العربية
中国
Français
Deutsch
Ελληνική
हिन्दी
Italiano
日本語
Português
Русский
EspañolCONDOTTIERI
'Condottieri' (singular 'condottiere' (in English) or 'condottiero' (in Italian)) were mercenary leaders employed by Italian city-states from the late Middle Ages until the mid-sixteenth century. The word means "contractor" in renaissance Italian.
In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries Italian city-states were becoming enriched by their trade with the Orient. These cities, such as Venice, Florence, and Genoa, had woefully small armies and were increasingly becoming targets of attack by foreign powers as well as envious neighbours. The noblemen ruling the cities soon resorted to hiring companies of mercenaries known as ''condotta'' ("contract") to defend their territories. Each condotta was led by a ''condottiere'', a term which soon became synonymous with "captain".
The very first of these bands (called in contemporary Italy ''masnada'', plural ''masnade'') appeared between the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of fourteenth centuries and were not of Italian origin. Soldiers came mainly from Germany, Brabant (''brabanzoni''), Aragon and Catalonia: the last, for example, had come to Italy following King Peter III of Aragon in the October 1282 and had remained there afterward searching for employers. Other mercenaries came in 1333 alongside John of Bohemia, and therefore served Perugia in its war against Arezzo with the name ''Compagnia della Colomba'' ("Dove Company"). Some of these ''masnade'' were merely a grouping of bandits and other desperate men.
Later these bands were joined by the first true organized Ventura Companies, those of Duke Werner of Urslingen and count Konrad von Landau. The Italian noble Lodrisio Visconti countered by creating the "Company of St. George." Werner's company differed from the previous ones by a code of laws which imposed a rigid discipline and an equal division of income. This company was increased until it turned into the fearsome "Great Company," which had up to 3,000 ''barbute,'' each ''barbuta'' including a knight and a sergeant.
The bands of condottieri became notorious for their caprice. They would often change sides to a higher paying rival before or even during battle. They soon realized that they held a monopoly on military power in Italy and began dictating terms to their ostensible employers. Many, such as Braccio da Montone and Muzio Sforza, became powerful political figures in the fourteenth century. The condottieri also became reluctant to place themselves or their men in harm's way and began fighting each other in grandiose but often pointless and nearly bloodless "battles". They still retained grand armored knights and medieval weapons and tactics long after the rest of Europe had converted to more modern armies composed of pikemen and musketeers.
Cola di Rienzo had Werner executed in Rome in 1347, and Landau took over the Great Company. Landau, betrayed by his Hungarian soldiers, was defeated in 1362 by Albert Sterz and John Hawkwood's "White Company", which used more advanced combat tactics and formations. The ''barbuta'' was replaced by the ''lancia'' comprising three men: a ''capo-lancia'' and groom, both mounting a battle horse, plus a boy using a lesser quality horse. Five ''lance'' formed a ''posta,'' five ''poste'' a ''bandiera'' ("flag"). Now the condottieri comprised as many Italian companies as foreign, creating soon a host of national companies: they included the Astorre I Manfredi's ''Compagnia della Stella'' ("Star's company"), a new Company of St. George under Ambrogio Visconti, Niccolò da Montefeltro's ''Compagnia del Cappelletto'' ("Little Hat Company"), and Giovanni da Buscareto and Bartolomeo Gonzaga's ''Compagnia della Rosa'', the last using a name of its own.
From the 15th century onward the companies' leaders were mainly Italian: they were nobles who for some reason had not been able to succeed in their lands and had therefore chosen the fighting life. In that century, the most famous condottiero was Giovanni dalle Bande Nere from Forlì, son of Caterina Sforza. He was also known as "the last condottiero" (but that means "the last ''famous'' condottiero"). His son was Cosimo I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany.
Sometimes even princes fought for some periods as condottieri in order to increase their revenues: the most notable cases are Sigismondo Malatesta, lord of Rimini, and Federico da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino. Incomes were high indeed, though it should be noted that inflation was high in Italy during the period:
★ 1,900 florins a month in 1432: Micheletto Attendolo from Florence
★ 6,600 florins a month in 1448: William VIII of Montferrat from Francesco Sforza of Milan (the pay of the troops was only half this sum)
★ 33,000 scudi a year for 250 men in 1505: Francesco II Gonzaga from Florence
★ 100,000 scudi a year for 200 men in the same year: Francesco Maria della Rovere also from Florence
The leaders of these new condottieri companies were not chosen by their men, but viceversa. The ''condotta'' become a consolidated form of contract. When the contract period (''ferma'') ceased, the company must wait another period called ''aspetto'' ("wait") in which the State kept the possibility of renewing it. If the contract ended in a definitive way, the condottiero could not declare war upon the other contracting party before two years had passed.
