The Military Organisation of a Renaissance State: Venice c. 1400 to 1617 (Cambridge Studies in Early Modern History)

CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN EARLY MODERN HISTORY Editors J. H. ELLIOTT

H. G. KOENIGSBERGER

The Military Organization of a Renaissance State

CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN EARLY MODERN HISTORY Edited by Professor J. H. Elliott, The Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and Professor H. G. Koenigsberger, Kings College, London The idea of an' early modern' period of European history from thefifteenthto the late eighteenth century is now widely accepted among historians. The purpose of the Cambridge Studies in Early Modern History is to publish monographs and studies which will illuminate the character of the period as a whole, and in particular focus attention on a dominant theme within it, the interplay of continuity and change as they are represented by the continuity of medieval ideas, political and social organization, and by the impact of new ideas, new methods and new demands on the traditional structures. The Old World and the New, I4g2-i6^o J. H. ELLIOTT

The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road, 1567-165g: The Logistics of Spanish Victory and Defeat in the Low Countries Wars GEOFFREY PARKER

Chronicle into History: An Essay on the Interpretation of History in Florentine Fourteenth-Century Chronicles LOUIS GREEN

Gunpowder and Galleys: Changing Technology and Mediterranean Warfare at Sea in the Sixteenth Century JOHN FRANCIS GUILMARTIN JR

Reform and Revolution in Mainz 1743-1803 T. C. W. BLANNING

The State, War and Peace: Spanish Political Thought in the Renaissance 1516-1559 J. A. FERNANDEZ-SANTAMARIA

Calvinist Preaching and Iconoclasm in the Netherlands I544~i56g PHYLLIS MACK CREW

Altopascio: A Study in Tuscan Rural Society 1587-1784 FRANK MCARDLE

The Kingdom of Valencia in the Seventeenth Century JAMES CASEY

Filippo Strozzi and the Medici: Favor and Finance in Sixteenth-Century Florence and Rome MELISSA MERIAM BULLARD

Rouen during the Wars of Religion PHILIP BENEDICT

Neostoicism and the Early Modern State GERHARD OESTREICH

The Emperor and his Chancellor: A Study of the Imperial Chancellery under Gattinara JOHN M. HEADLEY

The Military Organization of a Renaissance State Venice c. 1400 to 1617 M.E. MALLETT Professor of History, University of Warwick

and J.R. HALE Professor of Italian, University College, London

The right of the University of Cambridge to print and sell all manner of books was granted by Henry VIII in 1534. The University has printed and published continuously since 1584.

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge London

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New Rochelle Sydney

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521248426 © Cambridge University Press 1984 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1984 This digitally printed first paperback version 2006 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 83—2055 ISBN-13 978-0-521-24842-6 hardback ISBN-10 0-521-24842-6 hardback ISBN-13 978-0-521-03247-6 paperback ISBN-10 0-521-03247-4 paperback

Contents List of illustrations Acknowledgements References and abbreviations

page vii ix xi

PART i: c. 1400 to

1508

M. E. MALLETT

Introduction: the European context 1400-1525 1 1 The beginnings of Venetian expansion 7 2 The composition and role of the army in the fifteenth century 20 3 Military development and fighting potential 65 4 The organization and administration of the Venetian army 101 5 Control and policy making 153 6 Soldiers and the state 181 7 Venice and war 199 PART

11: 1 509-1617 J. R. HALE

8 9

The historical role of the land forces 1509-1617 The wars (i) Cambrai, reconquista and retention 1509-1529 (ii) The Turkish War of 1537-1540 (iii) The War of Cyprus 1570-1573 (iv) The War of Gradisca 1615-1617 10 Government: policy, control and administration 11 The higher command 12 Manpower (i) Foreigners (ii) Venetians (iii) The militia

212 221 227 233 241 248 284 313 330 350

Contents 13 Cavalry, infantry, artillery 14 Fortifications in the Terraferma 15 The defence of the maritime empire 16 The costs of defence and war Conclusion: the European context 1525-1617

367 409 429 461 485

Appendix: Infantry wages in the sixteenth century

494

Select bibliography Index

502 510

VI

Illustrations MAPS

1 The Terraferma in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries 2 The empire da Mar

page xiii xiv

FIGURES

1 2 3 4 5 6

Military decision and execution: the structure of government Size and composition of the armies 1509-1530 Army wage bills 1509-1530 Comparative size of armies in wartime 1537-1617 Comparative wartime army wage bills 1509-1617 Costs of defence and war 1530-1617 in relation to revenues and conjectured total costs

250 473 474 477 478 483

Acknowledgements We started work on this book when we were colleagues teaching for the University of Warwick's term for history students in Venice. It was conceived from the first as a collaboration. Wanting to cover a period long enough for continuities and changes to become apparent, as well as for analogies with the practice of other countries to emerge, we divided it chronologically. Even so, given the lack of secondary and printed sources (for too long, we felt, the plash of Venetian oars had obscured the tread of soldiers' feet), it has taken a long series of visits to bring it to such completeness as it may be judged to possess. We have acquired debts in common: to the University of Warwick for underwriting the idea of a regular term in Venice and to Count Brando Brandolini for giving us as headquarters the use of the palace on the Grand Canal on whose alt ana this book was planned; to the staffs of the Archivio di Stato and the Correr and Marciana libraries; above all to the care shown, from commas to concepts, by the editors of the series in which our book appears, Professors Helli Koenigsberger and John Elliott, and our vigilant Cambridge sub-editor, Mrs Jane Van Tassel. J.R.H. M.E.M.

I am grateful to the generosity with which Marco Morin shared his unrivalled knowledge of the sources dealing with the republic's artillery services, and with which Peter January helped me, during the revision of the typescript, from the research for his London Ph.D. thesis on the military obligations of Venice's Terraferma subjects 1565-1630. Professor Gaetano Cozzi has been a steady support. Robert Finlay commented helpfully on an early draft, and Professor Felix Gilbert helped me gird my loins for making the major changes that were wisely suggested by the editors of this series, Professors Elliott and Koenigsberger. In another vein I want to record my gratitude to Sir Ashley and Lady Frances Clarke for a Venetian home over so many years, and to the Director of Villa I Tatti, Professor Craig Hugh Smythe, for giving me a Florentine one for a revision that was only possible ix

Acknowledgements when I was removed from the temptation of paying yet one more visit to the archives in the Frari. My work has been helped by the research fund of the University of London and, time after time, by the Arts Faculty travel grants of my College. Finally, I wish to acknowledge my debt to my colleague Laura Lepschy for the care and flair with which she helped me correct the proofs. J.R.H.

During so long a period of gestation as this book has undergone the writer incurs debts so numerous that they are hard to specify. At every stage my colleagues on the Warwick programme in Venice, John Law in the early days, Martin Lowry, Humfrey Butters and Michael Knapton more recently, have helped me greatly with discussion and clarification of many points. The sections on artillery owe much to Marco Morin, while those on organization and control have assumed their final form only after much helpful comment from members of the Venice Seminar and the Warwick Renaissance Seminar. For practical, and particularlyfinancial,support I am indebted to Villa I Tatti for a fellowship in 1974-5, a n ^ t 0 the British Academy and to the University of Warwick for invaluable grants. M.E.M.

References and abbreviations All references, unless otherwise indicated, are to documents in the Archivio di Stato, Venice. When not given in full, such references are abbreviated in the footnotes as follows: Council of Ten In references to [Consiglio dei] Dieci, Comune, Misti, Secreta, Criminal or Zecca, the series Parti in registers is taken for granted; thus Dieci, Secreta, reg. 4, 128V. Series belonging to the archives of the Capi del Consiglio dei Dieci are cited as: Capi, Dieci. Great Council M[aggior] C[onsiglio]. All references are to the names (e.g. 'Novus') of individual registers of Deliberazioni. Senate S[enato], S[ecreta], Mi[sti], Tferra], M[ar], reg[istro]. In citations such as ST. reg. 60, i9v[erso], the series Deliberazioni is taken for granted; when a reference is to the filze from which the deliberazioni were compiled, this is stated. Some other fondi are abbreviated as follows: Prow. Gen. in Terraferma Senato, Dispacci di Provveditore Generale in Terraferma Prow. Fort. Proweditori alle Fortezze Esposizioni Principi Pien Collegio, Esposizioni Principi Commemoriali Libri Commemoriali Other abbreviations ASB. ASF. ASMa. ASMi. ASP. ASVe.

Archivio Archivio Archivio Archivio Archivio Archivio

di di di di di di

Stato, Stato, Stato, Stato, Stato, Stato,

Brescia Florence Mantua Milan Padua Verona

References and abbreviations BCV. BMV. DBL Predelli Priuli RIS. RRIISS. Sanuto Sanuto,

Biblioteca Correr, Venice Biblioteca Marciana, Venice Dizionario biografico degli italiani I libri commemoriali della repubblica di Venezia: i

regesti, ed. R. Predelli (Venice, 5 vols., 1879-1901) / diarii, ed. R. Cessi, RRIISS., xxiv, 3 (Bologna, 4 vols., 1912-38) Rerum italicarum scriptores, ed. L. A. Muratori (Milan, 25 vols., 1723-51) Rerum italicarum scriptores, new ed., ed. V. Fiorini, G. Carducci, C. Calisse and G. De Sanctis (Bologna and Citta di Castello, 33 vols., 1 gooff) / diarii di Marino Sanuto, ed. R. Fulin et al. (Venice, 58 vols., 1879-1903). References are to column numbers

Vite de' dogi

Marino Sanuto, Vite de duchi di Venezia, RIS., xxii (Milan, 1723). References are to column numbers

ASL

Archivio storico italiano Archivio tforico lombardo Atti delTIstituto veneto di scienze, lettere ed arti Archivio veneto Nuovo archivio veneto Rivista storica italiana

ASL.

Atti 1st. Ven. AV.

NAV. RSI. B*.

n.p. s.a. N.B.

Busta. Used for all 'packages' of documents whether bound or loose in boxes or folders No page Sub anno Folio or page references (given without a preliminary' f.' or' p.') are, in documents, to the old numeration. In unfoliated or unpaginated collections the date of a reference (where available) is given.

Xll

Feltre

- / . ' Sacile .Pordenohe Valmareno -j^J k Pa|manova. negliano. c V 'Praia Fft I U L I Asolo ^ ^ ^ ^ V ^ Portogruaro \ Aquilei /-»^ ?tHar->Z lull.*, * Marand' rVw ^r Trieste

Capod'lstria Aqnadello LodiV

Soncino\ > Crema

Cavnana Seniga

50 km

Asola

\ .Ravenna ROMAGNA I lmola * .CastelBoloqnese\ lCervia

Map i. The Terraferma in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Battles are underlined. xill

Bergamo Verona*

Udine

ce r 1 Albona.*/^,Segna Obrovac ^Novegrad VranaX Sibenico Clissa

BuduaV^Antivari Adriatic >Dulcigno Sea

Mediterranean

XIV

Sea

2. The empire da Mar.

PART I

c. 1400 to 1508 M. E. Mallett

Introduction: the European context 1400-1525 ' It is said that the Venetians in all those places which they are recovering are painting a lion of St Mark which has in its hand a sword rather than a book, from which it seems that they have learnt to their cost that study and books are not sufficient to defend states.' So wrote Machiavelli from Verona on 7 December 1509 as he watched Venice gradually recover from the shattering blow of Agnadello. His assessment of 1509 as a turning point in Venetian military thinking matches a central theme of this book, but the nature and the implications of that turning point are here perceived in very different terms from those which Machiavelli had in mind. The idea that it was only in 1509 that Venice was forced to consider seriously the military implications of defence of a land empire and to involve itself directly in that defence rather than relying on hired mercenaries is denied by the whole experience of the fifteenth century. Similarly Machiavelli's implication here, more clearly stated elsewhere in his writings, that not just Venice but Italy as a whole had been shocked into a tardy awareness of oltramontane military developments by the thunder of the French guns and the measured tramp of Swiss infantry squares is a view which has to be questioned. The army which Charles VIII led over the Alps in 1494, with its experienced and permanent heavy cavalry companies, its large contingent of confident and disciplined Swiss pikemen, and its train of horse-drawn guns, was well known to acute Italian observers. It was the product of experiences, experiments and developments in which Italian states and Italian soldiers had shared. It was neither a unique force nor necessarily an irresistible one, but rather an uneasy compromise between various competing trends which had dominated European fifteenth-century military development. The most significant of these trends was that towards permanent, standing forces. The origins of this development lay not in the famous ordonnances of Charles VII of 1439 and 1445, but in the whole trend away from feudal military obligations towards paid, contractual service which had been initiated in the thirteenth century and dramatically accelerated during the course of the Hundred Years' War. The compagnies d}ordonnance of Charles VII had their forebears in the similar permanent arrangements created by Charles V in the 1360s and 1370s, and in the permanent forces

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 organized by England for the defence of Normandy in the 1420s. They were perhaps crucially conditioned by the presence and example of veteran Piedmontese companies and captains in Charles' army in the 1420s and 1430s. Certainly Italy, and particularly Milan and Venice, was accustomed to the presence of standing forces contracted to the states from the end of the fourteenth century. What was unique about the French ordonnances was the determination to standardize the size of the cavalry companies and to forbid the recruiting of troops by unauthorized captains. These developments came more slowly and more informally in Italy. In the second half of the fifteenth century the French and Italian examples were followed by Charles the Bold of Burgundy in his army ordinances of 1468-76, and in a less structured way by Ferdinand and Isabella in their creation of permanent forces for the reduction of the last Moorish enclaves in Granada. In England the relative invulnerability of the state and the limitations of its fiscal structure discouraged the English kings from attempting to maintain more than token standing forces, while in Germany the ambitions of the emperors, and particularly Maximilian, to follow suit were frustrated by lack of central control and fiscal organization. Thus, in the 1470s Louis XI could call on a more or less permanent force of 4000 lances, Charles the Bold was organizing a standing army of 1250 lances and supporting companies of light cavalry and infantry, and Galeazzo Maria Sforza of Milan had 42,000 troops on his books, of which about half could be described as permanent effectives. The emphasis of these arrangements was on permanent heavy cavalry forces. The value of such cavalry might seem to have been placed in doubt by some of the battles of the fourteenth century, but in the fifteenth century improved armour, greater discipline and new fighting techniques gave the lances a further lease of life. Thus the highly developed expertise of such troops and the potential problems and costs of emergency recruiting of them meant that they continued to receive priority in the permanent armies. But this should not blind us to a growing awareness of the potential role and value of infantry forces. The success of the English archers in the battles of the Hundred Years' War lay behind the inclusion in Charles VII's reforms of provision for a select militia force of francs archers, while the growing reputation of the Swiss pike squares led to attempts both to imitate them and to monopolize their services. By the later years of the century, despite the provision of infantry contingents in its arrangements for standing forces, France relied on employing Swiss infantry to maintain a balance in its armies. While there was undoubtedly a growing concern about maintaining, and indeed increasing, a national element in the standing armies of the day, the need for troops with special skills and the growth in size of the infantry element in armies were consolidating the role of the foreign mercenary.

Introduction: the European context 1400-1525 Alongside the growing emphasis on trained infantry went a concern to exploit the new possibilities of gunpowder. The siege trains which had contributed so much to ensuring French success in driving the English from their fortified enclaves in France in the later stages of the Hundred Years' War became a feature of all armies. Indeed it was soon apparent that fortification techniques were adapting rapidly to the new situation, and guns became as important a feature of the defence of cities as in their assault. The size of artillery trains accompanying the armies of the late fifteenth century was no indication of the number of guns in use or of the number of gunners required by that time. The 400 guns lost by Charles the Bold in his defeat by the Swiss at Morat were only a small part of the total artillery resources of the Burgundian state. At the same time attention was shifting from an emphasis on the size and hitting power of guns to a concern for their mobility. This was not so much an attempt to increase their role in battle, which still remained negligible, as to ensure rapid deployment and perhaps decisive advantage in siege warfare. More important to the fortunes of battle by this time was the extent to which large contingents of infantry were being equipped with handguns. Such forces were a key factor in the Spanish conquest of Granada, and here, as in many other aspects of military innovation, the Italian states played an important part. The handgun and the arquebus were rapidly replacing the crossbow as the main shot weapon of European infantry. The implications of some of these developments for the broader problems of control, recruiting, provisioning and cost of armies were also particularly apparent in Italy. The political and institutional sophistication of the Italian states quickly responded to the new needs; military bureaucracies emerged to cope with the problems of organization and supply created by the standing forces;fiscalresources were harnessed to pay the costs; the peasant economy and peasant manpower were exploited to provide provisions, billets and pioneers. By the 1480s half the income of the French crown was committed to the new permanent military needs, and the same was probably true of most western European states with the exception of England. The French invasions of Italy in and after 1494 and the release of Spanish military energies after the conquest of Granada in 1492 hastened these developments. The context of the Italian Wars in which large French and Spanish, and to a lesser extent Imperial, expeditionary forces were committed to confrontation on distant and foreign ground and for great imperial and economic prizes led to a temporary phase in which the warfare of attrition and manoeuvre inherited by the fifteenth century from the Middle Ages gave way to a search for the decisive blow. Collaboration between arms reached new levels of sophistication in the conditions of continuous warfare and constant confrontation, and the armies themselves

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 grew to a maximum size for reasonable manoeuvrability - about 30,000. The proportion of infantry in these armies steadily increased from about half in the army of Charles VIII in 1494 to about four-fifths by the time of Pavia in 1525. This accounted for the growth in the size of the armies and for the disproportionate rise in the level of battle casualties, as the infantry were usually less well protected than the armoured knights. It also revolutionized tactics and ultimately contributed to the slowing down of the tempo of warfare which became apparent after 1530. War assumed a fury and frightfulness which was undoubtedly novel but which was at the same time a passing phase; the characteristics of the military organization of this period of wars were more deep-rooted and justify the contention that the so-called Military Revolution of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries cannot be viewed in isolation from the developments of the previous two centuries. In all these developments Italian leaders and Italian troops played their part although increasingly rarely as an independent force, except in the case of Venice. Thus the Italians who have caught the eye of historians are those who served France or Spain, and contributed significantly to the innovations and developments which emerged from that dynamic confrontation. Men like Fabrizio and Prospero Colonna, the Marquis of Pescara, Gianjacopo Trivulzio, Alfonso d'Este, Giovanni de' Medici, and even Cesare Borgia, have a secure place in the military annals of the period. The army of Venice, which provided the bulk of the Italian forces at Fornovo in 1495, fought unaided at Agnadello in 1509, and remained the only large, independent Italian force in the 1520s, has left fewer and more ambiguous memories. Yet, in terms of the long-term developments of military organization and the relationship between a Renaissance army and the state which created, nurtured and employed it, that army has much to tell us. This book, which explores two centuries of that development and that relationship, falls naturally into two parts. Prior to 1509 Venice had fought foreign powers, not unsuccessfully, on a number of occasions. Hungarians, Germans, even the French at Fornovo and above all the Turks had been confronted. But the emphasis and the contextual framework of Venetian military development had been primarily Italian. From the first major expansion of the Terraferma state in 1404-5 until the crisis of the League of Cambrai in 1509 Venice had concentrated its military energies on the spasmodic opportunities for territorial gains in Italy and the consolidation of those gains. Its attitudes were by no means consistently aggressive and imperialist, but its military stance was one of preparedness for opportunistic advance. Large forces of permanent cavalry and mechanisms for the rapid recruitment and deployment of armies took precedence over investment in permanent defences. Constantly fluctuating levels of military expenditure

Introduction: the European context 1400—1525 and oscillation between policies of greed and caution led to an erratic development of the essential substructures of military financing and organization. But in and after 1509 the realities of a new world were imposed on Venice; a world in which the overwhelming foreign predominance in Italy and the growing threat to the Venetian empire overseas from the Turks placed restraints on and dictated the course of Venetian military policy. Once the Terraferma state had been largely recovered after Agnadello the emphasis in Italy shifted entirely to defence. In accordance with the general European trends the size of the permanent cavalry force was dramatically reduced, and money was poured into the preparation of fortifications and garrison points. The new demands of large-scale galley warfare in terms of the concentration of infantry and guns for service at sea, and the fortification of the empire da Mar, became increasing burdens on fiscal and manpower resources. A considerable proportion of the revenue from the Terraferma state, which had in the fifteenth century been largely devoted to maintaining a flexible and mobile military presence in Italy, was now diverted to the confrontation with the Turks. Military institutions became increasingly fixed, military responses increasingly predictable. Venice, the most effective military power in fifteenth-century Italy, became a second-rate military power in sixteenth-century Europe, capable of defending its independence but acquiring its further moments of military glory only in its ability to mobilize for and check the onslaught of the Ottoman Empire. The following works are of value in establishing the European context for Venetian military developments in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries: M. Howard, War in European History (Oxford, 1976); J. F. Verbruggen, The Art of Warfare in Western Europe in the Middle Ages (Amsterdam, 1977); the chapters by J. R. Hale on war in the New Cambridge Modern History, vols i and ii (Cambridge, 1957 and 1958); A. Corvisier, Armies et societes en Europe de 1494 a iy8g (Paris, 1976); R. Puddu, Eserciti e monarchie nazionali nei secoli XVe XVI (Florence, 1975); M. A. Vale, War and Chivalry (London, 1981); P. Contamine, Guerre, etat et societea lafindu moyen age: etude sur les armies des rois de France, ijjy-i4g4 (Paris, 1972); R. A. Newhall, Muster and Review: A Problem of English Military Administration, 1420-40 (Cambridge, Mass., 1940); C. Brusten, Larmee bourguignonne de 1465 a 1468 (Brussels, 1953); R. Vaughan, Charles the Bold (London, 1973); P. Pieri, // Rinascimento e la crisi militare italiana (Turin, 1952); G. Parker, 'The "Military Revolution", 1560-1660 - a myth?', Journal of Modern History, xlviii (1976) 195-214; P. Stewart, 'The soldier, the bureaucrat and fiscal records in the army of Ferdinand and Isabella', Hispanic American Historical Review, xlix (1969) 281—92; M. L. Lenzi,

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 'Fanti e cavalieri nelle prime guerre d' Italia (1494-1527)', Ricerche storiche, vii-viii (1977-8) 7-92, 359-415-

The beginnings of Venetian expansion The rapid creation of a Terraferma state by Venice in the first three decades of the fifteenth century gives an impression of a new orientation of Venetian policy which is very misleading. The appearance of the Lion of St Mark, the symbol of Venetian authority, on city walls and town halls from the banks of the Adda in the west to the Isonzo in the east, and from the foothills of the Alps to the Po, seemed a dramatic extension of the power and influence of the lagoon republic. There were many at the time, and have been since, who spoke of Venetian imperialism shifting its emphasis sharply from east to west in the face of an irresistible Turkish advance and a consequent decline of Levantine commercial interests. But this is to exaggerate both the power of the Turks in the early fifteenth century and their impact on eastern Mediterranean trade, and the novelty of Venice's interest in the Italian mainland. Direct rule replaced covert economic and diplomatic influence as the method of Venice's role in northern Italy in the early fifteenth century, but the innovations were institutional rather than political, and particularly were they apparent in military institutions. The creation of a standing force to protect the newly acquired state was the real novelty of the period; the involvement which led to that development has to be traced back much further.1 Throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries Venice had kept a careful watch on affairs in northern Italy. While involvement in those affairs had been mainly of a diplomatic nature, there had been a series of military flashpoints when Venice committed itself to armed intervention on a considerable scale. There was also a growing commitment after 1340 to the control of a hinterland which extended north through Treviso to the foothills. 1

For the main outlines of the history of Venetian expansion and military involvement in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, see S. Romanin, Storia documentata della repubblica di Venezia (Venice, 10 vols., 1853-61), vols. ii-iii; H. Kretschmayr, Geschichte von Venedig (Gotha, 3 vols., 1921), vols. i-ii; R. Cessi, Storia della repubblica di Venezia (2nd ed., Milan, 2 vols., 1968) vol. i; R. Cessi, Politico, ed economia di Venezia nel Trecento (Rome, 1952); D. S. Chambers, The Imperial Age of Venice, 1380-1580 (London, 1970) 54-5; F. C. Lane, Venice: A Maritime Republic (Baltimore, 1973) 58-65, 172-201; J. E. Law, 'Rapporti di Venezia con le provincie di Terraferma', in Componenti storici-artistiche e culturali a Venezia nei secoli XIII e XIV (Venice, Ateneo Veneto, 1981) 78-85.

