Clients in Seventeenth Century France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986). Larson, Magali Sarfatti. The Rise of Professionalism: A Sociological Analysis (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977). Lazzarini, Isabella. Communication and Conflict: Italian Diplomacy in the Early Renaissance, 1350–1520 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). Lucas, Scott. Freedom’s War: The American Crusade Against the Soviet Union 1945–56 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999). Lucas, Scott. ‘Mobilizing Culture: The State-Private Network and the CIA in the Early Cold War’, in War and Cold War in American Foreign Policy 1942–62, edited by Dale Carter and Robin Clifton (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 83–107. Luzzatto, Gino. Storia economica di Venezia dall’XI al XVI secolo (Venice: Centro Internazionale delle Arti e del Costume, 1961). Macchi, Mauro. Istoria del Consiglio dei Dieci (Turin: Fontana, 1848). Mallett, Michael, and John R. Hale. The Military Organization of a Renaissance State: Venice, c.1400 to 1617 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). Marshall, Alan. Intelligence and Espionage in the Reign of Charles II, 1660–1685 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). Martin, Patrick H. Elizabethan Espionage: Plotters and Spies in the Struggle between Catholicism and the Crown (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company). Neff, Mary, F. ‘Chancery Secretaries in Venetian Politics and Societies, 1480–1533’, Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of California, Los Angeles, 1986. O’Day, Rosemary. The Professions in Early Modern England, 1450–1800 (Harlow: Pearson Education, 2000). Preto, Paolo. Peste e società a Venezia nel 1576 (Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 1978).

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Preto, Paolo. ‘Le relazioni dei baili a Constantinopoli’, Il Veltro, 23 (1979): 125–30. Preto, Paolo. I servizi segreti di Venezia: Spionaggio e controspionaggio ai tempi della Serenissima (Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1994). Preto, Paolo. Persona per ora secreta: Accusa e delazione nella Repubblica di Venezia (Milan: Il Saggiatore, 2003). Pullin, Eric. ‘Secrecy, State-Private Networks and Operational Effectiveness in Cold War Europe’, Contemporary European History, 25.3 (2016): 551–60. Romano, Dennis. Patricians and Popolani: The Social Foundations of the Venetian Renaissance State (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987). Trebbi, Giuseppe. ‘Il segretario veneziano’, Archivio Storico Italiano, 144 (1986): 35–73. Van Gelder, Maartje, and Claire Judde de Larivière (eds). Popular Politics in an Aristocratic Republic: Political Conflict and Social Contestation in Late Medieval and Early Modern Venice (Abingdon: Routledge, 2020). Van Gelder, Maartje, and Filippo De Vivo. ‘Papering Over Protest: Contentious Politics and Archival Suppression in Early Modern Venice’, Past & Present, In Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtab040. Van Gelder, Maartje, and Tijana Krstić (eds). ‘Cross-confessional Diplomacy and Diplomatic Intermediaries in the Early Modern Mediterranean’, Special Issue of Journal of Early Modern History, 19.2–3 (2015): 93–285. Warren, Michael. The Rise and Fall of Intelligence: An International Security History (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2014). Zannini, Andrea. Burocrazia e burocrati a Venezia in età moderna: I cittadini originari (sec. XVI–XVIII) (Venice: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 1993).

About the Author Dr Ioanna Iordanou is a Reader in Human Resource Management at Oxford Brookes Business School (UK) and an Honorary Research Fellow at the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance (University of Warwick, UK). She is the author of Venice’s Secret Service: Organizing Intelligence in the Renaissance (Oxford University Press, 2019), which was shortlisted for the Royal Historical Society’s Gladstone Prize 2020. She’s an organizational historian, studying the development of organizational entities and managerial practices in the early modern period.

IV Women and Agency in War

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Gender, War, and the State The Military Management of Alda Pio Gambara During the Italian Wars Stephen Bowd Abstract During the Italian Wars (1494–1559) a significant number of women were entrusted with household and estate management in northern Italy in the absence of husbands or other relations involved in war. That some women drew on this experience or adapted existing skills to contribute to military management is demonstrated by the extensive correspondence of Alda Pio Gambara. These letters reveal the extent of Alda’s estate management and the ways in which she ensured her husband and his company were fitted for war by providing supplies and equipment including armour. They also reveal the ways in which she managed the war in and around Brescia by raising troops and sappers and by working closely with the Venetian and then French authorities. Keywords: Gambara; Venice; Brescia; Gender; France; Italian Wars

Introduction On 19 February 1512 forces commanded by Gaston de Foix (1489–1512), the French royal lieutenant in Lombardy, entered the city of Brescia, attacked occupying Venetian troops led by Andrea Gritti (1455–1538), and inflicted a sack as punishment for the city’s rebellion against French rule.1 As one of the worst massacres of the Italian Wars (1494–1559) contemporary Unless otherwise noted: all archival citations are to Archivio di Stato, Brescia, Archivio Gambara, busta (b.), filza, and letter number if available; all references are to letters by Alda Pio Gambara in b. 277 in the same place, cited by number and date; and all letters are dated at Brescia. 1 Pasero, Francia, 222.

Bowd, S., Cockram, S. & Gagné, J. (eds.), Shadow Agents of Renaissance War. Suffering, Supporting, and Supplying Conflict in Italy and Beyond. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2023 doi: 10.5117/9789463721356_ch09

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commentators scrambled to parse its meaning.2 Marco Negro assigned blame for the catastrophe to all sides and highlighted local social and political fault lines destabilized by foreign intervention. Specif ically, Negro claimed that he would need a month to describe the contribution of the Gambara family and their followers to the betrayal of the city and ensuing violence. He singled out Alda Pio Gambara (ca. 1465–ca. 1527) as chief culprit: she had held out in the castle with French troops until Foix arrived with reinforcements, and ‘had made more war on Venice than if she had a thousand cavalry, and yet all she had done was write and plot’.3 Around the same time, the Venetian commissioner described her as a ‘whore and cow’ (‘puttana et vacca’), while two decades later another local chronicler recalled how during the sack Alda’s palace rang with the sounds of dancing and banqueting more suitable for a brothel, and described her as ‘this great, large woman who wore the trousers to such an extent that she was obeyed by the whole Gambara family which attended to all of her commands’. 4 These images of Alda as a manly female and meretricious intriguer are typical characterizations of women of power.5 But just as historians of gender and politics have revealed more complex truths beneath contemporary slurs and modern exceptionalist models, so this chapter provides a fuller version of Alda and her shadow agency during war.6 This is a portrait largely based on hundreds of letters Alda wrote between 1497 and 1512 from her palace in Brescia – to which she moved from her native Carpi on marrying Count Gianfrancesco Gambara (d. 1511) in ca. 1485 – and which she addressed to her brother-in-law Count Niccolò Gambara at Verola Alghise (now Verolanuova); to his wife Lucrezia Gonzaga; and to their daughter Auriga.7 This largely unexplored female correspondence, which is far from unique in the Gambara archive or in Italian archives 2 Bowd, Venice’s Most Loyal City, chap. 11; Renaissance Mass Murder. 3 ‘Alda ha facto più guera a la Signori ache si havesse auto contra 1000 cavali; mai non feva altro che scriver e far pratiche, etc.’ Summary of letter from Marco Negro to Piero and Lorenzo Capello, Brescia, 9 Aug. 1512 in Sanudo, 15:287–93. All references to vols. and cols. 4 Polo Capello quoted in Pasero, Francia, 253 n. 55; Pandolfo Nassino quoted in Frati et al., Sacco, 1/1: 145 (‘Costey era granda et grossa. Costey portava baraga talmente che tutta casa Gambaresca la obidiva et stasevano ad ogni sui comandamenti’). 5 Dixon. 6 Tanner. 7 In addition to the letters in b. 277, see letters from Alda in b. 282, filza ‘1509’, no. 546 (5 Dec. 1509); filza ‘1510’, no. 604 (3 June 1510, autograph), and no. 605 (1 June 1510, autograph). No.100 (15 Mar. 1505) was signed jointly by Alda and her sister Gratiosa Pio. Alda’s letters are cited in Pasero, Francia, passim. On Lucrezia Gambara see Mucci.

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more generally,8 suggests that Alda’s household and estate management underpinned what might be called her ‘military management’ or war-related shadow agency and is therefore of direct relevance to the broad themes explored in this book.9 As noted in the Introduction, and by several other contributors to the volume, this period has been considered critical in the relationship between war and state development.10 In Venice, as in many other parts of Europe, the provision of men and supplies for war entailed bureaucratic growth and specialization, but also relied on networks of noble families in the mainland empire.11 These families were expected to train and provide companies of expensive heavy cavalry, organize regular musters and other warlike displays, and raise infantry or sappers from local society.12 As all this suggests, war and state development may be understood in terms of bipolar (metropole-territory) and polycentric relationships. Accordingly, recent scholars have shown how northern Italian communities worked with local noble or civic authorities, as well as with the metropoles of Milan or Venice, to organize for war.13 As these studies demonstrate, and as Alda’s correspondence amply confirms, these networks were shaped by an array of feudal privileges or customs governing the work of peasants, military entrepreneurs, merchants, moneylenders, or estate and household managers. Recent studies have also revealed how war-related labour was gendered. Women’s work was vital to the early modern state and to the support of growing armies through the provision of food, accommodation, and a range of services by no means ‘unskilled’ or simply conf ined to the ancillary roles of the ‘campaign community’.14 For example, the wives of soldiers were often expected to trade as means of supplementing military pay. 15 This ‘two-supporter’ model of spousal contribution to 8 Principally, but not exhaustively, see b. 269, Auriga Gambara (84 letters dating to 1508–47), Emilia Gambara (108 letters, 1513–48); b. 271, Taddea Gambara (28 letters, 1499–1511); b. 272, Alessandra Gambara (25 letters, 1498–1508), Caterina Torelli Gonzaga di Novellara (70 letters, 1496–1517), Ippolita Gonzaga di Novellara (39 letters, 1496–1516), Lucrezia Gonzaga di Novellara Gambara (40 letters, 1496–1504); b. 274, Laura Maggi (15 letters, 1503–11); b. 278, Aloisa Scotti (74 letters, 1496–1517), and Maddalena Maggi Scotti (29 letters, 1506–11). In general, see Plebani. 9 The term ‘military management’ is here adapted from Ongaro. 10 Above, with full bibliographic references, 14–18. 11 Hocquet. 12 Mallett and Hale, 65–74, 314, 473 fig. 2. 13 Ongaro; Covini “‘Alle spese’”. 14 Lynn. 15 Lennersand et al., 183–85, 190–91.

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the household has also been applied to the elite household and estate management model of military management.16 For example, Kristen B. Neuschel has argued that during the French Wars of Religion (1562–98) roles assumed in early modern aristocratic household management – acquiring goods and clothing, managing labour, or providing small arms for the defence of the château – were not sharply or rigidly gendered. Tasks like hospitality – which cemented bonds of mutual trust and promoted family honour – and the maintenance of cannon or the organization of peasants to meet local or small-scale threats were shared by both sexes and meant that women ‘constituted and represented’ the ‘warrior class’ in ways readily observable in Renaissance Italy.17 This changing picture of who exactly contributed to war invites us to rethink how we approach archival work on the history of war and how to expand our analyses of familiar histories.

Managing Estate and Household In Renaissance Italy many aristocratic women wielded power in the absence of their husbands, as widows, or as regents for sons or nephews. For example, Alda’s maternal aunt Maddalena del Carretto, widow of Pietro Guido Torelli, acted as regent in the duchy of Guastalla for lengthy periods and resorted to arms and poison in her determined efforts to retain power towards the end of the fifteenth century. In this respect she resembled a previous duchess of Guastalla, Orsina Visconti, who was famed for donning armour and taking to the battlefield against the Venetians in her husband’s absence in 1426.18 In her turn, Alda’s daughter Veronica Gambara (1485–1550) married a condottiero (mercenary) and in 1518 assumed the rule of Correggio as widow and regent.19 During the Italian Wars the absence of lords from their territories while on military service threw more of the work of political leadership and estate and household management, including military or defensive expenditure, onto women.20 The families of these condottieri were often 16 Ågren. 17 Neuschel, 126. See Sandberg; Arcangeli and Peyronel. See also Sandberg’s contribution to this volume. 18 Affò, 2:74, 79–80, 83, 99–101, 115–18. Compare Covini, ‘Tra patronage’, esp. 253; Spagnoletti; Shaw. On Orsina Visconti see Milligan, 189–93. 19 McIver, ‘The “Ladies”’. 20 Arcangeli, ‘Un’aristocrazia’; Folin, esp. 487–89.

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closely connected and their wives or widows drew on the influence of their extended network of relations by birth and marriage, as well as on friends and servants, to maintain their local influence, preserve their dowry wealth, and ensure that their sons came into their inheritance.21 These women brokered marriages between clans to enhance dynastic clout, organized artistic, urban planning or architectural projects, 22 maintained extensive epistolary networks, and produced literary works which sometimes reflected the experience of the disruption of war: it is no coincidence that the poetry of Veronica Gambara, daughter and widow of condottieri, is full of images of war and the parting or absence of loved ones.23 Alda’s life was shaped by war and military priorities as a consequence of the absence of her husband Gianfrancesco on military service for the Venetian state from the earliest years of their marriage. She managed household and estate with a combination of skill, knowledge and determination that may have been innate and could have been modelled on the example of a number of other women in the region, some of whom were female relations and acquaintances.24 Alda may also have learned from the experience of her own family since the Pio da Carpi clan was riven with tensions due to the indivisibility of its territory and by the end of the century her brother Giberto was in violent dispute with their cousin Alberto for control of the lordship.25 Despite the fraternal division of the Gambara feudatory inheritance in the latter part of the fifteenth century, Alda was obliged to work with her brothers-in-law Pietro and Niccolò in a number of matters of shared jurisdiction and f iscal or military obligations.26 Such shared fraternal arrangements posed enormous challenges to both household harmony and political stability, but Alda worked hard to navigate them to the benefit of the clan. For Alda, the routine matters of estate management included making an investiture of land in 1496 while her husband was fighting on behalf of Venice in and around Pisa.27 Three years later she took delivery of, and organized payment for almost 2,000 pavement tiles and lime while her 21 Arcangeli, ‘Un’aristocrazia’; Casanova. See also Chojnacki, ‘At Home’. 22 Covini, ‘Tra patronage’; Folin; McIver, ‘An Invisible’; Ghirardo; Smith, ‘Gender’. 23 Gambara. 24 McIver, Women. 25 Sanudo, 1:680–683. On Giberto’s death see letter no. 21 (7 Oct. 1500). 26 Archetti, ‘Gambara’; Camerano, ‘Gambara’; Archetti, ‘Una famiglia’. 27 No. 12 (22 Feb. 1496). On Gianfrancesco’s military service ca. 1496–97 see Sanudo, 1: 194, 493, 543.

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husband was involved in the wars in the Milanese.28 She also oversaw disputes between local men about improvements to a mill, and indeed the management of lucrative waters and mills on Gambara lands occupies a significant proportion of her correspondence.29 In 1503 she sent a servant down with her husband to help deal with the damage caused to a mill by certain toughs or ‘bravi’ on horseback.30 Two years later another dispute revolved around the tussle for control of waters with neighbours, which required a survey by her staff.31 Alda kept a weather eye on those who might overstep their rightful bounds by breaking the stumps marking Gambara territory in 1501, for example, or five years later writing to ensure that the owner of a piece of land purchased from the Gambara did not overstep the mark, as was his wont, and dig up trees.32 The marshaling of resources and the direction of male and female servants were key components of Alda’s household and estate management.33 These servants often helped Alda to organize banquets and other entertainments to cement the family’s relationship with Venice or France embodied by its ambassadors or commissioners, including Andrea Gritti, who were in need of horses, accommodation and refreshments as they travelled through the region.34 Special care was taken to keep local Venetian rectors sweet with gifts, banquets and respectful visits. In 1505 Alda cannily advised her brother-in-law Niccolò that since the rectors were about to sit in judgment on a dispute about waterways he should go and honour them over the holidays.35 On the occasion of the birth of a son to the wife of the Venetian captain in nearby Cremona in 1508 Alda suggested that Niccolò should take baked goods as a gift.36 At Christmas 1509 the new French governors, including the castellan, were presented with fat capons, calves, cheese, 28 No. 20 (18 Nov. 1499); no. 24 (26 Nov. 1499). On Gianfrancesco’s military service ca. 1499 see Sanudo, 2:1147–48, 1162, 1170, 1176, 1177, 1184; 3:121, 141. 29 No. 23 (16 Nov. 1498); no. 49 (22 Oct. 1503); no. 68 (2 May 1504); no. 102 (1 April 1505); no. 103 (6 April 1505); no. 105 (25 Nov. 1505); no. 118 (30 Oct. 1506); no. 212 (21 June 1511); no. 216 (14 Sept. 1511); no. 235 (Carpi, 25 Aug. 1517); no. 242 (Pralboino, 23 Nov. 1525). 30 No. 49 (22 Oct. 1503). 31 No. 98 (1 March 1505); no. 101 (17 May 1505); no. 105 (25 Nov. 1505); no. 106 (30 Nov. 1505); no. 107 (30 Nov. 1505); no. 108 (30 Nov. 1505); no. 109 (10 Dec. 1505); no. 110 (17 Dec. 1505); no. 111 (18 Dec. 1505); no. 113 (24 Dec. 1505); no. 114 (21 Feb. 1506). 32 No. 34 (7 Oct. 1501); no. 116 (7 Oct. 1506); no. 117 (14 Oct. 1506); no. 118 (30 Oct. 1506). 33 No. 31 (19 April 1501); no. 145 (24 April 1508); no. 198 (1 Oct. 1510); no. 228 (23 Jan. 1512); no. 214 (5 Sept. 1511); no. 215 (7 Sept. 1511). 34 No. 36 (25 Oct. 1501); no. 94 (1 Feb. 1504); no. 115 (20 Sept. 1506); no. 149 (10 June 1508) (Gritti). 35 No. 113 (24 Dec. 1505). 36 No. 151 (30 July 1508).

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and meats, which at Easter were supplemented with lambs and eggs, or adapted to chicken paste to suit the diet of Cardinal Carlo del Carretto, the French-appointed governor of Brescia (and possibly a relation of Alda’s through her mother).37 In sum, Alda’s experiences of household and estate management – briefly sampled here – provided her with some of the experience and skills fundamental to military management: the organization of people and the transportation of goods; the survey and defence of lands; the protection of natural resources; animal management; the organization of banquets and other exhibitions of diplomacy; and the exchange of gifts as part of an economy of favours which helped to maintain family honour and political influence locally and farther afield. These were skills exercised in the context of an increasingly challenging social and political landscape as war periodically scarred the region and Alda grew disenchanted with Venice, with the pro-Venetian peasantry, and with their political opponents in the city of Brescia.38

Organizing for War War in Lombardy following the French invasion in 1494 transformed the fortunes of families like the Gambara; it also elicited familiar strategies for survival. As experienced condottiere both Gianfrancesco Gambara and his brother Niccolò were in demand and they served in papal or Venetian forces from 1496 until 1509 when the French occupied the Bresciano.39 Although it sometimes had adverse consequences for them, the family maintained contact with military men on all sides of the conflict including nobles of the Trivulzio, Sanseverino, and Pallavicini clans who were close to the ousted Sforza regime in Milan or served the French.40 These families formed a network of alliances by marriage: Alda’s sister, Margherita Pio was married to Antonio Maria Sanseverino and the couple were due to stay with Lucrezia Gambara at Verola Alghise for eight days in 1504.41 In turn, 37 No. 164 (20 Dec. 1509); no. 165 (24 Dec. 1509); no. 166 (26 Dec. 1509); no. 170 (13 Jan. 1510); no. 177 (15 March 1510); no. 179 (17 March 1510); no. 185 (29 March 1510); no. 211 (19 April 1511). Alda’s mother was Benedetta, daughter of Galeotto del Caretto, marquis of Finale: Litta, vol. ‘P’, tavola IV. 38 Bowd, ‘Alda’. 39 For the terms of the condotta agreed between Niccolò Gambara and Pope Alexander VI (1431–1503) see b. 1, 95. See also Pecino Reffacani to Lucrezia Gambara, b. 277 (11 Nov. 1496); Lucrezia Gambara to Niccolò, b. 272 (Verola Alghise, 6 Mar. 1497). 40 Arcangeli, Gentiluomini, 71–121; Gagné, 192–3. 41 No. 76 (30 May 1504); no. 77 (1 June 1504); Sanudo, 3: 202.

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Antonio Maria’s sister Ginevra was married to Lucio Malvezzi, and he and his brother Giulio – both Milanese condottieri who fought for Venice in the war with Pisa during 1496–99 – were frequent visitors to Verola Alghise. 42 The fortunes of the Gambara were closely tied to France in the period after 1509. 43 In that year, Gianfrancesco transferred his services to the French after they defeated Venetian forces at the Battle of Agnadello. 44 He supported the subsequent capitulation of Brescia to the French and together with Niccolò and Alda led the pro-French faction in the city. 45 Like others, the family capitalized on its long experience as condottieri and leaders of mounted men-at-arms and helped to supply men recruited from their lands as militia troops or as sappers, and provided weaponry and armour. 46 In return for this service the Gambara expected France, like Venice (and before it, Milan), to honour their status, respect their local power, and protect their fiscal exemptions. In fact, the French crown granted Niccolò membership of the prestigious Order of St Michael and helped the family seize Quinzano, Manerbio, Gottolengo and Gambara from Brescian control – new feudal lands which the family battled hard to retain. 47

Billeting Troops These territorial struggles were complicated and exacerbated by the extended presence of disruptive companies of soldiers. The transit and lodging of troops posed a chronic problem in Venetian territory, especially in the countryside and in garrison towns as these troops rarely paid for their lodgings, food or fodder. Instead, rural communities were forced to provide troops with billets, to hand over valuable fodder for horses, and to pay extraordinary taxes in compensation to those whose property was damaged. 48 The burden of lodging troops in peacetime and during 42 No. 43 (16 July 1502); no. 60 (8 April 1504); no. 100 (15 March 1505). See also Alessandra Gonzaga to Giulio Malvezzi, in b. 272 (n.p., 10 Oct. 1503). 43 Pasero, Francia, esp. 112–18, 162–68; ‘Il dominio’. 44 For records of Gianfrancesco’s service with the Venetians see Sanudo, 7:320, 706; 8: 218; and with the French, see ibid., 8:512, 518, 544; 9: 72, 346, 348, 471, 479; 10: 881; 11:130, 185, 193. On Gianfrancesco’s capture or defection and transfer to France see Sanudo, 8:285, 290, 294. 45 Sanudo, 8:339, 375. 46 Generally, see Mallett and Hale, 74–81. 47 Pasero, Francia, 113–17; Bowd, ‘Alda’. 48 Mallett and Hale, 131–36.

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campaigns fell especially heavily on the Bresciano which lay on the western frontier of Venetian territory. For example, in 1517 one-fifth of all Venetian cavalry was accommodated in Brescia which was a transit point for forces moving between Venice, Mantua, Cremona and Milan. 49 The Gambara occasionally provided billets for these troops but such accommodation was often resisted, granted as a token of good will rather than in fulf ilment of any formal obligation, or used as ammunition for internal feuds.50 For example, in 1497 Giovanni Gradenigo, a Venetian patrician at the head of a company of a hundred cavalry, wrote to Lucrezia Gambara to apologize for the fact that the Brescian deputies in charge of the matter had arranged lodgings for troops at Verola Alghise. He had sent his herald to the Venetian captain of Brescia, who had overall control of military matters, to beg for the transfer of the lodgings to another place but the captain declined to go against the deputies, pointed out that the whole territory was full of soldiers, that a further thousand cavalry led by the captain of the stradiots (light cavalry) were expected, and that some would be forced into an inn with those who were already badly lodged there.51 In fact, Alda had strongly advised Lucrezia and her husband against going along with the offer made by Count Piero (Gambara) to the Brescian rectors to accommodate twenty-eight horsemen at Verola Alghise. She warned Lucrezia not to place any trust (‘fede’) in the letters of Count Piero because he did everything for several effects: first, to ingratiate himself with the countryside (‘contado’), second, to land a blow on them and, third, to demonstrate to the rectors that he wished to be one who does everything. Rather, Alda wrote, when the need arose to please the Lordship of Venice it should be for their account and not for his. In the meantime, Alda suggested that the troops be lodged at an inn at somebody else’s expense, and she sought an opportunity to plead their case with the rectors who sent their deputies to expedite the matter. Once the rectors heard the arguments made by advocates on both sides Alda reported that they gave clear signs that they favoured the Gambara to the extent that representations were made to Venice by the countryside and city to obtain a letter to hold matters up and cause some trouble. Alda then urged Lucrezia to persuade her 49 Ongaro, 23. On the uneven distribution of billeted troops in fifteenth-century Lombardy see Covini, ‘“Alle spese”’. 50 Archetti, ‘Una famiglia’, 68 (on lodging troops in 1468, 1472, 1477, 1487–89, and 1495). 51 ‘[M]e e forza non gli alogiando vadino al hostaria, achosto de chi havera male alogiato’. Giovanni Gradenigo ‘[m]illes [sic] armorum’ to Lucrezia Gambara: b. 282, f ilza ‘1497’, no. 34 (Quinzano, 23 Feb. 1497).

