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Condottieri
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Condottieri (singular condottiero and condottiere) were the mercenary soldier leaders of the professional, military Free companies contracted by the Italian city-states and the Papacy, from the late Middle Ages until the mid-sixteenth century. In contemporary Italian, condottiero means contractor, and is synonymous with the modern English title Mercenary Captain, which, historiographically, does not connote the hired soldier’s nationality.
These Italian words — the singular condottiero and condottiere, and the plural condottieri — were standard usage in English writing of the Napoleonic times that remained current in the histories until the late twentieth-century; because formally-employed, standing, professional armies were uncommon until late in the Napoleonic Wars (1800–1815) — when a brigade was (minimally) considered an army — thus, Condottiero denotes any hired soldier — mercenary captain, general, admiral, et al.
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Encyclopedia
Condottieri (singular condottiero and condottiere) were the mercenary soldier leaders of the professional, military Free companies contracted by the Italian city-states and the Papacy, from the late Middle Ages until the mid-sixteenth century. In contemporary Italian, condottiero means contractor, and is synonymous with the modern English title Mercenary Captain, which, historiographically, does not connote the hired soldier’s nationality.
These Italian words — the singular condottiero and condottiere, and the plural condottieri — were standard usage in English writing of the Napoleonic times that remained current in the histories until the late twentieth-century; because formally-employed, standing, professional armies were uncommon until late in the Napoleonic Wars (1800–1815) — when a brigade was (minimally) considered an army — thus, Condottiero denotes any hired soldier — mercenary captain, general, admiral, et al. — who often was commissioned a colonel, if he could provide and command some thousand, or more, professional soldiers. Perhaps the best-known Condottiero was Wallenstein — the Bohemian Count Albrecht von Wallenstein — an Imperial General who soldiered in the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), primarily in Northern Europe.
History
In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the Italian city-states of Venice, Florence, and Genoa were very rich from their trade with the Levantine Orient, yet, possessed woefully-small national armies. In the event, foreign powers and envious neighbours attacked, and the ruling nobles hired foreign mercenaries to fight for them; the military-service terms and conditions were stipulated in a condotta (contract), between the City-State and the Soldier (officer and enlisted man), thus, the contracted leader, the Mercenary Captain commanding, was titled the Condottiero.
From the eleventh to the thirteenth century, for European soldiers, led by professional officers, the Crusades (1095–1291) fought against the Muslims provided large-scale warfare combat experience in the foreign, Holy Land of the Asian Middle East. On the Crusades’ conclusion, the first masnada (bands of roving soldiers) appeared; they were not Italian, but (mostly) German, from the Duchy of Brabant (hence, the Brabanzoni), and from Catalonia and Aragon, these last were Spanish soldiers who had followed King Peter III of Aragon to the Holy Land in October of 1282, and, post-war, remained there, seeking military employment. In Italy, in 1333, other mercenaries arrived with John of Bohemia to fight, as the Compagnia della Colomba (Dove Company), Perugia’s war against Arezzo; given the profession, some masnade were less mercenaries than bandits and desperate men.
The first organised mercenaries were the Ventura Companies of Duke Werner of Urslingen and Count Konrad von Landau; Werner’s company differed from other mercenary companies because its code of military justice imposed discipline and an equal division of the contract’s income. This Ventura Company increased in number until becoming the fearsome “Great Company” of some 3,000 barbute, (each barbuta comprised a knight and a sergeant). To this, the Italian nobleman Lodrisio Visconti countered with the “Company of St. George” — featuring the cavalryman as the key fighting man, and not the infantryman. In Italy, the first mercenary army was led by Alberico da Barbiano, the Count of Conio, who later taught military science to condottieri such as Braccio da Montone and Giacomuzzo Attendolo Sforza.
Once aware of their military-power monopoly in Italy, the condottieri bands became notorious for their capriciousness, and soon dictated terms to their ostensible employers. In turn, many condottieri, such as Braccio da Montone and Muzio Sforza, became powerful politicians. As most were educated men acquainted with Roman military-science manuals (e.g. Vegetius’s Epitoma rei militarii), they began viewing warfare from the perspective of military science, rather than that of guts (physical courage) — a great, consequential departure from Chivalry, the traditional mediæval model of soldiering. Consequently, the condottieri fought by out-manœuvring the opponent and fighting his ability to wage war, rather than risk uncertain fortune — defeat, capture, death — in battlefield combat.
The mediæval condottieri developed the art of war (strategy and tactics) into military science more than any of their historical military predecessors — fighting indirectly, not directly — thus, only reluctantly endangering themselves and their enlisted men, avoiding battle when possible. As a political scientist, Niccolò Machiavelli mis-interpreted that condottieri fought each other in grandiose, but often pointless and near-bloodless battles. Militarily, the condottieri line of battle still deployed the grand armoured knight and mediæval weapons and tactics after most European powers had begun employing professional standing armies of pikemen and musketeers.
In 1347, Cola di Rienzo had Werner of Urslingen executed in Rome, and Konrad von Landau assumed command of the Great Company. In 1362, Count von Landau was betrayed, by his Hungarian soldiers, and defeated in combat, by the White Company’s more advanced tactics under commanders Albert Sterz and John Hawkwood. Stategically, the barbuta was replaced with the three-soldier, mounted lancia (a capo-lancia, a groom, and a boy); five lance composed a posta, five poste composed a bandiera (flag). By that time, the campaigning condottieri companies were as much Italian as foreign: the Astorre I Manfredi’s Compagnia della Stella (Star Company); a new Company of St. George under Ambrogio Visconti; Niccolò da Montefeltro’s Compagnia del Cappelletto (Little Hat Company); and the Compagnia della Rosa, commanded by Giovanni da Buscareto and Bartolomeo Gonzaga.