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 The origins of this Italian policy have to be sought in the second half of the thirteenth century. Prior to that the image of Venice, isolated and invulnerable in its lagoon, thriving on the rich profits of eastern Mediterranean trade and content to sell to all who came to it from the west without having to concern itself with the problems of distribution, can be largely sustained. The domination in the east achieved at the time of the Fourth Crusade and the extreme fragmentation of the political scene in northern and central Italy continued to make this position viable. But after the 1240s the situation began to change. The emergence of the Genoese as effective and dangerous commercial rivals after their restoration of the Byzantine emperors in 1361, and the growing economic tensions in Europe associated with the end of the great boom of the high Middle Ages, began to put pressure on the Venetian commercial system. Profits began to decline and Venetian merchants turned to active exploitation of Italian and oltramontane markets in order to compensate. The opening up of the direct galley voyages to northern Europe, a concern for the security of trade routes over the Alps, and a determination to win control over the markets of Lombardy were all part of this new orientation.2 At the same time Venetian commercial interests began to diversify and a monopoly of the bulk trades of the Adriatic and the distribution of commodities like grain and salt began to figure as significant Venetian economic interests alongside the traditional preoccupation with spices and Levantine luxury goods. But this emerging Venetian interest in controlling routes and markets in northern Italy encountered a new tendency towards political consolidation in that area. The activities of Ezzelino da Romano, and of the Este family in Ferrara, inevitably restricted the ease with which Venice could carry through the new policy of peaceful economic exploitation, and added a political dimension to the confrontation.3 One of the earliest Venetian military ventures on the mainland was the dispatch of an army under Marco Badoer in 1256 to liberate Padua from the control of Ezzelino.4 This convergence between economic and political realities strengthened through the fourteenth century. Venice, as far as possible, tried to resolve the dilemma by peaceful means. War was always seen as a last resort which 2

3 4

G. Luzzatto, Storia economic a di Venezia dall' XI al XVI secolo (Venice, 1961) 35-139; Lane, Venice, 22-86; F. C. Lane, Venice and History (Baltimore, 1966), particularly the essays 'Fleets and fairs' and 'Venetian merchant galleys, 1306-34'; R. Marozzo della Rocca and A. Lombardo, Documenti del commercio veneziano neisecoli XI-XIII, ii (Turin, 1940). See also M. Knapton, 'Venezia e Treviso nel Trecento: proposte per una ricerca sul primo dominio veneziano a Treviso', in Tommaso da Modena e il mo tempo (Treviso, 1980) 44-5 and for a very full bibliography on the whole question of Venetian relations with the Terraferma in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Lane, Venice, 56-65; R. Cessi, La repubblica di Venezia e ilproblema adriatico (Naples, 1953) 57-83; E. Sestan, 'La politica veneziana nel Duecento', AS I., cxxxv (1977) 295-331. Sestan, 322.

The beginnings of Venetian expansion was not only costly but also immensely damaging to the free flow of trade. Venetian policy concentrated on containing the growth of the signorial states on the Italian mainland by carefully arranged alliances and by subversion. Economic embargoes and diplomatic pressure were the preferred weapons, combined with a willingness to extend direct control over the immediate hinterland of the lagoon, to achieve both political security and a certain area of economic latitude. But as the political pressure increased, and particularly as the danger emerged of anti-Venetian alliances between the states on either side of that narrow hinterland, so Venice was forced to consider military intervention even to survive. If the need for a permanent military commitment emerged very slowly on the Italian mainland, such a commitment was apparent much earlier in the empire overseas. The events surrounding the Fourth Crusade gave Venice control not only of three-eighths of the Byzantine empire, but also of Zara and the Dalmatian coastline captured by the crusaders before the final expedition to Constantinople itself. The key points that now required permanent defensive arrangements included Negroponte, Modon and Coron in the south-eastern corner of the Morea, Crete, and a growing number of bases on the eastern shore of the Adriatic.5 In Crete the problem was solved for the time being by the establishment of Venetian feudatories on the island with an obligation to produce troops when called upon, but throughout the empire small permanent garrisons began to appear.6 For the most part the men recruited came from the empire itself, but even during the thirteenth century there was some recruitment of Italian leaders and Italian men for service in the garrisons.7 In the second half of the thirteenth century Venice was also engaged in the gradual subjugation of Istria in order to secure complete control of the northern Adriatic. This was carried out by a series of amphibious operations controlled by Venetian galley captains and largely involving the use of men from Venice and the lagoon. In the 1280s Trieste and Capo d'Istria were subdued and their defensive walls pulled down.8 This very early commitment to military enterprises and to permanent military defence has to be seen as a factor in the surprisingly mature Venetian responses to military problems which will be a major theme of this book. 5

6 7

8

F. Thiriet, La Romanie venetienne au moyen age, Bibliotheque des Ecoles francaises d'Athenes et de Rome, 193 (Paris, 1959) 63-140; S. Borsari, Studi sulle colonie veneziane in Romania nel XIII secolo (Naples, 1966); Venezia e il Levante fin0 al secolo XV, ed. A. Pertusi (Florence, 1973), vol. i. S. Borsari, // dominio veneziano a Creta nel XIII secolo (Naples, 1963) 27-9; in 1301 the Cretan feudatories agreed to provide troops for the Venetian fleet (Predelli, i, 14). For the employment of Tiberto Brandolini in Albania in the thirteenth century, see A. Brandolini, / Brandolini da Bagnacavallo (Venice, 1942) 31; for contracts for the employment of mercenaries in the empire in the early fourteenth century, see Predelli, ii, 62-3, 94, 125, 159. A. Tamaro, La Venetie julienne et la Dalmatie (Rome, 1918) i, 272ff.

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 Meanwhile on the Italian mainland control of the Po as a key means of access to the markets of central Lombardy and as the first stage of the route to France was one of the first priorities in Venice's expanding outlook westwards. In 1240 a Venetian army led by the doge attacked Ferrara and achieved a temporary dominance over the city.9 By the end of the thirteenth century Venice had established a fort at the mouth of the Po at Marcamo and had brought Ferrara itself under a degree of economic tutelage. The succession crisis which followed the death of Azzo d'Este in 1308 seemed to offer to Venice a chance of tightening this hold. Fresco, the illegitimate son of Azzo, sought to establish himself as lord of Ferrara by seeking Venetian assistance and offering in return further facilities for control of the Po. A force of Venetian volunteers and militia was sent under Niccolo Querini to occupy Castel Tedaldo and place Fresco in control of Ferrara. But the legitimate D'Este claimant, Francesco, countered this move by an appeal to the pope, who, as overlord of the city, placed Venice under an interdict and sent papal troops to drive out the Venetians. The struggle dragged on for over a year untilfinallythe Venetians were evicted from Castel Tedaldo and withdrew. The wider implications of the interdict for Venetian commerce were probably more influential in bringing about this result than actual military pressure, and it seems that the Venetian military commitment was never large. The troops employed were mostly raised within the lagoon area and commanded by Venetians, with the exception of one or two Dalmatian contingents like that of Count Doimo da Veglia. The episode brought home to Venice some of the problems raised by physical intervention on the Italian mainland, particularly when the interests of the pope were involved, and no doubt served to restrain any rapid development of tendencies in that direction.10 A revolt in Zara in 1311 led to a more effective display of military strength. A Venetian army was landed from the sea with a significant proportion of foreign mercenaries, including the Majorcan leader Dalmazio de' Banoli, but overall command was still in the hands of Venetian nobles. It succeeded in beating off an Hungarian attempt to relieve Zara and finally forced the city to surrender in 1312. Dalmazio de' Banoli was not only one of the first condottieri employed by Venice, but presaged the behaviour of some of his more distinguished successors by attempting to betray his employers and desert to the Hungarians. However, it seems unlikely that, although his treacherous conduct attracted a good deal of attention from the chroniclers, his example had any significant bearing on the development of 9 10

Sestan, 321. On the war of Ferrara, see Romanin, iii, 11-26; Lane, Venice, 62-4; G. Soranzo, La Guerra fra Venezia e la Santa Sede per il dominio di Ferrara (Citta di Castello, 1905). See also P. Sambin, 'Le relazioni tra Venezia, Padova e Verona all'inizio del secolo XIV, Atti 1st. Ven., n.s. iii (1952-3) 205. 10

The beginnings of Venetian expansion Venice's attitudes towards the problem of military recruiting. In this period the first reaction to a crisis requiring a military solution was to rely on local resources.11 However, the next major crisis on the mainland was of a dimension which required a more intensive military involvement. During the 1320s Venice watched anxiously the extension of a Delia Scala signoria eastwards from Verona to Padua, Feltre, Belluno and Treviso. The tightening grip of the Delia Scala on the trade routes over the Alps led to a great debate in Venice on how to react. The strength of the Delia Scala was such that a military effort to oppose it would inevitably involve hiring large numbers of foreign troops, a policy which Venice was still anxious to avoid. However, the danger of Mastino della Scala linking up with Venice's main rival in Friuli, the Patriarch of Aquileia, edged Venice towards war, and at the same time a growing confrontation between Delia Scala and Florence over possession of Lucca provided a valuable ally in such a war. In 1336 a conscripted army was called out to resist further Delia Scala expansion eastwards, but the alliance with Florence which quickly followed put the whole enterprise on a different footing.12 Florence was already well accustomed to depending on large military contracts for its army, and the two states now agreed to employ Piermaria de' Rossi, an experienced Parmigiano captain whose own territorial interests were threatened by Della Scala expansion, as captaingeneral. Rossi received the baton of command from Doge Francesco Dandolo on 10 October 1336 and immediately left to join the large army which was assembling at La Motta.13 Contingents of cavalry arrived from Florence, Bologna and Ferrara, but a sizeable proportion of the force was still made up of Venetian volunteers and conscripts. Rossi with 4500 cavalry and 10,000 infantry advanced to besiege Treviso. The campaign went well; Treviso, Bassano and Conegliano were taken and the Carrara family established as satellite signori in Padua. The death of Piermaria de' Rossi in the siege of Monselice in 1337 led to his place being taken by his brother, Rolando. The successes continued and by 1338 Vicenza was being besieged.14 This pressure forced Mastino della Scala to sue for peace, and Venice emerged from this first Terraferma war with a considerably expanded Terraferma state, including the important city of Treviso, and

11 12

13

14

Sanuto, Vite de dogi, 593-8. Romanin, iii, 1156°; L. Simeoni, 'Le origini del conflitto veneto-fiorentino-scaligero', Studi storici veronesi, xi (1961) 3-65; J. Piacentino (ed.), Cronaca dellaguerra veneto-scaligera, Miscellanea di storia veneta, v (1931). G. Gatari, Cronaca carrarese, ed. A. Medin, RRIISS., xvii, 1 (Citta di Castello, 1909) 18-19; Sanuto,

Vite de' dogi, 601-3. Sanuto, Vite de' dogi, 604-5. II

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 with a relatively happy experience with both mercenary commanders and Italian allies. However, in the 1340s Venice's problems lay mainly overseas. A revolt of the Greek landowning aristocracy in Crete in 1342 was ruthlessly put down by Venetian forces raised in the traditional manner.15 But a further revolt by Zara in 1344 proved a greater threat because of the help once again given by the Hungarians. The recapture of the city took nearly three years, and it was in this campaign that the future Doge Marino Falier made his military reputation, although the honour of finally subduing Zara went to Marco Giustinian. Once again the bulk of the forces employed seem to have been raised from Venetian lands, but at least one condottiere, Cecco di Tiberto Brandolini, was involved. The campaign was said to have cost 40,000 to 60,000 ducats a month, of which 16,000 ducats a month was spent on the land army. The overall cost, reckoned by Sanuto at 3 million ducats, was a significant contribution to Venice's rising financial problems in the critical period of the late 1340s. But the preservation of control in Dalmatia was seen as essential to the security of Venetian trade in the Adriatic.16 The loss of Dalmatia was the main outcome of a disastrous series of wars in the 1350s. Defeat at sea by Genoa in 1353/4 was followed by participation in an anti-Visconti league led by Francesco, il Vecchio, da Carrara which served only to increase the strength and pretensions of the Paduan signore. Thus, when the Hungarians attacked from the east in 1356 they were supported by Padua, and Venice was confronted by the ultimate danger of attack from both sides. In this mainly defensive war the burden was largely borne by locally raised troops; Conegliano was lost to the Hungarians, but Treviso was saved after seven months of heroic defence led by Giovanni Dolfin, who was elected doge during the last weeks of the siege. However, in 1357 the Hungarians overran Dalmatia and Venice was forced to make a humiliating peace.17 In the later stages of this war significant numbers of German troops had been hired to bolster Venice's declining manpower resources, and the experience with these was by no means uniformly happy.18 The next few years were dominated by revolts in Crete and Trieste which saw mercenaries drawn increasingly into the maintenance of Venetian control in the empire. The Cretan revolt of 1363 was, unlike its predecessor in 1342, mainly a revolt of the Venetian feudatories against increased taxation. It was presumably because the revolt effectively stripped the island 15 16 17

18

Ibid., 607. Romanin, iii, 149; Sanuto, Vite de dogi, 611-63; Cessi, Storia della repubblica di Venezia, i, 301-2. Sanuto, Vite de dogi, 640-3; Romanin, iii, 1976°; A. Simeoni, Storia di Padova dalle origini alia fine del secolo XVIII (Padua, 1968) 515-16. For an example of the difficulties created by German mercenaries, see G. B. Di Sardagna,' II Conte Armanno di Wartstein al soldo di Venezia', AV., ix (1875) 1-45. 12

The beginnings of Venetian expansion of loyal troops that it was quickly decided in Venice to dispatch a large mercenary force led by the prestigious Lucchino dal Verme to suppress it. Lucchino's contract for iooo cavalry and 2000 infantry was signed on 2 February 1364, and a large fleet laden with troops left Venice on 10 April.19 The fleet commander was Domenico Michiel, a prominent figure in Venice's military affairs for the next ten years, and the governor-general of the army was Pietro Morosini. The campaign which followed the disembarkation of Dal Verme's troops was swift and decisive. The levies of the feudatories were no match for the professional troops, who were accompanied by specially recruited Bohemian engineers in case there should be any prolonged siege work.20 Dal Verme's army forced its way into Candia as resistance crumbled, and the rebel ringleaders were quickly rounded up and executed. Dal Verme himself was given a life pension of 1000 ducats a year in reward for his services, and Venice was well satisfied with the decisive action which it had taken to secure this essential part of the empire.21 The revolt in Trieste in 1368 was a more protracted affair. On this occasion Venice resorted to the more traditional solution of a Venetian-led and largely native force, although Istrians and Hungarians were recruited and at least one prominent Italian condottiere, Niccolo d'Este, served as a volunteer. Domenico Michiel led the army in the opening stages but was later replaced by Paolo Loredan, who succeeded in driving off a relieving force sent by Duke Leopold of Austria, an old enemy of Venice. Trieste surrendered in 1369 and Loredan was knighted by the republic for his services. Niccolo d'Este received a gift of 5000 ducats.22 Throughout this period Francesco, il Vecchio, da Carrara had been strengthening his position on Venice's western mainland frontier, and seeking to interfere in affairs in Friuli. In 1372 a renewed threat of an antiVenetian league between Padua and Hungary led to Venice once again trying to break out of the stranglehold being imposed upon it. However, the war got off to a slow start as Venice experienced the difficulties of assembling large numbers of mercenaries quickly.23 It was only in November 1372 that 19 20 21 22

23

Commemoriali, v n , 32 (Predelli, iii, 26-7). Ibid., v n , 33; 16 Jan. 1364 (Predelli, iii, 25). Sanuto, Vite de dogi, 6 5 6 - 9 . For the rewards to Lucchino dal Verme, see Commemoriali, v n , 51; 16 J u n e 1364 (Predelli, iii, 31). O n t h e siege of Trieste, see T a m a r o , i, 193; Sanuto, Vite de' dogi, 669; Raphayni d e ' Caresini, Chronica, ed. E. Pastorello, R R I I S S . , xii, 2 (Bologna, 1922) 18-19; G. Cesca, Le relazioni tra Trieste e Venezia sino a 1381 (Verona, 1881) 145$; G . G . Caroldo, La guerra di Trieste coi veneziani, 1368-70 (Udine, 1874). T h e letters of Domenico Michiel from the besieging camp survive in B M V . Mss. Lat. Cl. x, 14. O n Niccolo d'Este, see M C . Novella, 124 (17 Jan. 1370). Gatari, 6 6 - 8 3 ; Sanuto, Vite de' dogi, 6 7 1 - 5 ; Nicoletto d'Alessio, ' L a storia della guerra per i confini', in Gesta Magnified domus Carrariensis, ed. R. Cessi, R R I I S S . , xvii, i (Bologna 1965); P. Sambin, ' L a guerra del 1372-3 tra Venezia e Padova', AV., ser. 5, xxxviii-xxxix (1946-7) 1-76. 13

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 the chosen captain-general, Ranieri de' Guaschi, Count of the Maremma, arrived and the main army, 15,000 strong, was able to take the offensive against Padua. A largely Venetian force, bolstered by cavalry hastily recruited in the Romagna and led by Domenico Michiel as vice-captaingeneral, had assembled some months earlier but had been unable to achieve anything positive. Now, with the campaigning season virtually over, Ranieri de' Guaschi conducted some half-hearted operations against Brentelle and was soon squabbling with the proveditors assigned to the army because of his inactivity. The proveditors were recalled in disgrace and in February 1373 Ranieri was sacked, to be replaced by Giberto da Correggio. Meanwhile a Venetian force covering the rear of the main army against an Hungarian attack was overwhelmed by the Hungarians, who marched through to link up with the Paduans. Venice now faced the most serious military threat of its history to date. Large numbers of additional troops were hired; 100 nobles were alerted for service as leaders of crossbowmen; and in April Giberto da Correggio arrived to take command. The new army suffered a further defeat at Lova in May and Giberto da Correggio died soon afterwards of marsh fever. But already the Paduan economy was being exhausted by the activities of three armies within the area and Francesco il Vecchio was anxious for peace. A victory won by the new Venetian commander, Pietro della Fontana, on 1 July at Buonconforto, in which both the Paduan and Hungarian commanders were captured, only hastened the end and gave Venetian morale a badly needed boost. Pietro della Fontana had won his victory by adopting the English tactics, recently introduced into Italy, of dismounting his men-at-arms and making themfighton foot.24 The value of professional expertise of this sort no doubt impressed the Venetians and helped to balance the unfavourable impression left by the earlier commanders in the war. However, once again Venice had felt obliged to commit itself to war with no hope of sustaining it without the assistance of mercenaries. The fact that these mercenaries had taken so long to assemble and had proved unreliable and difficult to handle could point to only one solution - a permanent force. But at this stage both economic difficulties and a reasonable hope that a renewed dual attack could be averted by more industrious diplomacy postponed any serious attempt to explore such a solution. That the Paduan-Hungarian alliance re-emerged in even more dangerous form before the end of the decade was largely due to the success with which Genoa turned another round of the protracted naval confrontation with Venice into a grand alliance against its old rival. The War of Chioggia (1378-81) saw Venice beleaguered by land and sea; while the Genoese fleet 24

Caresini, 25-6. 14

The beginnings of Venetian expansion with Paduan troops stormed into Chioggia in the south-eastern corner of the lagoon, further Paduan forces besieged Mestre and the Hungarians swept through Friuli and over the Livenza.25 All this was in the summer of 1379, and Venice's very existence seemed to hang by a thread. Control of the Adriatic had been lost; Istria was largely overrun by the Hungarians; enemy troops were on the shores of the lagoon. That the republic survived this crisis was mainly due to its naval strength; the return of Carlo Zeno'sfleetat the crucial moment re-established naval superiority, and both made an attack on Venice itself impossible and cut off the Genoese from reinforcements. In the fight for survival and in the recapture of Chioggia in 1380 Venetians themselves obviously played a large part; indeed for a period the city was largely cut off from the possibility of bringing in additional mercenaries to assist in the defence. However, mercenaries had a share both in the humiliations and in the triumphs. The notorious treachery of Roberto da Recanati, hanged between the columns in the Piazzetta for conspiring to hand the city over to the Genoese, was balanced by the bravery of Giacomo de' Cavalli, who led the army in the recapture of Chioggia and was made a member of the Great Council as a reward.26 Once Chioggia was recovered and the Genoese fleet destroyed, the land threat could be parried more easily. Treviso was ceded temporarily to the Austrians to win an alliance against Padua, and Vettore Pisani's fleet combined with Giacomo de' Cavalli's cavalry to recover most of Istria except for Trieste. The Treaty of Turin involved commercial concessions to the Genoese in the east but few losses closer to home. However, the financial costs of the war had been crippling and this factor again delayed any swift solution to Venice's military problems. The last two decades of the fourteenth century saw Venice mobilizing only once more on a large scale on the mainland, but there was a dramatic extension of the overseas empire. As the Turks advanced through the Balkans Venice was able to move in as the protector of beleaguered coastal communities and considerably extend its network of bases on the Adriatic and in southern Greece. The occupation of Corfu in 1386 was the most significant step in this process; but this was quickly followed by the acquisition of Scutari, Durazzo, Lepanto, Patras, Argos and Nafplion.27 All these had to be garrisoned and fortified to be of any significance, and the new permanent military commitments and the expense involved no doubt 25

26 27

F o r the W a r of Chioggia, see Caresini, 3 3 - 5 8 ; Daniele di Chinazzo, Cronica de la guerra de veneziani e zenovesi, M o n u m e n t i storici della R. Deputazione veneta di storia patria, ser. 1, xi (Venice, 1958); R o m a n i n , iii, 191-216; L a n e , Venice, 191-6; L . A. Casati, La guerra di Chioggia e la pace di Torino (Florence, 1866); V. Lazzarini, ' L a presa di Chioggia', AV., ser. 5, xlviii-xlix (1951) 53-74. On Cavalli, see DBL, xxii, 727-31. Thiriet, 355-63; Lane, Venice, 198-9; Cessi, Politica ed economia, 249-73. 15

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 contributed to Venice's continued reluctance to make any decisive moves on the Terraferma. One such move was made, however, and that was the decision to ally with the rising power of the Visconti and take the opportunity to overthrow the dangerous Carraresi. The treaty of 1388 obliged Venice to field a force of 2500 infantry, 300 mounted crossbowmen and 100 men-at-arms. This was not in fact an extravagant commitment and it was not felt necessary to engage a captain-general. Jacopo Dolfin commanded the Venetian contingent, which was supported by a river fleet of 400 craft. But the main pressure was exerted on the Carraresi by Jacopo dal Verme and his Milanese army from the west. The temporary elimination of the Carraresi brought Venice immediate gains in the form of Treviso (bought by Francesco il Vecchio from the Austrians in 1383), Feltre and Belluno.28 But there must have been doubts in Venice about the long-term wisdom of the policy as Visconti power grew. Indeed, there was no serious attempt to prevent the limited Carraresi recovery in 1390, and throughout that decade Padua acted as a sort of buffer between Venice and the Visconti. It is also in this period that one can see Venice seeking to create positive links with a number of neighbouring satellite princes who had an interest in soldiering. In 1388 Alberto d'Este was made a member of the Great Council and in 1390 Carlo Malatesta was received with lavish honour in Venice.29 These were men who could be expected to provide troops quickly if Venice needed them, and the courting of them was a temporary substitute for the maintenance of significant standing forces. Nothing is more indicative of Venice's reluctance to abandon a policy in the Terraferma which put diplomacy before war, covert influence before military takeover, than its stances in the 1390s.30 Much attention was devoted to keeping Friuli disunited and free of systematic foreign control. Venice consistently supported the Savorgnan against the pro-Carrara and pro-Visconti factions, and worked, after the murder of John of Moravia, for the appointment of a friendly Patriarch to succeed him.31 To the west, although diplomatic encouragement was given, any real commitment to the anti-Visconti league was avoided until 1397 when there seemed to be a 28

29 30

31

Sanuto, Vite de dogi, 758; R. Cessi, 'Venezia e la prima caduta dei Carraresi', NAV., ser. 1, xvii (1909) 311-37; G. Collino, 'La preparazione della guerra veneto-viscontea contra i Carraresi', ASL., xxxiv (1907) 209-89. MC. Leona, 2or-v (Alberto d'Este), 87 (Carlo Malatesta). R . Cessi, ' L a politica veneziana di T e r r a f e r m a dalla caduta dei Carraresi al lodo di G e n o v a ' , Memorie storiche forogiuliesi, v (1909) 1 2 7 - 4 4 , 193—209; G . Bolognini, ' L e relazioni tra le r e p u b b l i c h e di Firenze e di Venezia nell-ultimo ventennio del secolo X I V , A V., ix (1895) 5-109; F. Surdich, Genova e Venezia fra Tre e Quattrocento (Genoa, 1970) 23-42. R. Cessi, 'Venezia e la preparazione della guerra friulana (1381-5)', Memorie storiche forogiuliesi, x (1914) 414-73; Tamaro, i, 302-3. 16