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brothers-in-law, Maffeo and Marsilio, to spend some money and send a family servant to Venice to counter such actions.52

Supplying Troops The most direct and practical aid or military management exercised by Alda took the form of providing vital supplies and equipment for war, and raising troops or sappers from the family’s lands – all tasks for which estate and household management was a good training ground. In August 1499 Alda asked Niccolò to arrange for one of their bailiffs to escort four loads of spelt to her husband’s camp with the Venetian forces at Soncino on the Mantuan border, and she later advised Niccolò, who was expecting to depart from Brescia for a military engagement in Padua, to arrange for supplies for the camp through one of their tenants.53 In 1508 Alda’s husband asked her to put his tents in order and send them on for use in the campaign since he had already lent one to the captain of the infantry. Therefore, she asked Niccolò to have the tents stretched and pulled to see if anything was missing from them, and to make every provision in the matter.54 Most notably, Alda was closely involved in the production of the arms for which Brescia was famed.55 In February 1508 she advised Niccolò about the provision of armour required for the troops: Having had notice that your brother-in-law the magnificent Count Giovanni Pietro [Gonzaga of Novellara] wishes to make a certain quantity of armour and that by your good offices the business has been given to [the armourer] Piero Iacomo da Castello I have wished to make these few words about it and beg that your magnif icence might be content not to make another contract with that Piero Iacomo because I have a way of serving in this [business] rather better than he can, at the same price as him, and with that convenience of time, because with very little respect he says rather insolent words about the house [of Gambara]. In addition, he has not wished to transfer from the Count [Giovanni Pietro?] the measurements for a cuirass [and] notwithstanding the fact 52 No. 14 (21 Feb. 1497); no. 15 (22 Feb. 1497); no. 16 (3 March 1497); Lucrezia Gambara to Niccolò Gambara, b. 272 (Verola Alghise, 6 Mar. 1497). 53 No. 28 (27 Aug. 1499); no. 213 (20 July 1511). 54 No. 145 (24 April 1508). Compare Cockram, 130. 55 See Fletcher’s contribution to this volume.

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that under the favour of the house [of Gambara] this [?] has earned five hundred ducats he has turned his back to its needs. I have proceeded without him because he says he can live without the house of Gambara. And that house has brought his shops to the [prosperous] end to which they can now been found! And similarly, those men of Verola [Alghise] not being in [your] service your magnif icence ought not to deign to do anything else without me, because I will bring it about quickly and well.56

Pietro Iacomo had indeed done well out of the family and its Gonzaga connections as can be seen from a note of payments of 867 lire a grossi in money of account made to him up to 1496 and a detailed list of further payments made between 26 April 1499 and 13 October 1504 amounting to 645 lire a grossi and 5 soldi. The accoutrements ordered by the Gambara included dozens of cuirasses, sallets and bevors (helmets and neck-chin protectors) for Alda’s brother-in-law Count Giovanni Pietro Gonzaga; a similar range of armour for another relation Count Giovanni Maria Scotti; a corselet with shoulder pads, doublet, restraints and curbs for one Zorzi Albanese (likely a stradiot); sallets, including one in the French style with a bevor of mail, for Lucio Malvezzi, as well as a mail doublet for his brother Giulio; repairs to a piece of armour for Pietro Antonio Malvezzi; and two bombards at four gold ducats a piece.57 But if Alda also had a hand in these orders no trace of her intervention survives in the household account books. 56 ‘Havendo havuto noticia el Magnif ico Co. Zo. Pietro cognato vostro voler far fare certa quantità d’armatura quali per mezzo vostro de essere datto tal impresa a Piero Iacomo da Castello: pertanto ho voluto farne queste poche parole in pregare la M. V. sia contento non far altro contratto cum esso Piero Iacomo perche io havuto modo farne servire assai melio che non fara lui, cum quello medesimo precio le fara lui, et cum quella comodit[à] de tempo sapera abocha a dimandare, perche dice parole della casa assai insolente, cum pochissimo rispetto: ultra che non ha voluto mai transferirse dell[o] Conte particolari la mesura de una coraza non considerando che sotto el favore della casa, questo [word illegible] ha guadagnato mezzo miliaro di ducati, et alli bisogni ne volta le spalle. Son usita senza lui perche dice che senza casa Gambaresca gli basta lanimo de vivere. Et la casa essa quella gli ha posto la botege sue nel termine la trova havere. Siche prego la M. V. per amor mio a non exequire altro in beneficio suo. Et semelmente quelli homeni da Virole non essendo servito la M. V. se dignara de fare non exequisca altro senza me, perche le faro? presto e bene’. No. 138 (23 Feb. 1508). 57 See the volume inscribed ‘Maestro 2.o’ and (at a later date) ‘del Con. Nicolò Gambara / Dal 1489 fino 1495’ in b. 571, fols. 134v, 135r. Inserted between these folios is a booklet: ‘Credito de M[aest]ro Piero de Castello armarolo de bressa’ (ca. 1496–98). The gold ducat stabilized at 6 lire a grossi 4 soldi until 1510. There were 20 soldi in a lira a grosso: Lane and Mueller, 362.

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Raising Troops and Sappers The greatest challenge of military management faced by Alda was raising troops as well as the sappers (‘guastadori’) vital for the provision of temporary earthwork defences, bridges, and roads. On the eve of Agnadello the Venetian commissioners and rectors had struggled to raise experienced infantry in the prosperous and settled territories on its western frontier.58 Nevertheless, around one-third of the Venetian army at that time was composed of militia (cernide) exempted from labour service and paid two ducats every thirty-six days in war (one ducat less than infantrymen), raised and equipped by rural communities including the Bresciano which sent no less than 1,200 men to the muster at Pontevico.59 Alda and the rest of the Gambara family took a leading role in the organization of these musters for the Venetians.60 Following the French conquest of the Bresciano and the transfer of Gambara services, the family was expected to furnish a company to serve in the armies of Louis XII and to provide sappers. However, like the aforementioned billeting of troops the family was quick to assert its privileges and exemptions with respect to such wartime exigencies, but also to leverage its capacity to raise troops for its own local advantage. In the spring of 1510 Alda sent her copy of a French order for sappers to Pietro Giacomo, a member of the staff of Cardinal Carlo del Carretto, the French-appointed governor of Brescia, who issued a letter of revocation and reprimanded the auditor for making such an error against his wishes. Nevertheless, Pietro Giacomo wanted the family to help the French meet this need. Alda therefore noted that Niccolò should put things in order at the feudatory of Gambara, send around ten men from Milzano, Pralboino and Verola Alghise, and pay two marcelli to the men raised from their new lands.61 Alda then wrote to Niccolò suggesting that he provide a chief for the sappers and that they all go down to Calvisano, while he also moved to ensure that Quinzano made its due provision or pay a fine of 10 lire planete. She concluded by noting that she had already been in touch with the vicar 58 Mallett and Hale, 315. 59 Pezzolo, ‘La “rivoluzione”’, 38. On raising troops, the performance of the rural militia in war, and pay before ca. 1550 see Mallett and Hale, 78–81, 350–58, 383, 494–95; Pezzolo, ‘L’Archibugio’. 60 Bowd, ‘Alda’. 61 No. 186 (7 May 1510); Sanudo, 10:32. On sappers in the service of Venice during the fifteenth century see Mallett and Hale, 87–96. Two marcelli were silver coins amounting to one lira di piccolo or very roughly an agricultural worker’s weekly wage.

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at Verola Alghise on the matter of enrolment so that Niccolò would lose no time.62 The peasants, who probably did not welcome the distraction from their agricultural labours, proved less than tractable and Alda was forced to return to this topic with some insistence a month later.63 The cardinal had reminded Alda of the king’s need for sappers and so in a lengthy and repetitive autograph letter she directed Niccolò to make every immediate effort to raise from their lands more sappers who would be paid and would return before the time of ‘the frenzy of harvest’ (‘la furia del medere’). Honour also demanded action: their rivals the Martinengo had made great provision of sappers and the Gambara therefore ought to write to the king and the royal governor to let them both know about their concern for this need and to send them men by force or of their own volition. Worse, some peasants had joined the Venetians without Gambara permission and with little fear of the king. Truly, Alda wrote with some exasperation, these were peasants whom one had to persuade with menaces rather than good words and they should be ordered to this in the name of the king.64 In a rather less agitated letter the following day Alda noted that the cardinal had informed her that his superior, the governor in Milan, had sent a courier requesting a thousand sappers and so she once again begged Niccolò to send more men if he could and added that they would be well paid.65 Alda returned to the topic again the following day in yet another lengthy autograph letter. She noted that a certain Messer Cesare had promised to send one hundred at the rate of pay of six marchetti per day, and she once again noted if they did not wish to go by love then they would go by force. Some, like the rustics (‘rustigi’) of Pralboino and Milzano, had gone into the Venetian camp against the proclamations of the king, and each commune faced a fine of 200 ducats if it failed to supply sufficient manpower although those in the new lands had applied to the royal chamber in Milan (presumably for an exemption).66 The royal governor subsequently sent a list of the total required to Alda who forwarded a copy to Niccolò and advised him that 62 No. 187 (8 May 1510). The lira planeta was the Brescian money of account and in this case the fine was set at a fairly standard rate. 63 On the scarcity of volunteer sappers later in the century and the need to raise wages see Ongaro, 45. 64 B. 282, no. 605 (1 June 1510). 65 No. 188 (2 June 1510). 66 B. 282, no. 604 (3 June 1510). Alda is likely referring to her son-in-law Cesare Martinengo di Cesaresco, lord of Orzivecchi. The marchetto was the equivalent of the soldo a grosso, 124 of which made up a gold ducat at this time: Lane and Mueller, 362.

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they were needed in Brescia the following day and would perhaps be paid more than the sum listed, which would be to their ‘honour and utility’.67 Alda’s final letter to Niccolò on the matter of raising sappers and infantry troops is an excellent distillation of her whole approach to military management. The letter is detailed, crisp and commanding and demonstrates clearly how the family’s established household could be used to funnel ready men drawn from their feudal territories to the military headquarters at Cremona: I believe that yesterday your lordship had a letter from my consort the count by way of Pontevico from which [it is known that] with the agreement of the nephew of the castellan of Cremona troops are raised to go to camp but since your lordship has not provided a company you must set about finding a captain, or market cat [sc. cunning or watchful person?], or some other suitable person from our territories to be sent with your letters through the said lands and raise a company of fifty or one hundred with good fare to meet this need. These men should be found in Cremona on Thursday and from them a selection made of twenty-five or thirty who will be well paid. The captain will make three advances to them, amounting to twelve ducats each. And so your lordship should get on with this matter with all haste and the greatest diligence. But the one who sent the sappers down has sent them back again because they cannot work and I wonder that you have been asked not to send them at present and that no order is issued to them. Your Lordship should not let them come without a word from the castellan.… [Postscript:] And because it seems that at Gottolengo may be found better men skilled in carrying arms one can send there for them, and thus your lordship can let the priest of Breda know that he ought to send those who shall be good by the nephews of Rizo de Gabianeda. In this [manner] he may [also] send to Calvisano by Ravello, and so those from among all of these [men] will bring about this [desired] result.68 67 No. 189 (19 June 1510), endorsed ‘cito cito’. See also no. 194 (18 Aug. 1510). 68 ‘[C]redo la S. V. heri habia ha[v]uto una lettera dil signor mio consorte per via de Pontevicho. Dil che ad complacentia dil nepote dil castelano da Cremona quale fa fanti per andare al campo et per non havere fornita la compagnia la signoria vostra voglia vedere di cercare uno capo: overo mercato gato, autem uno altro di le terre nostre che sia al proposito: et mandarlo cum vostre lettere per le dicte terre et fare compagnia 50 aut 100: che habino bona ciera al dicto bisogno quali per tuto zobia si vogliano trovarsi ad Cremona de li quali fanti se ne fara eletione de 25 aut 30 et serano ben paghati, el capo li sera fato carere 3 paghe morte, donde tochara ducati 12 per acaduna paga, et cosi V. S. voglia cum ogni optima diligentia et expeditione spagare questa cosa: et perche quella a facto venire suso li guastatori li havemo rimandati perche mi si po laborare et mi maraveglio che e commiso che ve sia scrito che non se mandaseno al presente et che non

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The seriousness with which Alda’s military authority was treated is demonstrated by the fact that on the same day Pietro Sacchi, the Frenchappointed vicar of Manerbio, wrote to Niccolò affirming that he had just received a letter from her with an immediate wish for ‘good troops’ to be paid by Niccolò. Sacchi promised to search out the best men and asked for advice on amount and means of payment to be made to them and to their head.69

The Crisis of 1512 The climax of these efforts, and the supreme test of Alda’s military management, came early in 1512 when the family’s great enemy Count Alvise Avogadro attempted to oust their patrons the French from Brescia in an unsuccessful uprising on 18 January, and then on 2 February with Venetian reinforcements managed to take the city.70 Alda’s loyalty to France never wavered and just a few days after Avogadro’s f irst assault she was writing with hope that everything would come out well for Louis XII.71 In her letters to her niece Auriga, Alda traced the advance of the Venetians, including Count Alvise, and she offered advice on how to fortify the castle at Verola Alghise – and most importantly protect her own grain there – by making sure good guards and men with brains were at the gates so that the enemy could not appear unexpectedly, and by advising her to send a ‘secret man’ to Mantua to understand what was happening on that key front. Above all, she counseled secrecy since the enemy, like the French, sent out spies – those ‘quintessential shadow agents of war’ as Ioanna Iordanou has put it in her contribution to this volume.72 li sia dato aviso: siche V. S. non ne lassa per venire senza parola dil castelano … [Postscript:] Et perche ad Gotholengo ne pare se atrovarseno megliori homini pratichi ad portare arme ge si pora mandare li: et cosi V. S. pora fare intendere al Prete de la Breda che voglia mandare per quelli nepoti de Rizo de Gabianeda qualli seriano boni: In questa poria mandare ad Calvisano per Ravello: qualli tra tuti questi tum vogliano fare questo effecto’. No. 205 (27 Jan. 1511). Pontevico was a fortified outpost: Mallett and Hale, 90, 150. 69 Pietro Sacchi to Niccolò Gambara, b. 278 (Gottolengo, 27 Jan. 1511). See also same to same, b. 278 (Gottolengo, 29 Jan. 1511). 70 Merici. 71 No. 227 (22 Jan. 1512, ‘hora 19’). 72 No. 220 (18 Dec. 1511); no. 225 (19 Jan. 1512); no. 226 (22 Jan. 1512); no. 227 (22 Jan. 1512, ‘hora 19’); no. 228 (23 Jan. 1512). On anti-Venetian spies see Francesco Trenta to Auriga Gambara, b. 283, no. 75 (Verola Alghise, 26 Jan. 1512). See above, 241.

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Meanwhile, Alda holed up in the castle at Brescia with her daughter Veronica and the remaining French forces.73 In her final surviving letter before the Venetian assault Alda’s thoughts, as ever, turned towards questions of loyalty and obedience: that the men of their feudal lands of Verola Alghise had made a great – presumably favourable – demonstration was not news to her because they knew they could not have a better master (‘patrono’), and for this reason they – presumably the family – ought not to impose any more of a burden on them than they can bear, take matters with love and not with pain, and consequently all would turn out well (literally, ‘they will all eat’).74 The Venetian occupation lasted a little over two weeks but caused considerable damage to Alda and her family – their erstwhile guest Andrea Gritti and noble rival Count Alvise plundered Alda’s palace in the city and sold her grain at a low price in the market.75 But in the end, Gaston de Foix made his rapid march to Brescia and allowed the French garrison to retake the city and exact a just revenge, including the decapitation of the rebellious count. In June 1512 the indefatigable Alda, having organized the payment of ransoms for key supporters,76 was reported at the head of one hundred horsemen proceeding out of Brescia and her subsequent correspondence, which concludes in 1527, indicates that she worked hard to rebuild family fortunes.77

Conclusion Thanks to effective household, estate, and military management on the part of Alda and her successors the Gambara consolidation of feudal power in the Bresciano continued for at least another century. By 1610 it was estimated that the Gambara owned almost 3,000 hectares of land, which has been likened to ‘a small state within a state’.78 As noted, Venice was obliged for the sake of its security to tolerate a high degree of autonomy on the part of Brescian noble families, many of whom continued to provide soldiers and comprise a hereditary officer class with close links to other such families across northern Italy. In this respect it is significant that within a year 73 Sanudo, 13:438, 445, 469. 74 ‘Le quale vano tute in mangiare’. No. 229 (24 Jan. 1512). 75 Sanudo, 14:9. 76 Archivio di Stato, Brescia, Notarile, 2146 (Pietro Giacomo Bellecatti), 22, 23 Feb., 5 March 1512. I am grateful to Marco Pakas for this reference. 77 Sanudo, 14:288. 78 Ferraro, 40.

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of the Brescian ‘revolution’ of 1644 caused by local protests against fiscal inequities the Venetians chose to reverse their reforms to the local council and to reintroduce the old order which favoured established landed and military families including the Avogadro, Martinengo, and the Gambara.79 This toleration had important consequences for the power of women. It has sometimes been suggested that female agency based on procreative and dynastic priorities flourished more strongly in the Italian courts than in the homosocial public and political spaces of republican states like Venice.80 In the recently conquered and weakly centralized environment of much of the Venetian mainland empire entrenched feudal powers might flourish at some distance from republican patriarchal priorities, or even in contempt for Venetian mercantile priorities, and so feudatories like the Gambara could absorb and embody elite political and social life as ‘small princes’ in the absence of a local court.81 In this way, the women of these families were able to move between the private and public spaces of household and city in pursuit of dynastic power and the preservation of patrimony. They sometimes did this on their own account, as mothers-in-law or, as in Alda’s case, as wives, widows and mothers.82 It is not by chance therefore that in her letters to her brother and sister-inlaw, and her niece, Alda insistently presented herself as ‘sister’ and ‘mother’ and articulated a close link between the protection of family and household, the honour and survival of the clan (casa) and local power which helped to circumvent misogynistic claims and legal restrictions on the female role.83 In this way, Alda’s agency as an informal regent in the absence of her husband was far from independent or individualistic and involved some ‘limitation of personhood’.84 It was an agency underpinned by a strongly articulated sense of agnatic and cognatic connections quite typical of elite families until the latter part of the sixteenth century: honour was tied by Alda to her husband’s clan and its posterity in the shape of their sons and daughters, and by the careful exploitation of the natal and conjugal kinship network in which she was embedded.85 79 Ferraro, 56. See also Pezzolo, ‘Nobiltà’. 80 But note Hurlburt, 10–11. 81 Arcangeli, Gentiluomini; Smith, ‘Revisiting’. 82 McIver, ‘An Invisible’; Ghirardo; Crabb. 83 Kuehn, Law; Family, esp. chaps. 1–2, 7. See also Couchman and Crabb. 84 Kuehn, Family, 66. See also James; Davis. 85 Pomata; McIver, Women, 31; Chojnacki, ‘“The Most Serious Duty”’; Kuehn, ‘Daughters’. Alda makes explicit reference to efforts to preserve for her son disputed patrimony in no. 132 (10 June 1507).

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In return, Alda was perhaps trusted by her husband to preserve his interests within the family more effectively than his brothers, given how fraught sibling relations usually were among Italian aristocrats of the period, and especially in a family like the Gambara whose territories had so recently been shared out fraternally. In 1506 she penned a letter about estate matters to Niccolò Gambara in her own hand but sent it in her husband’s name.86 Tellingly, in 1510 Gianfrancesco excused the fact that he had not written to his brother for two months in the following terms: ‘I have written well to Alda since I know that the letters are common to you [both] and from which you ought to have understood all that has come to pass for us’.87 But Alda also issued her own commands and requests, and in her letters to Lucrezia and Auriga developed an effective female channel for household and estate management.88 As the disparaging remarks about the ‘whore and cow’ Alda and her frivolous, disordered and ‘brothel’-like household quoted at the beginning of this chapter suggest, the exercise of female agency nevertheless challenged assumptions about social or natural hierarchies and the role of patriarchy or ‘hegemonic masculinity’ as a legitimation of power relations.89 The moral force of such gendered discourse is especially clear in relation to women and war. As recent work by Frédérique Verrier and Gerry Milligan has shown, the Renaissance presentation of female involvement in the supposedly masculine domain of warfare was a matter for considerable philosophical debate, historical comment, and chivalric literary fantasy. The presence of women warriors in literature – including lists of illustrious women modelled on those of Giovanni Boccaccio – underscored the pusillanimity and effeminacy of Italian men or reflected a yearning for a return to peaceful order and traditional gender roles.90 These literary concerns may also have indicated a heightened consciousness of contemporary militant women like Orsina Visconti, commanding 86 B. 270 (27 April 1506). Compare Cockram, 138–42. 87 ‘[B]en scritto a lalda che so le lettere ve sono state comune, et doveri haver inteso tutti i successi nostri’. Gianfrancesco Gambara to Niccolò Gambara, b. 270 (Blois, 1 Aug. 1510). Note also his comment in a letter of the previous year: ‘Domane Io me parto con la Compagnia andar ad Pischiera & poy In Veronese dove secondo li partiti pigliaremo il Camino scrivendo drizate le littere a lalda mia consorte alaquale ho Comesso. non manchi in cosa alchuna de quanto scriverete’. Same to same, b. 270 (9 Oct. 1509). 88 For example, see no. 16 (3 March 1497); no. 32 (10 May 1501); no. 54 (13 Jun. 1504); no. 78 (4 June 1504); no. 79 (15 June 1504); no. 160 (10 Jan. 1509); no. 214 (5 Sept. 1511); no. 219 (2 Dec. 1511); no. 222 (29 Dec. 1511); no. 223 (2 Jan. 1512). 89 Connell and Messerschmidt; Lynch. 90 Milligan; Verrier. See also Milligan’s contribution to this volume.

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and supposedly sexually dangerous regents like Caterina Sforza, or of the women of all ranks pressed into service to defend hearth and home under siege conditions during the Italian Wars.91 They may even have echoed knowledge of quasi-regents or military managers like Alda Pio Gambara and other women who formed part of an extended ‘campaign community’ moving between camp and home.92 In sum, as noted in the Introduction to this book, scholars have placed women in the midst of the battlefield as warriors, but they have also sought to show how the nature of war itself is gendered and in this way to open up a space for the conceptualization of military management and shadow agency with which this chapter has been concerned.93 Alda’s letters provide some insight into matters of war and peace from a female perspective and show how war-related work can be understood in a gendered way, and how it can or should be integrated within the political framework of the French and Venetian states and their organization for war. The accounts of Alda threatening to fire artillery upon enemy emissaries demanding surrender in 1512,94 or of her subsequent departure from the city at the head of a hundred cavalry need not be dismissed as the fantasies and exaggerations of her enemies and indeed they would seem to be perfectly in keeping with the character and agency explored here. In fact, the concise and commanding language of Alda’s letters fully reveals how she worked to provide a vital service to her family and to the state by writing and plotting – as Marco Negro observed – but also by a lot more besides.

Bibliography Primary Sources Manuscript

Archivio di Stato, Brescia, Archivio Gambara, bb. 1, 16, 269, 271, 272, 274, 277, 278, 282, 283, 571 Archivio di Stato, Brescia, Notarile, 2146 (Pietro Giacomo Bellecatti, 1494–1524) 91 Bowd, Renaissance, 99–111. 92 Lynn. Alda was in Mantua in April 1507 around the time the Gambara mustered troops close to the Mantuan border: No. 125, Alda to Aurelia Maggi (Mantua, 21 April 1507); Sanudo, 7: 70. 93 Above, 20–22. 94 Spini, 291.

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Frati, Vasco, Ida Gianfranceschi, Françoise Bonali Fiquet, Irene Perini Bianchi, Franco Robecchi, and Rosa Zilioli Faden (eds). Il sacco di Brescia: Testimonianze, cronache, diari, atti del processo e memorie storiche della ‘presa memoranda et crudele’ della città nel 1512, 3 vols. in 2 (Brescia: Grafo, 1989–90). Gambara, Veronica. Complete Poems: A Bilingual Edition. Introduction by Molly M. Martin, edited and translated by Molly M. Martin and Paola Ugolini (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014). Sanudo, Marin. I diarii di Marino Sanuto, edited by Rinaldo Fulin et al., 58 vols. (Venice, 1879–1903; facs. edn, Bologna: Forni, 1969–70). Spini, Patrizio. ‘Il Suplimento delle Historie bresciane’, in Elia Capriolo, Delle Historie Bresciane (Brescia: Pietro Maria Marchetti, 1585), 257–344.

Secondary Sources Affò, Ireneo. Istoria della città e ducato di Guastalla, 2 vols. (Guastalla: Salvatore Costa, 1786–87). Ågren, Maria. ‘Introduction: Making a Living, Making a Difference’, in Making a Living, Making a Difference: Gender and Work in Early Modern European Society, edited by Maria Ågren (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), chap. 1 https://oxford. universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190240615.001.0001/ acprof-9780190240615-chapter-1. Arcangeli, Letizia. Gentiluomini di Lombardia: ricerche sull’aristocrazia padana nel Rinascimento (Milan: UNICOPLI, 2003). Arcangeli, Letizia. ‘Un’aristocrazia territoriale al femminile. Due o tre cose su Laura Pallavicini Sanvitale e le contesse vedove del parmense’, in Arcangeli and Peyronel, 595–654. Arcangeli, Letizia, and Susanna Peyronel (eds). Donne di potere nel Rinascimento (Rome: Viella, 2008). Archetti, Gabriele. ‘Gambara, Pietro’, in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, 100 vols. in progress (Rome: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana, 1960–present), 52:60–62. Archetti, Gabriele. ‘Una famiglia in ascesa: i Gambara nel Quattrocento’, Civiltà Bresciana, 4 (Dec. 1996): 51–75. Bowd, Stephen D. Venice’s Most Loyal City: Civic Identity in Renaissance Brescia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010) Bowd, Stephen D. Renaissance Mass Murder: Civilians and Soldiers during the Italian Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). Bowd, Stephen D. ‘Alda Pio Gambara and Regime Change in Brescia during the Italian Wars’, in The Culture and Politics of Regime Change in Italy, c.1494–c.1559, edited by Alexander Lee and Brian Jeffrey Maxson (Routledge: Abingdon, 2022), 190–208.