The ''condotta'' was also applied for sea mercenaries. This was called ''contratto d'assento'', and ''assentisti'' were the captains and venturers hired in this way. These were mainly used by Genoa and the Papal States from the 14th century. Venice instead considered it a humiliating way to hire sailors and never used it, even in the most dangerous periods of her history.
The condottieri were masters of the battles fought in Italy for the whole 15th century. By the time of the wars in Lombardy, Niccolò Machiavelli observed, "None of the principal states were armed with their own proper forces":
:''History'' I.vii.
Throughout the 15th century Italian armies had defeated most, though not all, incursions by hostile neighbors, be they French, Swiss, German, Austrian, Hungarian or Turkish. At Calliano in 1487 the Venetians met, and more than held their own against, German landsknechte and Swiss infantry, troops who were then regarded as the best in Europe.
As time passed, the financial interests and the increasing political role the captains were playing led to some serious drawbacks: often the condottieri behaved treacherously and tended to solve the clashes by bribing or asking for bribes themselves instead of combat. The condotta being such a lucrative activity, the contenders had little interest to risk their army in a bloody clash: if a pitched battle was unavoidable, they tended to avoid heavy losses and leave the field preserving as much as possible of the army.
The end of the condottieri age began in 1494 with the first great foreign invasion in more than a century: Charles VIII's national French army proved quite a match for the divided Italian states and smaller condottieri armies. Some of the most renowned condottieri chose therefore to fight for foreign powers: Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, for example, abandoned Milan for France, while Andrea Doria became admiral of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles. In the end, however, the failure was political rather than military, and stemmed from a disunity and a lack of political determination.
The condotta had disappeared by 1550. The term ''condottiero'' remained to indicate great Italian generals mainly fighting for foreign states. Figures like Marcantonio II Colonna and Raimondo Montecuccoli were prominent well into the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries.
★ Roger de Flor (c. 1268-1305)
★ Malatesta da Verucchio (1212-1312)
★ Castruccio Castracani, Lord of Lucca (1281-1328)
★ Walter VI of Brienne
★ Cangrande della Scala (1291-1329)
★ Luchino dal Verme (c. 1320-1372)
★ "Sir" John Hawkwood (Giovanni Acuto, c. 1320-1394)
★ Giovanni Ordelaffi from Forlì (1355-1399)
★ Facino Cane de Casale (c. 1360-1412)
★ Andrea Fortebracci, best known as Braccio da Montone (1368-1384)
★ Alberico da Barbiano (1344-1409)
★ Jacopo dal Verme (1350-1409)
★ Muzio Attendolo, called ''Sforza'' ("Strong") (1369-1424)
★ Giovanni Vitelleschi (died 1440)
★ Erasmo da Narni, better known as Gattamelata (1370-1443)
★ Niccolò Piccinino ("Tiny Nick", 1380-1444)
★ Francesco Bussone da Carmagnola (better known as "Count of Carmagnola", 1390-1432)
★ Micheletto Attendolo, cousin or nephew of Muzio Attendolo
★ Francesco Sforza (1401-1466)
★ Sigismondo Malatesta (1417-1468)
★ Bartolomeo Colleoni (c. 1400-1475)
★ Federico III da Montefeltro (1422-1482)
★ Cesare Borgia (1475-1507)
★ Niccolò di Pitigliano (d. 1510)
★ Bartolomeo d'Alviano (1455-1515)
★ Gian Giacomo Trivulzio (c. 1441-1518)
★ Giovanni dalle Bande Nere (1498-1526)
★ Ferrante Gonzaga (1507-1557)
★ Astorre I Manfredi (1345-1405)
★ 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)
★
★ Cesena Bloodbath (1377) - Papal and Breton mercenaries under John Hawkwood slaughtered more than 2,000 citizens of Cesena.