The beginnings of Venetian expansion danger of the Carrara gaining new strength from their leadership of the league.32 In that year Venice sent a riverfleetunder Francesco Bembo to the help of Mantua and contributed significantly to the victory at Governolo.33 But even in the last stage of Giangaleazzo Visconti's expansion Venice remained reluctant to involve itself as long as Milanese ambitions were turned towards Tuscany. In March 1402, with the Milanese spring campaign about to be launched, Venice ordered the raising of 300 lances for the defence of Mestre.34 At this point Venice had avoided major military commitments in the Terraferma for fourteen years and was clearly not preparing any serious initiative with this move. The castle at Mestre was traditionally the focal point of Venice's landward defence and was normally garrisoned by a small detachment of permanent infantry. Similar guards were stationed in Treviso, Belluno and Feltre and at other points in the small mainland state which had been created in the fourteenth century. There is no evidence of any permanent cavalry force being maintained in Italy. Venice, at moments of military crisis, had certainly outgrown a reliance on its own hastily raised manpower during the course of the century, although volunteers and even conscripts from among the lagoon inhabitants had always played a part in the campaigns. Leading Italian and German condottieri had been employed, with some reluctance perhaps and with varying degrees of success, but always on short-term contracts. The first surviving set of regulations for the employment of mercenaries dates from 1336, the moment of the Delia Scala war, and allowed for the hiring of cavalry lances of two men each on a pay scale of 9 ducats a month. The men hired were expected to buy their own food and pay rent for their billets and for the stabling of their horses. They were to be compensated for any loss of horses whilst in Venice's service. No length of contract was stipulated in these early regulations, which bore a close resemblance to Florentine regulations of the same period.35 By 1373, when a similar set of general regulations was issued to govern recruiting for the war against Padua, the pay for a cavalry lance had doubled to 18 ducats a month, but by this time the lance probably consisted of three men. Contracts were to be for four months' service with two additional months di rispetto, i.e. at the discretion of the employing state. This implied that troops were raised specifically for the campaigning season, and an advance (prestanza) of 40 ducats per lance was to be paid at the moment of hiring, and subsequently deducted from pay. The principle of compensation for 32

33 34 35

R. Cessi, 'Venezia neutrale nella seconda lega anti-viscontea (1392-7)', NAV., n.s. xxviii (1914) 2S3-3O7Sanuto, Vite de dogi, 764. S M i . reg. 46, 8v (20 Mar. 1402). Commemoriali, in, 138 (Predelli, ii, 68). 17

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 lost horses was now specifically excluded from these contracts, presumably in the light of the much-increased pay scales.36 Venice therefore at the end of the fourteenth century was conforming exactly, in the employment of mercenary troops, to the standard procedures current in northern and central Italian states. Where it differed was in the policy of maintaining considerable numbers of permanent troops in the garrisons overseas. While the defence of Crete, the major commitment, was largely entrusted to the expatriate feudatories until their revolt in 1363, the garrisons of the other bases were a mixture of Balkan troops and Italian and German mercenary companies. After the suppression of the Cretan revolt a sizeable body of mercenaries was maintained on the island,37 and by 1400, with the recent expansion of the empire, the garrisons must have represented a considerable standing force. In that year the garrison of 32 crossbowmen in Scutari was to be supplemented by 40 Italian lances,38 and that of 50 crossbowmen and 25 Albanian cavalry in Durazzo was to be reinforced with 40 Italian cavalry.39 Pandolfo Malatesta with a body of Italian troops was temporarily stationed in Istria.40 These overseas garrisons were normally controlled by the Venetian rectors on the spot, and there were thus many opportunities for Venetian patricians to experience the problems of controlling soldiers, quite apart from the periodic major expeditions to suppress revolts and counter threats to the empire. In Italy also, even when the role of Venetian-led native troops had declined, the periodic mobilizations of hired armies involved Venetian supervisors at all levels. The provveditore or civilian commissary became a familiar figure in Venice's military camps as the need to keep a close watch on the temporary and transient mercenaries was fully realized. However, there is no indication that this close supervision enabled Venice to do any better than any other Italian state in terms of effective organization of its armies. In 1381 a large group of deserters from the camp at Mestre issued a public statement about conditions in the camp in justification of their desertion.41 They complained of poor pay, expensive bread made of inferior grain, watered-down wine and putrid salt meat. It could be said that many Venetians had experience of the problems of provisioning and disciplining Commemoriali, vn, 167; Mar. 1373 (Predelli, iii, 107). For contracts agreed with Bartolomeo dal Verme, Astolfo da Trieste, Rizzolino degli Azzoni and Matteo Malaspina, see Commemoriali, vn, 29, 53 (Predelli, iii, 39, 44). SMi. reg. 45, 2v and 25V (9 Mar. and 13 Aug. 1400). Ibid., 10 (11 May 1400). Ibid., 20V (22 June 1400). G. G. Di Sardagna, 'Soldati istriani e di altri italiani e forestieri che militarono nell'Istria allo stipendio di Venezia nei secoli XIII, XIV e XV, Archcografo triestina, n.s. vii (1880) 88. Amongst the deserters were sixteen non-Italians, thirteen Milanese, eleven Florentines, eight Parmigiani, five Bolognese, three Mantuans and three Pisans. Most of the others were north Italians. 18

The beginnings of Venetian expansion galley crews, but doubtless those crews would have made exactly the same complaints; the difference lay in the fact that they had less chance to desert. In Venice itself the outbreak of war usually led to the establishment of a special war council of 25 to 50 leading patricians which took over responsibility for the direction of the war from the Senate. While this practice enabled the government to call on men with relevant experience even if they were temporarily not members of the main governing councils, it also tended to slow down the decision-making process when debate had to take place within what was still a large committee. But the key feature of Venice's military commitment in Italy in the fourteenth century was its sporadic nature. Undoubtedly the experiences of the War of Chioggia led to the emergence of a group of younger men in the Venetian ruling class who were acutely conscious of the need for more organized permanent defence and the necessity for a more positive and longterm approach to the problem of Italian involvement. The war had revealed how vulnerable Venice was to a grand alliance against it, and it also served to pinpoint Padua as the main threat. The need for a more extensive and better-protected hinterland was highlighted by the loss of Treviso and the problems of provisioning Venice itself which resulted from the temporary loss of naval control of the Adriatic. These lessons certainly did not go unnoticed, and the birth of a Terraferma faction amongst the nobility can be dated to this period. But for the next twenty years it remained a minority; the crippling financial cost of the War of Chioggia weighed heavily on the succeeding years, and the traditional approach to Italian involvement prevailed through the 1380s and 1390s. By the early fifteenth century, however, trade had picked up; confidence had been restored by the acquisitions overseas; Treviso had been recovered; but above all the Terraferma faction had gathered strength with the election of Michele Steno as doge and with the rise to positions of experience and authority of men nurtured in the shadow of Chioggia. While the activities of Giangaleazzo Visconti seemed sufficiently remote not to arouse an immediate reaction in Venice, the new expansion of Carrara power which followed the death of Giangaleazzo raised the spectre of encirclement once more, and this time Venice was ready to take action.

The composition and role of the army in the fifteenth century

THE CREATION OF A TERRAFERMA STATE, 1 4 0 4 - 2 5

If the occupation of Verona and Padua in 1405 and the overthrow of the Carrara family cannot be described as the results of a revolution in Venetian thinking about Italian involvement, nor technically as the beginning of the Terraferma state, the moment did lead to the emergence of a significant Venetian permanent army. The history of this army in terms of its exploits and functions will be the concern of this chapter. The speed and determination with which Venice reacted to the renewal of Carrarese expansion in 1404, when Francesco Novello by a swift coup added Verona to his Paduan possessions, are surprising. As recently as 1402 the strength of traditional opposition to extensive mainland commitment and to expensive land war had shown itself clearly. In the spring of that year, as Giangaleazzo Visconti prepared for another campaign of expansion, Venice, as we have seen, thought first of strengthening the defences of Mestre. The next relevant Senate decision was in May 1402 when authority was given for the raising of a further 300 lances which were to be sent to the assistance of Padua.1 With a growing sense of urgency in July Paolo di Leone was given command of this force;2 he was a Paduan and a close supporter of the Carrara, and therefore particularly suited to the appointment. However, proposals to offer a condotta to Paolo Orsini and to strengthen the garrisons of Treviso and Ceneda with 400 crossbowmen were both defeated in the Senate.3 The strong opposition to these moves can be seen both as conservatism and as a reluctance to spend money. However, by early July the threat was too insistent to be ignored and full-scale war preparations went ahead. A 1

2 3

SS. reg. 1, 6ov (5 May 1402). For discussion of the 1402-5 period, see Fondazione Treccani, Storia di Milano, vi (Milan, 1955) 60-7; D. M. Bueno de Mesquita, Giangaleazzo Visconti (Cambridge, 1941) 275-80, 293-302; N. Valeri, Leredita di Giangaleazzo Visconti (Turin, 1938); I. Raulich, La caduta dei Carraresi, signori di Padova (Padua, 1890). SS. reg. 1, 68v (2 July 1402). Ibid., 67V-68 (26-8 June 1402). 20

The composition and role of the army condotta for Orsini was agreed without further question,4 and a five-year league with Florence was confirmed on 11 August with Venice committed to paying three-fifths of the war expenses. On 31 August it was announced that the Emperor had given permission for Venice to recruit in Germany.5 The impression given by all this is that Venice had no standing forces of any size, except for garrison troops, and was virtually arming from scratch. By November, while Giangaleazzo was now dead, the threat to Padua still seemed serious and there was a proposal to demobilize only partially for the winter. The continued threat was one factor here, but the Senate was also advised of the danger of releasing large numbers of mercenaries at once; the suggestion was to reduce gradually from the 600 lances which had been assembled to 250, which were to be retained for the time being. However, this modest attempt to create a standing force was defeated, and total demobilization of the cavalry was ordered.6 As far as we can tell, this remained the position until April 1404, when the need for active involvement in the Terraferma re-emerged in a different form, the threat from a strengthened Carrara lordship. On 9 April a proposal to raise 1000 lances was defeated,7 but three days later a smaller force of 500-600 lances was authorized. This decision produced a flurry of activity; Andrea Zeno and Leonardo Emo took charge of the recruiting, and large numbers of lances and crossbowmen were hired. The export of arms was strictly forbidden, and on 29 April four savi were elected to direct the war. Francesco Gonzaga, lord of Mantua, was invited to come with 200 lances, and Jacopo dal Verme, the veteran Milanese commander, was also active in raising troops for Venice.8 Finally, approaches were made to Malatesta Malatesta to come and take command, and meanwhile two Venetian governors were responsible for the rapidly growing army at Treviso.9 As the mobilization went forward during the summer it included a contract for the Company of the Rose of about 220 lances, one of the last of the traditional companies active in Italy.10 Troops were also brought from Dalmatia and Crete. By the height of the 1404 campaign the army was said to number 9000 cavalry and 10,000 infantry and militia.11 This sudden 4 5 6 7 8 9

10 11

Ibid., 68v (2 July 1402). Ibid., 73 (31 Aug. 1402). Ibid., 78V-79 (17 Nov. 1402). Ibid., 142V (9 Apr. 1404). Ibid., 144-9 ( I2 ~3° Apr. 1404). SS. reg. 2, 8v (19 May 1404). Corrado de' Cavalli, a Veronese noble in exile with considerable military expertise, whose family enjoyed the status of honorary Venetian nobility, and Francesco da Molin were chosen. SS. reg. 2, 32 (16 July 1404). Annales Estenses, ed. G. Delayto, RIS. (Milan, 1731) xviii, col. 1009. Andrea Dandolo put the size of the army at 30,000, but this seems too high (Andrea Dandolo, Cronaca, ed. E. Pastorello, RRIISS., xii, 1 (Bologna, 1938-58) 402). 21

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 expansion of the army clearly created great problems for Venetian planning. The appointment of an all-powerful captain-general was a decision of great moment, and, in keeping with tradition both in terms of numbers and in order to avoid creating too dangerous a figure, his condotta was limited to 350 lances.12 But, given the very large number of troops which Venice was trying to raise and the obvious desire to get good men, it quickly became apparent that some of the other condottieri felt themselves entitled to larger companies than this. For Francesco Gonzaga and Paolo Savelli the solution was limited companies, smaller than that of Malatesta, but with other attached forces placed under their command. Jacopo dal Verme posed an even greater problem, but as he was to be operating in a different area from Malatesta he was eventually allowed to bring a company larger than that of the captain-general. For Ottobuono Terzo the solution was a half-pay condotta which placed him and his very large company in a different category. Finally, despite the formal limitations to his condotta, it is probable that Malatesta was allowed to bring a considerably larger company than that originally contracted for.13 The conclusion to be drawn from these arrangements was that in armies of the size which henceforward seemed necessary, it was essential to give real pre-eminence to the captain-general by allowing him a very large company. Venice gradually learnt to accept this and to devise other ways of countering any possible internal threat from too powerful a military commander. By the autumn of 1404 the position had emerged of a large main army besieging Padua and divided into two camps. Malatesta, as captain-general, was based on Treviso while Paolo Savelli, his second in command, was moving in from the east and south-east. At the same time the siege of Verona was being conducted by Jacopo dal Verme and Francesco Gonzaga, both of wl >m had clear personal interests in the successful outcome of the siege. D Verme was himself Veronese and may well have dreamed of establishing a personal lordship in the city; Gonzaga, as lord of neighbouring Mantua, had long aimed at adding Verona to his state. Perhaps because of these somewhat suspect loyalties, but also to avoid rivalries between the two captains, the Senate vested control of this army in a committee offivewhich included Gabriele Emo as governor and two proveditors.14 Finally, a third force was required in the Polesine to counter any attempt by Ferrara to come to Padua's assistance. This army was normally commanded by a Venetian,

12 13 14

Commcmoriali, ix, 162V (Predelli, iii, 299-300). Gatari, 531 suggests that Malatesta in fact had 1000 lances. SS. reg. 2, 6iv (2 Oct. 1404).

22

The composition and role of the army presumably because there was a strong amphibious element in the fighting in this area, and co-operation with a fleet on the Po was essential.15 With the approach of winter Malatesta indicated his wish to retire, and Savelli took over from him. Venice was clearly reluctant to accept any premature seasonal break in the hostilities and decided to renew all the condotte and keep the armies in the field. The contracts were, however, still those appropriate to a short campaigning season, i.e. two months ferma and two months di rispetto. Certainly vigorous fighting went on round Padua in November and December, leading to the fall of Piove di Sacco; but following that the winter lull set in and the armies were run down and went into winter quarters. In the spring of 1405 it was decided to employ 1200 lances in the army facing Padua; the Verona army was probably about the same size.16 The need for a Polesine force had been alleviated by a truce with Ferrara. In June Verona surrendered and the Mantuan contingent, now commanded by Galeazzo Gonzaga, Count of Grumello, was immediately transferred to the Padua front. There the ring was gradually closing on the beleaguered city. On the death of Savelli from a combination of wounds and marsh fever, Grumello took over command. On 25 November Padua finally surrendered and Grumello, surrounded by a large coterie of Venetian nobles, entered the city.17 The Carrara war was crucial for Venice not only because itfinallyturned it into a mainland power with all that this was to involve, but also for the military developments of the war itself. It was essentially a transitional war; on the one hand the number of troops involved and the relative continuity of the fighting over a period of eighteen months introduced Venice to many of the problems of permanent military commitment. On the other hand the short contracts and hand-to-mouth recruiting and administrative methods showed how traditional the Venetian military system still was. Nowhere was this clearer than in the large number of Venetian nobles who were directly involved in this war. From Gabriele Emo, governor of the army before Verona, down through the levels of the administration to paymasters and provisioners, captains of crossbowmen and commanders of redoubts in the 15

16 17

There have been many confusions in the sources about these command arrangements. The most complete, but in some ways most misleading, account is in 'Cronica di Zorzi Dolfin' (BMV. Mss. It. VII, 794) 270V, which places Malatesta as the successor to Savelli after the latter's death in 1405. Both Sanuto and, following him, Romanin (iv, 19) erroneously describe the first captain-general as Pandolfo Malatesta. An additional useful source for this period is the 'Cronachetta veneziana dal 1402 al 1415', ed. V. Joppi, AV., xvii (1879) 301-25. SS. reg. 2, 99 (21 Mar. 1405). For the best account of the military details of the war, see Gatari, 520-71.

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 field, Venetian nobles were everywhere. At a rough computation at least 80 nobles served with the army in some significant official capacity during 1404-5. This was to be a declining phenomenon in the fifteenth century and one to which we must return at various points in this study. As soon as Padua had surrendered, and indeed even before, the process of demobilization began. The cost of this war had been over 2 million ducats and there was now a strong feeling in Venice that the army must be reduced to a bare minimum.18 However, that bare minimum, about which there was considerable debate, was still a sizeable force by contemporary standards. It was at first agreed, on the urging of Alvise Loredan, that it should be 400 lances and 500 infantry.19 However, a few days later the parsimonious group in the Senate, led by Carlo Zeno, had the better of the argument and a motion was carried to reduce the standing force to 300 lances.20 Such an establishment would have represented little progress towards an effective permanent force. But the problem was not just one of how large an army Venice could afford, nor indeed of how large an army it felt it needed. The immediate problem was how to get rid of the troops who were to be paid off without them getting out of control. Venice had probably never faced the problem on this scale before, and the threat was twofold. In the first place there were large numbers of troops round Verona who were impatient to get away to new contracts and for whom money had to be found quickly to pay them off. They threatened a mass assault on Verona unless money arrived. The second danger arose once troops had been finally paid off and were making their way over the frontiers in independent companies. This was a moment when any authority over them was gone and there was a tendency for them to take advantage of their licence and steal and loot anything they could lay their hands on.21 In February Fantino Michiel, who had already gained considerable experience with the army during the war, was sent out with a slim purse to deal with these problems.22 Michiel was instructed to offer the dangerous companies round Verona, who were mostly Mantuan troops under Galeazzo Gonzaga, Count of Grumello, full payment of what was owed to them within four months, and even half-pay until that moment, as long as they would leave Venetian territory immediately and give hostages for their good behaviour.23 This amounted in effect to a renewal of their condone, in 18 19 20

21 22 23

Dandolo, Cronaca, 404. SS. reg. 2, 168 (24 Nov. 1405). Ibid., 170V (1 Dec. 1405). The vote on this hotly contested issue was 58 for, 46 against and 5 non sinceri. Sanuto, Vite de dogi, 832-3. SS. reg. 2, 187 (5 Feb. 1406). Ibid., 189V (8 Feb. 1406); Sanuto, Vite de' dogi, 832-3.

24

The composition and role of the army aspetto, for four months, and it indicated once again that negative aspect of the condotta in aspetto, i.e. a bribe to keep dangerous troops at a distance as much as a means of having protection on call. If this offer was refused Michiel was empowered to break up the force by offering a full renewal of contract to part of them, and then using these men to drive the rest out.24 This is presumably what he did, as the net result of the whole operation was that Venice ended up with a larger standing force than it had intended, but the rest of the demobilized troops were successfully dismissed. On 11 March 1406 a standing force of 500 lances was authorized, and indeed some, including Alvise Loredan, wanted to go to 600.25 A week later Taddeo dal Verme was named commander of this force with a personal condotta for 100 lances and 100 infantry.26 This force remained fairly constant until the Hungarian emergency in 1411, except possibly for August 1409 when the threat from Boucicault led to a hurried call for the mobilization of a further 250 lances.27 The army was billeted in and around Verona, Padua and Treviso. The headquarters of Taddeo dal Verme were in Verona, but he was obliged to keep a part of his troops in Padua to avoid him becoming dangerously powerful in Verona.28 The standard form of contract for these troops was now four months ferma and two di rispetto. The extent to which the presence of this standing force quickly became accepted is indicated by a Senate minute of 30 April 1409. It being spring and the beginning of the normal campaigning season, a number of the condottieri in Verona and Padua had asked permission to leave Venetian service. The reaction in the Senate was indignant; these troops had been maintained by Venice through the winter, and in some cases for several years, and their request was regarded as singularly faithless. Any condottiere who left before September was to be blacklisted and never employed again without specific Senate permission.29 Apart from this small standing army, Venice continued to maintain close contacts with neighbouring condottiere princes so that reinforcements could be raised quickly if necessary. Particularly important to the defensive system were the Gonzaga in Mantua and Pandolfo Malatesta in Brescia. Both these men were lent Venetian troops and money when they needed them. Indeed, in 1407 a defensive league was signed among Venice, 24

SS. reg. 2, 190V (13 Feb. 1406). .SS. reg. 3, 4 ( n Mar. 1406). I b i d . , 5V (17 M a r . 1406). 27 S S . r e g . 4, 53 (29 A u g . 1409). 28 S S . r e g . 3 , 43V (21 O c t . 1406). 29 SMi. reg. 48, 70 (30 Apr. 1409).

25 26

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 Malatesta, Mantua and Ferrara.30 On the death of Ottobuono Terzo in 1409 Venice put up the money to pay his troops to protect Parma for his children. However, none of these soldier princes had a condotta in aspetto from Venice at this stage.31 The inadequacy of these arrangements to protect the new Terraferma state was to be revealed by the Hungarian invasions in 1411-12. These had been sparked off by the sale of Zara to Venice by Ladislas of Naples in 1409, and Venetian operations in Dalmatia to secure control of this city and to suppress a revolt in Split. King Sigismund was also in contact with the exiled Brunoro della Scala and Marsilio da Carrara.32 Although Hungarian intentions were clear early in 1411, Venice chose at first to make light of the threat and contented itself with signing contracts with a number of Friulan nobles for mutual defence. While these measures might have been sufficient to counter Hungarian raiding parties, they were totally inadequate to face the massive invasion led by Pippo Spano in the autumn of 1411. However, Venice did, in the late summer, start preparing a line of fortifications on the Livenza river to block the Hungarian advance. This consisted of a series of earthworks over twenty miles long, and it constituted a remarkable feat of military engineering which will be described in more detail later.33 The Livenza line certainly seems to have played a part in blunting the Hungarian attack, but the preoccupation with this task and perhaps an undue confidence in its effectiveness seemed temporarily to blind the Senate to the need also for more troops. The standing force of 500 lances could not hope to withstand the Hungarian army of about 12,000 cavalry, particularly as the western frontier could not be completely denuded of troops. But it was not until December 1411 that the full extent of the crisis seemed to dawn on Venice, and then within the next four months the size of the army was quadrupled. This was achieved by frenetic activity on the part of recruiting agents all over Italy, by borrowing troops from Milan and the Este, and by contracting out large-scale recruiting to Uguccione de' Contrari, the chief of staff of the Este and currently papal captain-general.34 This last measure virtually deprived Venice of any control over who was hired for her service and must have seemed deeply unsatisfactory to some members of the Senate. The fact was that while Venice had quickly appreciated the need for permanent defences of its new state and the ASMa., Archivio Gonzaga, B.43, 61 (27 July 1407). Venice agreed to contribute 300 lances to the league, Pandolfo Malatesta 125, Ferrara 50 and Mantua 40. M. E. Mallett, 'Venice and its condottieri, 1404-54', in Renaissance Venice, ed. J. R. Hale (London, 1973) 124. G. Cogo, 'Brunoro della Scala e l'invasione degli Ungari del 1411', NAV., v (1893) 2Q.6ff. See below, 92-3. The best source for this Hungarian war is Joppi, 'Cronachetta veneziana', 319-21. Collegio, Commissioni Secrete, 1408-13, 58-9 (14 Dec. 1411); SS. reg. 4, 231V (17 Jan. 1412). 26

The composition and role of the army maintenance of a small standing force, it had not yet solved the problem of how to expand that force quickly without losing control over it. The largest accretion to the Venetian army at this stage was the company of 500 lances of Carlo Malatesta, who was invited to be captain-general. However, it was the spring of 1412 before these troops began to arrive, as the initial discussions in Venice and the subsequent negotiations with Malatesta had been more than usually protracted.35 Meanwhile the makeshift defence was made up of infantry on the Livenza line commanded by Bartolino de' Zamboni, the expanding army camped behind the line commanded by Taddeo dal Verme and Francesco Orsini, a small river fleet, and a bevy of Venetian proveditors and officials. This, combined with the inability of the Hungarians to press home their advantage, produced a temporary stalemate. The Livenza line was the key to the situation; by abandoning any idea of defending the lands to the east the Venetians gave the Hungarians something to occupy them, and the line itself was clearly sufficiently effective a barrier to demand an organized attack which the Hungarians were slow to prepare. Various sorties were planned to keep up the morale of the troops and prevent the Hungarians from massing, but when Carlo Malatesta arrived in the camp in May 1412 he found the situation far from satisfactory. His main complaint was that there were not enough men, and although Venice claimed that it had already signed contracts for 2400 lances, further efforts were now made to raise more.36 The main result of this was that Pandolfo Malatesta, Carlo's brother and lord of Brescia, agreed to come with his entire force of 1000 lances.37 This was a stroke of luck which was to stand Venice in good stead for some years, as Pandolfo had one of the bestorganized and most efficient companies in Italy.38 At Pandolfo's request, a Venetian noble, Jacopo Soriano, was sent to Brescia to govern it in his absence.39 Pandolfo Malatesta moved with surprising speed, and by late August an army which must have numbered about 12,000 men was assembled on the Livenza. On 24 August the Hungarians attacked the Venetian positions at Motta, and after a fierce encounter were driven off. Both Carlo Malatesta and Taddeo dal Verme were wounded in this battle, and Pandolfo Malatesta took over command. He led a brisk counter-attack aimed at Seravalle, Prata 35

36 37 38

39

Mallett, 'Venice and its condottieri', 133-4. For Malatesta's condotta, see Commemoriali, x, 116 (Predelli, iii, 357). S S . r e g . 5, 42 (7 J u l y 1412). Malatesta claimed he h a d been promised 2000 lances a n d 3000 infantry. Ibid., 44(11 July 1412). A good deal of material on the organization of Pandolfo Malatesta's troops survives in Archivio di Stato, Fano, Codici Malatestiani, esp. nos. 54 and 56. SS. reg. 5, 50 (26 July 1412).