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Camerano, A. ‘Gambara, Gianfrancesco’, in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, 100 vols. in progress (Rome: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana, 1960–present), 52:41–42. Casanova, Cesarina. ‘Mogli e vedove di condottieri in area padana fra Quattro e Cinquecento’, in Arcangeli and Peyronel, 513–34. Chojnacki, Stanley. ‘“The Most Serious Duty”: Motherhood, Gender, and Patrician Culture in Renaissance Venice’, in Refiguring Woman: Perspectives on Gender and the Italian Renaissance, edited by Marilyn Migiel and Juliana Schiesari (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), 133–54. Chojnacki, Stanley. ‘At Home and Beyond: Women’s Power in Renaissance Venice’, in Arcangeli and Peyronel, 25–44. Cockram, Sarah D. P. Isabella d’Este and Francesco Gonzaga: Power Sharing at the Italian Renaissance Court (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013). Connell R. W., and James W. Messerschmidt. ‘Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept’, Gender & Society, 19.6 (2005): 829–59. Couchman, Jane, and Ann Crabb (eds). Women’s Letters Across Europe, 1400–1700: Form and Persuasion (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005). Covini, Maria Nadia. ‘“Alle spese di Zoan villano”: gli alloggiamenti militari nel dominio visconteo-sforzesco’, Nuova Rivista Storica 76.1 (1992): 1–56. Covini, Maria Nadia. ‘Tra patronage e ruolo politico: Bianca Maria Visconti (1450–1468)’, in Arcangeli and Peyronel, 247–80. Crabb, Ann. The Strozzi of Florence: Widowhood and Family Solidarity in the Renaissance (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000). Davis, Natalie Zemon. ‘Boundaries and the Sense of Self in Sixteenth-century France’, in Reconstructing Individualism: Autonomy, Individuality, and the Self in Western Thought, edited by Thomas C. Heller, Morton Sosna, and David E. Wellberg (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1986), 53–63. Dixon, Suzanne. ‘Conclusion – The Enduring Theme: Domineering Dowagers and Scheming Concubines’, in Stereotypes of Women in Power: Historical Perspectives and Revisionist Views, edited by Barbara Garlick, Suzanne Dixon, and Pauline Allen (New York: Greenwood Press, 1992), 209–25. Ferraro, Joanne M. ‘Feudal-Patrician Investments in the Bresciano and the Politics of the Estimo, 1426–1641’, Studi Veneziani, n. s. 7 (1983): 31–57. Folin, Marco. ‘La corte della duchessa: Eleanora d’Aragona a Ferrara’, in Arcangeli and Peyronel, 481–512. Gagné, John. Milan Undone: Contested Sovereignties in the Italian Wars (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2021). Ghirardo, Diane Yvonne. ‘Lucrezia Borgia as Entrepreneur’, Renaissance Quarterly 61 (2008): 53–91. Hocquet, Jean-Claude. ‘Venice’, in The Rise of the Fiscal State in Europe, c.1200–1815, edited by Richard Bonney (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 381–415.

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Hurlburt, Holly S. The Dogaressa of Venice, 1200–1500: Wife and Icon (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). James, Carolyn. A Renaissance Marriage: The Political and Personal Alliance of Isabella d’Este and Francesco Gonzaga (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020). Kuehn, Thomas. Law, Family, and Women: Toward a Legal Anthropology of Renaissance Italy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). Kuehn, Thomas. ‘Daughters, Wives, and Widows as Legal Persons’, in Time, Space, and Women’s Lives in Early Modern Europe, edited by Anne Jacobson Schutte, Thomas Kuehn, and Silvana Seidel Menchi (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2001), 97–115. Kuehn, Thomas. Family and Gender in Renaissance Italy, 1300–1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). Lane, Frederic C., and Reinhold C. Mueller, Money and Banking in Medieval and Renaissance Venice. Vol. 1: Coins and Moneys of Account (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985). Lennersand, Marie, Jan Mispelaere, Christopher Pihl, and Maria Ågren. ‘Gender, Work, and the Fiscal-Military State’, in Making a Living, Making a Difference: Gender and Work in Early Modern European Society, edited by Maria Ågren (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), chap. 8 http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/ view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190240615.001.0001/acprof-9780190240615-chapter-8. Litta, Pompeo. Celebri famiglie italiane, vol. ‘P’ (Milan: Giusti, 1819). Lynch, Katherine A. ‘The Family and the History of Public Life’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 24.4 (Spring 1994): 665–84. Lynn, John A. Women, Armies, and Warfare in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). Mallett, Michael, and J. R. Hale. The Military Organization of a Renaissance State: Venice, c.1400 to 1617 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). McIver, Katherine A. ‘The “Ladies of Correggio”: Veronica Gambara and Her Matriarchal Heritage’, Explorations in Renaissance Culture, 26.1 (2000): 25–44. McIver, Katherine A. Women, Art, and Architecture in Northern Italy, 1520–1580: Negotiating Power (Farnham: Ashgate, 2006). McIver, Katherine A. ‘An Invisible Enterprise: Women and Domestic Architecture in Early Modern Italy’, in Wives, Widows, Mistresses, and Nuns in Early Modern Italy: Making the Invisible Visible through Art and Patronage, edited by Katherine A. McIver (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), 159–77. Merici, G. ‘Luigi Avogadro: Un signore e un feudo nella congiura antifrancese del 1512’, Civiltà Bresciana, 3–4 (2009): 137–81. Milligan, Gerry. Moral Combat: Women, Gender, and War in Italian Renaissance Literature (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018)

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Mucci, Silvana. ‘Lucrezia Gambara e il cenacolo spirituale di Verola Alghisi’, in La scrittura femminile a Brescia tra il Quattrocento e l’Ottocento, edited by Elisabetta Selmi, vol. 1 (Brescia: Fondazione Civiltà Bresciana, 2001), 189–222. Neuschel, Kristen B. ‘Noblewomen and War in Sixteenth-Century France’, in Changing Identities in Early Modern France, edited by Michael Wolfe (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997), 124–44. Ongaro, Giulio. Peasants and Soldiers: The Management of the Venetian Military Structure in the Mainland Dominion between the 16th and 17th Centuries (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017). Pasero, Carlo. Francia, Spagna, Impero a Brescia, 1509–1516 (Brescia: Fratelli Geroldi, 1958). Pasero, Carlo. ‘Il dominio veneto fino all’incendio della loggia (1426–1575)’, in Storia di Brescia, edited by Giovanni Treccani degli Alfieri, vol. 2: La dominazione veneta (1426–1575) (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1963), 3–396. Pezzolo, Luciano. ‘L’Archibugio e l’Aratro. Considerazioni e problemi per una storia delle milizie rurali venete nei secoli XVI–XVII’, Studi Veneziani, n. s. 7 (1983): 59–80. Pezzolo, Luciano. ‘Nobiltà militare e potere nello stato veneziano fra Cinque e Seicento’, in I Farnese. Corti, guerra e nobiltà in antico regime, edited by Antonella Bilotti, Piero Del Negro, and Cesare Mozzarelli (Rome: Bulzoni, 1997), 397–419. Pezzolo, Luciano. ‘La “rivoluzione militare”: una prospettiva italiana, 1400–1700’, in Militari in età moderna. La centralità di un tema di confine, edited by Alessandra Dattero and Stefano Levati (Milan: Monduzzi, 2006), 15–62. Plebani, Tiziana. ‘La corrispondenza nell’antico regime: lettere di donne negli archive di famiglia’, in Per lettera: La scrittura epistolare femminile tra archivio e tipografia, secoli XV–XVII, edited by Gabriella Zarri (Rome: Viella, 1999), 43–78. Pomata, Gianna. ‘Family and Gender’, in Early Modern Italy, edited by John A. Marino (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 69–86. Sandberg, Brian. ‘“Generous Amazons Came to the Breach”: Besieged Women, Agency and Subjectivity during the French Wars of Religion’, Gender & History, 16.3 (Nov. 2004): 654–88. Shaw, Christine. ‘Bartolomea Campofregoso: A Woman’s Claim to Power in Fifteenth-Century Genoa’, in Arcangeli and Peyronel, 465–80. Smith, Alison A. ‘Gender, Ownership and Domestic Space: Inventories and Family Archives in Renaissance Verona’, Renaissance Studies, 12.3 (1998): 375–91. Smith, Alison A. ‘Revisiting the Renaissance Household, in Theory and in Practice: Locating Wealthy Women in Sixteenth-Century Verona’, in Wives, Widows, Mistresses, and Nuns in Early Modern Italy: Making the Invisible Visible through Art and Patronage, edited by Katherine A. McIver (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), 141–57.

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Spagnoletti, Angelantonio, ‘Donne di governo tra sventura, fermezza e rassegnazione nell’Italia della prima metà del ’500’, in Arcangeli and Peyronel, 313–32. Tanner Heather J. (ed.) Medieval Elite Women and the Exercise of Power, 1100–1400: Moving Beyond the Exceptionalist Debate (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). Ventura, Angelo. Nobiltà e popolo nella società veneta del ‘400 e ‘500 (Bari: Laterza, 1964). Verrier, Frédérique. Le miroir des Amazones: Amazones, viragos et guerrières dans la littérature italienne des XV et XVIe siècles (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2003).

About the Author Stephen Bowd is Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Edinburgh and the author of studies of the Bresciano, among other works on Renaissance Italy. He has recently published Renaissance Mass Murder: Civilians and Soldiers during the Italian Wars (2018).

10 Delivering Arms Noblewomen, Artillery, and the Gendering of Violence During the French Wars of Religion Brian Sandberg1 Abstract Sixteenth-century French noblewomen defended their own châteaux, but also delivered arms to military contingents and field armies operating in their provinces. Confessional divisions and religious strife presented new opportunities for French women to engage in warfare during French Wars of Religion (1559–1629). This chapter will employ contemporary correspondence, military records, family papers, and other manuscript sources to examine French noblewomen and urban women as active participants in religious warfare. I will argue that the elite women who managed and supplied artillery forces played a vital role in the French Wars of Religion, contributing to the organization of military campaigns and siege operations. My analysis will focus on French noblewomen’s roles in supervising arsenals, organizing defences, mobilizing artillery trains, and employing artillery. Keywords: Noblewomen, Gender, Artillery, Gunpowder, Siege Warfare, French Wars of Religion

As King Henri IV’s (1553–1610) royalist armies engaged Catholic League forces across France during the 1590s, a noblewoman insisted that she maintained direct control of her artillery.2 Louise d’Ognies, madame de Picquigny, 1 The research for this essay was conducted with the support of the Institut d’études avancées de Paris and Northern Illinois University. Writing was supported by a residency at the IMéRA in Marseille. 2 Louise d’Ognies, madame de Piquigny is listed in the section on the government of Picardie in Traité des princes, conseilers et autres ministres de l’estat de France, in Potter, Foreign Intelligence, 100. Madame de Piquigny was married to Philibert-Emmanuel d’Ailly, vidame d’Amiens.

Bowd, S., Cockram, S. & Gagné, J. (eds.), Shadow Agents of Renaissance War. Suffering, Supporting, and Supplying Conflict in Italy and Beyond. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2023 doi: 10.5117/9789463721356_ch10

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assured Catherine de Clèves, duchesse de Guise, that ‘if I wanted to loan my cannons to the military governors of this region, I would have had my money long ago. But, I chose to do my duty in obeying your commands rather than preferring my particular friends’ desires against your wishes, which have always served me as law’.3 The Guise family and their allies were leading Catholic League forces against a king they regarded as an abominable heretic. In the chaos of religious warfare, Madame de Picquigny presents herself as a loyal noblewoman who demonstrates her service by conserving the artillery pieces under her control. Sixteenth-century French noblewomen defended their own châteaux, but they also delivered arms to military contingents and f ield armies operating in their provinces. Noblewomen and urban elite women with hôtels particuliers (urban palaces) protected their family residences, but also assisted in organizing civic defence and providing logistical aid to nearby armies. Elite women’s conventional peacetime roles as household managers expanded greatly during the long and bitter conflicts of the religious wars to include managing household arsenals and military supplies. Many elite French women participated in feminine and familial networks of correspondence to equip armed forces, organize military campaigns, mount raids, and sustain sieges. Confessional divisions and religious strife thus presented many opportunities for French women to engage in civil warfare. Historians of early modern France have documented women’s active participation in the French Wars of Religion (1559–1629), as Catholics and Huguenots (French Calvinists) waged a series of brutal civil conflicts. Political histories and biographies have shown how princely women such as Catherine de Médicis (1519–89), Jeanne d’Albret (1528–72), and Marie de Médicis (1575–1642) conducted politics and organized war efforts. Natalie Zemon Davis’s groundbreaking research on the ‘rites of violence’ revealed women’s roles in religious riots and urban politics. 4 Barbara B. Diefendorf has shown Parisian women’s involvement in religious activism and Catholic reform during the French Wars of Religion.5 Kristen Neuschel argues for the importance of noblewomen’s contributions to warfare during 3 The original reads: ‘si jeusse voullu bailler mes canons au gouuerneurs particuliere de ce pais il y a long temps que ieusse mon argent. Mais iay mieulx ayme satisfaire a mon debuoir en obeissant a voz commendemens que de preferer mes amis particuliers contre vostre volonte, laquelle me seruira tousiours de loy’. Madame Piquigny to duchesse de Guise, n.p., n.d. [1590s], BNF, Mss. fr. 3633, fol. 120. 4 Davis. 5 Diefendorf, Beneath the Cross; From Penitence to Charity.

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the religious wars.6 S. Annette Finley-Croswhite finds that women aided the ultra-Catholic cause in Dijon in many ways during the wars of the Catholic League.7 Michael Wolfe reveals women’s roles in the construction of bastioned fortifications during the religious wars.8 My previous research demonstrates that noblewomen and urban women participated actively in partis (religio-political parties) and urban defence during the religious wars.9 Now, we can consider how French noblewomen managed artillery forces and how feminine relationships with artillery pieces affected gender norms of violence. Heavy cannons had become integral to siege warfare by the early sixteenth century and artillery pieces were increasingly diffused throughout the kingdom, especially after the outbreak of the religious wars in 1559. Many nobles and municipal leaders acquired artillery pieces for the defence of their châteaux and urban communities during decades of religious warfare in France. Increasing numbers of large cannons were also mounted on naval sailing ships, while galleys and merchant ships often carried smaller guns. Women may have been involved in the procurement of maritime and naval artillery and munitions, but this study will have to confine itself to women and land-based guns.10 This chapter will employ contemporary correspondence, military records, family papers, and other manuscript sources to examine French noblewomen and urban women as active participants in religious warfare through their management of artillery forces. Manuscript sources on the noblewomen from the Montmorency, Lévis-Ventadour, Rohan, Bourbon, Lorraine-Guise, Joyeuse, Nevers, Nemours, and other families provide glimpses into noblewomen’s management of the procurement, stockpiling, distribution, and transportation of arms, artillery, munitions, and gunpowder during the religious wars. These sources are fragmentary and elusive, but printed pamphlets, treatises, and other published sources allow us to contexualize noblewomen’s activities in managing artillery, gunners, support personnel, and munitions during the religious wars. I will argue that the femmes fortes (strong women) who managed and supplied artillery forces played a vital role in the French Wars of Religion, contributing to the organization of military campaigns and siege operations. Noble châteaux and urban citadels provided key arsenals for arming infantry 6 Neuschel. 7 Finley-Croswhite. 8 Wolfe. 9 Sandberg, ‘Generous Amazons’. 10 On naval artillery in early modern France, see James; Parrott, Richelieu’s Army, 65–71.

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units, cavalry companies, and artillery forces in the context of pervasive civil warfare that was especially intense in mixed-confessional regions within the kingdom. The noblewomen and elite urban women who managed arsenals and artillery forces played a significant role in the processes of military mobilization and logistical support that allowed Catholic and Huguenot field armies to wage religious warfare. My analysis will focus on French noblewomen’s roles in supervising arsenals, organizing defences, mobilizing artillery trains, and employing artillery during the religious wars.

Supervising Arsenals Queens, princesses, and noblewomen supervised the arsenals and gun foundries that manufactured and maintained artillery during the French Wars of Religion. Catherine de Médicis worked closely with architect Philibert Delorme [or de L’Orme] in the 1560s and provided patronage to complete the rebuilding of the Arsenal de Paris following a major fire that had seriously damaged its buildings in 1563. Delorme constructed an enlarged complex of buildings to house the gun foundries, armouries, gunpowder workshops, stables, and artillery personnel.11 The grand maître de l’artillerie (Grand Master of Artillery) managed the royal artillery, often with the assistance of his wife and family. Maximilien de Béthune, baron de Rosny [and later duc de Sully], served as grand maître de l’artillerie from 1599 to 1610 and renovated parts of the Arsenal de Paris, including the residential palace of the grand maître.12 The wife of the grand maître de l’artillerie often resided in apartments within the Arsenal de Paris and contributed to managing the royal artillery services.13 Noble courtiers and civic elites visited the Arsenal de Paris and observed its artillery services, perhaps influencing practices at royal, municipal, and private arsenals throughout the kingdom. Princely women and high-ranking noblewomen assisted in supervising citadel and municipal arsenals located in towns within their seigneurial jurisdictions or where their husbands served as military governors. Gun founding provided a powerful expression of male royal authority, so women might have been excluded from this highly gendered sphere of 11 Babelon. 12 Barbiche and de Dainville-Barbiche, 180–84. 13 On the authority of the grand maître de l’artillerie, see L’ordonnance de François I, Fontainebleau, 28 Nov. 1540, in Guenois, 2253–54. Wood, 155–57.

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masculine and technical activity. Gun founders ideally followed Henri II’s royal ordinances on artillery, which provided for six main types of artillery: canon, grand culverine, bastarde, moyenne, faucon, and fauconneau.14 The founding of artillery pieces involved highly technical work that was directed by male military engineers and performed by skilled artisans who labored within arsenals. Despite these masculine aspects of gun founding, princely women and some noblewomen seem to have been aware of many of the technological aspects of artillery manufacturing, and were involved in commissioning artillery pieces and managing gun founding. French noblewomen corresponded with military engineers and discussed aspects of artillery production. Jeanne d’Albret, reine de Navarre, organized financial and military support for the Huguenot parti in the early phases of the religious wars, assisting in providing artillery for the defence of La Rochelle and other key cities and towns that joined the Calvinist cause.15 French noblewomen provided patronage for artillery production and in some cases may have purchased metal for artillery founding.16 More research is needed on arsenal records, fortress inventories, and artisanal workshops to reveal the extent of women’s involvement in the manufacture of artillery and munitions, but gun founding was not an exclusively masculine sphere of activity. Once artillery pieces were founded, the hungry guns consumed a steady diet of artillery shot (cannonballs) and gunpowder, and women were involved in nourishing the artillery. Early modern French language employed a feeding metaphor, using munitions de guerre to refer to gunpowder for artillery and munitions de pain for bread rations for soldiers.17 Sixteenthcentury artillery pieces usually fired solid round shot projectiles made of cast iron, rather than the cut stone shot used by late medieval bombards.18 Utilizing artillery pieces relied on copious amounts of gunpowder, which was manufactured in gunpowder mills and artisanal workshops in towns across France, as well as in major arms centres. Arsenals increasingly included purpose-built magazines with cellars for storing hundreds of barrels of gunpowder.19 14 Potter, Renaissance France at War, 152–57; Wood; Contamine. 15 Eurich, 194–218. 16 Countess Alda Pio Gambara dealt with armourers in early sixteenth-century Brescia. Bowd, 213–14; Bowd’s contribution to this volume. 17 The phrase ‘hungry guns’ has been used widely in discussing early modern artillery. Arnold, 24–34. 18 Hall, 55–65, 151–55. 19 Claude de Chastillon, engraving of the artillery magazine at Metz, cited in Buisseret, Henry IV, plate 11.

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Artillery equipment and munitions had to be carefully maintained in order to keep them serviceable for use in defensive fortifications or in artillery trains. The iron and bronze artillery pieces themselves were relatively easy to keep clean and dry, but other munitions and supplies were complicated to maintain. Gunpowder stores had to be carefully monitored and maintained, since corned black powder was highly unstable.20 Gunpower had to be kept cool and dry to preserve its effectiveness. Supplies of match cord also had to be kept dry in secure storage. Military engineers, gunners, artisans, and teamsters had to be employed to transport and use artillery pieces on campaign. Some noblewomen and urban women seem to have been involved in maintaining artillery pieces and organizing artillery logistical services. Renée de Marconnay offered to assist the duc de Nevers with gunpowder from her château’s magazines: ‘if your route is agreeable, I will be ready to do all in my power to provide munitions for the king’s service and for yours’.21 Many noble families maintained their own arsenals within their châteaux, and noblewomen regularly managed these arsenals when their husbands or sons were away. Nobles armed companies of cavalry and infantry, often providing soldiers with their arms and armour from their arsenals. Nobles who could afford artillery maintained small collections for use in defending the château or for conducting military operations in the region. Kristen Neuschel finds evidence in noble families’ household accounts that ‘there were cannons and, as the century wore on, increasing stocks of small arms—harquebuses and pistols—to provision for the château’s defense’.22 Noblewomen were often involved in financing artillery and managing their arsenal’s munitions. Neuschel uncovered the case of Suzanne de Bourbon, who was accused by her uncles of mismanaging her household, in part because she sold off cannons from one of her family’s châteaux to a relative. A document charged her with having ‘taken and appropriated all of the movable goods left by [her late husband], excepting none and [she] even took the artillery from the château of Saint Fargeau, which is a forte place’.23 Noblewomen’s patronage and crédit seems to have been vital in founding, purchasing, and maintaining artillery. Noblewomen administered their household personnel, supplies, finances, and possessions in collaboration with their husbands and secretaries. During 20 Hall, 67–104. 21 ‘Sy votre chemin sy adonne, je tiendray prest ce que vous me commanderez de ce qui sera en mon pouuoir de munitions pour le seruice du roy et particulierement pour le vre’. Renée de Marconnay to Louis de Gonzague duc de Nevers, Grancey, 1 May 1593, BNF, Mss. fr. 4719, fol. 112. 22 Neuschel, 126. 23 Neuschel, 127.

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the religious wars, wives and daughters often took on additional responsibilities when their husbands, sons, and other male relatives took up arms and joined military campaigns. Noblewomen’s management of their households often included maintaining arms, munitions, and arsenals. Kristen Neuschel has rightly argued that noblewomen’s managerial skills ‘included securing adequate supplies of gunpowder’.24 Officials administering urban fortresses composed periodic états, or inventories, of their arsenals and some noble families produced états of their châteaux that included lists of their arms. These états of artillery, firearms, and munitions were probably drawn up by clerks, but noblewomen and their secretaries would have overseen the production of inventories and later may have used these documents in managing artillery and munitions.

Organizing Defences French noblewomen were involved in organizing the defences of family châteaux, urban residences, and fortresses in their regions. Defensive artillery pieces had to be positioned in gun emplacements within bastioned fortifications or older towers in order to resist battery by siege artillery deployed by military contingents and field armies. Noblewomen seem to have participated in discussions about converting towers and enhancing fortifications to position defensive artillery during the religious wars, as an extension of their roles as household managers. Wives of fortress governors sometimes managed citadels and urban fortifications in the absence of their husbands. Noblewomen played especially active roles in making defensive preparations in their châteaux and their hôtels particuliers, using their prerogatives as household managers. Wives, mothers, daughters, and widows regularly acted as property managers, often employing notarized procurations (proxy authorizations) prepared by their male relatives. For example, Jean de La Rivière, seigneur de Chanlemy, left a procuration for his wife, Marguerite de La Roëre, madame de Chanlemy, to negotiate affairs in his absence during the 1590s.25 Kristen Neuschel argues that ‘armed with procurations authorizing them to act in their husbands’ names, noblewomen purchased land, negotiated 24 Neuschel, 126. 25 ‘Monsieur de Chanlemy en a ameney une bonne partie il a laisey procurasion a madame de Chanlemy et a monsieur dAnnisy pour treter de nre afayre’. Humbert de Marcilly, seigneur de Cypierre to Henriette de Clèves, duchesse de Nevers, n.p., n.d., BNF, Mss. fr. 4708, fol. 55.

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credit, paid off debts, collected tenants’ dues, and carried out virtually another task that safeguarding the family’s property required’.26 These procurations were especially important for the wives of fortress governors and military officers who regularly administered military affairs in their husbands’ absences. Some military officers used notarized procurations to provide written documentation of their wives’ sweeping authority in their absence. When François de La Jugée, comte de Rieux, departed to join the royal army in 1629, he drafted a written procuration to give his wife, Marguerite de Navarre, comtesse de Rieux, full powers to administer his noble household and finances during his military service. The comte de Rieux granted his wife authority ‘to administer, manage, and negotiate all the affairs of his maison, to visit and rent his places and seigneuries, collect the rents from the hands of renters, give receipts for all sums due to him, borrow whatever sums seem good to her, make contracts or promises on them, sell, [transfer], and engage, and generally do what the said seigneur would do if he were present and was with promise to not revoke what the said madame his wife will do, manage, and procure until he takes up the charge of the procuration’.27 Although the comte de Rieux does not mention specific military authority in his procuration, the document would have given his wife the power to manage all of the family’s châteaux, along with their arsenal, garrison soldiers, and war finances in his absence. Many noblewomen used procurations to organize the defence of their families’ châteaux when threatened with blockades and sieges during the religious wars. Procurations often gave noblewomen the power to manage all household, financial, and official affairs during their husband’s absence – including defensive preparations at the châteaux, citadels, and urban fortifications under the command of their husbands. This might include sustained fortification-building projects, fortif ication repair and maintenance work, or hasty enhancements to fortifications. Noblewomen thus often held the authority to manage the soldiers, gunners, military engineers, pioneers, and other garrison personnel who composed châteaux and fortress garrisons. 26 Neuschel, 125. 27 ‘au nom dudt segneur constituant & pendant labsance dudt seigneur, administrer, gerer & negotier tous les affaires de sa maõn, passer arrentemt de ses places & segnieuries, retirer le prix des fermes des mains des rentiers, fere quitance de toutes sommes a luy dues, imprunter teles sommes que bon luy semblera, passer obligaõns ou feu promesses diceles, vendre [alienner?] & engager & generalemt faire ce que ledict segnieur constituant pourroict faire cy presant y estoict auec promesse de ne la reuoquer ains d’agreer tout ce que par ladt dame sa femme sera fais, gere, & procure en dela releuer de toute charge de procuraõn’. Procuration de La Jugie, AD Hérault, B 22794.