★ 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
★ Storia delle compagnie di ventura in Italia, 4 vols., , Ercole, , , 1844-1845,
★ Mercenaries and their Masters: Warfare in Renaissance Italy, , Michael, Mallett, Rowman and Littlefield, 1974,
★ I Capitani di ventura, , Claudio, Rendina, Newton Compton, 1992,
★ History of Florence, , Niccolò, Machiavelli, , , (on-line text)
★ Condottieri di ventura - a complete database about Condottieri operating in Italy between 1300 - 1550
★ Adrian Fletcher's Paradoxplace Condottieri Statues & Paintings
Leonardo da Vinci's ''Il Condottiero'', 1480.
| Contents |
| History |
| Famous condottieri |
| Main battles of condottieri |
| Sources |
| External links |
History
In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries Italian city-states were becoming enriched by their trade with the Orient. These cities, such as Venice, Florence, and Genoa, had woefully small armies and were increasingly becoming targets of attack by foreign powers as well as envious neighbours. The noblemen ruling the cities soon resorted to hiring companies of mercenaries known as ''condotta'' ("contract") to defend their territories. Each condotta was led by a ''condottiere'', a term which soon became synonymous with "captain".
The very first of these bands (called in contemporary Italy ''masnada'', plural ''masnade'') appeared between the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of fourteenth centuries and were not of Italian origin. Soldiers came mainly from Germany, Brabant (''brabanzoni''), Aragon and Catalonia: the last, for example, had come to Italy following King Peter III of Aragon in the October 1282 and had remained there afterward searching for employers. Other mercenaries came in 1333 alongside John of Bohemia, and therefore served Perugia in its war against Arezzo with the name ''Compagnia della Colomba'' ("Dove Company"). Some of these ''masnade'' were merely a grouping of bandits and other desperate men.
Later these bands were joined by the first true organized Ventura Companies, those of Duke Werner of Urslingen and count Konrad von Landau. The Italian noble Lodrisio Visconti countered by creating the "Company of St. George." Werner's company differed from the previous ones by a code of laws which imposed a rigid discipline and an equal division of income. This company was increased until it turned into the fearsome "Great Company," which had up to 3,000 ''barbute,'' each ''barbuta'' including a knight and a sergeant.
The bands of condottieri became notorious for their caprice. They would often change sides to a higher paying rival before or even during battle. They soon realized that they held a monopoly on military power in Italy and began dictating terms to their ostensible employers. Many, such as Braccio da Montone and Muzio Sforza, became powerful political figures in the fourteenth century. The condottieri also became reluctant to place themselves or their men in harm's way and began fighting each other in grandiose but often pointless and nearly bloodless "battles". They still retained grand armored knights and medieval weapons and tactics long after the rest of Europe had converted to more modern armies composed of pikemen and musketeers.
Cola di Rienzo had Werner executed in Rome in 1347, and Landau took over the Great Company. Landau, betrayed by his Hungarian soldiers, was defeated in 1362 by Albert Sterz and John Hawkwood's "White Company", which used more advanced combat tactics and formations. The ''barbuta'' was replaced by the ''lancia'' comprising three men: a ''capo-lancia'' and groom, both mounting a battle horse, plus a boy using a lesser quality horse. Five ''lance'' formed a ''posta,'' five ''poste'' a ''bandiera'' ("flag"). Now the condottieri comprised as many Italian companies as foreign, creating soon a host of national companies: they included the Astorre I Manfredi's ''Compagnia della Stella'' ("Star's company"), a new Company of St. George under Ambrogio Visconti, Niccolò da Montefeltro's ''Compagnia del Cappelletto'' ("Little Hat Company"), and Giovanni da Buscareto and Bartolomeo Gonzaga's ''Compagnia della Rosa'', the last using a name of its own.
From the 15th century onward the companies' leaders were mainly Italian: they were nobles who for some reason had not been able to succeed in their lands and had therefore chosen the fighting life. In that century, the most famous condottiero was Giovanni dalle Bande Nere from Forlì, son of Caterina Sforza. He was also known as "the last condottiero" (but that means "the last ''famous'' condottiero"). His son was Cosimo I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany.
Sometimes even princes fought for some periods as condottieri in order to increase their revenues: the most notable cases are Sigismondo Malatesta, lord of Rimini, and Federico da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino. Incomes were high indeed, though it should be noted that inflation was high in Italy during the period:
★ 1,900 florins a month in 1432: Micheletto Attendolo from Florence
★ 6,600 florins a month in 1448: William VIII of Montferrat from Francesco Sforza of Milan (the pay of the troops was only half this sum)
★ 33,000 scudi a year for 250 men in 1505: Francesco II Gonzaga from Florence
★ 100,000 scudi a year for 200 men in the same year: Francesco Maria della Rovere also from Florence
The leaders of these new condottieri companies were not chosen by their men, but viceversa. The ''condotta'' become a consolidated form of contract. When the contract period (''ferma'') ceased, the company must wait another period called ''aspetto'' ("wait") in which the State kept the possibility of renewing it. If the contract ended in a definitive way, the condottiero could not declare war upon the other contracting party before two years had passed.