27

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 and Sacile,40 but by this time the short condotte were beginning to run out and many of the troops were drifting away, perhaps alarmed at the thought of spending the winter in this inhospitable part of Italy.41 At this moment a new Hungarian attack was reported as imminent. Spies sent warning that Pippo Spano was on the move again, and once more Venice was caught in difficulties as the natural decline of an army in the autumn coincided with a renewed threat. A motion was passed in the Senate authorizing the raising of an additional 1000 lances.42 The danger was accentuated by a suspicion that Pandolfo Malatesta was being courted by the Hungarians. For a few weeks there was confusion as the Senate tried to take over control and use the army to defend towns piecemeal, while Pandolfo Malatesta argued for giving ground and keeping the army intact in order to defend Venice itself43 However, by January confidence in Pandolfo and his tactics had been restored, and at the end of that month the Hungarians halted their drive eastwards and concentrated on recovering territory in Istria where a Venetian force under Ludovico Buzzacarini had been operating with considerable success. On 17 April 1413 a truce was signed and the war ended in a sort of stalemate which must have seemed a somewhat fortunate conclusion for Venice. Many of the facts of life about the preservation of a territorial state were harshly brought home to Venice in this war. Neither the small permanent army nor the network of contacts with satellite condottiere princes had proved effective. Certainly but for the immediate presence of Taddeo dal Verme and his 500 lances the situation would have been even worse in early 1412; on the other hand, both the Gonzaga and the Este had been slow in coming to help despite intense pressure on them. The build-up of an effective field army and the search for and employment of a new captaingeneral had taken over six months. Nor had the traditional type of shortcontract Italian army proved itself fully effective against the Hungarians, who seemed to relish winter campaigning in Italy. The lessons to be learnt from all this were by no means quickly assimilated or immediately acted upon. The ultimate solution of a much larger permanent force with an accepted system of rapid expansion, long contracts and a permanent captain-general was not to emerge until nearly twenty years later. But the first step towards this solution was taken immediately in 1413 with the engagement of Pandolfo Malatesta as captain-general in aspetto. Pandolfo Malatesta was captain-general until 1416, when he went to the 40 41 42 43

Ibid., 64V (27 Sept. 1412). Ibid., 67 (6 O c t . 1412); ' C r o n i c a Dolfin', 284. S S . reg. 5, 84 (17 N o v . 1412). I b i d . , 85V (25 N o v . 1412), 85V-87 (27 N o v . 1412); Collegio, C o m m i s s i o n i Secrete, 1 4 0 8 - 1 3 , 97 (4

Dec. 1412).

28

The composition and role of the army Marches to arrange for the ransom of his brother, Carlo, from the hands of Braccio da Montone. This provided Venice not only with a skilled commander close at hand in Brescia with a large force of cavalry available if needed, but also furnished it with a force of 400 lances detached under Martino da Faenza in permanent service. The arrangement was a mutually satisfactory one; Venice expanded its standing army with good, reliable troops and had no longer to provide for the defence of the western frontier; Pandolfo got a part of his company fully paid for him and could rely on Venetian moral and diplomatic support to defend both Brescia and his interests in Romagna and the Marches. The condotta was renewed every six months during this period and cost Venice 4000 ducats a month.44 There were certainly many in the Senate who resented this expenditure and who used the biannual debate on the condotta as a moment to try and whittle down the military budget. But even when such votes to reduce the sum were successful, Pandolfo was in a sufficiently strong position to get the decision quickly reversed by a show of resistance. It was only his departure from Brescia in the autumn of 1416 which changed the situation and gave a chance to get the system suspended. However, on his return in 1417 the offer of the post of captain-general on the same terms was renewed to him, and appears to have been accepted.45 Apart from Pandolfo Malatesta's troops, a number of the condottieri who had fought against the Hungarians were retained in permanent service.46 A brief campaign against the Austrians in the Valle Lagra in 1413, and a more extensive one in 1416 which resulted in the capture of Rovereto, provided activity and experience for these troops. The permanent condottieri included Simone da Canossa, Grasso da Venezia, Antonio de' Roberti and Ruggiero da Perugia. In addition to Martino da Faenza's 400 lances in Verona, there must have been 400-500 retained under these men, who were divided up amongst the main Terraferma cities. The standard condotte remained four months ferma and two di rispetto. In addition to these cavalry commanders there was now an infantry leader who, although he did not yet have the official title of captain of infantry, certainly occupied that position. This was Quarantotto da Ripamortorio, a Pisan who had served Venice since at least 1404 and whose peacetime 44

T h i s condotta

w a s first a p p r o v e d in April 1413 ( S S . reg. 5, 125; 29 A p r . 1413). See also Mallett,

'Venice and its condottieri', 140 n. 9. 45

46

S S . reg. 6, 144 (8 M a y 1417). Pandolfo had suggested that Venice take over the protection of Brescia and assume all the costs, b u t the Senate decided that a return to the old condotta in aspetto was likely to be a less dangerous c o m m i t m e n t . In J a n u a r y 1418 Venice, although realizing that Pandolfo had his own c o m m i t m e n t s defending Brescia against Milan, proposed to renew the condotta in aspetto which was clearly still in force ( S S . reg. 6, 185V; 10 J a n . 1418). S S . reg. 5, 120V (28 M a r . 1413). As the peace negotiations were in progress Venice declared its intention of retaining most of the troops in service.

29

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 function was commander of the infantry garrison in Padua. There he had a house next to that of the Venetian captain of the city.47 Anotherfigurewho emerged during this period and took part in the 1416 campaign was Taddeo d'Este; he was to be a prominent captain in the Venetian army for the next thirty years.48 Bartolino de' Zamboni, who had supervised and commanded the fortifications of the Livenza line, took command again of the 1416 operations, but he does not seem to have had a formal condotta. He comes into that category of elderly professional soldiers, like Paolo di Leone, who acted as advisers to Venice and whose standing was somewhere between the contract condottieri and the patricians who supervised and directed them. Thefive-yeartruce with the Hungarians was due to run out in April 1418 and Venice was well aware of the threat that this posed. As early as October of the previous year preparations for mobilization were being made. For the first time special taxes were imposed on the subject cities to pay for troops, and 200 additional lances and 500 infantry were hired.49 In the spring efforts were made on the diplomatic front to extend the truce, but at the same time fortifications were inspected and part of the army was moved to Friuli to resist a Hungarian invasion.50 By this time Pandolfo Malatesta was fully occupied with the defence of Brescia against Milan, so in July 1418 Filippo Arcelli was hired as governor of the army.51 Arcelli had been in Pandolfo's service in 1415 and at that time had held a Venetian condotta. So he was known in Venice, indeed perhaps too well known, as he seems to have been a violent and unpredictable man whom the Senate always slightly distrusted. Whether this was why he was not made captain-general, or whether there was still a hope that Pandolfo would return to that post, is not clear. But Arcelli was remarkably successful in 1419-20 recovering towns lost to the initial Hungarian assault and indeed considerably expanding Venetian possessions in Friuli. It is difficult to judge how large the army he had at his disposal was; it probably fluctuated considerably during nearly three years of active campaigning. But in June 1419 Venice aimed to have 1000 lances under arms, which was a small force even by the standards of 1404-5. What is noticeable, however, is that this war was fought without the help of any major condottiere prince. The army was made up of a large number of lesser condottieri, many of whom had 47

48 49

50 51

Mallett, 'Venice and its condottieri', 127 and n. 39 and Commission! di Rinaldo degli A/bizzi, ed. C. Guasti (Florence, 1867-73) ii, 56, 71-3. Mallett, 125-6. S S . reg. 6 , 1 7 5 (30 O c t . 1417). T h e proposal to raise new t r o o p s was vigorously opposed in t h e S e n a t e , and a counter-motion to postpone t h e decision was only just lost. S M i . reg. 52, 75 (10 F e b . 1418) and S S . reg. 7, 21 (21 J u n e 1418). F o r accounts of this war, see Kretschmayr, ii, 2 6 7 - 8 and G . Cogo, ' L a sottomissione del Friuli al dominio della repubblica veneta', AttidcF Accudemia di Udine, ser. 2, iii (1896). O n Arcelli, see DBL, iii, 7 5 1 - 2 .

30

The composition and role of the army been serving Venice for some time. Arcelli himself had only 120 lances at first, and no other condottiere seems to have had more than 100. This was perhaps a situation dictated as much by the fact that the better-known captains were all engaged elsewhere, particularly in Naples, as by any conscious Venetian policy; but the result was a relatively harmonious and highly successful campaign. At one stage in September 1419, when it was felt that more troops were needed, the Senate decided that rather than go out and seek more condottieri they already had sufficient competent leaders and would therefore invite each of these men to expand his company.52 This was to become one of the key features of the Venetian system; mobilization and demobilization were to be largely carried out within a cadre of permanent condottieri, and this seems to be the first time that the idea was systematically applied. This war, which saw the occupation by Venice of Cividale, Sacile, Prata, Portogruaro, Belluno, Feltre andfinallyUdine, culminated in an expedition to defend Istria in January 1421 led by Taddeo d'Este in the absence of Arcelli, who became ill and died in Capo d'Istria. A truce wasfinallysigned in the spring of 1421, and a defensive treaty was signed with Mantua at the same moment allowing for military access to the Mantovano in an emergency.53 But already in the summer and autumn of 1420 the size of the army was being reduced to 600 lances by a proportional reduction of the companies and a pruning of the garrisons.54 By the autumn of 1421 pressure in Venice to reduce military expenditure had clearly become acute, and demobilization had reduced the army to its lowest level for years. Arcelli was dead, and no official appointment had been made to replace him; Taddeo d'Este was recognized as the senior commander of those who remained, and indeed most of the leaders in the second Hungarian war did remain in Venetian service. But the strength of the cavalry force was now run down to about 400 lances. However, this was just a momentary reaction, and perhaps only a lapse of attention, because in May 1422 the condottieri were all authorized to increase their companies by 25%, and a further 300 lances were hired in addition to this increase.55 The expansion of the state in the recent war was given as the justification for this increased peacetime army, and probably never again was the permanent force of cavalry allowed to fall below 800 52

53 54

55

SS. reg. 7, io8v (26 Sept. 1419). It is interesting that the idea was sharply opposed in the Senate by 45 votes to 63. SS. reg. 8, 2 (13 Mar. 1421). Francesco Foscari had a major role in negotiating this treaty. SS. reg. 7,169 (18 July 1420) and SMi.reg. 53,9ov(7 Dec. 1420). After some debate it was decided to reduce the standing force to 600 lances, in addition to those stationed in Verona, Vicenza and Padua. SS. reg. 8, 54V (19 May 1422). The details given here indicate that the standing force was about 400 lances prior to these increases.

31

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 lances. Doge Mocenigo, in his deathbed oration, referred to a standing force of 1000 lances and 3000 infantry, which already consumed most of the income from the new Terraferma state.56 This new concern for military strength coincided with the setting up of a permanent group of savi responsible for the Terraferma lands. The standard condotta used by this time was six vcvonxhs ferma and six months di rispettof1 in other words yearin, year-out service was now envisaged. The system reflected what had become the standard practice in the Venetian army of reviewing and resigning the condotte in the spring, with less formal extension in the autumn before winter quarters, which enabled Venice to reduce its forces if it wished. The size of the army by this time led to serious consideration of the need for a captain-general in peacetime, but it was only in 1424 that steps were taken to fill the post. By this time a tense atmosphere was developing with Milan, which was at war with Florence, and by the autumn of that year the permanent establishment had risen to 1250 lances after another increase of 25% in all the companies.58 At the same time the first one-year-plus-sixmonth condotte were introduced.59 Various proposals were discussed in Venice, including, before Aquila, the hiring of Braccio da Montone. Eventually Antonio da Montefeltro, Count of Urbino, was offered a condotta in aspetto as captain-general along the lines of that of Pandolfo Malatesta in the previous decade.60 Although this condotta was signed, Antonio was never called upon to serve because early in 1425 Carmagnola arrived in Venice having fled from Milan with a small following of 80 cavalry. Francesco Bussone, Count of Carmagnola, was already one of the most prestigious soldiers in Italy. Indeed, the possibility of hiring such a man caused some trepidation in Venice and he was handled with extreme caution. During protracted negotiations in March 1425, Carmagnola asked to be made captain-general with a condotta for 500 lances. The Senate resisted these proposals, more, one suspects, out of a distrust of Carmagnola himself than out of any fundamental reluctance to appoint a captain-general in peacetime. Carmagnola was given a condotta for 200 lances, with a promise that it would be quickly increased to 300, and sent to billets in Treviso.61 It was here during the summer that a Visconti plot to murder him 56 57 58

59 60 61

Sanuto, Vite de dogi, 958. SS. reg. 8, 22 (6 July 1421). Ibid., 174.V (17 Oct. 1424). On 19 Nov. 1424 the College was authorized to increase the cavalry force to 1600 lances (SS. reg. 8, 177). Predelli, iv, 57. SS. reg. 8, i 3 9 v (17 Jan. 1424). SS. reg. 9, 2-5 (2-22 Mar. 1425). The decision to allow Carmagnola 200 lances was passed in the Senate by only 84 votes to 62, with 10 nan sinceri. See also A. Battistella, / / Conte Carmagnola (Genoa, 1889) 93-103.

32

The composition and role of the army was uncovered, and this clear evidence of a breach between him and Milan helped the Senate to make up its mind about him. By the autumn heavy Florentine defeats at the hands of Milan, and the urgings of Carmagnola himself, were steadily pushing Venice towards an alliance with Florence and war with Milan. On 4 December 1425 the league was approved, and this amounted to a virtual declaration of war, although it was not published until 21 January 1426. By this time 800 Venetian lances were already moving forward into the Mantovano.62 From this moment for nearly thirty years Venice was to be at war, or on the brink of war, with Milan.63 The first quarter of the fifteenth century had clearly seen the establishment of a Venetian permanent army. The period had been punctuated by wars but was certainly not one of continuous war. The prime factor in the formation of that army had been the acquisition of the Terraferma state which needed defending, and for most of the period it had been the eastern frontier and the Hungarian threat which had preoccupied Venice. Venice was certainly not unique in Italy in having large standing forces by 1425, but the speed with which the phenomenon developed and the degree of conscious planning and forethought involved did serve to create a more formalized and highly organized system than can be detected elsewhere. THE MILANESE WARS, 1 4 2 6 - 5 4

The league with Florence committed Venice to the maintenance of an army of 8000 cavalry and 3000 infantry in war, and 3000 cavalry and 1000 infantry in peace.64 This meant in practice that Venice had to double the size of its army before the campaigning season of 1426 began. The first moves were to make Carmagnola captain-general and to launch a recruiting drive in the south with galleys ferrying the troops up the Adriatic. The army grew rapidly and soon exceeded by a large margin the formal treaty commitment. Gianfrancesco Gonzaga was named as second in command to Carmagnola, and other notable condottieri who joined the Venetian army at this stage were Guidantonio Manfredi, Luigi da Sanseverino, Piero Gianpaolo Orsini, Ludovico de' Michelotti and Lorenzo Attendolo da Cotignola. The brunt of the Milanese attack fell at first on Florence, whose captaingeneral, Niccolo d'Este, had also been named Venetian lieutenant-general 62

63 64

ASMa., Archivio Gonzaga, B.1419, 6-9. I am indebted for this reference to Dr R. A. Roberts, whose unpublished Ph.D. thesis ('Mantua under Gianfrancesco Gonzaga (1407-44): war, politics and diplomacy in a Lombard buffer state', University of Warwick, 1981) throws much light on the military and diplomatic events of this period. For the preliminaries to this war and an analysis of the opening phase, see I. Raulich,' La prima guerra fra i veneziani e Filippo Maria Visconti', RSI., v (1888) 441-68, 661-96. Ibid., 457. Flavio Biondo's Decades is an important source for this period, particularly as Biondo was at this stage secretary to Pietro Loredan, one of the Venetians most involved in the war. 33

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 beyond the Po. Venice sent some of its new forces southwards to help Niccolo d'Este, but then in May 1426 Angelo della Pergola brought the main Milanese army northwards to join Francesco Sforza against Venice, and all its troops were hurriedly recalled. The reason for this Milanese move was the need to recover Brescia, which had already revolted and admitted Carmagnola's army. Only the fortresses of the city were holding out and the Venetians were rapidly overrunning the Bresciano.65 The campaigns of 1426 were entirely devoted to this task of the reduction of the fortresses of Brescia and the surrounding castles. The combined Venetian-Florentine army under Carmagnola in Lombardy was said to number 29,000 men, of whom about three-quarters were in Venetian pay.66 It was not until 20 November that the castle of Brescia finally surrendered, and the armies immediately went into winter quarters. Carmagnola set up his headquarters in Brescia, which was to serve as the base for the Venetian captain-general throughout the century. The winter was taken up with peace negotiations which were clearly not seriously intended by either side. The loss of Brescia and the humiliating demands made by Carmagnola for the restoration of his family and all his Milanese lands were quite unacceptable to Filippo Maria Visconti. Venice, fully aware of the situation, renewed all its military contracts without formality and instructed Carmagnola to get the army ready for thefieldin February 1427. The process was an extraordinarily slow one, partly because Carmagnola himself had to spend a good deal of time at the baths at Abano, but probably more importantly because of the size of the army being prepared. In April it was reported that the allies had 16,000 cavalry and 8000 infantry under contract,67 and at the height of the summer campaign the army was said to number 22,000 cavalry, 8000 infantry and 6000 militia 'the largest army ever seen in Italy in living memory' according to Fazio.68 Whether the combined army actually reached this size must be doubted, but it was certainly slow to assemble, and in April 1427 a sudden Milanese attack on Casalmaggiore, supported by a river fleet, found Carmagnola unable or unwilling to respond, and the town fell. Despite the fact that the rest of the year's campaign was largely successful for Carmagnola and Casalmaggiore was itself retaken in July, this reverse was to rankle in Venice and left 65

66

67 68

For a recent description of the events in Brescia and the arrival of Carmagnola's army, see Fondazione Treccani, Storia di Brescia, ii (Brescia, 1964) 11-16. Battistella, 148 n. 1; L. Osio, Documenti diplomatici tratti dagli archivi milancsi (Milan, 1872) ii, 256-7 puts the size of the allied army at 18,000, and Sanuto's list of this year gives a Venetian strength of only 12,000 men, but the list is clearly not complete (Sanuto, Vitc de dogi, 990-1). See also F. Odorici, Storie bresciane (Brescia, 1858), viii, 174-5. SS. reg. 10, 44V (27 Apr. 1427). Battistella, 162.

34

The composition and role of the army suspicions of Carmagnola in many minds. However, for the moment criticism was muted as Carmagnola gradually contained and forced back the Milanese. A series of somewhat inconclusive encounters culminated in the decisive battle of Maclodio in October in which Carmagnola drew the Milanese into an ill-considered attack on a defensive position and completely shattered them. Milanese sources tended to play down both the casualties and the numbers of their condottieri captured at this battle, while the Venetians probably exaggerated the figures.69 Thus Carmagnola's failure to follow up his apparent advantage was regarded with unwarranted suspicion. Carmagnola was certainly a particularly cautious general whose insistence on overwhelming strength contributed to the massive build-up of the Venetian army in these years. But, on this occasion, he could point to the facts that winter was approaching, that the crossing of the Adda in order to advance on Milan was a particularly difficult operation, and that although the Milanese army was temporarily shattered it very quickly recovered and was re-equipped by an astonishing effort by the Milanese armourers. Anyway the victory was sufficient to make Filippo Maria Visconti once again seek peace; a peace which gave Venice Bergamo and the Bergamasco, and restored to Carmagnola all his Milanese lands.70 The Peace of Ferrara which was eventually signed in April 1428 initiated nearly three years of uneasy truce in Lombardy. The addition of Brescia and Bergamo to the Venetian state, together with Milan's obvious determination to recover them, made the maintenance of a large standing force inevitable. There was no question of paying off Carmagnola or any of the leading captains, and in November 1428 all the condotte were renewed despite proposals from a minority in the Senate that cavalry strength should be reduced by a quarter.71 The army began to settle down into a defensive posture based on permanent billets spread right across the Terraferma, which was to last for the rest of the century. These dispositions were set out in a Senate minute of 14 July 1429 and involved the quartering of over 6000 cavalry under a cadre of named captains of considerable eminence.72 This truce in Lombardy began to crumble in 1430 when Florence, already committed to a fruitless attack on Lucca which was defended by Milan, called on Venice to take up arms again. Venice began to prepare somewhat reluctantly, and it was not until early 1431, when Filippo Maria Visconti tried to take the frontier fortress of Orzinovi by treachery, that war again became inevitable. On 14 February 1431 an increase of all the condotte was authorized by Venice; Carmagnola increased his company from 500 to 69 70 71 72

Ibid., 190-202. R. Cessi, 'Venezia alia pace di Ferrara del 1428', NAV., n.s. xxxi (1916) 321-71. SS. reg. 10, 197 (2 Nov. 1428). SS. reg. 11, 2ir-v (14 July 1429).

35

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 625 lances and all his captains were allowed similar increases.73 In March fighting broke out in various parts of the Bergamasco. Once again, however, a serious campaign took a long time to get moving, and the crossing of the Adda, a crucial preliminary to any attack on Milan, was prevented in June by the defeat of the Venetian river fleet on the Po. In this year Florentine reports suggested that Venice had 24,000 men under arms, but this was almost certainly an exaggeration, perhaps circulated deliberately to impress Venice's ally.74 A more likely figure at this stage would be 15-16,000. But this force was to be seriously stretched in the autumn when a Hungarian attack on Friuli, promoted by Milanese diplomacy, was threatened. Large parts of the army were moved from Lombardy and operations in the west came to an abrupt conclusion. Carmagnola himself was ordered to Friuli for the Hungarian emergency, but he moved extremely slowly, if indeed he went at all. In fact the threat never materialized, but Carmagnola's reluctance to obey orders with which he did not concur added to the growing resentment in Venice about many aspects of his behaviour. These resentments had been fuelled over the years by his over-cautious tactics and apparent failure to take advantage of military opportunities, by his reluctance to support the riverfleetin 1431, by the strong stand which he took on frequent occasions against the proveditors on administrative issues, and by his constant demands for more money.75 In many of these issues individually it is easy to find justification for Carmagnola's intransigence, but taken together they added up to an intolerable burden on Venetian patience; and behind them all lay the suspicion that the continual attempts by Filippo Maria Visconti to suborn his erstwhile commander might one day bear fruit, or indeed that there might already be a secret understanding between the two men. What is perhaps surprising in the whole affair is the reluctance with which Venice acted. On 22 March 1432 a zonta of twenty leading nobles was summoned to join the Council of Ten to consider proceeding against Carmagnola.76 The possibility had already been discussed in the previous October in the Senate, but without any conclusion. Now the Ten was also uncertain, but on the 23rd a secretary was sent to Carmagnola in Brescia to invite him to come to Venice to consult about the impending campaign. This device was preferred to the more straightforward but dangerous proposal to arrest the captaingeneral in the midst of his troops. As Carmagnola journeyed to Venice letters were written to all his captains urging them to remain faithful despite 73 74

75 76

Ibid., 163V (14 F e b . 1431). C. C. Bayley, War and Society in Renaissance Florence (Toronto, 1961) 106. Sanuto, Vite de dogi, 1015-16, lists 4151 lances (c. 12,500 cavalry) in the Venetian army in 1431. F o r further discussion of some of these issues, see below, 176-8. Dieci, Misti, reg. 11, 37V.