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Preparing for the imminent threat of encirclement and siege involved procuring additional artillery pieces and large quantities of munitions and shot. Renée de Marconnay, dame de Fervaques, defended her château de Grancey and nearby Saulx-le-Duc against Catholic League forces in the Dijonnais region in 1593. Marconnay warned Louis de Gonzague, duc de Nevers, that ‘the enemies must come to besiege this place’, referring to her château de Grancey.28 She sent a series of letters to the duc de Nevers detailing her preparations for the defence of her château and her need for artillery, in addition to providing information on the Leaguer troops’ movements and skirmishes in the area.29 Renée de Marconnay actively sought financial, political, and military support through her network in an attempt to improve her château’s defences. Noblewomen engaged in military planning with local allies and conducted diplomacy with military officers and provincial governors in order to protect their families’ châteaux. Marguerite de La Baume attempted to defend her château de Buzancy in the 1590s in the midst of the confusing multi-sided conflict between royalists, Huguenots, and Catholic Leaguers.30 La Baume claimed that she had opened the gates of her château to Henri de La Tour d’Auvergne, duc de Bouillon, who had ordered her to admit a small royalist garrison or be declared a rebel against the king. However, she reported that ‘Lorraine troops [of the Catholic League] led by the sieur de Tremblecourt … arrived in front of this house, where after having fired five hundred coups de canon [cannon shots] at the château, those within [Bouillon’s troops] surrendered with an honourable composition’.31 Marguerite de La Baume then complained to the duc de Nevers and sought his assistance in removing the garrison of Lorraine soldiers, which she feared would bring about ‘the completion of my ruin’.32 Even if madame de La Baume’s attempts 28 ‘les ennemys debuoient venir assieger ceste place’. Renée de Marconnay to Louis de Gonzague, duc de Nevers, 17 April 1593, BNF, Mss. fr. 4719, fols. 74–75. 29 Renée de Marconnay to Louis de Gonzague, duc de Nevers, Grancey, 1 May 1593, BNF, Mss. fr. 4719, fol. 112; Renée de Marconnay to Louis Gonzague, duc de Nevers, Grancey, 8 June 1593, BNF, Mss. fr. 3631, fol. 82; Renée de Marconnay to Louis de Gonzague, duc de Nevers, Grancey, 19 July 1593, BNF, Mss. fr. 3625, fol. 79; Renee de Marconnay to Louis de Gonzague, duc de Nevers, 5 Sept. [1593?], BNF, Mss. fr. 3633, fol. 136. 30 Marguerite de La Baume, a daughter of François de La Baume, comte de Montrevel, married African d’Anglure, prince d’Amblize: de Saincte-Marthe and de Saincte-Marthe, 2:889. 31 ‘les trouppes de Lorraine cõduictes par le sieur de Tremblecourt (le femme passé conditionné en ladicte neutralité de mondt seigneur de Lorraine) sont venues deuant ceste maison, ou apres auoir tiré cinq cens coups de canons au chasteau ceux de dedans se sont rendus auec honneste composition selon le temps’. Marguerite de La Baume to duc de Nevers, n.d., BNF, Mss. fr. 3634, fols. 141–42. 32 ‘Et de par ledit sieur de Tremblecourt est demeurée vne garnison laquelle (comme ie croy) ne m’apportera que le paracheuement de ma ruine, si dieu n’a pitié de moy’. Marguerite de La

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to maintain neutrality failed, they do reveal the complexities of defending châteaux during the religious wars. Henriette de Clèves, duchesse de Nevers, managed military affairs and defensive preparations on a provincial scale for her husband, Louis de Gonzague, duc de Nevers. The couple had married in 1565 and the family possessed the town of Nevers and numerous seigneuries and châteaux in Nivernais and Champagne, each with a garrison established.33 The duchesse de Nevers regularly negotiated with the échevins (city councilors) of cities and towns in the Nivernais and Champagne, discussing details of garrisons, fortifications, and military supplies. In 1568, the duchesse de Nevers oversaw raising taxes and paying the soldiers based in the town of Nevers and the other garrisons in the region. According to Ariane Boltanski, ‘Henriette de Clèves acted tacitly as if she represented the king in the province’.34 Noble officers in the Nevers clientele often addressed their military reports and correspondence directly to both the duc and duchesse de Nevers, suggesting how closely the couple discussed military affairs. A manuscript ‘Receuil de la guerre de Piedmont’ drawn up in 1592 was thus dedicated to the duc and duchesse.35 The duchesse de Nevers collaborated closely with Gilbert de Chazeron, seigneur de Chazeron, on military matters while he was serving as lieutenant-général in the Bourbonnais. The seigneur de Chazeron assured the duchesse de Nevers of the crucial importance artillery for the defence of the town of Molins and the surrounding region.36 Chazeron then sent a request for assistance to the duchesse de Nevers and simultaneously to the duc de Nevers, indicating that ‘I have no doubt that madame la duchesse has sent you the deliberations and the response of messieurs the mayor, échevins, and inhabitants of this town with my own regarding the letter that it pleased you to write to us to send you the two cannons that are here’.37 Baume to Louis de Gonzague, duc de Nevers, n.d., BNF, Mss. fr. 3634, fols. 141–42. La Baume would continue to complain about the garrison at her château. Marguerite de La Baume to Louis de Gonzague, duc de Nevers, Buzancy, 15 Jan., n.d., BNF, Mss. fr. 3624, fol. 65. 33 BNF, Mss. fr. 3632, fols. 9–10 and 30–31. 34 ‘Henriette de Clèves agit ainsi tacitement comme celle qui représente le roi dans la province’. Boltanski, 90. 35 ‘Receuil de la guerre de Piedmõt por monseigneur et madame la duchesse de Nyuernoys’, BNF, Mss. fr. 4718, fols. 2–5. 36 Gilbert de Chazeron, seigneur de Chazeron to Henriette de Clèves, duchesse de Nevers, Molins, 12 April 1593, BNF, Mss. fr. 4719, fols. 19–20. 37 ‘Encores qe je ne face aucun doubte que madame la duchesse ne vous enuoye le deliberatoyre & la responce de messrs les maire escheuins & habitans de cest ville auecq la mienne sur ce quil

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The duchesse de Nevers’s important role in managing artillery assets can be seen in further correspondence concerning the defence of Molins. The échevins of Molins deliberated on an order to transfer artillery pieces from their town’s arsenal to Langres in 1593, then decided to appeal to the duchesse de Nevers to keep them for their town’s defence. These artillery pieces had been previous left in Molins by the maréchal d’Aumont, raising question about the proper ownership of the guns. The échevins claimed that ‘they desired to do all they could for the service of monseigneur and madame de Nevers’. However, they insisted that ‘they were well informed of how much the cannons are necessary for the defence of the town and the conservation of the region’. The échevins claimed that ‘this region is in many places seized and occupied by the enemies of the crown and surrounded and bordered by the rebel provinces of Bourgogne, Lyonnais, and Berry, who have no desire but to occupy this feeble town and take possession of it’. Nonetheless, according to the échevins, ‘the cannons have served for our assurance and willpower, and have given the enemy fear’. For these reasons, the échevins pleaded especially with the duchesse de Nevers to grant them continued use of the artillery.38 Despite this appeal to the duchesse de Nevers, the duc de Nevers got directly involved in this debate about the artillery pieces in Molins and a prolonged debate ensued over the fate of the guns. Noblewomen often participated in discussions about procuring and positioning defensive artillery pieces. Powerful noblewomen such as the duchesse de Nevers were deeply involved in military decision-making processes concerning the deployment of artillery assets. These noblewomen clearly had significant agency in allocating artillery pieces to fortifications, even if they sometimes acted in conjunction with their husbands and family secretaries.

Mobilizing Artillery Trains Princely women and powerful noblewomen contributed artillery and organized artillery trains to accompany Catholic and Huguenot field armies. luy a pleu nous escripre por vous enuoyer les deux canons qui sont icy’, Gilbert de Chazeron, seigneur de Chazeron, to Louis de Gonzague, duc de Nevers, n.d., BNF, Mss. fr. 4719, fol. 68. 38 ‘quilz desirent executter tous ce quil sera pour le seruice de monseigneur et madame de Neuers … Car se pais est en beaucoup dendroictz saisy & occupee par les ennemys de la couronne et oultre plus enuironne & borne des prouinces rebelles de Bourgogne, Lyonnays, & Berry, lesqlles nont rien tant a cueur que doccupper ladt ville assez foible & mal emparee. Mais les canons luy ont seruy dassurans & voullont(?) et ont donne a lennemy crainte & ereur(?) de laborder’. 12 April 1593, BNF, Mss. fr. 4719, fol. 69.

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Every year during the long religious wars, new field armies mobilized and operated during a campaign season lasting from spring through autumn. Siege artillery was always in great demand, since field armies often prosecuted dozens of blockades and sieges each campaigning season. Field armies positioned batteries composed of heavy siege guns to threaten and bombard cities and towns in the siege warfare that proliferated during the religious wars. Hastily assembled relief forces could sometimes engage besieging armies and disrupt their siege operations. Noblewomen’s efforts to mobilize artillery trains thus contributed to field armies’ ability to control urban populations, religious sites, and strategic locations by prosecuting sieges. Catherine de Médicis was clearly involved in planning the mobilization of royal field armies during the first three decades of the religious wars. A royal artillery train would be organized to accompany the royal field army, which was led in person by the king or by a designated commander (often with the title of lieutenant-général du roi). The artillery train for the main royal army could be massive, but royal artillery was usually concentrated in this one field army, for use in blockades and sieges of any enemy-held cities and towns in its path. Whenever a royal army mobilized, a royal artillery train would be organized at the Arsenal de Paris to go meet the assembling forces at their rendez-vous.39 Catherine de Médicis seems to have played an important role in coordinating with officials of the royal Arsenal de Paris as they prepared artillery forces for each military campaign. The queen mother regularly corresponded with army commanders, provincial governors, and fortress governors about troops, artillery, munitions, supplies, and war finances throughout the religious wars. 40 Catherine de Médicis and her ministers managed the movements of royal artillery train during the First War of Religion (1562–1563). Jean d’Estrées, comte d’Orbec, who was serving as grand maître de l’artillerie, accompanied the royal artillery train and directed its emplacement at the siege of Orléans. After the end of the siege of Orléans, Catherine de Médicis wrote in April 1563: ‘I have given orders to bring the artillery that was sent for the siege of Orléans back to Paris, along with gunpowder and cannonballs’. 41 Then, the Queen Mother arranged for artillery for the 39 Wood, 153–68. 40 De Médicis. 41 ‘J’ay donné ordre pour faire ramener à Paris l’artillerie qui en avoit esté tirée pour le siege d’Orléans, avec quantité de pouldres et boulletz’. Catherine de Médicis to monsieur de Gonnor, Saint-Mesmin, 25 April 1563, in de Médicis, 2:23–24 [original: BNF, Mss. fr. 3219, fol. 124v].

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main royal field army’s siege of Le Havre during the summer. 42 When Le Havre finally capitulated, Catherine de Médicis came to the city to inspect the artillery and trenches. 43 Following negotiation of a religious peace, promulgated by the édit d’Amboise, the royal family went on a tour of the kingdom in 1564–65, visiting cities and towns in order to implement the peace agreement. 44 Many of the royal entry ceremonies involved the use of artillery in various displays. During the royal family visit to Bourgogne, Guillaume de Saulx, comte de Tavannes, organized a war game that included a mock assault on a fort. 45 Noblewomen in the traveling royal court and many regional elite women witnessed these martial displays involving firearms and artillery. Despite the royal family’s pacification attempts, confessional tensions remained, and subsequent religious wars would involve increasingly intense use of artillery. Catherine de Médicis’s correpondence from the period of the Second War of Religion (1567–1568) offers glimpses of how she managed royal artillery forces. Religious tensions between Catholics and Calvinists had continued following the tentative peace of 1563 and the royal tour of 1564–65, so the queen mother prepared royal defences, even as she continued to negotiate with Huguenots. When Catherine de Médicis received a report on artillery in Rouen and Évreux in February 1567, she indicated that she would compile additional information on artillery in the provinces and coordinate with the grand maître de l’artillerie concerning the artillery forces.46 Huguenot cavalry attempted to capture Charles IX (1550–74) and his entourage at the Surprise de Meaux in September 1567, but the royal family escaped and fled to Paris with the assistance of its military escort. When a Huguenot field army blockaded Paris and seized a number of nearby towns, Catherine de Médicis organized the defence of Paris. Charles IX issued a commission, almost certainly drafted by his mother, to recruit an additional two hundred pioneers and a hundred draught horses for his siege train in October 1567. The commission emphasizes the king’s desire ‘to outfit in all diligence a large and powerful 42 Catherine de Médicis to monsieur de Rennes, camp at Le Havre, 31 July 1563, in de Médicis, 2:79–81 [original: BNF, Mss. fr. 3181, fol. 55]. 43 ‘La composition du Havre conclude, la Reine y vint avec toute la cour et amena le Roi loger en une maison où Monsieur le connétable se tenoit durant le siège et furent revoir la grosse tour dans laquelle les Français étoient, et semblablement les tranchées, artillerie et tout l’ordre du camp, combien que la peste fût effectivement au Havre’. Chantonnay to duchessa di Parma, cited in de Médicis, 2:xxii n. 2. 44 Boutier, Dewerpe and Nordman. 45 De Médicis, 2:xlvi. 46 Catherine de Médicis to monsieur de Carrouges, 23 Feb. 1567, in de Médicis, 3:11.

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army and campaign with our artillery, for the conduct of which (along with the powder, cannonballs, and other munitions that serve them) it is necessary to raise a good number of pioneers, cannonball makers, cart drivers, draft horses, and carts’.47 The main royal army under the connétable (constable) Anne de Montmorency (1493–1567), duc de Montmorency, sortied from the walls of Paris and defeated the Huguenot army at the battle of Saint-Denis on 10 November 1567, ending the blockade, although Montmorency was fatally wounded.48 The royal field army, now under the command of Henri de Valois (1551–89), duc d’Anjou and the king’s younger brother, pursued the Huguenots. In December 1567, Catherine de Médicis wrote to her son, the duc d’Anjou, regarding her coordination of additional troops, gunpowder, and supplies to reinforce the main royal army.49 The queen mother would continue to manage the royal artillery assets of the Arsenal de Paris throughout the Second War of Religion, enhancing Paris’s defences and managing Catholic commanders’ needs.50 When the duc d’Anjou sent an urgent request for additional artillery, his mother responded that she had already sent pioneers and that ‘as for the six cannons, they are already in boats all ready to depart’.51 Catherine de Médicis negotiated a religious peace that ended the Second War of Religion in March 1568, but she continued to prepare royal artillery and military forces for a new outbreak of fighting that was almost certain to come.52 When war erupted once again in August 1568, Catherine and Charles IX organized a new royal field army for the Third War of Religion (1568–1570). Documents provide details of the artillery train accompanying the main royal field army commanded by Henri de Valois, duc d’Anjou, in the autumn of 1568. This royal artillery train, almost certainly planned in close consultation with Catherine de Médicis, included ‘8 canons, 6 grand culverins, and 6 bastardes’, in addition to 5,000 cannonballs and ample gunpowder.53 Catherine de Médicis’s organization of an artillery train to 47 ‘dresser a toute diligence une bonne & puissante armee et icelle f.e marcher en campaigne auec ñre artillerie por le tiraige & conduicte de laquelle ensemble des pouldres, boulletz & autres munitions seruans a icelle est necessee f.e leuer bon nombre de pionniers, boulliers, chartiers, cheuaulx de traict & charretes’. ‘Coppe de la cõmission du roy aux elluz de Paris por f.e leuer deux cens pionniers et cent cheuaulx dartillerie en ler ellõn, du iie octobre 1567’, BNF, Mss. fr. 4682, fols. 131–32. 48 Wood, 208. 49 Catherine de Médicis to Henri de Valois, duc d’Anjou, Paris, 12 Dec. 1567, in de Médicis, 3:91. 50 Catherine de Médicis to Henri de Valois, duc d’Anjou, Paris, 21 Jan. 1568, in de Médicis, 3:107–8. On the defence of Chartres against a Huguenot siege, see Wood, 205–25. 51 Catherine de Médicis to Henri de Valois, duc d’Anjou, Paris, 30 Jan. 1568, in de Médicis, 3:113. 52 On the Second War of Religion and the Edict of Longjumeau, see Holt, 64–65. 53 Wood, 160.

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accompany the main royal field army on each of its campaigns seems to have provided a useful model. Princesses and noblewomen organized artillery trains to accompany smaller field armies operating away from the king’s personal command. Catholic and Huguenot field armies had much smaller artillery trains that were composed of artillery pieces that could be cobbled together from city, town, and fortress arsenals in the regions where they mobilized. These regional arsenals were vital in providing artillery for the Catholic and Calvinist field armies that fought in the religious wars. Additional artillery could be procured from nobles’ châteaux or captured from enemy-controlled cities and towns. Foreign continents of infantry and cavalry sometimes brought light artillery with them, and intervening field armies often brought their own siege artillery trains. A contingent of Germans marching into eastern France in 1576 brought an artillery train with them.54 French noblewomen periodically negotiated with local commanders and captains of foreign contingents regarding their artillery forces. Noblewomen loaned artillery and funds to field army commanders, who acquired artillery by borrowing guns from cities, towns, and châteaux. The processes of borrowing artillery could be rather complicated, involving lengthy negotiations. The military governors of citadels and municipal councils of cities normally controlled artillery assets in communities, so their authority was crucial for obtaining loans of artillery. Henri de Lorraine (1550–88), duc de Guise, discussed taking artillery from town fortresses during military operations in Bourgogne.55 Military officers or logistical personnel who borrowed artillery pieces often signed a receipt (récépissé or accusé de reception) when they took possession of the guns. Some of these receipts have survived in various archival collections. Nicolas Girard, seigneur de Bretigny, signed a receipt for a grande coulverine that he borrowed from Henri II d’Orléans, duc de Longueville, for use in the siege of La Rochelle in 1627–28.56 Noblewomen clearly played a role in managing the loaning of artillery to f ield army commanders and military governors. During blockades and sieges, noblewomen who managed nearby châteaux had the power to send reinforcements, or to deny them. The châteaux located in war zones sometimes had the only quickly available artillery and munitions to bolster a f ield army’s offensive weaponry or to reinforce the defences of a beleaguered château or community facing a tightening blockade. 54 BNF, Mss. fr. 4734, fols. 215–16. 55 BNF, Mss. fr. 4734, fols. 85–86. 56 AN, M 640, fol. 32.

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Not surprisingly, then, noblewomen routinely discussed the details of military campaigns and considered requests for artillery, f irearms, and munitions under their control. For example, a noblewoman became involved in correspondence about providing reinforcements to a château in 1593.57 Noblewomen seem to have recognized the significance of their ability to deliver gunpowder and war munitions to field armies at critical moments. Catherine de Navarre wrote that royalist troops, ‘desiring to pass in front of this army, sent me messieur de La Mote Gondrin, an excellent servant of the king, scrambling to have powder, shot, pikes, corselets, and more men—which I hope will not be unuseful for the king’s service, relying on their word, which they have given me”.58 Some noblewomen arranged for the transport of artillery pieces, gunpowder, shot, and munitions from their own châteaux’s arsenals. Occasionally, noblewomen were involved in the logistics of supplying and manoeuvring entire artillery trains. A series of epistolary exchanges between Anne de Joyeuse, an influential Catholic nobleman and courtier, and his mother, Marie de Batarnay, comtesse de Bouchage, is very revealing of noblewomen’s roles in mobilizing artillery trains for military campaigns. As a teenager, Anne de Joyeuse had gained military experience fighting in Languedoc against the Huguenots, and then earned a reputation for bravery at the siege of Issoire in 1577.59 He soon became one of the mignons (royal favourites) of Henri III, who arranged for Anne de Joyeuse to marry Marguerite de Lorraine-Vaudémont, half-sister of the queen, in a showcase marriage with elaborate festivities at the royal court in September 1581. From then on, Henri III referred to Joyeuse as ‘mon beau frère’ (my brother-in-law) and viewed him as a close family member, as well as a royal favourite.60 The king elevated the vicomté de Joyeuse into a duché et pairie in 1581, rewarding Anne with the title of duc de Joyeuse. The young duc increasingly presented himself at the royal court as a perfect courtier and a paragon of nobility.61 The Joyeuse family had an extensive clientele at court, in Touraine, and in the province Languedoc, in addition 57 Dadjacto[?] to duc de Nevers, Chauvelin[?], 26 Mar. 1593, BNF, Mss. fr. 3624, fol. 153. 58 ‘desirans paser encorres plus auant cette armee ma enuoye m rs de La Mote Gondrin, tres bon seruiteur du roy brouillen et mesmes pour auoir des poudres, balles piques, corselles, et encores des hõmes ce qui ie feray esperant sur la parolle quils me dõnet que cella ne sera pas innutille au seruise du roy’. Catherine de Navarre to Jacques II de Goyon, seigneur de Matignon, s.d., BNF, Mss. fr. 3325, fol. 62. 59 Jouanna et al., 1000–1003. 60 Le Roux, 484. 61 Le Roux, 485–89.

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to close alliances with other powerful noble courtiers, which would be reinforced by the marriage of Anne de Joyeuse’s aunt, Anne de Batarnay, with Bernard de La Valette, duc d’Épernon, in February 1582.62 The duc de Joyeuse’s female relatives seem to have provided significant support for his military operations. At the time of the epistolary exchange with his mother, the duc de Joyeuse was leading a Catholic field army against Huguenot forces in southwestern France in 1587. As one of Henri III’s mignons, Joyeuse could rely on substantial financial and material support from the king himself, but he also invested heavily in his military efforts to support the Catholic cause in Languedoc and throughout the kingdom. Nonetheless, Joyeuse complained regularly about the lack of royal artillery that he had anticipated for his ongoing campaign. In one letter, Joyeuse wrote: ‘Our enemies don’t want to let me hunt great fortune, having withdrawn when they heard me approach. I am here waiting or the artillery forces that the royal court will send me. However, I have gathered up the troops that have arrived every day’.63 Joyeuse’s repeated complaints about his lack of artillery seem aimed at seeking his mother’s interventions at the royal court to speed the delivery of artillery to his field army. In yet another letter, Anne de Joyeuse lamented that ‘this courier rushes me so to depart that I don’t have a moment to breathe, and along with that I am here so delayed in receiving my artillery and in a thousand other affairs’.64 Through her persistent requests at the royal court, the comtesse de Bouchage seems to have been able to sway Henri III to send additional royal artillery forces from the Arsenal de Paris to her son. Nonetheless, once the royal artillery train finally arrived in southwestern France, Joyeuse complained about how slowly the artillery train manoeuvred along the country roads. Joyeuse reported to his mother that ‘I am still here with all the regrets of the world, seeing myself idle and useless. The bad roads are the cause that my artillery has been able to move only five leagues in a month. I hope that in five or six days, with the aid of God, I can dislodge them and start doing something or otherwise I have 62 Le Roux, 502. 63 ‘Les ennemis nont pas enuie de me faire courre grand fortune, ayant quyté la campaigne des quils mont santy aprocher … Cepandant, je receuilles les troupes quy arriuent tous les jours’. Anne de Joyeuse, duc de Joyeuse, to Marie de Batarnay, comtesse de Bouchage, Saumur, 14 June, n.d., BNF, Mss. fr. 3392, fol. 43. 64 ‘Se porteur me presse tant de le faire partir que je nay pas seulement loysir de respirer, joinct que je suis ycy asses ampaiche à receuillir mon artillerie et a mile autres affaires’, Anne de Joyeuse, duc de Joyeuese, to Marie de Batarnay, comtesse de Bouchage, n.d., BNF, Mss. fr. 3392, fol. 57.