The ''condotta'' was also applied for sea mercenaries. This was called ''contratto d'assento'', and ''assentisti'' were the captains and venturers hired in this way. These were mainly used by Genoa and the Papal States from the 14th century. Venice instead considered it a humiliating way to hire sailors and never used it, even in the most dangerous periods of her history.
The condottieri were masters of the battles fought in Italy for the whole 15th century. By the time of the wars in Lombardy, Niccolò Machiavelli observed, "None of the principal states were armed with their own proper forces":
:''History'' I.vii.
Throughout the 15th century Italian armies had defeated most, though not all, incursions by hostile neighbors, be they French, Swiss, German, Austrian, Hungarian or Turkish. At Calliano in 1487 the Venetians met, and more than held their own against, German landsknechte and Swiss infantry, troops who were then regarded as the best in Europe.
As time passed, the financial interests and the increasing political role the captains were playing led to some serious drawbacks: often the condottieri behaved treacherously and tended to solve the clashes by bribing or asking for bribes themselves instead of combat. The condotta being such a lucrative activity, the contenders had little interest to risk their army in a bloody clash: if a pitched battle was unavoidable, they tended to avoid heavy losses and leave the field preserving as much as possible of the army.
The end of the condottieri age began in 1494 with the first great foreign invasion in more than a century: Charles VIII's national French army proved quite a match for the divided Italian states and smaller condottieri armies. Some of the most renowned condottieri chose therefore to fight for foreign powers: Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, for example, abandoned Milan for France, while Andrea Doria became admiral of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles. In the end, however, the failure was political rather than military, and stemmed from a disunity and a lack of political determination.
The condotta had disappeared by 1550. The term ''condottiero'' remained to indicate great Italian generals mainly fighting for foreign states. Figures like Marcantonio II Colonna and Raimondo Montecuccoli were prominent well into the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries.
Famous condottieri
Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, lord of Rimini, by Piero della Francesca.
★ Roger de Flor (c. 1268-1305)
★ Malatesta da Verucchio (1212-1312)
★ Castruccio Castracani, Lord of Lucca (1281-1328)
★ Walter VI of Brienne
★ Cangrande della Scala (1291-1329)
★ Luchino dal Verme (c. 1320-1372)
★ "Sir" John Hawkwood (Giovanni Acuto, c. 1320-1394)
★ Giovanni Ordelaffi from Forlì (1355-1399)
★ Facino Cane de Casale (c. 1360-1412)
★ Andrea Fortebracci, best known as Braccio da Montone (1368-1384)
★ Alberico da Barbiano (1344-1409)
★ Jacopo dal Verme (1350-1409)
★ Muzio Attendolo, called ''Sforza'' ("Strong") (1369-1424)
★ Giovanni Vitelleschi (died 1440)
★ Erasmo da Narni, better known as Gattamelata (1370-1443)
★ Niccolò Piccinino ("Tiny Nick", 1380-1444)
★ Francesco Bussone da Carmagnola (better known as "Count of Carmagnola", 1390-1432)
★ Micheletto Attendolo, cousin or nephew of Muzio Attendolo
★ Francesco Sforza (1401-1466)
★ Sigismondo Malatesta (1417-1468)
★ Bartolomeo Colleoni (c. 1400-1475)
★ Federico III da Montefeltro (1422-1482)
★ Cesare Borgia (1475-1507)
★ Niccolò di Pitigliano (d. 1510)
★ Bartolomeo d'Alviano (1455-1515)
★ Gian Giacomo Trivulzio (c. 1441-1518)
★ Giovanni dalle Bande Nere (1498-1526)
★ Ferrante Gonzaga (1507-1557)
★ Astorre I Manfredi (1345-1405)
Main battles of 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)
★
★ Cesena Bloodbath (1377) - Papal and Breton mercenaries under John Hawkwood slaughtered more than 2,000 citizens of Cesena.
★ 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
Sources
★ Storia delle compagnie di ventura in Italia, 4 vols., , Ercole, , , 1844-1845,
★ Mercenaries and their Masters: Warfare in Renaissance Italy, , Michael, Mallett, Rowman and Littlefield, 1974,
★ I Capitani di ventura, , Claudio, Rendina, Newton Compton, 1992,
★ History of Florence, , Niccolò, Machiavelli, , , (on-line text)
External links
★ Condottieri di ventura - a complete database about Condottieri operating in Italy between 1300 - 1550
★ Adrian Fletcher's Paradoxplace Condottieri Statues & Paintings
This article provided by Wikipedia. To edit the contents of this article, click here for original source.
psst.. try this: add to faves