36

The composition and role of the army the arrest of their leader.77 On 7 April he arrived at the lagoon and was escorted with full honours to the Ducal Palace. There, once he was separated from his bodyguard pending an interview with the doge, Carmagnola was quietly arrested and imprisoned. On 9 April a special commission was set up to interrogate, and if necessary torture, him, and prepare charges. For nearly a month the proceedings dragged on; Easter celebrations intervened, but probably the Ten was reluctant to act until it was clear that there was going to be no violent reaction in the army. Finally on 5 May the commission of inquiry presented its report including what was said to be a detailed confession of treachery. The result was an almost unanimous condemnation by the Ten, but more uncertainty over the sentence. The death sentence was carried by only two votes, but then within hours Carmagnola was led out into the Piazzetta and executed between the columns.78 None of the evidence collected by the Ten in this case remains to us, but in a sense it is irrelevant. Once the decision to arrest Carmagnola had been taken it had little choice but to proceed to afinalsolution. To imprison or exile a man like Carmagnola could only lead to endless problems and political dangers; to execute him publicly had the great advantage of administering a salutary shock to his fellow captains and eventual successors. The obvious successor to Carmagnola was Gianfrancesco Gonzaga, who had been the second in command for several years. But Gonzaga had not in fact seen active service in 1431, and was reluctant, perhaps understandably, to be hurried into taking over Carmagnola's responsibilities. Perhaps a part of this reluctance arose from Gonzaga's anxiety not to offend Sigismund, who remained a potential enemy of Venice and in whose hands lay the decision to confer the title of Imperial marquis on Gonzaga. So for much of 1432 he remained relatively inactive with the rank of governor-general, and the only significant campaign was fought by a part of the army in the Valtelline in the autumn. This ended in disaster in November with the capture by Milan of the proveditor, Giorgio Corner, and a number of the leading condottieri.79 The effect of this setback was the immediate conclusion of a contract with Gonzaga as captain-general, and an increase of the army to 12,000 cavalry, 8000 infantry and 11,000 militia.80 Throughout this winter peace negotiations were conducted in Ferrara 77 78

79 80

Ibid., 40 (30 Mar. 1432). Dieci, Misti, reg. 11,45(5 May 1432). See also Battistella, 339-63; DBI.,x\, 6; H. F. Brown, Venetian Studies (London, 1887) r73~7SS. reg. 12, 135 (24 Nov. 1432). Romanin, iv, 164. For the renegotiation of Gonzaga's condotta, see SS. reg. 12,138V-150 (3 Dec. 1432 - 19 Jan. 1433).

37

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 and culminated, in May 1433, with a new peace which added little to the previous Peace of Ferrara of 1428.81 It did, however, give Venice the chance for a systematic demobilization which had not been attempted in 1428. On 3 June 1433 the Senate ordered a reduction of the army to a peacetime strength of 5000 cavalry and 2000 infantry.82 This was to be achieved by cutting the size of the condotte by up to half, an unprecedentedly strict application of the system developed over the previous ten years. The condottieri, who included such influential figures as Luigi da Sanseverino, Piero Gianpaolo Orsini, Alvise dal Verme, Guidantonio Manfredi and Lorenzo Attendolo, as well as Gonzaga himself, were extremely resentful. Under great pressure the reduction was limited to one-third instead of a half, and on 29 July the new sizes of the companies were announced.83 The bulk of the condottieri seem to have accepted with bad grace, but a small group of the more senior captains, led by Luigi da Sanseverino and Lorenzo Attendolo, did leave Venetian service at this stage. This was only to be expected, and indeed what is surprising is that the majority remained. Amongst the junior captains, whose chances were perhaps increased by a certain weeding out at the top of the emerging Venetian military hierarchy, was Bartolomeo Colleoni. In fact the pressure to reduce the military establishment did not last long, and may never have been particularly effective on this occasion. By December the Senate was authorizing new recruiting, and fighting broke out again in the early months of 1434.84 In this year the main centre of operations was the Romagna, and the bulk of the Venetian army was transferred there. In April a condotta was given to the papal condottiere Gattamelata to join Guidantonio Manfredi at the head of this contingent. Gonzaga remained in Lombardy with about 5000 cavalry, and a Mantuan source estimated total Venetian strength at 9657 cavalry and 6272 infantry.85 The Romagna army suffered a severe reverse at the hands of Piccinino and the Milanese at Castel Bolognese in August 1434, and many of the captains were captured, of whom some remained in Milanese prisons for several years. This division of the Venetian army into two contingents divided by the Po persisted in the next two years when there was only desultory fighting. It 81 82

83

84 85

Osio, iii, 1, no. cxxii. SS. reg. 12, 182 (4 June 1433): 'Quia factum gentium nostrarum importantie et in eo procedendum matura cum deliberatione et maxime attento qui infrascripti conductores non ut stipendiarii sed partialiter nobis serviverunt et honorem et statum nostrum sustinerunt et propea non sunt ullo modo dereliquendi . . .' Fourteen condottieri were then named for retention with renegotiated condotte. SS. reg. 12, 191 (29 July 1433). At this juncture fifteen condottieri were named, including Colleoni; Lorenzo da Cotignola, Antonello da Siena, Pietro Navarino and Battista Capiccio were released. SS. reg. 13, 29 (7 Dec. 1433). Ibid., 108 (16 Sept. 1434); ASMa., Carte d'Arco, 131 (23 May 1434).

38

The composition and role of the army contributed to keeping the total size of the army unusually high, and in the depths of winter in January 1436 Venice still had 6000 cavalry and 3000 infantry under arms, despite efforts to bring about some reductions.86 In 1437 the war in Lombardy flared up afresh. In March Gonzaga had assembled 6000 cavalry, 4500 infantry and 5000 militia and pioneers, and tried to force a crossing of the Adda.87 He managed to establish an infantry bridgehead over the river, but the high spring level of the waters swept away his bridge of boats and prevented his cavalry from crossing. Frustrated in this design, Gonzaga fell back on the defensive, fearful of being caught in the open by Piccinino when his army was, in his opinion, under strength. His cavalry strength was gradually built up to about 9000 men, but in the autumn this was reported to be a paper strength which bore little relationship to reality.88 Feelings against Gonzaga rose high in Venice, and he, perhaps fearful of suffering the same fate as Carmagnola, perhaps under diplomatic pressure from Milan, decided to retire. In December Gattamelata was invited to take over as governor-general, and urgent messages were sent to Francesco Sforza, who had a joint contract with Florence and Venice as captain-general of the league, to come to Lombardy.89 The threat of a massive Milanese assault, which had haunted Gonzaga throughout the summer of 1437, finally materialized in the next year when Piccinino advanced into the Bresciano and bottled up Gattamelata with a part of the Venetian army in Brescia. Gonzaga, finally won over by Milan, joined up with Piccinino and threatened Verona, while Sforza at last crossed the Po to come to Venetian aid. The long siege of Brescia, heroically defended by Francesco Barbaro and Taddeo d'Este, Gattamelata's escape from the beleaguered city, and his famous march through the mountains north of Lake Garda, and thefierce,swift-moving campaigns culminating in Piccinino's surprise attack on Verona and its equally rapid relief by Gattamelata and Sforza are too well known to need enlarging on here.90 The Venetian army, augmented by Sforza's considerable company, numbered 86 87

SS. reg. 13, 197 (21 Jan 1436). Collegio, Registri Secreti, reg. 4, 35 (1 Mar. 1437).

88

S S . r e g . 14, 69V (6 N o v . 1437).

89

G. Soranzo, 'L'ultima campagna del Gattamelata al servizio della repubblica veneta (1438-40)', A V., lx—lxi (1957) 79—114; G. Eroli, Erasmo Gattamelata da Narni, suoi monumenti e sua famiglia (Rome, 1877) 94-100; G. Tarducci, 'L'alleanza Visconti-Gonzaga del 1438 contro la repubblica veneta', ASL., ser. 3, xi (1899) 265-70. Soranzo makes no reference to the events of 1437; the conferment of the title of governor-general on Gattamelata he dates to 1438, after the arrival of Sforza and as a sort of demotion (102 n. 2). This is the result of a misdating of the crucial Senate discussion of Dec. 1437 for which Eroli seems to be responsible (Eroli, 328-9; SS. reg. 14, 84; 23 Dec. 1437). On Francesco Sforza, see I. Toderini, 'Le prime condotte di Francesco Sforza per Venezia', A V., ix (1875) 116-29. Soranzo, 'L'ultima campagna' passim; Cristoforo da Soldo, Cronaca, ed. G. Brizzolara, RRIISS., xxi, 3 (Bologna, 1938-42) 8-47; E. Manelmi, Commentario/um . . . de obsidione Bresciae, 1438, ed. G. A. Astezati (Brescia, 1728); Storia di Brescia, ii, 52-71.

90

39

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 16,100 cavalry in 1439, according to Sanuto, and this is a figure which is confirmed by other evidence.91 Gattamelata, in reward for his services, was made captain-general, but in 1440 became too ill to continue an active career, and his place was taken by Michele Attendolo. The other Venetian condottieri, however, remained a remarkably static group in this period. It has been suggested that in these years Sforza, as captain-general of the league, and Piccinino, increasingly indispensable to the Visconti, became the real arbiters of the political situation, and certainly the evidence suggests that Venice was not able to maintain the control over Sforza that she could over her own troops. It was at Sforza's camp at Cavriana, and very much as a result of Sforza's initiative, that a peace was finally agreed in November 1441. It was to protect Sforza's interests in Cremona, once more threatened by Milan, that Venice was again drawn into war in 1446. In the interim all Venetian diplomatic activities were directed towards trying to obtain a stable peace and isolate Milan, but needless to say it had not dropped its military guard. The permanent army was now fully established and all the links with the independent condottiere princes had been abandoned. The senior captains had mostly accepted Venetian fiefs and were permanently based within the Venetian frontiers; the princely condotta in aspetto was a thing of the past. While there were moves in late 1441 and in 1442 to reduce the size of the army by proportional cuts in company strength, it was becoming increasingly common by this time for the original contracts to stipulate smaller numbers of lances to be maintained in peacetime than in war. Thus captains were expected automatically to reduce the strength of their companies in times of peace. At the same time, perhaps by way of compensation, contracts of two years' ferma began to become more common.92 There was in fact relatively little campaigning between 1441 and 1446, but the army that reassembled in May 1446 to resist the Milanese attack on Cremona looked very similar in leadership to that which had retired into quarters in the autumn of 1441. In September the Milanese were badly defeated by Michele Attendolo at Casalmaggiore and for the first time for five years there were significant amounts of booty available for distribution amongst the Venetian captains.93 This puts into perspective the idea that condottieri depended on booty for their rewards and for their fidelity. During the remaining eight years of the Milanese wars fighting was almost continuous. Francesco Sforza, increasingly preoccupied with the 91 92

93

Sanuto, Vite de dogi, 1088. For the reductions of the companies, see SS. reg. 15, 136 (23 Aug. 1442); for the new longer condotte, see Commemoriali, xm, 117V, 139V, 167V and SS. reg. 16, 50V (4 Nov. 1443). Sanuto, Vite de dogi, 1122; Anonimo Veronese, Cronaca di anonimo Veronese dal 1446 al 1488, ed. G. Soranzo (Venice, 1915) 5.

40

The composition and role of the army Milanese succession, could no longer be relied upon, and the Venetian military establishment was maintained at unprecedentedly high levels even during winter. In November 1447 when the army was sent into winter quarters there were over 10,000 cavalry and 7000 infantry quartered in Lombardy alone, with undisclosed numbers garrisoning the towns from Padua eastwards.94 The great pitched battle at Caravaggio in 1448 involved a Venetian army nearly 20,000 strong.95 At Caravaggio Michele Attendolo suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of Sforza, and in the flight which followed his troops got completely out of control. It was this breakdown in discipline, rather than defeat in the battle, that led to Attendolo's dismissal by Venice and his exile to his estates in Castelfranco. In February 1449 Sigismondo Malatesta was called upon to take his place, but with the title of governor-general rather than captain-general.96 This reversion to the employment of a condottiere prince with little experience of Venetian service was an exceptional move for the period, and one which clearly encountered opposition in Venice. But the policy of maintaining equality amongst senior captains under a powerful supreme commander did create inevitable problems if that commander suddenly disappeared. Bringing in an outsider of undoubted reputation was one answer to the problem, although clearly this had to be done tactfully. Sigismondo eventually forced the Senate to make him captain-general, but he was always regarded with suspicion, both in Venice and probably in the army. Through 1449 and 1450 the army continued to be maintained at a consistently high level. In January 1449 4000 lances were in winter quarters.97 In April 1450 Cristoforo da Soldo counted 13,500 cavalry and 7500 infantry in quarters in the Bergamasco, Bresciano and Veronese alone.98 Malatesta himself, Jacopo Piccinino, who had recently come over from Milan, Bartolomeo Colleoni and Gentile da Leonessa with the Gatteschi companies were all stationed in the Bresciano. Tiberto Brandolini commanded the frontier troops along the Adda and round Bergamo, while Cristoforo da Tolentino, Bertoldo d'Este (whose father Taddeo had been killed in 1448) and Giovanni Conti were stationed in the Veronese. Cristoforo da Soldo's lists, like those which appear in the Senate records, are 94

95

96 97 98

Cristoforo da Soldo, 77.

Anonimo Veronese, 7 reported that the Venetians lost 10,000 horses in this battle, and amongst the prisoners taken were the proveditors, Gentile da Leonessa, Roberto da Montalboddo and Dietisalvi Lupi. See also E. Ricotti, Storia delle compagnie di vcntura in Italia (2nd ed., Turin, 2 vols., 1893) n \ 79-82. Commemoriali, xiv, 32 (Predelli, v, 26). ST. reg. 2, 99V (22 Jan. 1449). Cristoforo da Soldo, 98. Later in the same year an official army list quoted a strength of 3461 lances and 5144 infantry (SS. reg. 18, 205V; 20 July 1450), but these did not include the large company of Sigismondo Malatesta, who had already departed.

41

Part I: c. 1400 to is08 usually based on contract strength and therefore inevitably give an exaggerated idea of the size of the army; but the extent to which Venetian captains were disciplined into keeping their companies up to strength is a question which will be considered later. It was in 1450 that Sigismondo Malatesta fell into disgrace over the affair of the seizure and rape of the Duchess of Bavaria, so that in the winter lull of 1450-1 Venice again faced the problem of whom to place in command of the army. The war had developed into one of attrition in Lombardy as Venice's probable numerical superiority and more efficient organization were balanced by Milan's decisive advantage in leadership in the person of its new duke, Francesco Sforza, and Florence's change of sides." In February 1451 the Senate decided to appoint a commander by a ballot among its three leading condottieri, Colleoni, Jacopo Piccinino and Gentile da Leonessa. Colleoni was by far the most experienced of the three, but he had already deserted Venice once; Piccinino had only recently joined Venetian service and was suspect because of the long-standing Milanese connections of his family. So the vote went in favour of Gentile da Leonessa, who was made governor-general.100 The hope that the- apparent equity of the decisionmaking process would stifle the jealousies among the three was quickly dispelled as Colleoni showed his obvious displeasure and prepared to desert from Venetian service. An attempt to forestall his treachery by an attack on his company by the other condottieri, organized by the proveditors, failed to stop Colleoni himself escaping.101 On the other hand, the rivalry between Piccinino and Gentile only ended with the latter's death at the siege of Manerbio in 1453. Without doubt Venice's war effort suffered in these years from the lack of a generally accepted and respected captain-general. The army seemed to grow progressively larger but more and more divided. No concerted aggressive action was organized, and first Gentile da Leonessa and then Piccinino, when he took over from him, were forced onto the defensive in a desperate effort to protect the extended frontiers of the Terraferma state. The crippling costs of the war to both sides, the failure of either army to achieve a clearcut victory in the field, and finally, in early 1454, the impending return of Colleoni to Venetian service created the situation in which a conclusive truce became possible. The Peace of Lodi signed in April 1454 epitomized the military stalemate which had been reached. It should be emphasized that the prolonged wars in Lombardy between 1426 and 1454 did not create the Venetian standing army. But they provided 99 100

101

L. Rossi, 'Firenze e Venezia dopo la battaglia di Caravaggio', AS I., xxxiv (1904) 158-79. SS. reg. 19,44-6 (24-5 Feb. 1451). Gentile was related by marriage to Gattamelata and commanded the Gatteschi companies. Anonimo Veronese, 21-2; B. Belotti, Vita di Bartolomeo Colleoni (Bergamo, 1923) 215.

42

The composition and role of the army the atmosphere of tension and frequent conflict which institutionalized an already burgeoning system. Contractual and organizational devices which had been fragile innovations in 1425 became fixed traditions during a generation of warfare. Condottieri whose fidelity to Venice had been wondered at and little understood in the 1420s had become in a certain sense Venetian subjects by 1454. Family traditions of faithful service had been built up, condottiere fiefs established and a whole military administration consolidated. At the same time, and particularly in the final stages of the wars, Venice had learnt the lesson of the brutal economic realities of the cost of war, and this was to be very much in the forefront of the minds of its politicians in the next decades. THE DEFENCE OF EMPIRE, 1 4 5 4 - 9 4

That the whole of the period between the Peace of Lodi and the French invasion in 1494 was one of peace and tranquility in Italy is an idea which can be easily exaggerated. Nor can it be said with any great justification that Venice's military attitudes in these years were entirely defensive.102 While this would be true of the long war fought against the Turks between 1463 and 1479, Venice's attitudes in 1467 and during the War of Ferrara were more ambiguous. Nevertheless the first nine years after the Peace of Lodi were ones in which Venice's army was first dramatically reduced, and then settled into a permanent defensive posture. Immediately after the signing of the peace, demobilization began. In the case of the senior condottieri there was no question of dismissal, as this would have been contrary to the principles of the now well-established Venetian military system. Nor could company strength be reduced dramatically and arbitrarily, as by this time the peacetime strengths of the companies were clearly stated in most contracts and by the autumn of 1454 most of them had reduced to this level. Jacopo Piccinino, the governorgeneral in the last stages of the war, was the only senior captain who prepared to take his leave as soon as his current contract ran out. Venice made no attempt to dissuade him, not only because he had been the last of the leading captains to join her service, but also because his loyalty was 102

The diplomatic events and the military tensions of the post-1454 period have been studied from many angles. The most useful general accounts are: G. Soranzo, La lega italic a (1454—5) (Milan, 1924); G. W. Nelson, 'The origins of modern balance of power diplomacy', Medievalia et Humanistica, i (1942) 124-42; E. Pontieri, L'etd deW equilibria politico in Italia (Naples, n.d.); G. Pillinini, IIsistema degli stati italiani (1454^4) (Venice, 1970); M. E. Mallett, 'Diplomacy and war in later fifteenth-century Italy', Proceedings of the British Academy, lxvii (1981) 267-88. On the role of Venice, see particularly N. Valeri, 'Venezia nella crisi italiana del Rinascimento', in La civilta veneziana del Quattrocento (Florence, 1957) 23-48 and N. Rubinstein, 'Italian reactions to Terraferma expansion in the fifteenth century', in Renaissance Venice, ed. J. R. Hale, 207-9. 43

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 suspect and his troops were disorderly.103 He was not used to the idea of a dramatic cutback in his company in time of peace; he had received no estates or fiefs from Venice and was determined to make a niche for himself elsewhere. Furthermore the secret deal with Colleoni had included a promise to make him captain-general as soon as Piccinino had left. Venice had both troops and a commander waiting in the wings to take Piccinino's place. Indeed, the fact that Colleoni's 500 lances had now to be paid was an additional incentive to Venice to disband as many of its existing troops as it could if expenses were to be reduced at all. In the years following Lodi a number of senior commanders gradually drifted out of Venetian service as the full implications of permanent peacetime service began to dawn on them. In the autumn of 1454 Matteo da Capua left to go southwards, and he was followed in the next four or five years by Orso Orsini, Ludovico Malvezzi and Giovanni Conti. Cristoforo da Tolentino retired and died shortly afterwards, and Carlo Gonzaga and Cesare da Martinengo also died. This meant that by the early 1460s the cavalry force had been reduced considerably. Bartolomeo Colleoni was firmly established as captain-general with his base at Malpaga and a peacetime condotta of 500 lances. Carlo Fortebraccio, the son of Braccio da Montone, garrisoned Brescia with his 200 lances; Bertoldo d'Este was at Padua, and Antonio da Marsciano, the son-in-law of Gattamelata, was at Verona with the remnants of the Gatteschi companies. Apart from these leading figures a new generation of lesser captains were establishing themselves, with much smaller companies, as the nucleus of the Venetian army.104 In the demobilization of its infantry Venice was able to be much more ruthless. Apart from Matteo da Sant'Angelo, the captain of infantry, Pietro Brunoro, and a few exceptionally long-serving constables, the majority of the leaders were either dismissed or had their companies disbanded while they themselves were given pensions for the duration of the peace. As a result of this cutback the infantry force was brought down to about 2500 men.105 The army of these peaceful years, therefore, numbered about 10,000 men, which compares with Venice's commitment according to the terms of the Italian League of 6000 cavalry and 2000 infantry in peacetime.106 Throughout these nine years there were few alarms which might have 103

104

105 106

The proposal to release Piccinino at the end of his contract was first made by the Senate committee set up to reduce expenditure after the war (SS. reg. 20,40: 12 Oct. 1454). For the disorderliness of his troops, see Cristoforo da Soldo, 132. No army list for the years immediately following the Peace of Lodi has survived, and the dispositions here described have been pieced together from a wide variety of sources. ST. reg. 3, 131 (20 Sept. 1454). Soranzo, Lega italic a, 192-3.