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no hope of hunting great fortune, not having any town around that I can besiege that would be worth attacking’.65 With the assistance of this royal artillery train, the duc de Joyeuse’s field army successfully seized a series of Calvinist-dominated towns in southwestern France during autumn 1587. Nevertheless, Joyeuse seems to have remained frustrated at his inability to win a great victory over the Huguenots. The duc de Joyeuse sought battle, engaging a Huguenot field army led by Henri de Bourbon, roi de Navarre, at Coutras on 20 October 1587. The Huguenot cavalry and infantry defeated the Catholics, however, and the duc de Joyeuse and his younger brother, Claude de Joyeuse, baron de Saint-Sauveur, were both killed in the rout. The captain of artillery for Joyeuse’s defeated army reportedly burned the artillery train’s caissons after being surrounded.66 Ironically, the comtesse de Bouchage’s efforts at obtaining royal artillery for her son may have contributed to this disaster for the Joyeuse family. Most Catholic and Huguenot field armies fighting in the confessionally mixed regions of France could not rely on receiving an artillery train from the capital. Regional noblewomen delivered artillery to beleaguered communities and field armies in their regions when they could. Urban elite women could make donations of artillery and munitions for nearby field armies and relief forces. In a letter from the town of Langres in September 1592, Joachim de Dinteville relates that ‘I proposed to the inhabitants to make a present of gunpowder and cannonballs, which it seemed to me His Majesty [Henri IV] would find pleasing, [and] that they could aid him with their present in relieving several châteaux that are threatened’. Dinteville reported that in response to his call for donations, ‘madame de Fervaques gave a thousand pounds of cannonballs for sixteen écus, and a merchant [gave] a thousand [pounds] of gunpowder for forty-five livres of good money. He is offering up to a hundred thousand [pounds]’.67 Other noblewomen and urban elite 65 ‘Je suis encores ycy auuec tous les regrés du mone my voiant oyzif et inutile. Les mauuais chemins en ont esté cauze quy ont faict que mon artillerie na lieu(?) faire en un mois sinc lieues. Jespere que dans quatre ou sinc jours, auuec laide de dieu, je pourray desloger et coumensser a faire quelque choze ou toutesfois je nespere pas courre grande fortune, ny ayant come jestime plasse en toutes cela que je vois assieger quy done la paine de se faire batre’. Anne de Joyeuse, duc de Joyeuse, to Marie de Batarnay, comtesse de Bouchage, Rodez, 1 Oct., n.d., BNF, Mss. fr. 3392, fol. 38. 66 Jouanna et al., 323–25, 696–97. 67 ‘J’ay propose aux habitans luy f.e quelque present qui ma semblé qe sa maté auroit agreable q.l fust de pouldres et bulletz qu’elle ler rendroit auec leur present sa peyne pour les eslargir de quelques chasteaulx qui les pressent.… Madame de Feruaques donne le millier pezant de bouletez pour seize escus et ung marchand le millier de pouldre pour tiers pour quarante cinq

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women made f inancial contributions for the purchase of artillery and munitions. French noblewomen contributed to the mobilization of artillery trains in many ways.

Employing Artillery Queens and high-ranking noblewomen wielded the authority to command artillery, even if they often did so from a distance. We have already seen how Catherine de Médicis organized royal artillery trains and managed their movements, but she also contributed to decision-making processes about the use of royal siege artillery in prosecuting sieges. Heavy artillery pieces were incredibly expensive, and artillery trains thus represented precious resources as well as strategic assets. Princely women were sometimes able to command artillery trains, effectively deciding when and how to employ siege artillery. Fascinating details of noblewomen’s command of artillery trains and military forces are provided in the correspondence of Joachim de Dinteville, baron de Dinteville, who acted as lieutenant-général in Champagne and Brie from 1579 to 1607. Dinteville reported in January 1592 on the ways in which Catherine Michelle d’Espagne, duchesse de Savoie, directed Savoyard forces that were operating in France under the command of Jacques de Savoie, duc de Nemours: ‘Monsieur de Nemours is outside Montaigu, a château near Châlons sur la Saone, which he is battering with two canons and two coulverines. Here there is news that he was to receive and command four or five hundred Neapolitan cavalry that have come in the service of monsieur de Savoie. But madame de Savoie, in the absence of the duc, opposed this, which prevented them from advancing and stopped them in Bourgogne’.68 The duchesse de Savoie’s intervention to prevent Savoyard reinforcements from joining Nemours indirectly questioned his conduct of the siege and his use of artillery. Queens and noblewomen provided patronage to military engineers and gunners who had technical expertise in utilizing artillery. Catherine liures de bonne monnoye. Il en offre jusques a cent milliers’. Joachim de Dinteville, baron de Dinteville, to Louis de Gonzague, duc de Nevers, Langres, 3 Sept. 1592, BNF, Mss. fr. 4718, fol. 57. 68 ‘Monsieur de Nemours est deuant Montagu chasteau pres de Chaalons sur la Saulne quil bat auec deux canons et deux coleurines. L’aduis est icy qu’il sestoit advancé pour receuoir & commander quatre ou cinq cens cheuaulx Napolitains qui sont venue au seruice de m r de Sauoye. Mais madame de Sauoye en l’absence du duc sy est opposé, qui la empesché de passer plus oultre et la faict s’arrester en Bourgongne’. Joachim de Dinteville, baron de Dinteville, to Louis de Gonzague duc de Nevers, Louviers, 16 Jan. 1592, BNF, Mss. fr. 4718, fol. 31.

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de Médicis and Marie de Médicis used their extensive political and social networks in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and the Papal States to recruit Italian military engineers for service in France. Many Italian military engineers had acquired European-wide reputations as specialists in siege warfare, based on their experience in the Italian Wars (1494–1559), the Dutch Revolt (1566–1609), and other conflicts.69 Some of these Italian military engineers accompanied royal field armies during the French Wars of Religion, devising siege machines, siting batteries, and directing bombardments during sieges. A royal commission for an Italian military engineer in 1567 shows the parameters for a military engineer’s role during the religious wars.70 Franco-Italian noblewomen may have been able to utilize their family clienteles and friendship networks to recruit additional military engineers from Italy during the religious wars. Princely women collaborated on the direction of sieges, discussing lines of circumvallation, approach trenches, battery emplacements, and bombardments with officers and military engineers. Maxmilien de Rosny, grand maître de l’artillerie, conducted the royal artillery on numerous campaigns. During the campaign against Savoy in 1600–01, Rachel de Cochefilet, madame de Rosny, accompanied her husband on campaign and observed the sieges of Chambéry and the château de Montmélian. She negotiated with the comtesse de Brandis, wife of the governor of château de Montmélian, assisting in achieving a capitulation of the château.71 Other noblewomen had opportunities to collaborate with their husbands who commanded artillery, infantry, and cavalry involved in prolonged siege operations. Some noblewomen organized artillery trains to support siege relief efforts when friendly fortresses were beleaguered by enemy forces. A field army aiming to relieve a siege often had to be mobilized rapidly, with a hastily assembled collection of military contingents and artillery forces. Catherine d’O, marquise de La Vieuville, attempted to raise a relief force to aid her husband, Robert de la Vieuville, who was defending a château in Champagne.72 Kristen Neuschel examines one of Catherine’s letters, analyzing her gendered positioning and rhetoric in seeking relief forces, communicating military intelligence, and negotiating with the commander of the besieging army.73 Additional sources discuss Catherine d’O, her husband, and the complicated 69 Buisseret, Ingénieurs. See Zanetti’s contribution to this volume. 70 BNF, Mss. fr. 4682, fols. 11–12. 71 Barbiche and de Dainville-Barbiche, 141. 72 BNF, Mss. fr. 3632, fols. 127–28. 73 Neuschel, 132–38.

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military situation in the province of Champagne during the Catholic League period.74 It is unclear whether Catherine d’O was ever able to organize a small relief army with artillery that would have been capable of relieving the siege, but her letters do suggest that some noblewomen may have been able to raise small armies capable of relieving sieges. As noblewomen and men considered the possibility of organizing siege relief attempts, they assessed the defensibility of a fortified town or château by the number of coups de canon (cannon shots) it could sustain before capitulating, as in Marguerite de La Baume’s account (cited above). Military officers’ correspondence is filled with references to the dozens – or even hundreds – of cannon shots that a particular fortress was expected to withstand.75 Military governors who surrendered a fortress before sustaining an appropriate number of cannon shots from the besiegers’ batteries risked accusations of having conducted a dishonourable defence. Knowing the expectations for defence, military governors and administrative officers often complained about the insufficient artillery forces in the towns and fortresses that they governed. Anne de Lévis, duc de Ventadour, frequently requested additional artillery and munitions for frontier fortifications in the province of Languedoc.76 Noblewomen were involved in managing artillery during all phases of civil wars, including in negotiations for demobilizing artillery trains at the end of the military campaign season. Peaces and truces made dispositions for the control of towns and châteaux as places de sûreté to ensure enforcement of treaty articles. Treaties often detailed the restitution or exchange of châteaux, sometimes mentioning châteaux of noblewomen.77 A local truce provided articles on the disposition of artillery: ‘all the canons, artillery pieces, shot, and munitions that are in the towns in the governments of Lyonnais, Forêts, Beaujoulais, and Auvergne will remain there, except for those that have been taken away from Lyon, which the [municipal leaders] desire to have brought back there’.78 Many noblewomen participated in the coordination and management of artillery forces in all phases of military 74 Konnert, 109–10, 174–75. 75 For example, see Mss. fr. 3628, fol. 23. 76 Anne de Lévis duc de Ventadour to Henri I de Montmorency duc de Montmorency, Blois, 9 May 1602, BNF, Mss. fr. 3589, fol. 71. 77 ‘Articles accordez entre le roy et monsieur le duc de Lorraine pour finir et terminer la guerre qui est entre eulx’, BNF, Mss. fr. 3449, fols. 58–62. 78 ‘Tous les canons, pieces, balles, et munitions dartilleries qui sont es places desdicts gouuernemens de Lyonnois, Forests, et Beaujollois et Auuergue y demeureront, sauf et reseruee ce qui a esté tiré dudit Lyon que messieurs de la ville desiront y estre ramené et conduict’. ‘Articles proposés par monseigneur le duc de Mayenne a monsieur le baron de Lux, accordés’, BNF, Mss. fr. 3327, fols. 37–41.

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campaigns, so they could also participate in the demobilization processes that accompanied truces and peaces.

Conclusion Uncovering evidence of the management of artillery forces by French noblewomen contributes new perspectives on the ways in which women engaged directly in military organization, operational planning, strategic formulation, and political activity in the early modern period. Historians are gaining an appreciation of early modern women’s involvement in warfare, even if the complex relationships between women, gender, and war in European history are still only partially understood. The military revolution debate has long focused on military technologies, organizations, strategies, and tactics – without considering women, gender, and sexuality in detail.79 Related studies of military enterprise and pillaging have often considered the impact of war on civilians and entire populations, but have rarely developed gendered analyses of women’s experiences of warfare.80 Cultural historians have increasingly examined women as victims of rape, pillage, and atrocities during the Italian Wars,81 the Dutch Revolt,82 the Thirty Years’ War (1618–34),83 and the British Civil Wars.84 Recent studies have demonstrated that princely women directed warfare and noblewomen actively participated in the Dutch Revolt85 and the Thirty Years’ War.86 Early modern historians have begun to consider how ordinary women experienced warfare and how they became involved in military operations. John A. Lynn’s important study of women and war excavates women’s roles as soldiers’ wives, sutlers, and prostitutes in the ‘campaign communities’ that formed around field armies in early modern Europe.87 This body of scholarship on women, gender, and war in early modern Europe provides useful comparisons with French women’s experiences of managing artillery forces during the religious wars. 79 Rogers; Parker, The Military Revolution. 80 Parrott, The Business of War; Parker, The Army of Flanders; Gutman; Redlich. 81 Duc; Bowd; Shaw and Mallett. 82 Pipkin; Arnade. 83 Haude; Ulbricht. 84 Stoyle; Ó Siochrú; Donagan. 85 Peacock; Pollmann; Thøfner. 86 Ailes; Helfferich. 87 Lynn.

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Artillery has often been seen as a hypermasculine domain, associated with male displays of power and technical military engineering. Yet, French queens, princesses, and noblewomen played important roles in manufacturing artillery and gunpowder, maintaining artillery and munitions, and organizing defences. The noblewomen who were able to deliver artillery by mobilizing and employing artillery trains in siege operations and siege relief efforts had the potential to significantly shape military campaigns. Noblewomen’s roles in military management and planning for the use of artillery forces during the religious wars demonstrate women’s profound and multidimensional involvement in early modern warfare, challenging gendered assumptions about warfare and masculine notions of command.

Bibliography Primary Sources Manuscripts

Bibliothèque nationale de France (BNF), manuscrits français [Mss. fr.] 3181, 3219, 3325, 3327, 3357, 3392, 3449, 3589, 3624, 3625, 3628, 3631, 3632, 3633, 3634, 4047, 4682, 4708, 4718, 4719, 4734. Archives Nationales (AN), M 640. Archives départementales de l’Hérault (AD Hérault), B 22590, B 22794, C 7059. Bibliothèque municipale de Montpellier, 30017.

Printed Sources

de Médicis, Catherine. Lettres de Catherine de Médicis, edited by Hector de La Ferrière, 10 vols. (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1885–1909). de Saincte-Marthe, Scévole and Louis de Saincte-Marthe. Histoire genealogique de la maison de France, 2 vols. (Paris: Sebastien Cramoisy, 1628). Guenois, Pierre. La conference des ordonnances royaux, nouvelle édition (Paris: Robert Foüet, 1610).

Secondary Sources Ailes, Mary Elizabeth. Courage and Grief: Women and Sweden’s Thirty Years’ War (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2018). Arnade, Peter J. Beggars, Iconoclasts, and Civic Patriots: The Political Culture of the Dutch Revolt (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008).

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Arnold, Tom. The Renaissance at War (London: Cassell, 2001). Babelon, Jean-Pierre. ‘Le Palais de l’Arsenal à Paris. Étude architecturale et essai de répertoire iconographique critique’, Bulletin Monumental, 128.4 (1970): 267–310. Barbiche, Bernard and Ségolène de Dainville-Barbiche. Sully. L’homme et ses fidèles (Paris: Fayard, 1997). Boltanski, Ariane. Les ducs de Nevers et l’état royal. Genèse d’un compromis (ca. 1550–ca. 1600) (Geneva: Droz, 2006). Boutier, Jean, Alain Dewerpe, and Daniel Nordman. Un tour de France royal. Le voyage de Charles IX (1564–1566) (Paris: Aubier, 1984). Bowd, Stephen D. Renaissance Mass Murder: Civilians and Soldiers during the Italian Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). Buisseret, David. Henry IV, King of France (London: Routledge, 1984). Buisseret, David. Ingénieurs et fortifications avant Vauban. L’organisation d’un service royal aux XVIe-XVIIIe siècles (Paris: Édition du Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques, 2002). Contamine, Philippe. ‘Les industries de guerre dans la France de la Renaissance: l’exemple de l’artillerie’, Revue Historique, 271.2 (April–June 1984), 249–80. Davis, Natalie Zemon. Society and Culture in Early Modern France: Eight Essays (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1975). Diefendorf, Barbara B. Beneath the Cross: Catholics and Huguenots in SixteenthCentury Paris (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991). Diefendorf, Barbara B. From Penitence to Charity: Pious Women and the Catholic Reformation in Paris (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). Donagan, Barbara. ‘Atrocity, War Crime, and Treason in the English Civil War’, American Historical Review, 99.4 (1994): 1137–66. Duc, Séverin. La guerre de Milan. Conquérir, gouverner, resister dans l’Europe de la Renaissance (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 2019). Eurich, Amanda. The Economics of Power: The Private Finances of the House of Foix-Navarre-Albret during the Religious Wars (Kirskville, MO: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1994). Finley-Croswhite, S. Annette. ‘Engendering the Wars of Religion: Female Agency during the Catholic League in Dijon’, French Historical Studies, 20 (1997): 127–54. Gutman, Myron. War and Rural Life in the Early Modern Low Countries (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980). Hale, J. R. War and Society in Renaissance Europe, 1450–1620 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985). Hall, Bert S. Weapons and Warfare in Renaissance Europe: Gunpowder, Technology, and Tactics (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997). Haude, Sigrun. ‘The World of the Siege in New Perspective: The Populace during the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648)’, in The World of the Siege: Representations of

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Early Modern Positional Warfare, edited by Anke Fischer-Kattner and Jamel Ostwald (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 21–43. Helfferich, Tryntje. The Iron Princess: Amalia Elisabeth and the Thirty Years War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013). Holt, Mack P. The French Wars of Religion, 1562–1629, 2nd. ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). James, Alan. Navy and Government in Early Modern France (Woodbridge: Boydell Press and the Royal Historical Society, 2004). Jouanna, Arlette, Jacqueline Boucher, Dominique Biloghi, and Guy Le Thiec. Histoire et dictionnaire des guerres de religion (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1998). Knecht, Robert J. The French Renaissance Court, 1483–1589 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008). Konnert, Mark W. Local Politics in the French Wars of Religion: The Towns of Champagne, the Duc de Guise, and the Catholic League, 1560–95 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006). Le Roux, Nicolas. La faveur du roi: mignons et courtisans au temps des derniers Valois, vers 1547– vers 1589) (Paris: Champ Vallon, 2000). Lynn, John A. Women, Armies, and Warfare in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). Mallett, Michael, and Christine Shaw. The Italian Wars 1494–1559: War, State and Society in Early Modern Europe. 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2018). Neuschel, Kristen B. ‘Noblewomen and War in Sixteenth-Century France’, in Changing Identities in Early Modern France, edited by Michael Wolfe (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997), 124–44. Ó Siochrú, Micheál. ‘Atrocity, Codes of Conduct and the Irish in the British Civil Wars 1641–1653’, Past & Present, 195 (2007): 55–86. Parker, Geoffrey. The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road, 1567–1659 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972). Parker, Geoffrey. The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500–1800, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Parrott, David. Richelieu’s Army: War, Government and Society in France, 1624–1642 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). Parrott, David. The Business of War: Military Enterprise and Military Revolution in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). Peacock, Martha Moffitt. ‘The Maid of Holland and Her Heroic Heiresses’, in Women and Gender in the Early Modern Low Countries, edited by Sarah Joan Moran and Amanda Pipkin (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 68–127. Pipkin, Amanda. Rape in the Republic, 1609–1725: Formulating Dutch Identity (Leiden: Brill, 2013). Pollmann, Judith. Catholic Identity and the Revolt of the Netherlands, 1520–1635 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).

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Potter, David (ed.) Foreign Intelligence and Information in Elizabethan England: Two English Treatises on the State of France, 1580–1584 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). Potter, David. Renaissance France at War: Armies, Culture and Society, c. 1480–1560 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2008). Redlich, Fritz. De Praeda Militari: Looting and Booty 1500–1815. Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, suppl. 39 (Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1956). Rogers, Clifford J. (ed). The Military Revolution Debate: Readings on the Military Transformation of Early Modern Europe (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995). Sandberg, Brian. ‘Generous Amazons Came to the Breach: Besieged Women, Agency and Subjectivity during the French Wars of Religion’, Gender & History, 16 (2004): 654–88. Sandberg, Brian. “‘The Enterprises and Surprises That They Would Like to Perform”: Fear, Urban Identities, and Siege Culture during the French Wars of Religion’, in The World of the Siege: Representations of Early Modern Positional Warfare, edited by Anke Fischer-Kattner and Jamel Ostwald (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 265–87. Stoyle, Mark. ‘The Road to Farndon Field: Explaining the Massacre of the Royalist Women at Naseby’, The English Historical Review, 123.503 (2008): 895–923. Thøfner, Margit. ‘Marrying the City, Mothering the Country: Gender and Visual Conventions in Johannes Bochius’s Account of the Joyous Entry of the Archduke Albert and the Infanta Isabella into Antwerp’, Oxford Art Journal, 22.1 (1999): 1–27. Ulbricht, Otto. ‘The Experience of Violence during the Thirty Years War: A Look at the Civilian Victims’, in Power, Violence and Mass Death in Pre-modern and Modern Times, edited by Joseph Canning, Hartmut Lehmann, and Jay Winter (London: Ashgate, 2004), 97–128. Wolfe, Michael. ‘Walled Towns during the French Wars of Religion (1560–1630)’, in City Walls: The Urban Enceinte in Global Perspective, edited by James D. Tracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 317–48. Wood, James B. The King’s Army: Warfare, Soldiers, and Society during the Wars of Religion in France, 1562–1576 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

About the Author Brian Sandberg is Professor of History at Northern Illinois University and the author of War and Conflict in the Early Modern World, 1500–1700 (Polity Press, 2016) and Warrior Pursuits: Noble Culture and Civil Conflict in Early Modern France (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010). He is working on a monograph titled A Virile Courage: Gender and Violence in the French Wars of Religion 1562–1629.

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Useless Mouths in Early Modern Italian Literature Gian Giorgio Trissino and Lucrezia Marinella Gerry Milligan

Abstract In order to manage dwindling food rations, cities under siege expelled people known as ‘useless mouths’ (‘bocche inutili’). Those forced out were ostensibly promised safety as they were (perceived to be) non-combatants, while those who remained within the city were meant to fight. This chapter offers the first discussion of the theme of ‘useless mouths’ in early modern Italian literature, and focuses on the process by which powerful men came to the decision to cast out others who were neither powerful nor (often) men. The chapter discusses mentions of the practice in contemporary military manuals and then analyzes the lengthy passages found in Gian Giorgio Trissino’s Italy Liberated from the Goths (1547–48) and Lucrezia Marinella’s Enrico, or Byzantium Conquered (1635). Keywords: Useless mouths; bocche inutili; Lucrezia Marinella; Gian Giorgio Trissino; non-combatants; women in war

As the curtain rises on the second act of Annie Vivanti’s play, Le bocche inutili (The Useless Mouths) (1918), a British war captain shows his commander a graph that predicts when provisions in their village will be depleted. The captain then shows a second graph where supplies extend to a later date, which is only achievable if the city were to expel ‘useless mouths’, also called ‘superfluous beings – who don’t know how to kill’.1 The hesitant commander 1 Vivanti, ‘Fuori le bocche inutili’ (Act II, 123); ‘essere superflui – che non sanno uccidere’ (Act II, 126). All translations are mine unless otherwise indicated.

Bowd, S., Cockram, S. & Gagné, J. (eds.), Shadow Agents of Renaissance War. Suffering, Supporting, and Supplying Conflict in Italy and Beyond. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2023 doi: 10.5117/9789463721356_ch11

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enacts the plan, framing the expulsion of women, including his own wife and daughter, into enemy lines as his (rather than their) sacrifice.2 Knowing that there was no guarantee that the enemy would provide safe passage to these women and children, the commander fears the worst. He likens this event to one of Italy’s darkest moments, asking if the practice isn’t like ‘returning to the Middle Ages? To the Siege of Siena?’ (Act II, 114). For the commander, the Siege of Siena (January 1554–April 1555) is emblematic of the possible tragic result of sending ‘useless mouths’ outside protective walls. Over 4,000 ‘useless mouths’ were expelled from Siena, and among the many outcomes of those sent outside the city, thousands of adults and children died of starvation, trapped in the space between the enemy lines and the city gates shuttered behind them.3 The spectre of this horror reminds Vivanti’s commander of the danger of the proposal, while the graphs depicting famine remind him of the stakes of not enacting it. The sixteenth-century scenario – where men decide the fates of women in war crises – inspired the author and surely resonated with audiences at the close of the First World War. Siena’s expulsion of ‘useless mouths’ had found its place in literature long before Vivanti’s play. In the preamble to Scipione Bargagli’s book on entertainment, I trattenimenti (written 1569, published 1587), the Sienese writer paints a vivid picture of the suffering of those who were expelled from the city during the siege. He describes how the moment caused a shifting of animosities (from the attacking forces onto their own city rulers or onto those deemed as ‘useless’). 4 The moral complexity of leaders sending their own people into enemy hands could understandably lead people to question who exactly is their enemy. This displacement of ‘enemy’ (particularly between male leaders and women inhabitants) led not only Annie Vivanti but also Simone de Beauvoir (1908–86) to write a play titled Useless Mouths (1945), this time at the end of the Second World War. While reading about the Siege of Siena and other medieval/Renaissance Italian expulsions of women as bocche inutili, de Beauvoir was inspired by the human drama of the moment when men made the decision to send out women and children or ‘victims’ as she calls them.5 Her memoir tells us that while reading about these tragedies, she asked herself, ‘What must have been the feelings of the 2 Vivanti, 132, the Commander (to his wife): ‘Ma a un soldato si domanda di più che la vita. Il soldato dev’essere pronto a strapparsi il cuore, e vivere. Ad immolare ciò che ha di più caro, e vivere. Voi, che adoro … voi, vita della mia vita, devo mandarvi fuori … fuori, con gli altri derelitti! Devo mandarvi alle linee nemiche!’ (Act II). 3 Lenzi, 21–22, 25. 4 Bargagli, 22. 5 Megna, 243.

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chosen victims during this period – and of the fathers, brothers, lovers, husbands, sons who had condemned them?’6 Despite the compelling texts of de Beauvoir, Vivanti, Bargagli and others that depicted ‘useless mouths’, there is scarce scholarship on the phenomenon in literature.7 Moreover, there is limited scholarship on the history of ‘useless mouths’ during the early modern period beyond the war of Siena.8 My chapter aims to bring attention to this tactic. It offers the first discussion of the theme in early modern Italian literature, and it focuses specifically on the process by which powerful men came to the decision to cast out others who were neither powerful nor (often) men. The chapter begins by providing a summary of how the practice was discussed in contemporary military manuals, and then analyzes the lengthy passages found in Gian Giorgio Trissino’s Italy Liberated from the Goths (1547–48) and Lucrezia Marinella’s Enrico, or Byzantium Conquered (1635).

Useless Mouths in Early Modern Military Manuals The custom of expelling people during sieges had been institutionalized in military manuals dating back to the classical period. One theme that remains constant throughout the centuries is that the division of the sexes provided a non-controversial means by which to determine combatants and non-combatants. Moreover, these manuals all argue that non-combatants (e.g. women, elderly men, and children) are a dangerous drain on resources. Onasander (first century CE), suggested that commanders send those ‘useless in action’ into opposing cities in order to weaken them, while Vegetius’s influential De re militari (aka Epitoma rei militaris) (ca. 390 CE) suggested that when under siege, people who were ‘unfit for war were often shut out of the gates because of the need to conserve food, lest hunger oppressed the soldiers guarding the walls’.9 Medieval and Renaissance military manuals generally repeated Onasander’s and Vegetius’s recommendations, often adding small variations to the theme. In the only medieval military treatise known to be written 6 Beauvoir, The Prime of Life, 464, quoted in Megna, 243. 7 On the artistic representation of ‘useless mouths’ see Baskins. 8 On Siena see Lenzi; Matheron. On ‘bocche inutili’ more generally see Alfani; Alfani and Rizzo; Bowd; McGlynn. 9 Onasander, 525. Vegetius, Epitome, 124 (4.7). On Vegetius in the Middle Ages, see Allmand. The date for treatise is discussed by Charles. I am indebted to Bowd, Renaissance Mass Murder for much of the history of the tradition of ‘useless mouths’ in treatise literature.