From the fifteenth century hence, most condottieri were landless Italian nobles who had chosen the profession of arms as livelihood; the most famous of such mercenary captains was the son of Caterina Sforza, Giovanni dalle Bande Nere, from Forlì, known as The Last Condottiero; his son was Cosimo I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany; besides noblemen, princes also fought as condottieri, given the sizable income to their estates, notably Sigismondo Malatesta, Lord of Rimini, and Federico da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino; despite war-time inflation, soldier’s pay was high:
- 1,900 monthly florins in 1432: Micheletto Attendolo (Florence)
- 6,600 monthly florins in 1448: William VIII of Montferrat, from Francesco Sforza (Milan); the enlisted soldier’s pay was 3,300 florins, half that of an officer’s
- 33,000 yearly scudi for 250 men in 1505: Francesco II Gonzaga (Florence)
- 100,000 yearly scudi for 200 men in 1505: Francesco Maria della Rovere (Florence)
The condottieri company commanders selected the soldiers to enlist; the condotta was a consolidated contract, and, when the ferma (service period) elapsed, the company entered an aspetto (wait) period, wherein, the contracting city-state considered its renewal. If the condotta expired definitively, the condottiero could not declare war against the contracting city-state for two years. A military–business custom respected because professional reputation (business credibility) was all to the condottiero; a deceived employer, was a reputation ruined; like-wise for maritime mercenaries, whose contratto d’assento (contract of assent) stipulated naval military-service terms and conditions; sea captains and sailors so-contracted were called assentisti. Their principal employers were Genoa and the Papal States, beginning in the fourteenth century, yet, Venice considered it humiliating to so employ military sailors, and did not used naval mercenaries, even during the greatest danger in the City’s history.
In fifteenth-century Italy, the condottieri were masterful lords of war; during the wars in Lombardy, Machiavelli observed: “None of the principal states were armed with their own proper forces”:
- History I. vii.
The fifteenth-century Italian armies defeated most of the Turkish, Swiss, Hungarian, German, French, and Austrian, incursions. In 1487, at Calliano, the Venetians successfully met and acquitted themselves against the German landsknechte and the Swiss infantry, who then were the best soldiers in Europe.
Decline
In time, the financial and political interests of the condottieri proved serious drawbacks to decisive, bloody warfare: the mercenary captains often were treacherous, tending to avoid combat, and resolve fights with a bribe — either for the opponent or for themselves. In the event, the condotta was so profitable that the commanding condottieri officers had little interest in risking their armies, yet, if battle was due, they fought swiftly, decisively, and definitively, to leave the battlefield victorious and with as many soldiers as possible.
The “Age of the Condottieri” began in 1494, with the first, great foreign invasion in a century: Charles VIII’s national French army, which matched the divided Italian city-states and their smaller condottieri armies. The most renowned condottieri fought for foreign powers: Gian Giacomo Trivulzio abandoned Milan for France, while Andrea Doria was Admiral of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. In the end, failure was political, rather than military, stemming from disunity and political indecision, and, by 1550, the military service condotta had disappeared, while the term condottiero remained current, denominating the great Italian generals (mainly) fighting for foreign states; men such as Marcantonio II Colonna and Raimondo Montecuccoli were prominent into the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries. To wit, the political practice of hiring foreign mercenaries did not end, even in contemporary Italy, the Vatican’s Swiss Guards are the modern remnants of an historically effective mercenary army.
Distinguished condottieri
Principal battles of the condottieri
- Battle of Forlì (1282) - a French army, for the Pope, against Guido I da Montefeltro, for Forlì
- Battle of Montecatini (1314)
- Battle of Parabiago (1339 - Lodrisio Visconti's "Company of St. George", for Verona, against Luchino Visconti and Ettore da Panigo for Milan.
- War of the Eight Saints (1375–1378)
- Battle of Castagnaro (1387) - Giovanni Ordelaffi, for Verona, against John Hawkwood, for Padova
- Battle of Alessandria (1391) - Jacopo dal Verme, for Milan, against John Hawkwood, for Florence
- Battle of Casalecchio (1402) - Alberico da Barbiano, for Milan, against Muzio Attendolo and others for the Bolognese-Florentine league.
- Battle of Sant'Egidio (1416) - Braccio da Montone, for himself, against Carlo I Malatesta, for Perugia
- Battle of Maclodio (1427) - Count of Carmagnola, for Venice, against Carlo I Malatesta, for Milan
- Battle of San Romano (1432) - Niccolò da Tolentino, for Florence, against Francesco Piccinino, for Siena
- Battle of Anghiari (1440) - Niccolò Piccinino, for Milan, against Florence, Papal States and Venice, under Micheletto Attendolo
- Battle of Fornovo (1495) - Italian League against Charles VIII of France
- Battle of Agnadello (1509) - Bartolomeo d'Alviano, for Venice, against France and Italian League
- Battle of Pavia (1525) - Spain against France
- Battle of Marciano (1544) - Gian Giacomo Medici for Florence and the Holy Roman Empire against Piero Strozzi for Siena and France
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