44

The composition and role of the army prompted remobilization. In June 1456 a force was alerted to go to Siena to help that city against Jacopo Piccinino, and Bertoldo d'Este was given command of it.107 As early as 1459 there was talk of sending infantry to the Morea in the light of a growing Turkish threat. Then in early 1463 the war with the Turks blazed up, and in the same year an expedition was organized for the siege of Trieste. The war machine was activated with a speed that belies the apparent lack of concern of the immediately preceding years. The Turkish War, 1463-79 Prior to 1463 Venice's mainland army had been little concerned in the defence of the maritime empire. This defence was mainly entrusted to locally raised troops under local commanders and supervised by the Venetian civilian officials. There were a few companies of Italian infantry scattered about, particularly at Negroponte, where each newly appointed Venetian bailo took a fresh company with him and repatriated the least efficient of the resident constables.108 But the only evidence of a significant condottiere cavalry force was to be found at Zara. Here there was usually a small company of men-at-arms commanded by a condottiere captain; Bernardo Morosini had held this post for a long period in the 1430s and 1440s. Zara was also the only one of the Venetian-held Dalmatian ports that had a Venetian captain as well as a conte, the normal patrician official responsible for the government of these territories.109 The Turkish capture of Argos in the spring of 1463 sparked off the one serious attempt by Venice in this period to maintain a large Italian army in the east. That such an enterprise was attempted at all was partly the result of the long period of peace in Italy. A large standing army had been idle for nine years, and there were strong arguments for giving it some fighting experience and avoiding the cost of raising additional local troops. It is also possible, judging by the events of the 1463 and 1464 Morea campaigns, that Venice saw the opportunity of launching an offensive against the Turks and hence the need for a cavalry army in addition to the garrisons. There was a real hope at this moment, with Pius II enthusiastic for a crusade, that the Venetian contingent would be part of a much larger Christian force. So the decision was taken to send 5000 infantry and 1500 cavalry to the Morea under the overall supervision of the captain-general of the fleet, Alvise Loredan.110 The military commander chosen to lead the force was Bertoldo 107 108 109 110

SS. reg. 20, 94 (3 June 1456). SMi. reg. 50, io8v (18 May 1414). G. Praga, Storia della Dalmazia (Padua, 1954) 146; id., 'L'organizzazione militare della Dalmazia nel Quattrocento', Archivio stork0 per la Dalmazia, cxix (1936) 463-77. SS. reg. 21, 157V (13 June 1463). For the details of the 1463 Morea campaign, see R. Lopez, 'II principio della guerra veneta-turca nel 1463', AV., ser. 5, xv (1934) 45-131. 45

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 d'Este. Bertoldo was probably third in the Venetian hierarchy of command at this moment. He was the son of Taddeo d'Este, who had served Venice since the early years of the century, and therefore his own company was one of the most seasoned that Venice had. He had been the victor in the tournament held early in the year to celebrate the election of Doge Cristoforo Moro. All this helps to explain why he was chosen although Colleoni himself was said to be anxious to go. Furthermore it was clearly the intention that the army commander was to be subordinate to Venice's own naval commander, and it was therefore essential that the condottiere chosen should not be too senior. Bertoldo took with him a number of Venice's leading infantry constables including Bettino da Calcinate, Giovanni Grande della Massa, and Giovanni dalP Atella, a large company of handgun men under Giovanni Ortiga, and in addition to his own cavalry the men-at-arms of Guido Benzoni.111 He arrived at Nafplion early in August 1463 and immediately commenced the siege of Argos. Once this was retaken the army moved across the Morea to the Corinth isthmus, which was quickly fortified with a six-mile-long and twelve-foot-high wall - a new Hexamilion. At this moment, with Turkish forces actually in the Peleponnese few in numbers, there was a real possibility of a Venetian occupation of the whole peninsula. However a premature assault on Corinth itself led to a Venetian rebuff and the mortal wounding of Bertoldo. Loredan, frightened by news of a huge Turkish army advancing on the Hexamilion, drew the demoralized army back to the south coast, and the chance was gone. However, despite this disappointing outcome, Venice was determined to keep the expeditionary force in being, and throughout the winter the search went on for a new commander. Most of the leading captains in Italy were now approached, but eventually only Sigismondo Malatesta, desperately anxious to recover both his military prestige and his personal standing with the pope, was prepared to go.112 The decision to employ Sigismondo cannot have been an easy one for Venice; its experience with him in the past had not been happy, and the chances of an easy relationship between him and the Venetian fleet commanders and proveditors on the spot were not good. They were made worse by the fact that the Venetian proveditor-general already appointed was Andrea Dandolo, who had married an ex-mistress of Sigismondo and had a personal feud with the condottiere over his wife's dowry. 111 112

Sanuto, Vite de dogi, 1171; Domenico Malipiero, Annali veneti daWanno 1457 al 1500, ed. T. Gar and A. Sagredo, AS I., ser. 1, vii (1843) 43-6. G. Soranzo, 'Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta in Morea e lc vicende del suo dominio', Atti e memoric della R. Dep. di storia patriu per lc provineie di Romagna, ser. 4, viii (1918) 211-80 has the best account

of the 1464 campaign.

46

The composition and role of the army It was the Venetian intention to strengthen considerably the cavalry contingent in the 1464 army. Sigismondo himself had a condotta for 400 lances, and he was joined by Deifebo dalPAnguillara and Girolamo Novello Allegri da Verona with large companies. However, while Bertoldo's force in 1463 had been largely made up of veteran Venetian troops, the reinforcements were a much more heterogeneous collection of Italian mercenaries. The commitments both of the soldiers to Venice and vice versa were lessened and this added to the problems. Sigismondo, after an initial success in taking Mistra, allowed himself to be bottled up in a defensive position by the Turks, and lapsed into inactivity. He was worried about papal designs on Rimini in his absence, and was able to claim with considerable justification that Venice was not keeping his troops either properly supplied or paid. The death of Pius II meant that any hope of a more general Christian commitment to a crusade was gone, and in Venice enthusiasm rapidly waned. Finally Sigismondo was recalled in January 1466 and his place was taken by Francesco da Teano, a relatively minor condottiere. The army was gradually run down and Venice abandoned any idea of an offensive campaign. One of the lessons that had been learnt from these campaigns in the Morea was that for most of the fighting the locally raised light cavalry, the stradiots, were much more effective against the Turks than Italian men-atarms. They were also far less costly and could be more easily controlled by the Venetian officials. The problems of supplying and paying an Italian army in Greece had proved beyond Venice's resources, and the experience was not to be repeated on this scale. An additional reason for the relative failure of the Morea expedition was that in the summer of 1463 Venice was distracted on her own eastern frontier at Trieste. Trieste was held by the Austrians and a series of disputes had arisen between them and the Venetian officials in Capo d'Istria. It was decided in Venice to launch a campaign against Trieste.113 Fifteen hundred cavalry and increasing numbers of infantry, commanded by Count Antonio da Marsciano, were sent to besiege the city. By December 1463, when papal intervention and the weariness of the troops forced Venice to call a truce, the army had been built up to 20,000 men, including militia. The maintenance of this army at Trieste was clearly a severe handicap to the operations in Greece, and it is hardly surprising that both ventures failed in their objectives. For the next few years the main Venetian army played little part in the Turkish War. Any attempts to send large numbers of troops to the east were defeated in the Senate, although there were certainly small bodies of Italian 113

Sanuto, Vite de dogi, 1178-9; G. Cesca, Uassediu di Trieste nel 1463 (Pordenone, 1883). 47

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 troops scattered round the garrisons. Negroponte had an Italian infantry garrison when it was attacked and eventually taken by the Turks in 1470. In the same year the condottieri were asked if any of them would like to go to Crete.114 Considerable numbers of Italian infantry were sent to the Dalmatian cities in the 1470s as the Turkish pressure in this area was increased.115 The heroic defences of Scutari in 1474 and again in 1478 were conducted in part by a large garrison of Italian infantry, and by the time the war ended in 1479 many of Venice's infantry constables had seen service against the Turks. The end of this war gave Venice the opportunity to transfer these seasoned troops to Tuscany for the later stages of the Pazzi War. But the military occupation of Cyprus in 1474 was undertaken by stradiots and infantry companies, and not by a contingent of Italian cavalry.116 This reluctance to commit the mainland army to further adventures in the east was not on the whole a consequence of any major commitments in Italy. The only campaign of any moment in this period which required Venetian mobilization was the enterprise of Colleoni in support of the Florentine exiles in 1467. This was always represented as a free-lance operation by Colleoni carried out when he was technically not employed by Venice between the expiry of one contract and the signing of the next. However, many of the troops used were in Venetian pay and Colleoni's second-in-command, Alessandro Sforza, was given a Venetian condotta specifically for this campaign.117 On the other hand, Astorre Manfredi's contract for the same campaign was shared between Venice and Colleoni himself.118 As Colleoni moved his army of 13,000 men from their quarters into the Romagna in May 1467, more troops were hired by Venice to take their place.119 After the indecisive battle of Molinella Colleoni's forces were reinforced by Venice and Venetian diplomacy went to work to patch up a peace. 114 115

116

117

118 119

SS. reg. 24, 153 (16 Oct. 1470). A badly mutilated file of contracts issued to mercenaries in Zara in 1472 survives in Capi, Dieci, Lettere di Rettori, 307. It lists 243 infantry underfiveconstables, and 44 lances of the lanze spezzate carlesche, presumably the old company of Carlo Gonzaga. SS. reg. 26, 68 (10 Jan. 1474). In 1473 a consignment of artillery and handguns together with 200 handgunmen were sent to Persia with the ambassador, Giosafat Barbaro, to assist in the Persian war against the Turks, and these also played a part in the occupation of Cyprus (N. Di Lenna, 'Giosafat Barbaro (1413-94) e i suoi viaggi nella regione russa (1436-51) e nella Persia (1474-8)', NAV., n.s. xxviii (1914) 47-51). The Senate authorized negotiations to start in Jan. 1467 (SS. reg. 23,23; 20 Jan. 1467), but part of the army had already been alerted two months earlier (ibid., 18; 29 Nov. 1466) after a closely contested vote. SS. reg. 23, 40V-41 (21 Apr. 1467). Ibid., 43-4 (2-23 May 1467). A list of the captains in Colleoni's army can be found in Corpus Chronicorum Bononiensium, RRIISS., xviii, 1 (Bologna, 1910-40) iv, 359.

48

The composition and role of the army By 1471 a more serious preoccupation for Venice's main army had emerged with the growing Turkish threat in Friuli.120 Deifebo dall'Anguillara, who had joined Venetian service in 1464, was the commander of the army in Friuli in the early stages of the emergency. But by 1473, when the first serious Turkish invasion took place, Carlo Fortebraccio with his large company had been moved from Brescia and he took over the command. At this stage he had only 1400 cavalry to guard the frontier and could do little in the face of the Turkish attack other than withdraw into the fortresses and allow the Turks to ravage the countryside unopposed. Over the next five years the growing Venetian army in Friuli was to make a poor showing in the open field against the Turks. This was in part the result of a permanent inferiority in numbers and of limitations of military technique; it was never possible to engage the Turks in a large-scale battle in which the heavier armour and greater discipline of the Italian companies might have prevailed. At the same time there is no doubt that the Venetian administration must bear much of the blame. A nagging fear of Milan led to a reluctance to weaken the defences of the western frontier in order to concentrate the army in Friuli. The difficulties of raising money led to a refusal to countenance any dramatic increases in recruiting, and meant that the Friuli army was badly paid and provisioned. Furthermore the long years of inactivity had led to a definite decline in the quality of the Venetian army which a series of reforms in the 1470s was not entirely able to rectify.121 Behind it all there was the belief that the Turkish threat was transient and could never seriously menace Venice itself. Nowhere more than in the attitudes to the defence of Friuli and Istria is the slowness with which Venetians accepted the full implications of responsibility for a territorial state more apparent. The army in Friuli did succeed in preventing any major towns falling into Turkish hands, but the one major encounter, in October 1477, led to a heavy defeat for the Venetians and the death or capture of a number of leading commanders. This defeat occurred during the absence of Carlo Fortebraccio, who had temporarily left Venetian service to carry out an independent strike against Perugia. The Venetian commander, who was killed in the battle, was Girolamo Novello Allegri.122 However, even before this reverse reinforcements were on their way to the eastern frontier. Cola di Monforte, 120 p Musoni, Sulle incursioni dei Turchi in Friuli (Udine, 1890-2) 25-31; A. De Pellegrini, 'Note e documenti sulle incursioni turchesche in Friuli al cadere del secolo xv', NA V., n.s. xxv (1913) 230; P. Preto, Veneziaei Turchi (Florence, 1975)32-3. Tamaro(i, 348) suggests that the first incursions were in 1470, but there was no reaction in Venice until 1471. 121 See below, 109-10. 122 Sanuto, Vite de dogi, 1206. A partial list of the captains involved in this disaster is to be found in Misc. Carte non appartenenti ad alcun archivio, 7, conti ed elenchi di soldati (8 Jan. 1479). In addition to Allegri, Anastasio da S. Angelo and Collantonio Zurlo were among the dead.

49

Part I: c. 1400 to is08 Count of Campobasso, had been hired by Venice and was marching with nearly 700 cavalry. At the same time Carlo Fortebraccio was also returning northwards. By the late summer of 1478 6500 troops had assembled and a further Turkish attack was beaten off easily.123 In the following year a truce was signed and the threat receded for the time being. However, three positive developments can be attributed to these campaigns; the first was the introduction of the stradiots for the first time into warfare on Italian soil as a counter to the Turkish light cavalry. From this moment onwards stradiot companies became an integral part of any Venetian army. Secondly, the sustained pressure exerted by the Turks led to a greater concern in Venice about militia training, and the institution of a selective conscription system.124 Thirdly, that same pressure produced an awareness of the importance of strong fortifications. All these developments will be discussed in more detail elsewhere, but once again one is struck by the role of the eastern frontier in giving Venetian military institutions and developments their distinctive character. Wars in Italy, 1478-Q4 Throughout the years since Lodi and despite the various Turkish emergencies, the Venetian army must rarely have exceeded 10,000 men in strength. In 1476 Venice was said to have 5030 cavalry under contract in Italy.125 This was just after the death of Colleoni, who had been captaingeneral for twenty years, but most of his troops were still in Venetian pay. During this period the army had never been fully mobilized. Colleoni's own companies had fought in one campaign, that of 1467. Carlo Fortebraccio's companies, still known as the Bracceschi, had played a small part in the siege of Trieste and had been fully committed in Friuli from about 1473. Antonio da Marsciano and the so-called Gatteschi, the remnants of the old Gattamelata companies, had taken part in the siege of Trieste and were sent to Friuli for the very last stages of the Turkish war. Now, in 1478, renewed fighting on a large scale broke out in Italy and the Venetian army became a good deal more active. The papal-Neapolitan attack on Florence in 1478 following the Pazzi conspiracy led to Florence making urgent appeals to its allies, Milan and Venice, to support it. Venice, although still at war with the Turks, responded immediately with efforts to recruit an additional 3000 cavalry, 1000 infantry and 1000 Swiss pikemen,126 and by sending a proveditor to 123 124 125 126

Senato, Provveditori da Terra e da Mar, 24, 3V-4.V. See below, 78-9. Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, z.226 sup., fasc. 1. ST. reg. 8, 19V (10 Aug. 1478).

50

The composition and role of the army Tuscany to start recruiting locally.127 By the spring of 1479 large numbers of veteran Venetian troops began arriving in Tuscany, and throughout the summer the contingent built up as troops arrived from Friuli and from the Dalmatian garrisons. Carlo Fortebraccio was the senior commander until his death at Cortona in June 1479, when his son Bernardino took over. But no replacement for Colleoni as captain-general had yet been found, and it was perhaps with this in mind that the Duke of Lorraine was hired with 1500 cavalry. However, these new French troops did not arrive in Tuscany before the end of the 1479 campaign; a campaign which closed with the heroic but unsuccessful defence of Colle Val d'Elsa by Venetian infantry. During the winter Venice finally solved the problem of command of her army by hiring Roberto Malatesta as captain-general.128 In April 1480 the diplomatic realignments which followed the end of the Pazzi War produced a papal-Venetian alliance and a treaty commitment for Venice to maintain 6000 cavalry and 3000 infantry in peacetime.129 The next two years were years of considerable tension in Italy; Venice, already suspected of imperialist intentions in Lombardy and the Romagna, added to these tensions by its tacit support of Sixtus IV's territorial ambitions and its refusal to join any league against the Turks who had seized Otranto. In December 1480 it had 8000 cavalry under contract, but they were said to be in a poor state of readiness.130 Nor were there any military signs in 1481 that Venice was preparing for a major confrontation with the other Italian powers. The Lorraine contract was allowed to expire and, although relations with Ferrara were clearly worsening, any preparations that Venice might have been making for war were conducted in a very low key.131 However, the flight of Roberto da Sanseverino, one of the most experienced and prestigious military commanders in Italy, from Milan early in 1482 altered the whole situation.132 Venice hired him as lieutenantgeneral, thus considerably augmenting its forces, and, spurred on by his personal antagonism to the regime of Ludovico Sforza, decided to resolve its differences with Ferrara by force. The situation was not unlike that in 1425 127 128

129

130 131

132

L. Landucci, Diario fiorentino dal 1450 al 1516 (Florence, 1883) 2 ^For details of Venetian military involvement in the Pazzi War, see Lorenzo de' Medici, Lettere, iii-iv, ed. N. Rubinstein (Florence, 1979-81) passim. K. Piva, 'L'origine e conclusione della pace ed alleanza fra i veneziani e Sisto iv', NAV., n.s. ii (1901) 35-69SS. reg. 29, 144 (6 Dec. 1480). Mallett,' Diplomacy and war', 278-9. For discussion of the diplomatic tensions of this period, see E. Piva, 'L'opposizione diplomatica di Venezia alle mire di Sisto IV su Pesaro e ai tentativi di una crociata contro i Turchi, 1480-1', NAV., n.s. v-vi (1903) 49-104, 422-66, 132-73; F. Fossati, 'Alcuni dubbi sul contegno di Venezia durante la ricuperazione di Otranto, 1480-1', NAV., n.s. xii (1906) 5-35; A. Bombaci, 'Venezia e l'impresa turca di Otranto', RSI., lxvi (1954) 159-203. Although Roberto da Sanseverino only finally arrived in Venice in Apr., he had made his first approaches in Dec. 1481 (Dieci, Misti, reg. 20, 133V; 11 Dec. 1481). 51

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 when the arrival of Carmagnola changed Venetian attitudes to the prospect of war. The attack on Ferrara was not part of a planned Venetian expansion; it was an opportunist move to settle a local dispute. The dangers of a concerted defence of Ferrara by Milan, Florence and Naples were obvious. But the sudden accretion of strength provided by Roberto da Sanseverino created the possibility that a quick blow at Ferrara could achieve positive results before the allies could intervene. According to a Florentine assessment Venice had 12,237 cavalry and 2170 infantry ready for the war, and at the same time the support and encouragement of Sixtus IV and Girolamo Riario lessened the dangers of it having to fight a protracted war on its own.133 In May 1482 Roberto da Sanseverino launched the attack on Ferrara. He came close to achieving the immediate success required. A causeway across the marshes of the Polesine was built by the engineers, Figarolo fell, and Venetian troops were within sight of the walls of Ferrara. Assistance for Ercole d'Este from Milan and Florence was predictably slow to arrive. However, the plan that Roberto Malatesta should move in on Ferrara from the south-east and complete the circle around the city had to be abandoned when Sixtus IV, terrified of a Neapolitan attack on Rome, demanded assistance. Without the help of Malatesta and the Romagna army Roberto da Sanseverino had not the strength to launch a final assault on Ferrara. Federigo da Montefeltro arrived to take command of the defence, and marsh fever began to take its toll of both armies. Once the first attack had failed, Venice's chances of gaining any significant advantage in this war had gone. Despite Malatesta's victory over the Neapolitans at Campomorto in the autumn of 1482, Sixtus was induced to change sides. This enabled Alfonso of Calabria with a large Neapolitan contingent to reach Lombardy, and in 1483 the Venetian forces were steadily outnumbered. The main centre of operations shifted north of the Po as Milan tried to use the opportunity to recover Bergamo and Brescia. But Venice, by quickly switching troops from Ferrara while at the same time keeping up the threat to that city, was able to prevent a decisive build-up by the allies in the Lombard plain. In fact the surprising thing about the war is that Venice was able to resist the combined attack of the other four major Italian states and still emerge with some gains at the Peace of Bagnolo in August 1484. This was certainly in part due to the failure of the allies to co-operate effectively, and the jealousies within the allied camp. But one should not underestimate the role of the military efficiency and organization of the Venetian army. Although 133

For the size of the Venetian army at this moment, see Biblioteca Nazionale, Florence., Magi, xxv, 161. E. Piva, La guerra di Ferrara (Padua, 1893) vol. i describes the events leading up to the war. 52

The composition and role of the army the cavalry force probably rarely exceeded 10,000 men, Venice was able to make the best use of these troops by getting into thefieldmore quickly than the allies both in 1483 and in 1484, and by moving its strength quickly from one danger point to another. In addition the Venetian infantry seemed to be considerably superior to that of the allies; andfinallythere were the stradiots who were employed in increasing numbers and were a decisive factor in at least one battle, Argenta.134 Following the Peace of Bagnolo, it was not until February 1485 that Venice decided to demobilize. At this stage it had 6500 cavalry under arms with the permanent condottieri and three contracts, with leading 'foreign' captains, Roberto da Sanseverino as captain-general, Giulio Cesare Varano as governor-general in the Romagna, and Guido de' Rossi, Sanseverino's son-in-law. Demobilization took the form of reducing the permanent forces to 4130 cavalry and leaving the three big condotte intact.135 This meant that at this stage Venice was reckoning to pay a standing force of about 7000 cavalry in peacetime, which was considerably less than Milanese commitments in this period. The Neapolitan barons' war in 1485-6 did not directly involve Venice but it did draw in Roberto da Sanseverino, who was reluctantly given permission to go south and take part. However, it was made clear that his contract with Venice was temporarily suspended, and on his return to his Venetian base at Cittadella in i486 he was not immediately re-employed. However, in the spring of 1487 Venice did find itself at war again, this time with the Austrians over local issues in the Trentino. The standing forces were mobilized and Giulio Cesare Varano was summoned from the Romagna to take command. It seems clear that atfirstthis war was not taken very seriously in Venice and it was not felt that a large army was needed. There was some reluctance to re-employ Roberto da Sanseverino, who was camped with the nucleus of his company at Cittadella near Padua. However, the loss of Rovereto to the Austrians in May, and the clear incompetence and indecisiveness of Varano, led to a change of heart in Venice. Sanseverino was recalled and reinstated as lieutenant-general, and a strengthened army began to move up on Trento. At this point Sanseverino allowed himself to be caught at Calliano by an Austrian counter-attack with his army divided on both banks of the Adige and the river in spate. This prevented him from using his full strength and both he and many of his men were drowned trying to cross the river after the bridge had collapsed. Guido de' Rossi 134

135

For the size of the armies, see Sanuto, Vite de' dogi, 1229; for the details of the war, see M. Sanuto, Commentarii dellaguerra di Ferrara (Venice, 1829) and Piva, Guerra di Ferrara, vol. ii. In December 1483 there were 6868 cavalry and 1570 infantry billeted in the Bresciano and Bergamasco alone (ASB., Territoriale, reg. A, 78V; 23 Dec. 1483). SS. reg. 32, 119 (10 Jan. 1485), 134V (28 Feb. 1485).

53

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 partially restored the situation with a spirited cavalry charge, and the Austrians were too heavily mauled to follow up their victory. But the Venetian offensive was halted and its military reputation somewhat tarnished by this encounter. The reaction of the Senate was, somewhat belatedly, to authorize an intensive recruiting drive for 5000 new cavalry; but long before a new army could be assembled peace was signed.136 The death of Roberto da Sanseverino left Venice without a supreme military commander, and no effective successor was appointed in the next few years despite protracted negotiations with a number of candidates.137 There was a clear reluctance to appoint a captain-general because of the expense of such an appointment and a realization that in the tense Italian political atmosphere the creation of a captain-general would be seen as a declaration of aggressive intent. On the other hand, the title of lieutenantgeneral was considered inadequate by many of the potential candidates, of whom the most attractive from a Venetian point of view was Niccolo Orsini, Count of Pitigliano.138 Finally in March 1489 a major condotta was agreed with Francesco Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, but he was deliberately not given a title at this stage.139 The indications, therefore, are that both financial stringency and an awareness of its dangerous isolation in the face of the league among Milan, Florence and Naples led Venice to maintain a low military profile in the years immediately before 1494. Although the peacetime military establishment was estimated at 10,000 cavalry and 7000 infantry by one contemporary, in this period it is doubtful if, in fact, the standing army reached anything like these dimensions.140 However, the reappearance at the battle of Fornovo in 1495 of many of the commanders from the War of Ferrara indicates that the by now traditional system was maintained. The years between the Peace of Lodi and the invasion of Charles VIII were years in which a fear of Venetian imperialism and aggression seemed to become paramount in the minds of the other Italian states. If one examines 136

137

138 139 140

Collegio, Lettere Secrete, filza i passim covers this campaign and is an almost unique surviving series of letters from military proveditors for the fifteenth century. For secondary accounts, see G. Onestinghel, 'La guerra tra Sigismondo, conte del Tirolo, e la repubblica di Venezia (1487)', Tridentum, viii-ix (1905-6) 1-21, 145-72, 193-237, 321-73 and 213-43 and P. L. Rambaldi, 'La battaglia di Calliano e la morte di Roberto da Sanseverino', Archivio trentino, xv (1900) 77-108. An additional useful source for the battle of Calliano is the reports of the Florentine ambassador in Venice, Paoloantonio Soderini (ASF., Otto di Pratica, Responsive, 3, 489 and 497). P. M. Perret, 'Jacques Galeot et la republique de Venise', Bibliotheque de F Ecole des Chartes, Hi (1891) 590-614; id., 'Bofille de Juge, comte de Castres, et la Republique de Venise', Annalesdu Midi, iii (1891) 159-231; id.,' Le marechal d'Esquerdes et la republique de Venise', Annuairc Bulletin de la Societe de Fhistuire de France, xxviii (1891) 193-210. SS. reg. 33, 129 (14 Apr. 1488). SS. reg. 34, 2 (11 Mar. 1489) and Commemoriali, xvm, 127-8; 12 Mar. 1489 (Predelli, v, 315). Romanin, iv, 354.