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by a woman, The Book of Deeds of Arms and of Chivalry (ca. 1406), Christine de Pizan (1364–1430) suggests that in order to extend food provisions, ‘old and feeble men, women and children, who are of no use for the defense’ be sent to neighbouring towns, not just outside city gates.10 Like de Pizan, other authors also explore alterations to the discussions of ‘useless mouths’. Antonio Cornazzano (1430–84), for example, expands the list of ‘useless’ people in his verse treatise Arte militare (ca. 1476, first published 1494) to include ‘women, children, elderly, blind, and the mad’.11 Giovan Battista Belluzzi’s Treatise on Fortifications, on the other hand, emphasizes that resiliency in a siege depends on the timing and method of expelling ‘useless mouths’.12 He further makes explicit the hierarchy of combatants over non-combatants by stating that those who remain behind are tasked with continuing as ‘masters and commanders of the place, as they should by merit be’. 13 In a separate manual on fortif ications (1565), Girolamo Maggi and Iacomo Castriotto advise that a city should be ready for this moment by drawing up a list of useless mouths in anticipation of a siege.14 The Seminar on the Government of State and War (1613) by Girolamo Frachetta states that when one is attacking a city, an army must block ‘useless mouths’ from being expelled and force them back inside in order to starve them as quickly as possible.15 Only two pages later, Frachetta then advises that those who are sieged should send out ‘useless mouths’ in order to survive the long battle.16 What the book does not address is the irreconcilable nature of the two passages: cities are to expel people, but 10 Pizan, 107–8 (2.15). 11 Cornazzano, De re militari, ‘Quando el raccolto pur non gli bastasse / tutta l’età disutile a far facti / per lo consiglio mio fora si casse / femine, putti, vecchi, i ciechi, i matti’. (bk. 8, chap. 1, fol. 152v) Cornazzano’s treatise on war was first written in prose. It was later put into verse and then altered by Giunti in 1520. On Cornazzano’s military writings see Zancani. 12 Belluzzi, Il trattato di fortificazioni ‘Quando per caso fusse che si vedesse la vittuaglia esser poca e che non si potessi provedere, seria bene cavar le bocche desutili e quelle mandar via con qualche destro modo quanto prima’. From the manuscript Il trattato di fortificazioni (Archivio di Stato di Torino Z.II.24) which differs from the better-known later version of the same work, Il trattato di fortificazioni di terra. Quoted in Lamberini, 387. 13 Belluzzi, quoted in Lamberini, 387, ‘queli che hanno la cura del diffendere restono più sicuri, essendo patroni e superiori al luogo, come meritamente deveno essere’ 14 Maggi and Castriotto, fol. 101v., ‘Fare fare la descrittione di tutte le bocche, & anche de’ bestiami, per poter calculare, e sapere il bisogno delle vittuaglie, e’l tempo che potranno bastare’ 15 Frachetta, 592, ‘Assediandosi una città, si dee vietare che non escano di quella le bocche inutili, & se escono, si vuol farle tornar dentro, per affamarla tanto più presto’. 16 Frachetta, 593, ‘Quando una città si crede di dover patire un lungo assedio, si deono mandar fuora le bocche inutili’.

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attacking armies should try to prevent expulsions and send noncombatants back into city walls. Most importantly, Frachetta avoids confronting the reality that people who were expelled from cities were in effect sent into the hands of enemy troops with little to no way of defending themselves. The situation is no different even in a treatise that was written explicitly to advise on how to conduct war following Christian principles. In the suggestively titled, The Christian Warrior Prince (1612), Giovanni Francesco Fiamelli states that ‘useless mouths’ should not be sent out too early as it might give the enemy hope.17 Nothing is mentioned about the peril, Christian or otherwise, of those who are expelled. The treatise Defence and Offence of the Piazzas (1630) by Pietro Paolo Floriani is one of the few military manuals that raises an ethical question about the practice. In his work, Floriani states that while some might find the expulsion of ‘useless mouths’ as ‘impious’, it is better to do this than let the city be conquered and families be slaughtered: ‘If on one hand it seems impious to see old fathers, un-warlike wives, and tender children driven away from their own home … to save the city from the hands of the enemy, not being able to protect from injuries and massacres in any other way, [one can] resolve that that in these cases it is without a doubt permissible to send out those who are deemed useless’.18 He then strangely provides horrific examples of the mistreatment of noncombatants after being sent out of cities, which happened, he argues, because of how cities chose to expel ‘useless mouths’. In his estimation, cities can charitably protect noncombatants if they are sent out early and to neighbouring locations.19 And yet, this brand of charity is suspiciously not meant for people like himself. In his definition of who should be expelled, he argues that older men should remain since they can bring aid in the defence of the fortress as they were once architects and surgeons, and so on.20 This particular detail is notable as Floriani was himself an engineer and forty-f ive years old when he wrote the text. 21 It raises the question whether the people who justified and ordered the 17 Fiamelli, 84–85. 18 Floriani, 23, ‘Se bene da un canto pare impietà veder i vecchi padri, le mogli imbeccilli, & i teneri figliuoli scacciati dalle proprie case … per salvar la piazza dalle mani del nemico, non potendosi in altra maniera guardare dall’ingiurie, & straggi d’esso, che col prender tal risolutione, non è dubbio alcuno, che in simili accidenti sarà lecito ad ogn’uno mandar fuora coloro, che si giudicaranno inutili’. 19 Floriani, 24. 20 Floriani, 24, ‘possono apportare grandissimo giovanemento alla difesa della Fortezza, come sono tutti i Fabri vecchi, Architetti, Chirurghi, Medici, Spetiali, i Periti della disciplina Militare, & gli huomini eruditi.…’ 21 On the Renaissance engineer see Zanetti’s contribution to this volume.

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expulsion of ‘useless mouths’ would have done so if they themselves were included in the category of ‘useless’. Floriani’s work, which considers older men as useful in combat, is the first military treatise to question how utility is categorically constructed. However, Floriani’s and indeed all of the treatises notably avoid the claim – one that had circulated at least since the time of Plato – that women were able to fight in combat.22 Rather, these manuals reduced the argument to a question of guarding resources for one group (those who fight) while prohibiting another group (those who can’t fight) without questioning how militancy itself is a constructed discourse. The problematic categorization of women as non-combatants becomes untenable as we turn to heroic poems, a genre that had featured women warriors for millennia. And thus, the remainder of this chapter will discuss how both Trissino and Marinella navigate women as ‘useless mouths’ in poems that depict women as war heroes. In these poems we will, moreover, see how military and civic leaders struggled with the reasons one might choose to expel inhabitants during siege warfare. The poems, unlike the military treatises, suggest that decisions were never made with cold clarity. The poetic narratives reflect instead competing perspectives that we see in historical documents such as the resistance movements that countered the military command during the Siege of Siena: the Sienese harboured thousands of ‘useless mouths’ in the Cathedral; the government wrote to the army generals that it seemed ‘strange to send the poor into the hands of the enemy’; and the government as well claimed that if generals sent out families to save the patria, then they ‘would respond that the patria is not the city walls but instead the families and their honour’. 23 Just as real-life decisions were fraught with competing positions, the poetic deliberations reflect the human conditions of trauma, desire, and desperation.

Gian Giorgio Trissino: Italy Liberated from the Goths Trissino’s Italy Liberated from the Goths (1547–48) is the first literary text in the Italian tradition to discuss ‘useless mouths’ at any length. The poem 22 On relevant aspects of Plato, Republic, bk. 5, and the early modern reception of Plato’s commentary, see Milligan, Moral Combat, 12–43. 23 Matheron; Cantagalli (letter quoted at 334–35). Similar discussions happened during the Siege of Florence in 1530, see Lodolini, 173.

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stretches across twenty-seven books and focuses on the wars of the Byzantine general Belisarius against the Ostrogoths in Italy (537–538 CE).24 Although the poem is firmly in the Italian canon as the first Italian-language epic in the classical manner, the work has suffered a poor reputation since its publication.25 Despite the usual dismissal of the epic as a historical relic, there has been some recent scholarly work on the poem and its author, including the claim that the Italy Liberated from the Goths served as one model for Lucrezia Marinella’s epic poem Enrico.26 There are in fact two sieges in the Italy Liberated. The first, found in Book 7, is when the hero of the poem, the Byzantine military commander Belisarius attacks Naples. Belisarius attempts to convince the Goths in Naples to surrender before the attack, warning them that soldiers will kill women, children, and elderly indiscriminately. 27 In a grim scene that matches Belisarius’s predictions, the poem’s heroes inflict mass murder in the city. The episode depicts Procopius’s history of the event as well as Trissino’s personal knowledge of the atrocities of siege warfare.28 After the fall of Naples, Belisarius and the imperial troops march toward Rome and conquer the city in 536 CE without a battle. The peaceful victory is short-lived, as the Goths return to attack the city of Rome the following year. Thus, the great siege of Rome that occupies most of the poem (Books XV–XXVII) is one where the recently defeated Goths are besieging the newly arrived Byzantine army (called the Roman army). The scene of bocche inutili occupies much of Book XVI. Early on in the book, General Belisarius congratulates his troops for having defended the walls so virilmente (in a manly way).29 I draw attention to this singular word as it bluntly genders combat as men’s business. The phrase is striking in the context of the poem since the Roman victory to which Belisarius refers had been in great part due to the bravery of a woman warrior, Nicandra (XV, 24 Ermini offers the most comprehensive study of the poem. 25 On the negative reception of Trissino by his contemporaries see Zatti, 59–63. See also De Sanctis, 430. On the romance elements of the poem, see Cavallo, 158–70. 26 Galli Stampino notes that Marinella’s poem is the ‘rhyming counterpart to Trissino’s text’, in ‘A Singular’, 24. Marinella herself cites Trissino’s Italia liberata in her Marinella, Nobility, 48, 157. 27 Trissino, L’Italia liberata da’ Goti, 106 (bk. 7). I have used the Parnaso edition as it is readily available and uses modern orthography rather than the unique spelling system created by Trissino. All translations of L’Italia liberata are mine. 28 Procopius, chap. 10. On Trissino’s personal experience see Morsolin, 98. On Trissino’s lamentations on war, as well as a discussion of the tragedy of Croazzo where Germans burned 1,000 noncombatants see, Trissino, Elegia inedita. 29 Trissino, L’Italia, 253 (26), ‘avem difese / Sì virilmente le Romane mure’.

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pp. 237–238).30 Belisarius’s comment effectively redirects the poem from a focus on women in combat onto a discourse of war that excludes women.31 The poem thus shifts from depicting women heroes to invoking the putative notion that women are ‘not suited to war’ and that, as a consequence, they should be cast out from the city. The deliberation of ‘useless mouths’ immediately follows, and with it the poem makes a generic pivot from heroic poem, where women famously wielded swords, to a humanist dialogue that debates the woman question. The episode of ‘useless mouths’ is innovative, a first in the Italian epic tradition, and its dramatization of conflicting positions reminds one of the sorts of deliberations that occurred in Siena discussed above. Trissino had found the story of the expulsion as a single sentence in Procopius’s History of the Wars.32 The lengthy dialogue of the counselors is therefore the author’s invention and may have been drawn from his own experience in negotiations in Rome at the time of the siege of Pavia.33 In Trissino’s dramatization of the event, Belisarius worries that food rations were dwindling and thus proposes limiting soldiers’ rations and sending women and other people ‘not suited to war’ to Naples and to Gaeta: We will send the women and people not suited to war outside of the walls, so that they can go easily by sea to Naples and Gaeta. They can then go to Capua and stay there without fear of hunger or discomfort since that abundant town enjoys the delight and fat of the land.34 (Italy Liberated from the Goths, Book 26)

Belisarius’s proposal situates the tactic within a discourse of charity, much like Floriani would describe in his treatise, and as a gesture of his commitment to the cause, he offers to send his wife and a captain as escorts for the women and other ‘persone imbelle’ (persons not suited for war), a 30 On Nicandra, see Corrieri, 373. The poem also features Asbite, the Amazon who is mentioned by Silio Italico in the Punic Wars, Trissino (2). 31 On the ‘universal gendering of war’ see Goldstein, passim. 32 Procopius, 239, ‘Belisarius commanded all the Romans to remove their women and children to Naples’. Also discussed in Peterson, 506. 33 Trissino, Orazione in difesa de’ diritti di decima etc., quoted in Morsolin, Giangiorgio Trissino, 125, n. 1, ‘Quivi (a Roma) stetti in diversi negotii e fra gli altri venni orator di S.B. a questa Illustrissima Signoria nel tempo che il Christianissimo assediava Pavia’. 34 Trissino, L’Italia, 255 (26), ‘Mandiamo le donne e le persone imbelli / Fuor de le mura, ch’andaran per mare / Agevolmente a Napoli e a Gaeta, / E quindi potran ire a Capua, e starsi / Senza tema di fame, o di disconci / Per quello abbondantissimo paese, / Che è le delizie e ‘l grasso de la terra’.

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term that notably differs from the ‘bocche inutili’ often used in treatises.35 When Belisarius concludes his speech, all are ‘silent and mute / because of the displeasing proposal’.36 The silence is broken by Pope Silverius, who opposes the plan. Silverius provides various reasons to not expel women: the Goths would bring food, sending women away would bring discomfort, and the Romans cannot guarantee the safety of those who are sent away.37 While many of the listeners are moved to tears by the pope’s words, this sympathetic response is apparently not meant to be shared by the reader. The narrator has guided the reader to distrust the pope. Trissino spills much ink on deriding the pope as a man who is ‘corrupted’ by envy of Belisarius. Trissino’s anti-Silverius bias follows certain historical records that state that the pope was deposed and exiled by Belisarius for double-dealing with the Goths. Thus, the plan to keep women in the city is implicitly framed as intentionally harming the city. The ‘prudent’ decision is the one proposed by the f inal speaker, Amulio, who is described as ‘a grave man of rare eloquence’.38 He tells the listeners to follow Pythagoras and chase away the infirmity of the body, ignorance from the soul, and luxury from the flesh. In Amulio’s winning argument, expelling ‘useless mouths’ is to exhibit a Pythagorean-turned-Christian virtue of asceticism. Like the Commander in Annie Vivanti’s twentieth-century play, the male rulers of the town see the expulsion of women from their own point of view of sacrifice and duty. To see things otherwise, the Roman counselor tells us, is to be misled by indulgence: ‘often, that which seems sweet at the first taste brings us bitter pain’.39 Finally, Amulio explains that while it may seem pleasing to have one’s family nearby, it would be unbearable to watch them die of hunger. 40 One of his arguments is particularly relevant to this volume on people who work during war, as Amulio suggests that those ‘not suited for combat’ may instead be useful in food production, harvesting grapes and olives and sending them back to Rome to help those soldiers who stayed to fight. 41 35 TLIO lists ‘imbelle’ as ‘inadatto alla guerra. Estens. Che non sa difendersi, debole’. It should be noted that the term ‘bocche’ was commonly used in bureaucratic and inventory documents of the period. 36 Trissino, L’Italia, 255 (16), ‘Così parlò quel capitano eccelso; / Onde rimase ognun tacito e muto, / Per la non dilettevole proposta’. 37 Trissino, 256 (16). 38 Trissino, ‘Amulio, uom grave e d’eloquenzia rara’; ‘quella sentenza / Mi parve sempre ed ottima e prudente’. 39 Trissino, ‘Spesso quel che par dolce al primo gusto / Ci reca poi qualche dolore amaro’. 40 Trissino, ‘Chi non sa, ch’egli è dolce avere accanto / La moglie e i figli e i cari suoi parenti? / Ma vederli da poi morir di fame e non poterli dare alcun aiuto, / Saria dolor poco minor che morte’. 41 Trissino, 260 (16).

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Amulio dismisses any concern for the safety of the ‘imbelle’. He suggests that they can take a road not used by the Goths, stay in well-defended cities such as Naples and Gaeta, and finally, have the protection of a military escort. He aims harsh words at the pope, questioning why an unmarried priest wishes to keep women in the city. 42 One of the more interesting arguments against the pope is that ‘eloquence’ is deceptive. Amulio, a man who the narrator also describes as ‘eloquent’, ironically warns his followers that ‘speech with eloquence and art moves ignorant people rather than the wise’, and thus he appeals to the crowd by aligning the expulsion of ‘useless mouths’ with learned men who resist the passions stirred by rhetoric. 43 The counselors agree to back the proposal. They gather and expel women with infants, children, the sick, and other ‘gente imbelle’ (people not suited to war). Once the people have been pushed out, Belisarius’s vocabulary notably changes. Whereas he had first called them ‘people unsuited to war’, he now calls the expelled ‘the useless people’ (inutil gente). 44 The timing of the shift in terminology – after the decisions have been made and the people were outside the city – seems to expose the power of rhetoric that Amulio himself had warned against. The change in terminology of non-combatants from ‘unsuited for war’ to ‘useless’ reveals a manipulation of rhetoric where leaders masked what they knew was a morally questionable practice. The claim of protecting women, children and elderly seems to be little more than mere musings to perpetuate a masculine military ethos.

Lucrezia Marinella: Enrico; or, Byzantium Conquered Nearly ninety years after the publication of the Italy Liberated from the Goths, Lucrezia Marinella (1571 Venice–1653 Venice) modeled Trissino’s scene for her epic poem Enrico; or, Byzantium Conquered (1635). The poem’s vibrant stanzas of ottava rima distinguish it from Trissino’s dry unrhymed blank verse, but as others have noted, it nonetheless adopts many of the standards he advocated.45 This study is the first to claim that Marinella adapts Trissino’s innovative scene of bocche inutili, putting her own pro-woman perspective on the mini-dialogue. Her adaptation is a crucial text in a project on the 42 Trissino, 257 (16), ‘i signor preti che non han mogliere / Non dovrebbon già mai con tanta cura / Voler tener le donne nostre appresso’. 43 Trissino, ‘il parlar con eloquenza ed arte / Muove la gente sciocca e non i saggi’. 44 Trissino, 258 (16): emphasis mine. 45 Russell, 40–41; Galli Stampino ‘Introduction;’ Cox, ‘Fiction’ 61.

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shadow agents of war, as it is the only early modern work that discusses ‘useless mouths’ at any length by a member of the constituency of those who would have been forcibly expelled. Marinella’s heroic poem takes as its premise the controversial Fourth Crusade (1202–1204). 46 The Fourth Crusade was launched with the intent of recapturing the Muslim-controlled city of Jerusalem, but for reasons that are still debated in modern scholarship, the crusading army sacked the Christian city of Zara and later the Christian city of Constantinople, with only a fraction of the forces arriving in the Holy Land. By adopting the Fourth Crusade as her premise, Marinella thus had to negotiate a problematic expedition that pitted Christian against Christian and resulted in the excommunication of the Venetian army. 47 The war that occupies most of the poem is between the Byzantine empire under the leadership of Emperor Alessio and a western European coalition, known in the poem as the ‘Latins’, under the leadership of the Venetian doge Enrico Dandolo. The episode of ‘useless mouths’ occurs in canto 18, when Dandolo’s ‘Latin’ army sieges the city of Constantinople. The structure of the scene identically reflects Trissino’s episode. Three male speakers present contrasting perspectives about expelling useless mouths: the pro-expulsion Byzantine Emperor (Alessio); the anti-expulsion counselor who’s described as biased against the Emperor (Costanzo); and the pro-expulsion ‘learned’ man (Aristide). 48 The narrator tells us that Emperor Alessio ponders expelling people from the city due to a scarcity of provisions; he ‘mulls within his thoughts’ (pensa ne suoi pensier) and devises a solution: May the useless in battle be given the gift to be able to live far away, basking in idleness. It isn’t right, he said, that the slow and cowardly create hardship for manly spirts. (L’Enrico 18.50)49

While in the first sentence Alessio frames the ‘useless in battle’ as given the gift of keeping from the fray of battle, in the second, he echoes familiar misogynist fears that the ‘slow and cowardly’ sex would have a negative 46 On the negative reception of the Fourth Crusade see Runciman, 130. 47 Galli Stampino, ‘Introduction’, 21. 48 All citations of the Enrico are taken from Galli Stampino’s modern annotated Italian edition, Marinella, 2011. Galli Stampino’s abridged English translation does not include the deliberation of the ‘useless mouths’. Translations of Marinella are mine unless otherwise indicated. 49 Marinella, Enrico, 417–8 (18.50), ‘Gli inutili alla pugna abbian per dono / Poter viver lontan, tra l’otio assisi; / “Giusto,” dicea, “non è che i lenti e vili / Faccian disagio agli animi virili”’.

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influence on militant masculinity. When the Emperor calls his counselors together to make his proposal, he softens his language and states that he will send the ‘delicate sex’ and children far from the sieged city. Those who have a burning spirit and fierce desire will stay in the city, but the delicate sex and children will go far from us, so that they do not bring suffering since they are often the source of worries, when the man removes himself from danger. (Enrico 18.58)50

Alessio continues by stating that it would be too painful to watch loved ones die of starvation.51 Once the city will have ‘unburdened’ (sgravata) itself of the ‘useless weight’ (inutil peso) of the suffering of families, the soldiers would be able to endure the siege more easily.52 It is difficult for the reader to view Alessio as compassionate. He has been maligned throughout the poem as the cause of the conflict in the first place. And his reasoning for sending those people who are ‘useless in war’ to ‘idleness’ is to avoid the harm these women cause to soldiers by emasculating them as well as taking their resources. And finally, his choice of words – that men could fight once the city ‘unburdened’ (sgravata) itself of the ‘useless weight’ of ‘crying mothers, children, and wives’ – tarnishes his compassion with a self-serving callousness to retain his wrongful (according to Marinella) possession of the throne.53 Upon hearing the proposal, the counselors are displeased and ‘mute’. Their silence echoes Trissino’s episode and makes us aware of how closely Marinella adopts the scene that she will rewrite. The silence is broken by Costanzo, who argues against the expulsion of ‘useless mouths’. Costanzo is described as a ‘lover of women and of ease’, and he is also said to harbor a personal hatred of Emperor Alessio.54 He aptly pits chivalric masculinity against an epic one by stating that once warrior men find their homes without family, they will lose their reason to fight. It is love not honour that motivates men to act valorously: 50 Marinella, 419 (18.58). ‘Color ne la città nosco staranno / Di vivo spirto e di feroci voglie, / Ma il delicato sesso e i figli andranno / Lungi da noi, benché ciò apporti doglie, / Ché spesso è ben quel che ci arreca affanno, / Quando l’uom dal periglio si ritoglie’. 51 Marinella, 419–20 (18.59), ‘… sarebbe acerbo e strano / In questi orrendi secoli infelici / Veder perir color ch’amiamo solo / Per penuria di cibo; e qual fia ‘l duolo?’ 52 Marinella, 420 (18.60), ‘Sgravata a la città da inutil peso, / Più agevolmente sofferir potremo / L’assedio e l’armi e d’ira il petto acceso’. 53 Marinella, ‘Non vedrem tanti afflitti e lagrimose, / Madri languenti, pargoletti e spose’. 54 Marinella, 420 (18.63), ‘Amator delle donne, amico agli agi’.

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Tell me, oh king, who will place valor in the armed breasts of men to suffer grave perils? Perhaps you believe in the incentive of honour? It is vain without love to sharpen it. (Enrico 18.64)55

Costanzo’s analogous f igure in Trissino’s poem is Pope Silverius, but in Marinella’s hands, Costanzo becomes the mouthpiece for seemingly proto-feminist arguments. Costanzo argues that another reason women should be kept in the city is that wives can ensure men’s masculinity. Women, he states, can remind men of their masculine duty to protect the family. He depicts a scene where an imagined wife demands her husband defend her: ‘Defend, oh my husband, your beloved offspring, the dear homestead, and me, your faithful wife from hostile arms. Do not let immodest rage take my untainted honour, nor let me be left wretched, surrendered and servant to the Franks, tormented for the world to see’. (Enrico, 18.66)56

Costanzo adds that a ‘cuor virile’ (manly heart) responds to the calling to protect women (18.67). But war for Costanzo is notably a service given in an erotic context. When warriors are surrounded by the eyes of a beautiful woman, he will throw himself ‘between one thousand swords’ to protect what is in his heart (18.68).57 Combat, in Costanzo’s view, is only possible because of women; women inspire through love as well as the threat of shame. As I have discussed elsewhere, the configuration of women as arbiters of men’s militant masculinity is a persistent theme in the Renaissance querelle des femmes.58 The discourse of women’s right to be protected by men suggests, even if only implicitly, that women are unable to protect themselves. This is a position that Marinella eschewed in her famous treatise. Her Nobility and Excellence of Women advocated for women’s abilities to 55 Marinella, 420–21 (18.64), ‘Quando scacciati i genitori amati, / Le care mogli e i pargoletti figli, / Li cittadini mesti e sconsolati / Vedrai, dolenti il cuor, dimessi i cigli; / Chi sarà, dimmi, o re, che ai petti armati / Somministri valor ne’ gran perigli? / Forse credi agli stimoli d’onore? / Quei vani son se non li aguzza amore’. 56 Marinella, 421 (18.66). ‘“Defendi, o sposo mio, l’amata prole, / L’ospizio caro, e me, tua fida amica, / Dall’armi avverse; e non lasciar che invole / Il mio candido onor rabbia impudica, / Né ch’io misera a Franchi serva e preda / Resti, e far di me strazio il mondo veda”’. 57 Marinella, 421 (18.68), ‘Tra mille spade e ‘n mezzo il fuoco ardente’. This sentiment is also expressed in Castiglione’s Cortegiano (III.51). I thank Virginia Cox for this reference. 58 Milligan, ‘Politics of Effeminacy’; Moral Combat.