54

The composition and role of the army the military postures and dispositions of Venice in this period onefindsvery little real justification for this fear. There were certainly moments when Venice showed limited aggressive intentions on the Italian mainland, but its main preoccupations were the Turkish threat, a fear of isolation in Italy particularly vis-a-vis a continual Milanese hostility, and a concern for financial economy. The army was maintained at the lowest level possible whilst allowing for reasonable security of the state. Apart from the personal aspirations of Colleoni there is little evidence of any significant aggressive military pressure group. The determination to retain the services of Colleoni at great cost stemmed more from a fear of him joining a rival state than from any potential aggressive intentions. While Venice, on the eve of the French invasion, may perhaps have had the strongest military potential of any Italian state in terms of well-established organization, available commanders, and effective wealth, it was very far from being militarily well prepared for the events of the coming years. THE ITALIAN WARS, 1 4 9 4 - 1 5 0 8

The growing threat of a French invasion in 1493-4 did not leave Venice unmoved. However, its relative isolation in the Italian political scene and its long-standing suspicion of both Milan and Florence made it unlikely that it would readily join an Italian alliance against the invader. Nor yet was it prepared either psychologically or militarily to turn that invasion to its own advantage. Approaches from both sides in these months were politely turned aside by Venice, which seemed determined to remain neutral, and indeed did little to mobilize its army until the invasion was already well advanced. It was, in fact, not until December 1494 that the army was put on a war footing and the recruitment of an additional 3000 heavy cavalry authorized.141 However, the ease with which Charles VIII had penetrated the peninsula clearly alarmed Venice, and by February 1495 it was willing to join the Holy League against the French. The League committed it to providing 8000 cavalry and 4000 infantry to a combined army.142 A contingent of light cavalry was sent southwards to help protect the pope against Charles' army retreating from Naples, and Francesco Gonzaga was formally given the title of governor-general. In April Venetian mobilization plans envisaged an army of 15,000 cavalry and 24,000 infantry, including militia. The permanent companies were expanded by 20-25% a n d a 141 142

ST. reg. 12, 77 (2 Dec. 1494). A. Segre, 'LudovicoSforzaelarepubblicadi Venezia dall'autunno 1494 alia primavera 1495', Y4.SL., ser. 3, xviii and xx (1902-3) 249-317 and 33-109, 368-443; id., 'I prodromi della ritirata di Carlo VIII, re di Francia', ASL, xxxiii-xxxiv (1904) 332-69 and 3-27, 350-405; Romanin, v, 49-50.

55

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 number of new condottieri were hired.143 However, the army that began to assemble in June on the Oglio had a very familiar look about it. Gonzaga was joined by Bernardino Fortebraccio, Ranuccio Farnese, Marco da Martinengo, Gianfrancesco da Gambara, Taddeo della Motella, Luigi Avogadro, the Colleoneschi and other lesser figures whose names are familiar from the War of Ferrara and the war against the Austrians. These were the men who were to be in the forefront of the battle when Charles VIII was confronted at Fornovo in July.144 Venetian troops, in fact, made up three-quarters of the combined army on the day of the battle.145 The Milanese contingent on the right wing under Giovanfrancesco da Sanseverino, Count of Caiazzo, conducted a more or less effective holding operation by engaging the French vanguard. But it was the two leading columns of Venetian cavalry led by Gonzaga himself and Fortebraccio which bore the brunt of the fighting and suffered the heaviest losses. Their attack on the French centre and rear was badly disrupted by the swollen waters of the river Taro which they had to cross, and it was not pressed home because of a failure to bring in the very substantial reserves at the crucial moment. But it was an heroic effort which failed narrowly to capture Charles himself and left the French with no great anxiety to renew the encounter on the following day. Fornovo was clearly a French victory in the sense that Charles achieved his aim of breaking through into Lombardy. But it was not the Italian humiliation which it is sometimes made out to have been. As far as Venice was concerned, and this is clearly indicated by the Senate's instructions to the proveditors, the main aim was to avoid defeat and keep the army intact while administering a shock to the French.146 The idea that the French army might be destroyed or even prevented from returning home would have appeared wildly optimistic to the contemporary Italian military mentality. Therefore the news of the outcome of the battle was received in Venice with immense relief and rejoicing. Gonzaga and Fortebraccio, himself badly wounded in the battle, were the heroes of the hour. 143

144

145

146

For a complete list of the Venetian army in Apr. 1495, see Malipiero, Annali veneti, 349, and for mobilization plans, see ST. reg. 12,90V (27 Apr. 1495). By 18 May it was reported that 5000 cavalry were more ready than the rest, together with 800 stradiots and 7000 infantry (SS. reg. 35, 103). For further details of this mobilization, see M. Sanuto, La spedizione di Carlo VIII in Italia, ed. R. Fulin (Venice, 1883) 288ff. The bibliography of the battle of Fornovo is considerable and has been summarized in D. M. Schullian (ed.), Diario de Bello Carolina di Alejandro Benedetti (New York, 1967) 239-59. This author has, however, missed two crucial discussions in P. Pieri, / / Rinascimento e la crisi militare italiana (Turin, 1952) 341-54 and F. L. Taylor, The Art of War in Italy, 1494-1529 (Cambridge, 1921; repr. Westport, 1973) 114-16. See also, for additional discussion, M. E. Mallett, Mercenaries and their Masters: Warfare in Renaissance Italy ( L o n d o n , 1974) 243—7. SS. reg. 35, 130 and 131V (27 and 30 June 1495).

56

The composition and role of the army Following Fornovo the bulk of the Venetian army followed in the wake of the French and settled down to besiege Novara, the last substantial French foothold in northern Italy.147 At this point Niccolo Orsini, Count of Pitigliano, who had escaped from the French during Fornovo, joined the Venetian army and was to remain the dominant figure in it until Agnadello fourteen years later. The campaign concluded with a truce signed somewhat prematurely, and without consultation with Venice, by Ludovico Sforza. This did not help to dispel the hostility which existed between the two states and which was to break out again in the following years. Venice was now free to turn its attention to the two problems left in the wake of the French invasion, the surviving French army in Naples and the Pisan revolt against Florence. Its involvement in both these affairs has often been regarded as further evidence of its ambitious and opportunistic policies at this time. A fear of Venetian aspirations to hegemony in Italy was deeply implanted in Italian minds, and the transition from its attitude of careful neutrality in 1494 to geographically far-reaching commitment in 1496 does smack at least of opportunism. However, the change in policy was at least in part the result of a growing realization that the French invasion was something more than a transient threat. To assist in the eviction of the powerful surviving French army in Naples was a logical continuation of Venice's commitment to the Holy League in which, in military terms at least, it had already played the leading part. At the same time the policy of assisting Pisa as a way of forcing Florence out of its French alliance was one which was employed collectively and individually by all the members of the League at one time or another. It cannot be part of the scope of this study to probe deeply into Venice's political and diplomatic postures; however, an inquiry into the nature and extent of its military commitments to these two enterprises does throw light on the wider issues. Undoubtedly Venice's decision to send troops to Naples was encouraged by the proposal that it should occupy temporarily the Apulian ports as a guarantee of full payment for its military services. The ports were of great value both as sources of grain supplies and for control of the Adriatic. Given the difficulties that all Italian states had in raising money to pay troops, and the particular economic weakness of Naples, there was a strong possibility that Venetian occupation of the ports would be more than temporary. Nevertheless the military assistance offered was limited and cannot be seen as a serious attempt to extend Venetian power. Furthermore when the opportunity came to add Taranto to the other occupied ports it was deliberately rejected. The army sent southwards in the early spring of 1496 consisted of 700 147

A. Rusconi, Uassedio di Novara (14Q5): documenti inediti (Novara, 1884).

57

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 men-at-arms, about 1000 stradiots and 1000 infantry. Francesco Gonzaga, who had been made captain-general as a reward for his services at Fornovo, led the force.148 With him was Filippo de' Rossi, who had served Venice since the War of Ferrara but was still something of an outsider amongst Venetian condottieri. In addition condone were given to the Duke of Gandia, Giovanni Sforza and Guidobaldo da Montefeltro. The stradiots were led by Bernardo Contarini and the infantry by Francesco Grassi, who was captain of the citadel of Verona. The force spent about six months in the south, taking Vallata by storm and participating in the protracted siege of Atella. By October Gonzaga and the bulk of the troops were back in Lombardy; by that time both Contarini and Grassi were dead, and there had been no serious consideration of replacing them. None of the remaining commanders were Venetian in the sense that many of her condottieri were. The job was done; Montpensier and the bulk of the French army had surrendered; Gonzaga was anxious to get home and Venice put no pressure on him to stay on. The involvement in Pisa was a good deal more protracted than that in Naples, but it showed some of the same military characteristics. The decision to send military help was first taken in March 1496, and Venetian troops took part in the defence of Pisa for the next three years.149 At first only light cavalry and infantry were sent, as the Milanese condottiere, Lucio Malvezzi, was already in Pisa with a force of heavy cavalry. Then in late April 1496 Gianpaolo Manfroni was sent with his 200 cavalry, and gradually the size of the force was built up. However, its strength never exceeded 1400 heavy cavalry, about 1000 stradiots, and a fluctuating number of largely locally recruited infantry.150 There was a marked reluctance on the part of the Senate to commit any of its senior permanent condottieri to the venture. Suggestions that Bernardino Fortebraccio should be sent were consistently vetoed, and Manfroni's successor in October 1497 was the middle-ranking Marco da Martinengo. The force was supplemented by a condotta given to Ferrante d'Este, younger son of the Duke of Ferrara, and in 1498 attempts were made to get Guidobaldo da Montefeltro to Pisa, but all the access routes were blocked by Florentine diplomacy. The Pisan venture was initiated in conjunction with Milan and in spite of 148

149

150

G. Coniglio, 'Francesco Gonzaga e la guerra contro i Francesi nel regno di Napoli', Samnium, xxiv (1961) 192-209. At this stage the diaries of Marino Sanuto become an invaluable source for Venetian military activity. For the Venetian involvement in Pisa, see Sanuto, i-ii passim, G. Scaramella, 'Relazioni tra Pisa e Venezia', Studi storici, vii and ix (1898 and 1900) 233-66 and 145-202, 329-50 and G. Portoveneri, 'Memoriali', in ASL, vii (1845) 335~9- The reluctance to commit large numbers of troops and, particularly, good captains is clear from the Senate debates on the subject. Sanuto, ii, 83-5 for an overview of Venetian military strength in 1498 which bears out the limited commitment to Pisa.

58

The composition and role of the army strong and continuing resistance in the Senate. As Milan began to withdraw its interest in 1497, Venice was left as the sole serious supporter of Pisa. There was, without doubt, a strong current of emotional sympathy for the Pisans in Venice and this as much as anything kept the enterprise going. However, repeated requests for more troops by the Pisans were largely ignored after the first year, and the Senate contented itself with sending money to hire infantry locally. By 1498 this was costing 17,000 ducats a month.151 This reluctance to commit any large proportion of the Venetian permanent army to the Pisan enterprise was not just a matter of limited political aims. The main requirement for the defence of the Pisan contado was infantry and these could most easily be recruited locally. Nevertheless the dimensions of the military commitment do not suggest a serious attempt to take over Pisa. In both these distant enterprises Venice chose to keep to a minimum the number of its picked and faithful troops committed. One of the reasons for this was undoubtedly the need to preserve its strength intact in Lombardy. In December 1496 there was a renewed threat of French invasion of Milan, and in the next four months large sections of the army led by Pitigliano, now governor-general, were moved over to face the French near Alessandria.152 This rapid commitment of seasoned troops to the defence of Milan is in marked contrast to the policy in Naples and Pisa. Sheer opportunism would have prompted Venice to ignore the threat to Milan and gloat over the fall of its rival. But at this stage its commitment to the idea of the League was still predominant. However, the League was fast breaking up and by the time the French threat re-emerged in 1499 Venetian attitudes had changed. The speed with which relations with Milan deteriorated in late 1497 and 1498 is somewhat surprising. A key factor in this was a growing awareness on the part of Ludovico Sforza that the French threat was not just aimed at Naples but also endangered Milan. The hostilities of early 1497 showed this, and of course the succession of Louis XII in 1498 with his personal claims to the Milanese duchy emphasized the danger. Ludovico's response was a gradual shift away from his policy of antagonism to France's ally, Florence, towards alliance with Florence against the remaining defender of Pisa, Venice. Venice was not slow to respond to this Milanese hostility, particularly when the movement of its troops through Parma to Pisa was stopped by Milan. Old antagonisms over the Lombard frontier quickly reemerged, and by the summer of 1498 rumours of impending war between Milan and Venice were rife in the garrison cities of the Lombard plain.153 151 152

153

Sanuto, ii, 166. SS. reg. 36, 103V and 109V (7 and 30 Jan. 1497); Sanuto, i, 543. In Mar. 1497 806 men-at-arms and 450 stradiots were involved in the defence of Milan. Sanuto, i, 984-5.

59

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 Pitigliano and his captains were once more put on the alert by Venice. Meanwhile in Tuscany Milanese assistance was putting new energy into the Florentine war effort and Paolo Vitelli began to move remorselessly in on Pisa. This was the moment at which Venice's reluctance, and to some extent inability, to increase its direct military aid to Pisa became most apparent. To save Pisa now required large-scale military intervention; the combined Pisan-Venetian forces were being hopelessly outnumbered by Vitelli's army, and the fall of Buti, Cascina and Vico Pisano highlighted their weakness. Venice had two alternatives open to it. First, it could send in a powerful army which would have to force its way through the Milanese blockade. With this in mind it turned to Francesco Gonzaga, who had been abruptly dismissed in the previous year for displaying Francophile affiliations, and offered to reinstate him if he would take his troops to Pisa.154 Gonzaga at first agreed and then refused to move until he had been formally re-established as captain-general. Venice was reluctant to agree for fear of angering Pitigliano, whose services it had begun to prize, and of disrupting a promising negotiation to win over Gianjacopo Trivulzio. Gonzaga's continued intransigence led to Venice abandoning any attempt to use him, and at the same time a plan to get Guidobaldo da Montefeltro through to Pisa by the southern route through Siena also broke down. Thus the hope of sending major reinforcements to Pisa was abandoned, as in the last resort Venice was not prepared to send Pitigliano or Fortebraccio or an equivalent force of its own troops. There remained the second alternative, a diversionary attack on Florence's eastern frontier. This was much easier to organize, as it did not involve moving key troops so far from Lombardy and because it could take advantage of the military operations already launched by the Medici to recover their lost position. An army was quickly built up in the Val di Lamone in the autumn of 1498 and drove into the Casentino, taking Bibbiena. The leading spirit in this offensive was Bartolomeo d'Alviano, who now passed from temporary service with the Medici into permanent service with Venice.155 The diversion was a complete success in so far as saving Pisa went. Vitelli and the bulk of his army were moved across to face the new threat, and the Pisans and Venetians began to recover lost ground in the Pisan contado. It was less successful in itself as winter rains impeded the advance and quarrels broke out between D'Alviano and Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, who had joined the expedition and now wished to retire promptly to winter quarters. 154 155

Ibid., 663 reported the dismissal of Gonzaga in June 1497. The decision to re-employ him was taken in Oct. 1498 (ibid., ii, 24). Commemoriali, xvm, 124V; 7 Oct. 1498 (Predelli, vi, 36). 60

The composition and role of the army D'Alviano tried unsuccessfully to push on and won praise from Venice for his efforts; but by the early months of 1499 his troops were being pushed back by Vitelli. It is against this background of reviving tension with Milan, frustration and uncertainty in the war with Florence, and the growing danger of a renewed Turkish attack that we must see the Venetian decision to ally with the French, and the Treaty of Blois of 9 February 1499. In one sense this was a complete volte-face in Venetian policy, in another it was just a new stage in the confrontation between the two leading north Italian powers and the search for a secure frontier between them. The Treaty of Blois promised Venice the frontier of the Adda and the key pivotal fortress of Cremona in return for its help in the French occupation of Milan. It represented for Venice the solution of an old problem in the context of an entirely new political situation, the situation of a permanent and overpowering foreign presence in Italy.156 However, the Treaty of Blois cannot just be seen as an example of Venetian opportunism and political realism in Italy. Venice, in late 1498, was aware that a new war with the Turks was imminent. In this conflict too the rising naval power of France could be a useful support, and in the war which ensued between 1499 and 1503 French ships joined the Venetian fleet in the eastern Mediterranean. In the light of the new understanding with France and the growing danger in the east Venice in April 1499 abandoned its war with Florence, accepted the unfavourable and unpopular arbitration of the Duke of Ferrara over Pisa, and withdrew its troops back into Lombardy.157 During the summer the army prepared for its part in the joint invasion of Milan. Venice was determined that this opportunity permanently to consolidate its western frontier was not going to be missed. An army considerably in excess of that required of it by the Treaty of Blois was prepared and the mounting Turkish threat in Friuli was largely ignored in order not to weaken the invasion force. Only 1300 cavalry under Carlo Orsini were sent to guard the eastern frontier, while Pitigliano and D'Alviano massed 12,000 men on the Oglio.158 On 21 August, with the French attack from the west already well advanced, Pitigliano led the army across the river in five columns. Within three weeks Cremona had been taken and Venetian troops had penetrated as far as Lodi. Resistance to this attack was, of course, slight and the campaign cannot be described as an heroic occasion or a significant military triumph. It was, however, an opportunity for Venice to demonstrate its military 156 157 158

Romanin, v, 78; A. Lizier,' II cambiamento di fronte della politica veneziana alia morte di Carlo VIII (il trattato di Blois, 9 febb. 1499)', Ateneo veneto, cxx (1936) 2off. G. Scaramella, 'II lodo del Duca di Ferrara tra Firenze e Venezia', NAV., n.s. v (1903) 5-47. SS. reg. 37, 105V (22 July 1499). Sanuto, ii, 1146-8 describes the Venetian army which invaded Milan. 6l

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 potential and the reasonably efficient organization of an army made up on this occasion entirely of permanent elements. In Friuli, however, it was a different story. The weakened frontier garrison based on Gradisca could do nothing to stem a Turkish attack across the Isonzo in September.159 Within days Turkish cavalry had reached Motta on the Livenza. The large forces of local militia proved unwilling to take the field against them without strong professional support, and both Carlo Orsini and the proveditor Andrea Zancani refused to risk an engagement even when the Turkish army had broken up to loot the unprotected countryside. Once again, however, as in the 1470s the Turkish threat quickly receded. The countryside suffered appallingly but the fortified centres stood firm, and by October the Turks had withdrawn once more across the Isonzo. Zancani, and to a lesser extent Orsini, was made the scapegoat for these reverses, but the real blame lay with an official policy which had still not come to realize fully that defence of a state meant defence of subjects as well as defence of political power and control. However, to see the events in Friuli in 1499 as an exact repetition of the situation of the 1470s is perhaps to be a little unfair to Venice. Considerable energies had been devoted to the arming and training of the militia in the interim, and it would be an exaggeration to say that Venetian attitudes to the problem of Turkish incursions had not changed at all. At this particular moment in 1499 Venice was confronted with a very real dilemma. It was not just a concern to save money or a limited view of its responsibilities which led to the denuding of the eastern frontier, but a realistic preoccupation with events on the western frontier. As soon as Milan had surrendered in the face of the combined attack, troops were moved across to Friuli. In the spring of 1500 Gianpaolo Manfroni was put in command of the eastern army, and by the summer Pitigliano himself and large parts of the army were moved eastwards.160 This was, in fact, to be the last time that Turkish forces were allowed to penetrate into Venetian territory on a similar scale. This Turkish War also led to defeats and heavy losses in the eastern empire, but these were events in which the army was not significantly involved. A few infantry companies took part in the desperate defence of Modon and Lepanto, but the main fighting was conducted by the Venetian galley crews and their patrician officers. Even at the siege and taking of Cephalonia, the one substantial success recorded in the war, the professional infantry element involved seems to have been small.161 159

160 161

G. Cogo, 'L'ultima invasione de' Turchi in Italia in relazione alia politica europea dell'estremo Quattrocento', Atti delta R. Universita di Genova, xvii (1902) 3-115; id., 'La guerra di Venezia contro i Turchi (1499-1501)', NAV., xviii-xix (1899-1900) 5-76, 348-421 and 97-138. ST. reg. 13, 125V (10 Apr. 1500) and Sanuto, ii, 1362-6 for the first movement of troops eastwards. Sanuto, ii, 1340-4.

62

The composition and role of the army The mobilization of the army for the invasion of Milan in the summer of 1499 was the last full-scale mobilization of the Venetian army before the Cambrai period. In the intervening years there were a number of brief flurries of activity but no major campaign. The recovery of Milan by Ludovico Sforza in early 1500 led to preparations for an attack across the Adda to support the French. But Trivulzio soon had the situation in hand without significant Venetian assistance. Similarly the activities of Cesare Borgia in the Romagna led to a fairly constant state of alert amongst the Venetian garrisons in Ravenna and Cervia between 1501 and 1503. In early August 1503 the army inspections listed 4833 cavalry in the main billeting areas, excluding the eastern frontier; of these, 301 were in Ravenna.162 It was these troops which moved forward in the late summer of 1503 to take advantage of the temporary power vacuum in the Romagna after the eclipse of the Borgias.163 This action permanently embittered Julius II and was to be an important factor in the consolidation of hostility to Venice which culminated in the League of Cambrai.164 But it did not involve any great concentration of troops or significant fighting. At the same moment in 1503 D'Alviano temporarily abandoned his formal commitment to Venice in order to go south to join the Spaniards and play his decisive part in the battle of the Garigliano. He was by this time generally regarded as a Venetian condottiere, and his intervention against the French was widely seen to reflect a changing Venetian political stance. But it seems that, at least initially, his move was regretted and opposed in Venice, and he certainly had very few of his own troops with him in the south.165 At the same time Louis XII, while convinced that Venice had encouraged D'Alviano, was unable to mount any serious counter-threat to Venice itself. For the next few years a political stalemate ensued in Italy with the only seriousfightingtaking place between Florence and Pisa. This was a problem which Venice now carefully avoided, and it was only in 1507 as German troops began massing on its northern frontier in preparation for accompanying Maximilian on his proposed armed march to Rome to receive the Imperial crown that the Venetian army was once more alerted. In May 1507 all the condottieri were authorized to increase their companies by 25%, and in the next month the target for cavalry recruitment was set at 10,000.166 By the autumn papal troops were reported to be moving into the Romagna and the Germans were concentrating at Trento. Pitigliano was ordered to 62 63

64 65 66

Sanuto, v, 62-3. G . S o r a n z o , ' I I clima storico della politica veneziana in R o m a g n a e nelle M a r c h e nel 1 5 0 3 ' , romagnoli, v (1954) 5 1 3 - 4 5 . F . Seneca, Venezia e papa Giulio II ( P a d u a , 1962) 1 7 - 3 4 . SS. reg. 39, 106V-107 (8 Sept. 1503). ST. reg. 15, 157 (3iMay 1507); SS. reg. 41, 22V (10 June 1507).

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Studi

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 assemble the main army in the Veronese while Gianpaolo Manfroni moved up to the frontier at Rovereto.167 The massing of Venetian strength on the main route from Austria southwards led to the Imperialists diverting their attack eastwards. Bartolomeo d'Alviano was given command of a second army in the Vicentino and marched north-eastwards up the Piave to meet the German threat. When the Germans occupied Pieve di Cadore, D'Alviano led a forced march with about 2500 men through the mountains and cut off the enemy from their base at Cortina. He then attacked the German force in the open valley outside Pieve di Cadore and totally defeated them. Following this defeat Maximilian was unable to make any move to protect his cities in Friuli and on Venice's eastern frontier. In a swift campaign and deploying powerful artillery D'Alviano forced the surrender of Pordenone, Gorizia, Trieste and Fiume. On 5 June 1508 a truce was signed and Venice was able to take pride in one of the most successful military campaigns it had fought for years.168 While his successes against the Germans reflected great credit on the elements of the Venetian army he commanded as well as on D'Alviano's own leadership, they were in fact achieved by a very small section of the army. They engendered a false sense of confidence in Venice, and at the same time completed the circle of jealous neighbours round it byfinallyalienating the Emperor. The army which returned to its quarters in the late autumn of 1508 was large; it consisted of more than 8000 heavy cavalry, unusually large forces of light cavalry, and in addition to the professional infantry a select cadre of veteran constables whose role in war was to command the militia.169 Thus it was largely made up of veteran troops and captains committed to Venetian service; further experiments in the use of specially hired condottieri, and particularly condottiere princes, to boost numbers and man far-flung expeditions in the period since 1494 had proved ineffective. Venice therefore had at this stage an army which was very much its own and could be compared favourably with that of any one of the powers soon to be ranged against it. But the League of Cambrai, signed on 10 December 1508, represented a coalition of forces which if properly co-ordinated was bound to put that army to a supreme test. 167 168

169

SS. reg. 41, 52 (30 Nov. 1507). The best brief account of this campaign is Pieri, / / Rinascimento e la crisi militare italiana, 448-55; but see also G. Ciani, Fatto d'armefra i Venezianiegli Imperiali a Cadore nelMDVIII (Venice, 1846); Benvenuto Cessi, La difesa di Cadore nel 1508 (Padua, 1913); I. T. Zanchi, La prima guerra di Massimiliano contro Venezia: Giorgio Emo in Val Lagarina, 1507-8 (Padua, 1916). ST. reg. 16, 61V-63V (23 Dec. 1508) for a complete list of the army at this stage.