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fight, and it carefully sidestepped examples about women’s expectations of men to defend them.59 Costanzo, too, will suggest (briefly) that women can fight, but, as we will see, it seems only a token of real praise. Costanzo’s entire declaration of women’s abilities in combat is but a few lines in an already flimsy praise of ‘illustrious women’: Does an illustrious cry not sound out the excellence of women in every corner? How many cities does their excellence safeguard! Cities whose virtues make them a noble crown! Joan – with her great faith – saved the true nest of the Gauls, and the name of the Sabine women still resounds, as well as the name of many others taken up by fame for adornment and honour. (Enrico, 18.69)60

The speech echoes only a small fraction of Marinella’s treatise, The Nobility and Excellence of Women, where Joan of Arc (an anachronism in a scene set in ca. 1204) was one of many militant women.61 Moreover, Costanzo does not raise the conceptual arguments about women’s militancy found in the treatise: that women are physically able to fight if given training, that women are emotionally dedicated to war, and that men intentionally suppress women in combat. But the most troubling aspect of Costanzo’s defence of ‘illustrious women’ is that he never references the many named and unnamed women who fight within the poem’s narrative. There is no mistaking that his defence of women (with the exception of this one stanza) is one that stresses women’s vulnerability and their role in motivating men to fight through love or shame rather than their own militancy. He thus unsurprisingly finishes his speech by raising his concern for the safety of women who are sent outside of the walls.62 One wonders if Marinella hasn’t shown Costanzo to instantiate a brand of male pro-women authors who 59 The Nobility and Excellence of Women does not include the tale of Persian women (Mulierum Virtutes, 5) who greet their retreating husbands with lifted skirts asking if they wished to climb back in the womb. Moreover, she writes of the Cimbrian women who greet men who have been defeated with axes of their own (Nobility, 113). 60 I thank Francesca Baretta for her assistance in translating this passage. 61 Marinella, Nobility and Excellence, 78–81, 105–7, 115, 128. 62 Marinella Enrico, 422 (18.71), ‘Costor da noi scaccati, esuli, e privi / Della patria e de’ suoi, caggiano nelle / Mani e restin per sempre egri e captivi; / Noi, che sarem cagion de le querele / Degli innocenti, appena per duol vivi, / Sedizioni forse in tra i dolenti / Sorger vedremo e liti e tradimenti’.

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position themselves as champions of vulnerable women, thereby reinforcing the dependence of women on men.63 Following the Trissino model, Costanzo’s argument moves the audience to compassion but is rebutted by a third and final man, Aristide. Aristide is hyperbolically called the ‘greatest light of the kingdom’ as well as described as ‘dotto e grave’ (learned and grave).64 There has been some speculation as to the meaning of his name (i.e. similar to Aristotle), and most critics agree that the name indicates a counterpoint to the pro-woman quality of constancy embodied by Costanzo.65 Aristide says that while he understands the appeal of keeping women and children in the city, it would be unbearable to watch them die of hunger.66 His seeming concern for women is then revealed to be little more than window-dressing for misogynist discourse. He calls women the ‘slow and weak’ sex and describes their role as one of erotic distraction: And I will say that the slow and soft sex – with laughter and glances and with sighs and caresses – weaken arms and strip the courage from that fervor that makes you esteem glory. (Enrico 18.75)67

Aristide further dismisses the idea of women’s ability at arms, with the claim that for every example of a woman at arms, there are another hundred who cry in wartime.68 He unsurprisingly supports the expulsion of women and children from the city, and his point of view seems on the surface to be condoned by the author, as the narrator states that Aristide persuades those who are ‘educated’ and ‘rational’.69 The canto ends with most but not all of the ‘inutil plebe’ (useless people) being gathered for removal from the city.70 Their fate, once outside the city is never mentioned. 63 On the positioning of pro-feminist men as defenders of women, see Dialeti. 64 Marinella Enrico, 321 (14.30), ‘uom sublime e di quel regno / Lume maggior, perché già l scita oppresse’; 422 (18.72), ‘‘l dotto e grave / Aristide; con dir maturo’. 65 Lazzari, Poesia epica, states that his name is intentionally close to Aristotle. Cox, Prodigious Muse, 186, instead suggests that his name could refer to the historical figure of Aristides ‘the Just’. Both are historical figures that might elicit some criticism by Marinella as Aristides the Just was remembered as unjust by Theophrastus and Aristotle. Moreover, his name could merely be a witty combination of two of Marinella’s favourite targets for misogyny, Aristotle and Thucydides. 66 Marinella, Enrico, 446 (18.71). 67 Marinella, 423 (18.75), ‘E dirò, che quel sesso lento, e molle / Con risi, sguardi, e con lusinghe, e vezzi / Inferma l’armi e ‘l coraggioso tolle / Da quel fervor che fa che gloria apprezzi’. 68 Marinella, 423. ‘Se tu ritrovi ch’una volta o mai / Serbata abbia la patria donna imbelle; / Cento ne troverai che ‘n pianto, e ‘n lai / L’han posta e furo a lei ferro e facelle’ (18.76). 69 Marinella, 424 (18.80). 70 Marinella, 424 (18.82), ‘Allor Filocaio insieme aduna / Gran quantità; ma non però raccoglie / Tutta l’inutil plebe all’opportuna / Fuga che porta a’ Greci acute doglie’.

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The episode in Enrico sits strangely in the work of such a proto-feminist writer. The narrative appears to support not only the forcible expulsion of women from the city but the misogynist logic that underpins the decision. Laura Lazzari states that the deliberations in Enrico were verisimilar for including only men and that they are Marinella’s ‘pessimist’ critique of what happens when women are not present in such decisions.71 She also notes that Marinella had already expressed her opposition to expelling ‘bocche inutili’ in the earlier treatise, Nobility and Excellence of Women.72 Virginia Cox on the other hand views ambivalence in Marinella’s scene. She points out that Aristide’s claim that women diminish men’s valor is confirmed in a later episode when the sorcerer Esone enchants soldiers by showing them visions of their beloveds.73 Cox further suggests that the episode may be anticipating Marinella’s last work, The Exhortations to Women (1645), in which the author demonstrates hesitations about some of her earlier proto-feminist positions.74 Maria Galli Stampino, in her notes to the modern edition of the poem, argues that the misogynistic episode is meant to be illustrative of the irrational Byzantines.75 These interpretations all seek to offer an explanation for the narrator’s unexpected sympathies. My contribution to this body of insight takes the approach of placing the ‘useless mouths’ deliberations in the context of Marinella’s larger discourse on women’s militancy as well as her comments on ‘learned’ men. In Canto 14, when the crusaders first begin their siege of the city, they are greeted by a force of Byzantine ‘children, elderly, and the gentler sex’ who fight with ‘an unvanquished heart / and perfect love for their fatherland’.76 The narrator praises the valour of the group by saying that when one dies, the others do not flee, but rather, they increase their burning desire to fight.77 This event then includes a paean to Meandra, the woman-warrior hero of the Byzantine side who galvanizes the Byzantine war effort. Only seven stanzas later, we are introduced to Aristide for the first time (XIV 71 Lazzari, 195. 72 Lazzari, 192. 73 Cox, Prodigious, 186. 74 Cox, 348, n. 110. 75 Galli Stampino, 424, n. 12, shows here and in other places how Marinella discredits the Byzantines. For example, when they believe that Venice is landlocked, 258, n. 2. 76 Marinella, Enrico, 319–20 (14.23), ‘Fanciulli, vecchi, e ‘l più benigno sesso / Fan tra le torri memorabil prove, / Loro avvalora e rende invitto il cuore / Del paterno terren perfetto amore’. See also a moment when elderly, children, and women are said to have thrown rocks and shot arrows at troops (8.88). 77 Marinella, 320 (14.24), ‘Né c’è che fugga, s’altra in guerra pere; / Anzi sia quasi vita ivi il perire, / Cresce la forza in lor, cresce l’ardire’.

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30). He is praised as the beacon of the realm, but his intervention in the war is followed by a disaster for Constantinople. As Constantinople faces imminent destruction, the Duke implores Meandra, a woman warrior, to save the city. The heroine says she will make up for what she lacks in her sword with her ‘heart’, and she eventually saves the city from complete destruction.78 Aristide’s next appearance in the poem is his participation in the deliberations of the ‘bocche inutili’. And thus, if we take his speech within the context of the larger poem, we see that his comments – that women cry rather than fight and that women only have an erotic position within war – are not merely misogyny, they are mendacity. He had witnessed an army of women who fought, and he watched his city single-handedly saved by a woman warrior. Moreover, when he claimed that women lacked ‘heart’ to fight, it hardly seems an accident that this is the word specifically used by Meandra to claim her bravery. What has perplexed readers in this episode has assuredly not been the misogyny of Aristide but the praise that the narrator bestows upon him (twice called ‘dotto’ (learned)) as well as the fact that the narrator states that ‘reasonable’ people agree with him. To understand this moment, it is helpful to remember that Marinella often used the very words ‘learned’ and ‘reasonable’ not as praise but as signs of misled misogynists.79 In The Nobility and Excellence of Women she states that ‘knowledgeable (sapienti) and learned (dotti) men speak against and vituperate women’ because they are envious of them, disdain them, or they only love themselves.80 She also states that ‘All learned (dotti) and educated (scientiati) men believe that men are more noble than women’, a claim that she will debunk over hundreds of pages by providing many, many examples of fighting women as well as describing how cities were saved by women’s contributions to war efforts.81 Moreover, the Enrico itself supports women’s abilities in combat when it claims that the warrior woman Claudia proves that ‘culture not nature’ is to blame for women’s absence in war.82 Finally, we should note that even 78 Marinella, 334 (14.89), ‘E se poco potrà la spada, il petto, / Disse, ‘supplirà pronto al mio difetto’. 79 Tullia d’Aragona also refers to ‘dotti’ in a less than positive connotation in the preface to her Meschino. I thank Julia Hairston, editor of the forthcoming edition of the Meschino, for this reference. 80 Marinella, La nobilta, 108, ‘Dico adunque, che varie furono le cagioni, che spinsero & sforzarono huomini sapienti et dotti a biasmar & viturperar le donne, fra le quali è lo sdegno, l’amor di se stessi, l’invidia & la scusa del poco ingegno loro’. 81 Marinella, 135, ‘Credono tutti gli huomini dotti & scientiati, che i maschi sieno più nobili delle femine’. 82 Marinella, Enrico, 65 (2.29), ‘Mostra che l’uso e non natura ha messo / Timor nell’un, valor nell’altro sesso’.

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after Constantinople expels its ‘useless mouths’, some women remain and fight. In the final moments before the fall of the city, ‘brave spirited’ women, ‘inspired by love of the patria’, shoot piercing arrows from the high walls ‘happy to give their souls and lives’ to their defeated city.83 In my reading, Aristide’s perspective to expel women is not condoned by the narrator, a point made clear by the fact that the advice of Aristide does not save the city from defeat. Sending the women out of the city did not bolster male troops. Instead, it possibly ensured defeat precisely due to the lack of women warriors. In her Nobility and Excellence of Women and in her Enrico, Marinella had already shown that victory could indeed be influenced by women’s participation in combat. She may have even been aware of a sixteenth-century battle popularized in a 1596 edition of stories of famous women, where women refused to be ‘useless mouths’ and thus defeated invading Turks.84 In Alessio’s Constantinople, on the other hand, these useful women had been sent away. Perhaps keeping women in the city would have led to a different outcome.85 Like Trissino’s, Marinella’s episode of ‘bocche inutili’ is her invention. There is, in fact, no mention of expulsions of people in the chronicle of Niceta Coniata (ca. 1150–ca. 1217), Marinella’s presumed source for the story.86 Her close adaptation of Trissino’s scene (one that had also aligned ‘wise’ men with expelling women) brilliantly allows her to show how ‘learned’ men congratulate themselves as ‘reasonable’ for their misplaced rulings over the fate of women’s bodies that ultimately lead to military defeat. And the deliberations of Costanzo and Aristide in particular reveal how the discourse of the protection of vulnerable women is in actuality underpinned by a misogynistic fashioning of women as useless. Marinella’s episode about ‘useless mouths’ is but part of the Enrico’s tapestry depicting women’s complex roles in warfare. This broader depiction of women within the poem comprises young women warriors, an older retired woman warrior, an army of women at the city walls, wives 83 Marinella, 515 (23.83). ‘Le donne miri in abito succinte / Lanciar dall’alte torri acuti dardi, / Dall’affetto di patria a ciò far spinte, / Con voler fermo e animi gagliardi’; ‘E liete dan per la città smarrita, / Come devote a lei, l’alma e la vita’. Cox notes that this episode ‘nuances’ Aristide’s words, Cox, Prodigious 186. 84 See the ‘Women of Diu’ in Serdonati, 603–5. 85 Not all of Marinella’s female characters are warriors. She includes wives (Clelia and Areta) who are sympathetic victims of war when their husbands are killed. See Galli Stampino, 34–42 and Behr, 108–52. 86 Zorzi, makes a compelling argument as to why Niceta Coniata’s Narrazione cronologica is Marinella’s source for her discussion of the Fourth Crusade. Zorzi indicates which verses are taken from Coniata’s account, and he also notes that much of the poem is not historical.

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of soldiers, and ‘useless mouths’.87 Among these women, the one group who never speaks are those forcibly expelled from the city. Did they hate their male compatriots more than the enemy as in Vivanti’s and Beauvoir’s twentieth-century plays? Or were they grateful to leave a warzone? Why did Marinella choose not to even tell us of their fate after leaving the city? On these matters, Marinella remains silent. In effect, she co-opts Trissino’s dialogue on ‘useless mouths’ not to voice her position on the war tactic that had been established by two millennia of war treatises, but rather, to show that the conversation was flawed in its premise. Men had asked the wrong question all along. The debate should not have been whether useless women should be expelled or not, but rather, why women were considered useless in the first place.

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About the Author Gerry Milligan is Professor of Italian and Director of Honors Programs at the College of Staten Island–CUNY. His publications include The Poetics of Masculinity in Early Modern Italy and Spain (co-edited with Jane Tylus, 2010) and Moral Combat: Women, Gender, and War in Italian Renaissance Literature (2018).

Index abacus teachers 180 Abbeville 53, 54 accountants and bookkeepers 127, 128, 133, 174 Acquaviva, Belisario 160 actor network theory (ANT) 13, 101 Aelian 157-59 Africans 81 age 23 see also children; elderly people agency and civilians 13, 23 theories of 12-14, 24, 99-101, 150-53 agents 17-18 Agier, Michel 64 Agnadello, battle of 213, 244, 260, 264 agriculture irrigation and land-reclamation 186 meadow clearance 75 Akkerman, Nadine 236 Albanese, Zorzi 263 Alberti, Leon Battista 178, 181 Alberti, Spinello di Luca 128, 132-40, 143 Albret, Jeanne d’ 278, 281 alchemists 183, 192 Aldrovandi, Ulisse 110 Alessio, Byzantine emperor 313-15 Alexander the Great 177, 186 Alfonso V, king of Naples 156, 157 Algiers 112 Amazons 156 ambassadors 18, 130-32, 134-41, 153, 165, 212, 227, 230, 232, 240, 242, 245, 258 see also bailo, diplomacy; heralds; messengers Americans 109 Amerigo, Giovanni 140 Amiens 54, 55 Anatolia 232, 234, 235, 245 Ancona 214, 215, 216 Andalusia 104 animals 95-119, 259 and agency 13-14, 95-97, 99 in Renaissance war 98 see also cats; cattle; cows; dogs; horses; tarantulas; toads Ansani, Fabrizio 203 ANT (actor network theory) 13, 101 anthropocentrism 99-100 anthropology 152 antiquarianism 157-62, 176-77, 191 Apollodorus of Damascus 177 apothecaries 127, 233 Apulia 141 archaeology 28-29, 98, 111 archers 163 Archimedes 174, 177, 181-83, 185, 190, 193

architects 72, 181-83, 185, 187, 190, 280, 307 archives 30, 65, 74, 98, 184, 203, 210, 214 Arezzo 134 Aristide (Enrico; or, Byzantium Conquered) 313, 317-20 Aristotile of Bologna 186, 188 Armenians 183, 234-35 armour 72, 81, 98, 113, 127, 155, 163, 210, 214, 215, 216, 253, 256, 260, 262-63, 280, 282 armourers 28, 29-30, 217 arquebuses and arquebusiers see guns; gunners Arrian 158 Artemon 177 artillery on galleys 80-81 and women 21, 277-302 artists 30, 71, 183-84 Asia 158 Astrarium, planetary automaton 178, 190 astrologers and astrology 29, 180, 188-91, 193 astronomy 179, 192 Attalus I 177 August of Wettin, Elector of Saxony 192 Augustus, Roman emperor 177, 181, 186 automata 178, 180, 187, 190, 191 Avignon bank branches 130-31 papacy 127, 129, 140 Avogadro family 269 Alvise 267, 268 bailo, Venetian resident ambassador in Constantinople 227-28, 231, 234-35 Baldo degli Ubaldi 153 balie, ad hoc Florentine government committees 127, 141 Ban, John 132 bandits 26, 204 bankers 130, 202 Barad, Karen 101 Barata, Giovanni Antonio 237-38 Barbaro, Marcantonio 234 barbers 20, 86, 233 Barducci Chierichini, Francesco 185 Barga 131 Bargagli, Scipione 304, 305 bargemen 216 Batarnay Anne de 293 Marie de, comtesse de Bouchage 292-94 Battisti, Eugenio 179 Beauvoir, Simone de 304-05, 321 Belisarius 309-12 Beolco, Angelo see Ruzante bell-ringers 127-29, 140

326  Bellini, Gentile 30 Bellus, king of ancient Assyria 156 Belluzzi, Giovan Battista 306 Bentivoglio, Giovanni II, lord of Bologna 189 Beretta, Bartolomeo 206 Beretta, firearms firm 203, 205 Bergamo 205, 210, 238 Bernardi, Giovanni 102 Berti, Simone Bartoli 142 Bertini, Compagno 141 Bessarion, Basilios 183, 188 Béthune, Maximilien de, Baron de Rosny and duc de Sully 280 Biagioli, Mario 173-74 Bible 155 Biez, Oudart du, admiral of France 55 Biondo Flavio 159 Biscotto, Paulo 235 Biton 177 Black Death 128, 129, 134, 140 blacksmiths 16, 20 Blaise de Monluc, marshal of France 104 blasphemy 82, 84 Boccaccio, Giovanni 125, 127, 178, 270 bodyguards 204 Bologna 138, 203, 204, 205 Boltanski, Ariane 286 bombards 205 see also guns; weapons Boniface IX, pope 178 books of secrets 30 booty and spoils 150 Boulogne siege of 52 Boulonnais destruction and depopulation of 50, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 60 fortifications of 62 land prices of 61 maps of 65 massacres in 56-57 refugees from 49, 52, 54, 55, 59 returnees to 60-62 settlers in 61-62 surveying commission of 61-62 Bourbon family 279, 282, 294 Charles de, duke of Vendôme 63 Henri de, roi de Navarre 294 Suzanne de 282 Brahe, Tycho 192 Brescia 201, 203, 207, 208, 210, 212, 214, 215, 216, 218, 219, 253-76 Brésin, Louis 58 bribes 77, 132, 136, 137, 139 Bridbury, E.R. 123 Bruciaferro, Giovanni Matteo 216 Bruciaferro, Terentio 216 Brucker, Gene 129 Brunelleschi, Filippo 180, 184, 187 bureaucracy and bureaucrats, in war 126

Shadow Agents of Renaissance War

Burgkmair, Hans 187 Burgundy and Burgundians 147, 153 Busle, Bernardino 201 Bussotto, Bartolomeo 201 Butters, Suzanne 74 Caesar, Julius 157 Calabre, Angevin king of arms 152 Calvisano 264, 266 camera del arme, Florence 135 camera del comune, Florence 127, 128, 132, 137, 138, 140, 142 Camerarius, Philipp 109, 110 campaign community 16, 255, 271 camp followers see campaign community Campanus of Novara 179, 190 Camu, imperial horse 104 canals 186 Cane, Ruggiero 136 Caracciolo, Pasquale 108 Cardano, Gerolamo 190, 191 carpenters 16, 20, 79, 83, 127, 175 Carpi 219 Carrara, Francesco 130, 131, 135, 177 Casale sul Po 205 Cascina, battle of 131, 135 castellans 205, 217, 258, 266 Castriotto, Iacomo 306 cats 100-101, 111 cattle 61, 109 Cavalcanti, Giovanni 137 cavalry 204 Cerignola, battle of 103, 205 charcoal 207 Charles IV, holy Roman emperor 127 Charles V, holy Roman emperor 52, 72, 109, 180, 190-92 Charles VIII, king of France 105, 165 Charles IX, king of France 289-90 Charles of Durazzo 132 Chazeron, Gilbert de 286 children and campaign community 16 and early modern war 27 killing of 59 and immunity from harm in war 23, 58 orphaned and sent to galleys 77 as refugees 58 and siege warfare 305, 306, 307, 309, 310, 312, 314, 317, 318 Chioggia 216 Chiti, Matteo 140-41 chivalry 74, 78, 97, 124, 151-53, 270, 306, 314 Cicero, Marcus Tullius 159, 186, 191 Ciompi Revolt in Florence 133, 138, 139 Città di Castello 138, 139 civilians and agency 13, 23 immunity of 22, 23, 24

327

Index

and soldiers 15-16, 90 targeted in war 58-59, 62-63 Clarques 56 Claudia (Enrico; or, Byzantium Conquered) 318 clerics 23, 26-27, 76, 88 Clèves Catherine de, duchesse de Guise 278 Henriette de, duchesse de Nevers 279, 283, 286-87 clocks, clock-makers and -keepers 180, 183, 187, 190 clothing 81, 89, 204 Cloux 185 coasts 62 Cochefilet, Rachel de, madame de Rosny 296 Cohn, Carol 22 Cold War 241, Collegio dei Savi, Venice 164 Colonna, Fabrizio 95 Colorni, Abramo 183, 188 Commines, Philippe de 105-106 Condotta, Florentine bureau for hiring troops 128, 131 Condottieri 17, 102, 125, 136, 140, 176, 178, 210, 211, 213, 220, 256-57, 259-60 Coniata, Niceta 320 Constantinople 81, 180, 227-28, 231, 234-35, 237-38, 313, 319-20 Contarino, Alessandro 218 Conti, Daniele 184 contraband 215 contractor state 202, 209-12, 220 convicts 78-79, 81-82 cooks 128, 129 Copenhagen, duke of Wellington’s horse 102 Corfu 239 Cornazzano, Antonio 306 Correggio 256 Correr, Paolo 207 corsairs 73, 86-87 Corso, Belantonio 215 Cortona 138 Costanzo (Enrico; or, Byzantium Conquered) 313-17, 320 Coucy, Enguerrand 142 Council of Ten, Venice 164, 214, 227-45 Courtois, Jean see Sicile cows 107 Cox, Virginia 318 creditors 76 Cremona 88, 180, 191, 258, 261, 266 Crete 239 criers 128 criminals 80-87, 227, 233, 240 crossbowmen 132 cryptography 188, 193 see also espionage; spies customs officials 202 Cyprus 133, 234-37

Daedalus 177 da Castello, Piero Iacomo 262-63 da Porto, Luigi 164-65 dal Cesenatico, Giovanni 216 dal Pozzo Toscanelli, Paolo 180 dal Verme, Luchino 176 Dandolo, Enrico, Venetian doge 313 Davis, Natalie Zemon 278 debt 134 de Gabianeda, Rizo 266 de Iacomo, Simon 234-35 del Carretto, Carlo 259, 264 del Carretto, Maddalena 256 del Chino, Battista 208-09 del Chino, Venturino 211 Deleuze, Gilles 13, 24, 101 Delorme (or de L’Orme), Philibert 280 de Roover, Raymond 133 Despret, Vinciane 107 Dieci di Balia, in Florence 142 Diefendorf, Barbara B. 278 diffidatio, formal challenge to war 147 Dinocrates of Rhodes 177, 186 Dinteville, Joachim de 294-95 Diogenes Laertius 183 Dionysus 158 diplomacy 153 disability 23 disease 27, 55, 85, 101, 125, 128, 230 see also Black Death disguise 164 distributed personhood 152-53 doctors 86 doge of Venice 164 dogs 101, 109-110 Donatello 102 Dondi, Giovanni de’ 178, 186 doves 100 Doyle, Arthur Conan 124 Dutch Revolt 25, 296, 298 dwarves 72 Edward III, king of England 125 Elba fortifications on 71-72 elderly people 23, 28, 51, 58, 88, 157, 305, 306, 307-09, 310, 312, 314, 317, 318 El Escorial see San Lorenzo El Escorial Elizabeth I, queen of England 109 Ellis, John 14 engineers 16, 30, 284, 296, 307 fluidity between military and civil 175 hydraulics 186 semantic shifts of the name 180 training 184 England 61, 64, 65, 111, 149, 162, 178, 208, 228 frontiers of 62 heralds 148 entrepreneurs 202

328  equestrianism 97-98, 102-09 see also horses Erik VII, king of Sweden, Demark, Norway 178 Esone 318 Espagne, Catherine Michelle d’, duchesse de Savoie 295 espionage 128, 227-50 Este family Isabella d’, marchesa of Mantua 21n53 Niccolò II d’, marquis of Ferrara 154 Niccolò di Leonello d’ 205 Estrées, Jean d’, comte d’Orbec 288 ethnic cleansing 48, 56, 64-65 Euclid 174 Fabbri, Gaspar 216 Fabian dalle Ballestre 209 Famagusta 133 Fano 178 farming 61 and destruction of crops 50, 53, 54, 62 Farnese, Alessandro, cardinal 79 Farnese, Pier Luigi, duke of Parma 211, 215 farriers 16, 20, 108 Favyn, André 155, 156 Fenestella, Tiberius Lucius see Fiocchi, Andrea Fernández de Córdoba, Gonzalo 189 Ferrara, duchy of 203, 205, 206, 214 Ferrarese, Alessandro 216 Fery, imperial horse 104 Fery de Guyon 104, 112-13 fetials 148, 159-62 Fiamelli, Giovanni Francesco 307 Fibiger, Linda 28 Finardo, Giovanni 210, 211 Finley-Croswhite, S. Annette 279 Fiocchi, Andrea (Tiberius Lucius Fenestella) 159, 160 firearms see guns First World War 14, 64, 65, 229, 304 Flanders 63, 230 flask-makers 218 Floriani, Pietro Paolo 307, 310 Florence 123-46, 154, 184, 185, 205, 208, 209, 210, 211, 215, 217, 218, 219, 231 artillery production 203 astrologer of the republic 189 cavalry organization 135 civic bureaucracy 126, 129 and impact of Black Death 129 Santa Maria del Fiore, cathedral 180 and wars 127-43, 154 Foix, Gaston de 253-54, 268 Fontana, Giovanni 177 foragers 54 Fornaro, Gironimo 216 Fornovo, battle of 103, 105-06 fortifications 71, 72, 73 surveys of 72-73

Shadow Agents of Renaissance War

Fortini, Benedetto di ser Lando 138 Fondulo, Giorgio 180 Frachetta, Girolamo 306-07 France and the French 19, 20, 21, 25, 26, 27, 30, 47-70, 72, 74, 77, 82, 83, 84, 103, 104-06, 109, 110, 127, 138, 139, 142, 149, 151, 160-61, 228, 253, 258-60, 264, 267-68, 271, 277-302 see also French Wars of Religion Francesco di Giorgio Martini see Martini, Francesco di Giorgio Francis I, king of France 160 and battle of Marignano 189 and battle of Pavia 189 and conquest of Boulonnais 59 Frederick II of Denmark 192 French Wars of Religion 21, 25, 256, 277-302 Friuli 205 Froissart, Jean 150 Frontinus, Sextus Julius 157, 177 Fudge, Erica 101 Gagné, John 188 Galilei, Galileo 174 galleys artillery and weapons of 80-81 commissioner of the Tuscan 85 depicted in frescoes 73 high mortality rates on 85 as ideal warships 73 inventory of slaves on 81-82 in the Mediterranean 80 oarsmen on 75-76, 80 pardons for service on 86 substitutions for service on 87-88 Tuscan general of the 80 Tuscan system of 73 see also ships Galli Stampino, Maria 318 Galluzzi, Paolo 174 Gambara family see also Gonzaga family, Lucrezia Alda Pio 29-30, 253-76 Auriga 254, 267, 270 Gianfrancesco 254. 257, 259, 260, 270 Maffeo 262 Marsilio 262 Niccolò 254, 257-60, 262, 264-67, 270 Piero 261 Pietro 257 Veronica 256, 257, 268 and arms trade 211 Gardone Valtrompia 206-07, 209, 210, 213, 220 Garzoni, Tommaso 181, 229 Gaston Phébus 110 Gattamelata (Erasmo da Narni) 102 Gaurico, Luca 189 Gaza, Theodore 157 Gell, Alfred 152-53, 156

Index

gender theory and war 20-22 and war-related labour and experience 12, 22, 255-56, 270-71, 296, 298-99 genetic evidence 98 Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War 23 Genoa 129, 131-32, 139, 214, 231 Gentili, Alberico 161 geometry 175 Germany and Germans 127, 129, 131, 132, 140, 158, 177, 178, 205, 206, 291 Giovanbattista d’Arezzo 210 Giovanni da Legnano 23 Giovio, Paolo 110 Girard, Nicolas, seigneur de Bretigny 291 Giustiniani, Pietro 110 Giustiniano, Paulo 218 gloves and gauntlets 147, 153-56, 160, 164, 166 see also heralds, and the gage of battle goldsmiths 187 gonfalonieri of Florence 143 Gonzaga family Federico II, marquis of Mantua 108 Ferrante, count of Guastalla 103 Francesco II, marquis of Mantua 103 Giovanni Pietro 263 Guglielmo, duke of Mantua 79 Louis de Gonzague, duc de Nevers 282, 285, 286, 287, 295 see also Nevers Lucrezia 254, 255, 259, 261-62, 270 Gonzaga, horse of Emperor Charles V 112 Gottolengo 260, 266, 267 grain 54 Gradenigo, Giovanni 261 Great Company 154 Gregory IX, pope 138 Grifo, Piero di 138, 139 Grisone, Federico 102-03, 107 Gritti, Andrea 253, 258, 268 Groebner, Valentin 30 Groffliers 55 Gruffydd, Elis 49, 51, 57 Gruter von Werden, Konrad 178 Guastalla 256 Guasto, Marchese del 212 Guattari, Felix 13, 24, 101 Guelfi, Agnolo 142 Guicciardini, Francesco 162, 185 Guido da Vigevano 177, 184 Guidoni, Matteo 142 Guigni, Domenico 141 guilds of engineers 175 Guindazzo, Giacomo 103 guerrillas 26 gunpowder 81, 127, 203, 204, 218, 220, 279-83, 288, 290, 292, 294, 299 gunners 205, 209

329 guns carrying 208 concealment of 204, 219 handguns (stioppi, schioppetti) 204-206 makers 202, 207-208 manufacture (forges and furnaces) 207, 209 matchlocks 204, 218 sales and purchases 206-16 smuggling 215 technical specifications 201-02, 204 transport 215 wheellocks 204, 208 see also artillery; weapons Guyon see Fery de Guyon Hagia Sophia, Constantinople 180 Hale, John 203 handcuffs 81 Hapsburg, Rudolf von 130 Harari, Yuval N. 104 Harman, Graham 13 Hawkwood, John 130, 132, 136, 137, 138, 139 Helm, Franz 100 Henri II, king of France reconquers Boulonnais 62 Henri III, king of France 292 hemp 219 Henry VIII, king of England asserts right of conquest 61 as coloniser 61, 62 and ethnic cleansing 48, 62 grants mercy to population of Boulogne 53 deploys mastiffs in war 109 heraldry 149, 151 heralds 17, 141 in ancient sources 157-62 as avatars of princes 150-53 from England 149, 162 from France 149, 162 as kings of arms 151 and the gage of battle 147-48, 160, 163, 164 and poursuivants 149 medieval origins 149 mythical origins 156-58 from Spain 163 herdsmen 16 Hero of Byzantium 177 Heron of Alexandria 182 Hiero II 177 Hobsbawm, Eric 106 Hollanda, Francisco de 30 Holy Land 177 Holy Roman Empire 52, 72, 78, 109, 112, 113, 124, 127, 129, 140, 162, 177, 240, 244 see also Germany and Germans horses 14, 260, 289, 290 in art 102

330  recalcitrance and collaboration with rider 106-09 and disparity with rider 104 and horsemanship handbooks 102, 107, 108 and riders as a ‘unity’ 97, 102-06 and sentience 95-96 horseshoers 16 see also farriers Howard, Thomas II, third duke of Norfolk campaigns in northern France 50, 56 campaigns in Scotland 50, 56 Howell, Philip 106 humanists 174, 176-80, 193 Hundred Years’ War 19, 54, 123, 125, 150 Hungary and Hungarians 127, 129, 132, 139, 140, 188 hydraulics 180, 185, 186, 191 Ingenio de Toledo 190 interspecies perspectives 98, 108 Ireland 48, 58, 62, 64, 65, 109 iron 206-07 irregular forces 24, 26 Israel Defense Force 24 Italian Wars 19, 25, 97, 103, 105, 109, 112, 148, 162, 175, 203, 205 ius fetiale (fetial law) 166 ius gentium (law of nations) 166 Ivan III, Russian tsar 188 Jacopo da Como 209 janissaries 183 Jews 27, 48, 183, 188, 218 Joan of Arc 316 Joyeuse family 279, 292-94 Anne de, duc de Joyeuse 292-94 Claude de, baron de Saint-Sauveur 294 Julius II, pope 205 jurists 166 just war theory 24, 159 Keen, Maurice 152 Knights of Malta 78 Knights of Santo Stefano 74, 78 Kosovo Serbian invasion of 64 Kyeser, Konrad 177 La Baume, Marguerite de 285-86, 297 labour forced 75-77 in gun manufacture 207 mobility 208 relations 17, 20 and war 18 see also sub-contractors; supply-chains La Jugée, François de, comte de Rieux 284 La Marche, Olivier de 153 Lambucci, Gianozzo 141

Shadow Agents of Renaissance War

Landau, Konrad von 132, 138, 154 Landau, Count Lutz von 132, 135 Landsknechts 187 La Rivière, Jean de, seigneur de Chanlemy 283 La Rochelle 281, 291 La Roëre, Marguerite de, madame de Chanlemy 283 Latour, Bruno 13, 101 La Tour d’Auvergne, Henri de, duc de Bouillon 285 La Valette, Bernard de, duc d’Épernon 293 La Vieuville, Robert de 296-97 Law, John 13 law of nations see ius gentium Lazzari, Laura 318 leather-workers 217 Le Féron, Jean 161 Le Havre 288 Lenman, Bruce 185 Leonardo da Vinci 30, 101, 102, 183-185, 187 Lepanto, battle of 201 Lévis, Anne de, duc de Ventadour 297 lice 111 Livy 159 Locke, John 111 Lombardy 134 Lopez, Robert 19 Lorraine 230, 279, 285 Henri de, duc de Guise 291 Marguerite de Lorraine-Vaudémont 292 Louis XII, king of France 164, 187 Lucas, Scott 241 Lucassen, Jan 90 Lützen, battle of 28 Lynn, John A. 298 Machiavelli, Niccolò 16, 28, 124-25 Art of War 16, 95-96, 98 Clizia 19 machines, military 178, 181-82, 184-87 see also mechanics, science of Maggi, Girolamo 306 Magnani, Nicodemo 209 Malatesta, Roberto 178 Malatesta, Sigismondo Pandolfo 178, 184 Mallett, Michael 203 Malvezzi family Lucio 260, 263 Giulio 260, 263 Pietro Antonio 263 Manerbio 260, 267 Mantua 21, 109, 183, 206, 209, 214, 261, 262, 267, 271 see also Gonzaga family Marconnay, Renée de, dame de Fervaques 282, 285 Mariano di Jacopo see Taccola Marinella, Lucrezia 303, 305, 308, 309, 312-21 Martinengo family 210, 265, 269 Martini, Andrea 216

331

Index

Martini, Francesco di Giorgio 186-87 Mary Rose (sunken carrack) 111 masons 79, 127, 174, 175 mastiffs see dogs mathematicians 174, 176, 187, 190, 191 Mati, Nanni 142 Mauss, Marcel 155-56 Mazzei, Arrigo 140 Mazzoli, Bartolomeo 212 Maximilian I, holy Roman emperor 162, 187, 189 McGee, Timothy 126 Meandra 318-19 mechanics, science of 177, 179, 182 Medici family Catherine de Médicis, queen of France 278, 280, 288-90, 295-96 Cosimo I de, grand duke of Tuscany 71, 72, 73, 76, 78, 79, 84, 85, 86, 90, 208-09 Francesco I de, grand duke of Tuscany 74, 77, 82 Lorenzo di Piero de, ruler of Florence 185 Marie de Médicis, queen of France and Navarre 278, 296 medicine 177, 179 Mehmed II, Ottoman sultan 184 Melfi, Prince of 103 mercenaries 124-25, 130, 131, 137, 140, 202 merchants 73, 133, 210, 232, 238, 279, 294 messengers 148, 162 metallurgy and metal-workers 175, 218, 219 Michelangelo 30, 76n30 middlemen 209-11 Milan 128, 163, 175, 203, 205, 207, 208, 212, 237, 238, 255 militarism 15 military enterprisers 16-17, 26 military revolution thesis 15, 18, 113, 173, 202, 221, 298 militia of Florence 75, 205 Minos, king of Crete 177 Mirandola 209 Mocarelli, Luca 203 Molins 286-87 Modena 203, 219 Mondoglio, count of 209 Moneylenders 27, 255 Monluc see Blaise de Monluc Montefeltro, Federico da, duke of Urbino 186-87 Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu 230 Montfort-Tettnang, Hugh 130 Montjoye, herald of France 151, 164 Montmélian 296 Montmorency family 279, 290, 297 Anne de Montmorency, duc de Montmorency 290

Montreuil siege of 52, 57 Morales, Ambrosio de 190 Morelli, Giovanni di Pagolo 136, 138 Morin, Antoine 49, 58 Mühlberg, battle of 192 Müller, Giuseppe 133 musicians 127, 141 muster rolls 98, 206 Naestved, battle of 28 Naimark, Norman 48 Naldi, Gennaio 142 Naples 132, 138, 139, 156, 210, 309, 310, 312 Navarre Catherine de 292 Marguerite de, comtesse de Rieux 284 Nef, John U. 19 Negro, Marco 254, 271 Nemours family 279, 295 Neri, Francesco 141 Neuschel, Kristen B. 256, 278, 282, 283, 296 Nevers see Gonzaga, Louis de; Clèves, Henriette de Nicandra 309 Nicolo da Prati 209 Nifo, Agostino 189 nobility 97, 148-49, 151-52, 173-74, 180, 210 notaries 127, 138, 183, 216 Novara, battle of 110 Nove conservatori di ordinanza e milizia, Florence 219 O, Catherine d’, marquise de La Vieuville 296-97 oarsmen 75-76, 80 Ognies, Louise d’, madame de Picquigny 277-78 Onasander 305 Ongaro, Giulio 203 Orléans 288, Henri II d’, duc de Longueville 291 orphans 77 Orsini, Camillo 210 Ottantuno, fiscal committee of Florence 142 Ottheinrich, Elector Count Palatine of Wittelsbach 192 Ottoman Empire 28, 80, 183, 188, 205, 207, 213, 218, 227, 228, 230, 231, 233-36, 238, 239, 240, 244 see also bailo; Constantinople Pacioli, Luca 179, 185, 187, 189 Pacq, imperial horse 104 Padua 130, 218 pages 128, 129 painters see artists Palazzo da Fano 211 Paliano 215, 218 Pallavicini family 259

332  Panciera, Walter 203 Pantera, Pantero Dell’armata 76, 89 Pantheon, Rome 180 Paoli, Giovanni 128-33, 138, 139, 143 Papal States 201, 208, 210, 215, 217, 259, 296 Pappus of Alexandria 182, 193 Paride dal Pozzo 154, 155 Parino, Bartolomeo 213, 214 Paris 238 see also France and the French Parrott, David 125, 203 pater patratus see fetials patroni dell’armi 211, 219 Paul IV, pope 78, 80 Pavia battle of 102, 112, 205 see also sieges, Pavia peasants 20, 23, 48, 50-65, 74-77, 79, 89, 255, 256, 259, 265 Pecchi, Zuane 240 Pericles 177 Perreau, Louis de 160-61 Perugia 134, 138, 139, 217 Peruzzi, Simone di Ranieri 136, 139 Pesaro 216 Pessaro, Ottavio 238 Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca) 176, 178 Philip II, king of Spain 180, 190 Phillips, Gervase 98 Piccolomini, Enea Silvio see Pius II, pope pilgrims 23, 164 see also clerics Pio da Carpi family Alda see Gambara family, Alda Pio Alberto 257 Giberto 257 Margherita 259 Piombino 73-74, 80 Pisa 125, 128, 130-31, 134, 257 Pistoia 209 Pius II, pope 158 Pius IV, pope 74 Pizan, Christine de 23, 306 Plato 181 Pliny the Elder 178, 183 Plutarch 181 podestà of Brescia 207 of Florence 129 Poeta, Ercole 214, 218 poets 29, 128, 176 policemen 129 Pomponio Leto, Giulio 159, 160 Pontevico 264, 266, 267 Porcellaga, Giovanni Battista 210-12 Porcher, Jocelyne 107 porters 216 Portoferraio (Cosmopolis) 72, 79, 86 Procopius 309 prosthetics 188

Shadow Agents of Renaissance War

priors of Florence 128-29, 140, 142 prisoners of war 24 Priuli, Girolamo 207 prostitutes 12, 23, 87, 237, 298 poursuivants see heralds Pucci, Antonio 128, 141 Punic Wars 157 punishments 76-77, 79, 83, 87-88 Pythagoras 311 quadrivium 175, 176 Quinzano 260, 261, 264 Raber, Karen 103 ransoms 19, 73, 268 rape 22, 59, 83, 298 recipes 30 Redlich, Fritz 19 refugees 29n92, 48, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 57-58, 63-65 see also useless mouths Riccabello, Battista 208 Ricotti, Ercole 124 Rimini 178 Roberts, Michael 219 Robins, Will 126 Rogers, Clifford 221 Rome 104, 210, 215, 309 Rondinelli, Tommaso Michele 137 ropemakers 202, 218 Rosny, Maxmilien de, grand maître de l’artillerie 296 Rossi, Gironimo 216 Rubens, Peter Paul 30 Rubinstein, Nicolai 129 Rupert of the Palatinate 177 Russia 188 Ruzante 108-09, 111 Sacchi, Pietro 267 Sach, Soltan 234 sailors 77 Saint-Denis, battle of 290 Saint Peter, Roman basilica 187 salaries of accountants 133-34 of bell-ringers 130 of engineers 175 of oarsmen 76 of sappers 264-65, 265-66 of soldiers 264 of spies 234, 235, 239 Salic Laws 155 Salimbene, Jacopo 141 Salutati, Coluccio 138 Sanctino de Rodiano da Salò 213 San Gimigniano 128 San Lorenzo El Escorial 187 Sanseverino family 259 Antonio Maria 259

333

Index

Ginevra 260 Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence 180 Sanudo, Marin 162-64 Sapori, Armando 133 sappers 12, 17, 20, 27, 89, 253, 255, 260, 262, 264-66 Saulx, Guillaume de, comte de Tavannes 288 Savoie, Jacques de, duc de Nemours 295 Savoy, horse of King Charles VIII 105-06, 113 Savoy 206, 230, 295-96 Saxony 191-92 Sbisa, Bastiano 216 Scetti, Aurelio 86 Schertlin, Sebastian 112 Schiesari, Julia 102-03 schioppettieri see gunners Schmitt, Tiphaine 107 Schutiggi, Lapo 133 Scotti, Giovanni Maria 263 secretaries 72, 74, 76, 78, 79, 88, 164, 235, 242, 282, 283, 287 Second World War 14, 304 senators of Venice 164 Serbia 108 sexual assault 83n79, 87. See also rape Sforza family 185, 259 Caterina 271 Lodovico 21, 165 Shaw, David Gary 97, 102-03 ships 53, 73, 75, 80-82, 98, 101, 111, 131, 141, 279 Sicile (Jean Courtois) 156, 157 Sicily 213 Sieges 21, 23, 26, 28, 30, 52, 54, 57, 98, 99, 100, 112, 127, 141, 149, 150, 177, 180, 217, 239, 271, 279, 283, 285, 288-92, 294-97, 299, 304-10, 313-14, 318 Alkmaar 28 Chambéry 296 Cremona 180 Issoire 292 Pavia 112, 310 Siena 304, 308, 310 Siena 138, 139, 208, 210, 304, 308, 310 Sigismund, holy Roman emperor 177 Sigüenza, Jose de 192 Silverius, pope 311, 315 Sinan 183 Sjoberg, Laura 21-22 Skradin 236 slaves 73, 77-78, 81, 81-82 Slim, Hugo 23 Smeducci, Bartolommeo 142 Snouckhaert von Schauberg, Willem 191-92 sodomy 82-83 Sokollu Mehmed Pasha 237 soldiers and billeting on ethnic lines 25 and food 141, 281, 305 and information sharing 233

and gun usage 204 labour of 89-90 and payments 141, 210, 264, 265, 266 and plunder 19, 20, 27, 51, 53, 73, 108 pawning equipment 27 see also women, as soldiers’ wives Soncino 186, 262 Soriano, Manoli 236 Spain 62, 74, 85, 162, 208, 228, 230 Spies 227-50 bureaucrats as 142 clerics as 26-27, 30 engineers as 188 heralds as 148 part-time and full-time 128 women as 236-37 see also espionage; salaries, of spies Spinola, Baldassare 132, 139 Spoleto 139 standard-bearers 150, 157 state formation and war 14-15, 18, 25, 65, 221, 255 and military contracting 202 and private networks 16-17 stone-cutters 16, 20, 79 see also masons St Quentin, battle of 103-04 stradiots 261, 263 Strozzi, Ruberto 211 sub-contractors 202, 209, 219 superintendent of the arsenal 82-83 of forts 72 supply-chains 207, 212, 217, 220 surgeons 20, 30, 307 surveyors of land and of fortifications 72-73, 174 Swart, Sandra 107 Swiss soldiers 110 tabards 151, 161, 163, 164 Taccola (Mariano di Jacopo) 178, 188 Tanzini, Lorenzo 134 tarantulas 101 Tartaglia, Niccolò 174, 180 taxes and taxation 186, 207 theft 84 theologians 188 Thirty Years’ War 25, 298 Thornbury, John 132 Thucydides 158, 159 Tilly, Charles 15, 20, 26, 126 Tilly, Chris 20 toads 101 Torelli, Pietro Guido 256 Torriani, Janello 180, 190, 191 Torrita 138 torture 189 Towton battle of 28

334  tournaments 149 Trajan, Roman emperor 177 translators 27, 157, 180 Trau (now Trogir, Croatia) 227-28 treason 84 treasurers 201, 215 troubadours 149 Trissino, Gian Giorgio 303, 305, 308-15, 317, 320-21 Trivulzio family 259 trumpeters 154, 157, 162, 163, 164 Tullius Hostilius, king of Rome 159 Turks 73-74, 77, 78, 80, 81, 82, 86, 104, 108, 184, 185, 188, 227-28, 231, 235-36 see also Constantinople Ubaldi, Baldo degli see Baldo degli Ubaldi Ubertini, Antonio 210, 211 uniforms 81, 89-90 universities Bologna 177, 178 Cologne 178 Padua 177, 178, 179 Pavia 180 Uppsala battle of 28 Uraniborg 192 Urban VI, pope 138 ‘useless eaters’ 24 ‘useless mouths’ 24, 303-24 vagrants 76 Valdarno 134 Valois, Henri de, duc d’Anjou 290 Valsabbia 211 Valturio, Roberto 178, 184 Varchi, Benedetto 231 Vasari, Giorgio 71-72 and decoration of Sala di Cosimo I 71-74 Vattel, Emer de 166 Vegetius Renatus, Publius 157, 177, 305 Venetian-Ottoman Wars 207 Venice 17, 22, 26, 29, 162-65, 178, 185, 187, 214, 218, 227-50, 255, 257, 258-62, 264, 268, 269, 271, 313 gunpowder industry 203 and war with France 162-165 popolani 228, 229, 233, 235, 243 senate 164 see also Collegio dei Savi; Council of Ten, Venice Verdelli, Fausto 230 Verola Alghise (now Verolanuova) 254, 259, 260, 261, 262, 264-65, 267-68 Verrier, Frédérique 270 Verrocchio, Andrea del 183-84 veterans 27, 157, 176 Vida, Marco Girolamo 191

Shadow Agents of Renaissance War

Villani, Matteo 135 Villard de Honnecourt 175 Visby battle of 28 Visconti family 127-28, 134, 140, 141, 175, 178 Bernabò 154 Giangaleazzo 142 Orsina 256, 270 Vitruvius (Marcus Vitruvius Pollio) 174, 177, 178, 181, 182, 185, 186, 190, 191, 193 Vivanti, Annie 303, 305, 311, 321 Vocati, Jacopo 141 volvelles 179, 188 War of Eight Saints 135, 137, 141 War of the League of Cambrai 164, 244 water clock 179 see also clocks and clock-keepers Waterloo, battle of 102 weapons arquebuses 81, 201, 204-18, 282 cannon balls 80-81, 212, 281, 288, 290, 294 cannons 80, 212, 256, 278-79, 281-82, 285-88, 290, 294, 297 flow of, from production to use 204 halberds 210, 217, 219 pikes 95-96, 98, 161, 210, 217, 235, 292 spears 160-61, 210 swords 95, 155, 162, 310 see also artillery; guns; gunpowder Weitingen, Count Konrad 132, 135 Wellington, duke of 102 Wenceslaus, king of Bohemia and Germany 140, 177 White Company 124-25 William the Wise, Prince of Hesse (later William IV, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel) 192 Witt, Ronald 143 Wolfe, Michael 279 women 253-76, 277-302, 304-21 and campaign community 16, 255, 271 as estate managers 20-21 as heralds in antiquity 156-57 and household 21 and immunity from harm in war 23 as refugees 58 in sieges 28 as soldiers’ wives 21, 22, 255, 258, 283-84, 298, 304, 307, 310, 314-15, 320-21 as victims of war 58, 59, 60, 304-21 see also Amazons work and animals 101 and war 16, 17, 20 Zara (Zadar, Croatia) 218, 313 Zen, Cattarino 208 Zilsel, Edgar 183