Military development and fighting potential

Any discussion of European armies and European warfare in the fifteenth century has to take account of the changing balance between cavalry and infantry which has often been seen as one of the key characteristics of the period, and of the impact of the emerging role of artillery and hand firearms. The Venetian army was no exception in this, and an examination of the changing balance of arms within it affords some interesting insights into the developing nature of European warfare. THE CAVALRY FORCES

One cannot avoid the impression, when studying military developments in fifteenth-century Italy, that in many ways the core of Italian armies, the heavy cavalry, underwent relatively few changes. It was this arm which continued to figure first in any description of an army, and which received the most attention from the government concerned. The socially eminent still usually served in the heavy cavalry, where the commanders were known throughout the century as condottieri and held contracts from the state for their troops. The basic structure of the heavy cavalry remained the lance unit based on the physical and military needs of the single mounted man-atarms. The equipment and method of fighting of the heavy lancers was largely unchanged. It is this impression of conservatism, of an apparent unawareness of military developments which were taking place elsewhere in Europe, which lies at the heart of much of the criticism of the Italian military scene. But it is a rather misleading impression both because it suggests that the relative importance of heavy cavalry vis-a-vis the other military arms remained unchanged and because it exaggerates the static quality of the heavy cavalry itself. In the first place one must remember that by no means all the heavy cavalry was organized into condottiere companies. A feature of the fifteenth century, and this is particularly relevant to Venice, was the emergence and ultimate decline of the lanze spezzate as an alternative form of organization

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 for the heavy cavalry.1 Lanze spezzate are usually thought of as veterans or picked troops, which in fact they tended to be. However, their origin and real distinctive quality lay in the terms of their employment. They were men-at-arms employed directly by the state and organized into companies commanded by captains appointed by the state. Their appearance in the early fifteenth century coincided exactly with the first moves by Venice to create a standing army. At first the numbers were few and they were clearly recruited either as individuals or in very small groups whenever suitable men presented themselves. At a time when the average condotta still lasted only months, the lanze spezzate began to take on the appearance of permanent troops. By the late 1420s Venice had as many as 200 lances in this category, and in 1432 Gianfrancesco Gonzaga was given command of them in addition to his own company.2 At about this moment and for a variety of reasons recruiting into the lanze spezzate took on a new dimension. Whole companies whose condottieri had died, deserted or retired were kept in Venetian employment as lanze spezzate. As a result of this development, by the middle of the century and in the years immediately after the Peace of Lodi, a large proportion of the Venetian army was made up of lanze spezzate directly employed on a permanent basis by the state. This was in the main a result of government policy to gain greater control over the army and retain the services of good companies which might otherwise have broken up and drifted away. However, two other factors influenced this growth of the lanze spezzate] the growing permanence of the Venetian army and the fact that some companies had spent very long periods in Venetian service and had become settled in Venetian territory meant that if the leader deserted the men were often reluctant to follow him, and if he died without an obvious successor it was the natural reaction of the men to turn to Venice for employment. Hence, just as in the whole phenomenon of growing permanence of military employment, one must look at this question from the point of view of the inclinations of the soldiers as well as the intentions of the employing state. The second point is that in the later stages of the Lombardy wars and the following period, the rate of mortality amongst condottieri somewhat increased as a result of the growing use of artillery and handguns. This aided the process of the formation of the lanze spezzate as companies were left suddenly leaderless before the natural processes of succession to leadership could take place. 1 2

Mallett, Mercenaries and their Masters, 112-13. There were Venetian lanze spezzate in Verona in 1418 (SMi. reg. 52, 114), and Sanuto (Vite de dogi, 990) reported 115 lanze spezzate in 1427; Gianfrancesco Gonzaga's condotta as captain-general was agreed on 12 Mar. 1433 (Commemoriali, xn, 106), and the lanze spezzate were added to his command in Dec. 1432 (SS. reg. 12, 138V; 3 Dec. 1432).

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Military development and fighting potential The first large company to be absorbed in this way was that of Roberto da Montalboddo, who was killed in 1448. Roberto had 900 cavalry in his company in 1447,3 and the company of the 'Roberteschi' still served among the lanze spezzate in the 1470s.4 An even more striking example was that of the Gattamelata companies. On the retirement of Gattamelata in 1440 command of his company was taken over by his young son Gianantonio and the somewhat older and more experienced Gentile da Leonessa, who was a nephew of Gattamelata's widow.5 Both these men died without male heirs in the 1450s; Gentile was killed in action and Gianantonio so badly wounded that he was virtually incapacitated for the last three years of his life. There remained Antonio da Marsciano, a son-in-law of Gattamelata. But at this point, in 1456, Venice decided to enrol the Gatteschi into the lanze spezzate, give them the title of the Societa di San Marco, and appoint Antonio to command them in the name of the state.6 The Societa di San Marco survived as a coherent company until 1482 when Antonio da Marsciano was captured in the War of Ferrara and subsequently took service with Florence. At this point the company was broken up, but elements known as 'Gatteschi' were still to be found amongst the lanze spezzate in the 1490s. In 1471 at least three other companies went to make up the Venetian lanze spezzate'? the Corneschi, who were the remnants of the company of Antonello della Corna, who had been disgraced and imprisoned in 1469;8 the company of Giovanni Conti, who had left Venetian service in the late 1450s; and that of Cimarosta, who had died. Cimarosta himself and a number of his men had at one time formed part of Bartolomeo Colleoni's company and had joined the lanze spezzate when Colleoni deserted from Venetian service in 1452.9 In the 1470s it was apparent that the phenomenon had got somewhat out of hand. It is not clear whether any new recruits at all were brought into these companies, but certainly the bulk of the men in them were veterans whose service went back twenty or thirty years and whose military efficiency was beginning to be in question. At the same time Venice had not created the obvious corollary to the lanze spezzate system, an officer hierarchy directly dependent on the state. Command of the lanze spezzate was decided 3 4 5 6

7 8 9

Cristoforo da Soldo, 77. ST. reg. 6, 139.V (22 Aug. 1471). Eroli, 35 states that he was Gattamelata's brother-in-law, but this is an error. SS. reg. 20, 89 (19 May 1456); M. E. Mallett, 'Some notes on a fifteenth-century condottiere and his library: Count Antonio da Marsciano', in C. H. Clough (ed.), Cultural Aspects of the Italian Renaissance: Essays in Honour of P. 0. Kristeller (Manchester, 1976) 204—6. ST. reg. 6, 139V (22 Aug. 1471). Ibid., 67 (13 Aug. 1469); it was agreed to take on the Corneschi as lanze spezzate 'quia dominatio nostra de lanceis spezatis bonum est consecuta fructum et consequitur'. SS. reg. 19, 65V and 76 (22 June and 7 Aug. 1451).

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Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 in a rather arbitrary manner; overall command of such companies was usually given to condottieri who already had their own companies, as a way of increasing their prestige and in a sense promoting them without increasing their potential independence. On the other hand, Antonio da Marsciano was an example of a man whose main responsibility was as a governor of the lanze spezzate, although he did also have a small condotta of his own. At squadron level the leaders of the lanze spezzate were chosen from among the men themselves and often at the request of the men. But in the 1470s we do find the appearance of Venetian nobles as squadron leaders in the lanze spezzate. Jacopo Badoer and Vettore Malipiero both became commanders of lanze spezzate in the 1470s.10 In both cases these were said to have been chosen as leaders by the men. But the fact that these appointments coincide with a clear policy of reform and improvement of the lanze spezzate suggests that a part of that policy was the deliberate introduction of Venetian commanders. The attempts to reform the lanze spezzate, reduce their numbers, amalgamate companies, and generally improve their efficiency went on throughout the 1470s. In August 1471 three nobles were elected to reform the army.11 However, in 1476 thefivemain companies of lanze spezzate still survived, although many of the men were said to be useless veterans.12 At the end of that year the Corneschi, Roberteschi and the company of Cimarosta, which consisted of only 80 surviving men-at-arms in all, were united under a single commander.13 However, it was also in 1476 that a new influx into the lanze spezzate resulted from the death of Colleoni. Nevertheless one has the impression that on this occasion, although the Colleoneschi continued to have this collective name for another twenty years and to be thought of in a certain sense as a single company, the internal structure came to resemble more that of a number of smaller traditional companies than a coherent body of lanze spezzate. Lorenzo Loredan, who was proveditor-general in 1477-8, described the Colleoneschi as like sheep without a shepherd, and his dispatches constantly urged that they be split up into companies and placed under established condottieri.14 As a result of this sort of advice the various Martinengo dependants of Colleoni were given small condone to absorb the men, and thus they were made the responsibility of the condottieri rather 10

11 12 13 14

Jacopo Badoer, 'nobile civis noster', became commander of the lanze spezzate cornesche on 27 Dec. 1474, having been previously a squadron commander in the company (ST. reg. 7, 61). Vettore Malipiero, also described as a Venetian noble, took over command of the Roberteschi on 4 Apr. 1475 (ST. reg. 7, 72). ST. reg. 6, 140V (26 Aug. 1471). ST. reg. 7, 140V-141 (30 Nov. 1476). Ibid., 143V (7 Dec. 1476). Senato, Provveditori da Terra e da Mar, 24, 22 (Nov. 1477).

Military development and fighting potential than the state. It seems likely that the long period of peace had underlined the problems of the lanze spezzate system without a proper officer hierarchy and implying a degree of responsibility of the state for individuals which had proved ineffective in practice. Nevertheless at the same time as the Colleoneschi were absorbed, arrangements were made for recruiting a further company of 150 lanze spezzate who were to be known as the Societa Nuova di San Marco.15 By the 1480s the problem of the veteran companies was reduced to the Colleoneschi. In December 1487 137 men-at-arms survived, and after rigorous inspection they were pruned still further.16 When the question of what to do with the troops of Roberto da Sanseverino, killed in 1487, came up it was decided not to make them lanze spezzate but to divide them up as the Colleoneschi had been.17 In 1502 there was still a compagnia colleonesca e gattesca in service and it was attached to the company of Bernardino Fortebraccio; but at that moment a further sixteen of its veteran men-atarms were pensioned off.18 During the second half of the century in which the loyalties of Venetian condottieri became increasingly established by long habit of service, the phenomenon of the lanze spezzate gradually declined. This had been a step towards creating an army directly dependent on the state which was produced by a continuous war situation before 1454, but was in a certain sense too innovatory for a fundamentally conservative society like that of Venice, and a fundamentally conservative tradition like that of the heavy cavalry. By the first decade of the sixteenth century the Venetian heavy cavalry had reverted almost entirely to the old condottiere company organization. Nevertheless there had been another area of development within these companies: in the size and composition of the lance. One of the tendencies throughout the fifteenth century was for the equipment and armour of the man-at-arms to increase in weight and complexity. This not only narrowed the social and economic base of the category but also dictated changes in the following of the man-at-arms, the lance formation. Traditionally the Italian lance had consisted of three men: the man-at-arms, a lightly armed sergeant and a page or mounted servant. The purpose of this group was both to give some support to the man-at-arms in battle and, more important, to look after his equipment, lead and tend his war horse and generally' service' him. The growing weight and cost of arms and armour had a double effect on this 15 16 17 18

SS. reg. 28, 66v (29 Nov. 1477). Recruiting of the new company started in Dec. 1477 (Senato, Provveditori da Terra e da Mar, 24, 31; 2 Dec. 1477). ST. reg. 10, 69-70 (13 Dec. 1487), 86 (7 Mar. 1488). ST. reg. 11, 40V-41V (14 Dec. 1490). ST. reg. 14, 109V-110 (25 Sept. 1502).

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Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 organization. In the first place the prestige and status of the man-at-arms increased as his equipment became more expensive and he became in a certain sense more invulnerable. After 1454 one increasingly finds the situation when not all capo lancie were vert armigeri\ the proportion of true men-at-arms within any body of heavy cavalry tended to decrease.19 This was not just the result of the rising cost of being a fully equipped man-atarms, but also stemmed from the prolonged peacetime situation in which the following of the condottieri tended to be filled out with men who were not genuine men-at-arms at all but rather personal attendants of various sorts. However, the term vero armigero was already appearing well before 1454, which suggests that the distinction was a military as well as a social one. Another term which seemed to be almost interchangeable with vero armigero was elmetto, again suggesting a more completely armed knight than the old uomo d'arme. Presumably this term derived from the growing use of the completely head-encasing helms rather than the various forms of basinets and sallets. This tendency towards a reduction in the number of fully armed men-atarms in a cavalry company is clearly seen in the organization of Bertoldo d'Este's troops for the Morea campaign in 1463. Bertoldo was to take 170 elmetti, which were the equivalent of 1500 cavalry; however, the force was also said to include 600 utili.20 The implication is that the proportion of men-at-arms was much the same as in a traditional force - one to three; but that of these fewer than a third were, in contemporary terms, fully armed. This process of restriction together with the growing 'servicing' requirements of the new fully armed elmetto produced a rationalization of the organization and a tendency for the size of the lance formation to increase. Not only the added social prestige of the man-at-arms, particularly apparent amongst the lanze spezzate, but also the need for additional warhorses to allow him to change horses when they tired under the weight of the heavier equipment, and the problems of more elaborate armour to clean and maintain all suggested an expanded following as a natural development. The lance in the second half of the fifteenth century rose to four, five or even six men and became known in some armies as the corazza, although in the Venetian army the term elmetto increasingly took on the same connotation. The basic function of this group did not change, although there was a 19

The renewal of the condotta of Giovanni Conti on 20 May 1454, which laid down that he should maintain 233 1/3 lances including at least 100 veri armigeri, was the first time that this new distinction formally appeared in Venetian documents (Commemoriali, xiv, 124V-125). Chierighino Chiericati in his Trattatello delta milizia in G. Zorzi, 'Un vicentino alle corte di Paolo secondo', NAV., n.s. xxx (1915) 425-34 (see below, 106-7) approved the idea and pointed out that Carmagnola had always wanted his men-at-arms to have six or seven horses each.

20

S S . r e g . 2 1 , 157V (13 J u n e 1463).

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Military development and fighting potential tendency to include a mounted crossbowman, such men being widely used in the second half of the fifteenth century as bodyguards and personal followers. Unlike the French or Burgundian lance, the Italian lance never acquired an infantry component. In practice in the Venetian army this expansion of the size of the lance formation was at first officially recognized only in wartime, and it became a natural part of the mobilization of the companies. However, in 1490 the peacetime establishment of the lances was finally raised from three to four.21 It also became accepted practice that the lesser members of the formation (the saccomanni and ragazzi) were not to be subject to inspection, and the emphasis shifted more and more to ensuring that the armed men were fit for war. In November 1494, with the French invasion already in progress, the establishment of the lance, or corazza as it was called on this occasion, was raised to five.22 By 1509 it had become the practice for each fully armed man-at-arms to have two lances, the second led by his sergeant who was equipped as a light cavalryman.23 The tendency of these developments, which were not of course specifically Venetian but can be clearly traced in the Venetian army, was to emphasize the distinctive quality of the heavy cavalry. Although light cavalry elements were included in the expanded lance, the organization of light cavalry units became increasingly separate, particularly at the very end of the century. Companies of mounted crossbowmen had always had a role in Italian warfare, but the success of the stradiots after about 1480 encouraged the growth of a greater variety of light cavalry companies. The basic reasons for the development of light cavalry were fourfold. First, the rising cost of heavy cavalry made a less expensive alternative, attractive both for employers and men. Secondly, the growing effectiveness of infantry on the battlefield, and particularly missile infantry, led to experiments with what was basically a more mobile infantry, mounted crossbowmen and mounted handgun men. Neither of these weapons could be seriously fired from the saddle, but the mounting of such men added a new dimension to their military value. Thirdly, the mounted crossbowmen became particularly popular as bodyguards; in the second half of the fifteenth century a large condotta nearly always included provision for a contingent of such troops. They provided more efficient protection to the captain or prince in the streets of a city than a squadron of heavy cavalry. 21

22 23

S T . reg. 11, 2ov (10 S e p t . 1490); Collegio, C o m m i s s i o n e Secrete, 1 4 8 2 - 9 5 , 146V-147 (17 O c t . 1490). By this time lances of four m e n or m o r e were, in fact, very c o m m o n in t h e Venetian a r m y . T h e new lanze spezzate raised in 1477 were expected to have four m e n in each lance ( S S . reg. 28, 66v; 29 N o v . 1477)S T . reg. 12, 72V (6 N o v . 1494). O n l y t h r e e of t h e five were to be m u s t e r e d a n d inspected. SS. reg. 41, 158 (14 Apr. 1509).

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Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 Finally, in an age of military experimentation and cross-fertilization the value of light cavalry was increasingly appreciated. Whereas in the early fifteenth century a fortress would rarely have included cavalry amongst its garrison, by the end of the century a squadron of light horse had become an essential feature of most garrisons. Venice, perhaps more than any other Italian state, participated in and contributed to this development of light cavalry forces. When the Senate ordered a reinforcement of the army in Friuli after the Turkish victory in the autumn of 1477, the proposed force of 6000 cavalry was to be divided equally between heavy cavalry, mounted crossbowmen and light cavalry.24 At this moment Cola di Monforte, who had recently joined the Venetian army after his Burgundian service, wrote a memorandum for the Senate on the needs of the army and in it he placed equal emphasis on the maintenance and equipping of the three types of cavalry.25 By the early 1490s Piero d'Erba, who had commanded stradiots in the War of Ferrara, was described as captain of the mounted crossbowmen, thus signalling the presence of such troops as a distinctive arm.26 In 1493, after the death of Piero, the title was conferred on Giovanni Greco da San Vitale, an experienced infantry constable who retained the post until at least 1509. At Fornovo both Greco and Soncino Benzoni commanded companies of mounted crossbowmen in the Venetian army,27 and both figured in the defence of Pisa together with small companies of the same troops.28 By 1501 Venice was becoming alarmed at a tendency for condottieri to replace men-at-arms with mounted crossbowmen, a practice which was atfirstsanctioned and even encouraged at a ratio of one to two. However, although this erosion of the heavy cavalry companies became frowned upon, the creation of the new light cavalry companies went on rapidly. In 1507 Vitello Vitelli, Guido Guiano, Rinieri della Sassetta and Piero Gambacorti were all hired with 100 mounted crossbowmen or mounted handgunmen each.29 Early in 1509 the importance of the light cavalry was recognized by the Senate, which was determined to avoid the need for such sudden recruitment again and committed itself to five large companies of such troops commanded by Giovanni Greco, Vitello Vitelli, Rinieri della Sassetta, Ludovico Battaglia and Franco dal Borgo. Each company of 100 to 130 was to contain at least 30 mounted handgunmen.30 24 25

26 27 28 29 30

S S . reg. 28, 71V-72 (15 D e c . 1477). Ibid., 7ir-v (15 Dec. 1477), published in B. Croce, 'Un memoriale militare di Cola di Monforte, Conte di Campobasso', Archivio storico per le provincie napoletane, n.s. xix (1933) 371-3. ST. reg. 12, 14 and 75 (24 July 1493 and 26 Nov. 1494). Schullian, 96. Sanuto, i, 543. SS. reg. 41, 43V (20 Sept. 1507). SS. reg. 41, 132V (20 Jan. 1509).

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Military development and fighting potential However, the main contribution to the development of light cavalry, both in terms of numbers and precedence, came from the stradiots. The stradiots were lightly armed cavalry recruited in Dalmatia, Albania and Greece. Their main arms were the short lance, or javelin, and the bow; but their small, fast and hardy horses were almost as important a feature of their military value.31 Recruiting was carried out through the local nobility of the area, and these men also commanded the companies. The stradiots proved their worth being hardy, fearless and above all cheap, in righting against the Turks in Dalmatia and the Morea after 1463. After 1465 they seem to have almost entirely replaced Italian cavalry in this fighting, and in the late 1470s companies of them were brought to Friuli to face the Turks there.32 On the conclusion of the truce with the Turks in 1479 the leaders of the stradiots based in Coron asked to be taken into permanent service, and the decision was made to bring 1000 of them to Italy.33 These were presumably the stradioti vecchi who took part in the initial stages of the War of Ferrara,34 but recruitment of a further 1000 was authorized in late May of 1482.35 During the war the post of proveditor of the stradiots was created and, unlike the other military proveditors, this man was expected to, and did in practice, lead the stradiots in battle.36 In the War of Ferrara the stradiots created a considerable sensation and were largely responsible for the Venetian victory at Argenta in November 1482. Their custom of cutting off the heads of those they killed in battle and bringing them back in order to claim rewards of 1 ducat each was at first deplored by Venice but clearly not seriously discouraged.37 At Fornovo their lack of discipline in turning too quickly to loot the baggage train of the French army was deplored, but at the same time their fierce loyalty to their natural leaders and their sense of belonging to a kinship community, which the companies on the whole were, gave them some similarities to the Swiss. Large numbers of stradiots were used in the Pisan campaign in 1497-9, but their long residence in that area led to many of them losing or selling their horses, which was a severe restraint on their military value. When they returned to Venice in 1499 they had to be reorganized and many sent home.38 During these years the garrisons in Friuli were largely made up of 31

32 33 34 35 36 37

38

ST. reg. 12, 142V-143 (30 May 1496). Stradiots in Pisa were forbidden to sell their horses because of their special qualities which could not be easily replaced. For the classic description of the stradiots, see Sanuto, La spedizione di Carlo VIII, 313-4. SS. reg. 28, 11 iv (22 Aug. 1478). ST. reg. 8, 62 (15 Sept. 1479). Sanuto, Vite de dogi, 1229. S S . reg. 30, 98V (23 M a y 1482). S T . reg. 9, 77 (11 M a y 1484). Collegio, L e t t e r e Secrete, filza 1 (26 Sept. 1487). O n this occasion Venice refused to pay a ducat each for 42 G e r m a n heads b u t offered suitable presents instead. S S . reg. 37, 94V (28 M a y 1499).

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Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 stradiots, there being as many as 3000 of them at a time.39 In 1508 there were seventeen stradiot captains in Venetian pay in Italy.40 INFANTRY

Infantry returned to the forefront of European warfare in the fifteenth century, although it is usually held that this development was somewhat retarded in Italy. However, Italy too, and particularly Venice, made considerable progress in the employment and use of infantry during this period. Evidence of this is the steady growth of an infantry element in the contracts of the more important condottieri. By the end of the century it was recognized that no military contingent was complete without a strong infantry component. Such a realization was not surprising in view of the developments in warfare which had taken place, particularly in the crucial years of the war in Lombardy between 1425 and 1454. The developments in the use offieldfortifications, the slowing down of the rhythm of warfare as armies grew larger and more encumbered with artillery and baggage trains, the growing emphasis on protracted sieges - all these encouraged the use of infantry and the expansion of the numbers of the infantry.41 Venice as one of the principal participants in those wars also played its part in this expansion. In 1400 the main role of infantry was as garrison troops. In this role a degree of permanence was essential, and therefore the first permanent forces retained by Italian states tended to be small bodies of infantry known as provisionati because they received a provisione, a monthly wage from the state. Their standing was similar to that of the cavalry lanze spezzate although their role and reputation were very different. Such troops were considered to be of little use on the battlefield. Venice, at that time having few possessions in Italy, had few provisionati in Italy, although her defence commitments in the eastern Mediterranean were growing rapidly. In time of war infantry companies were also recruited by contract, as were cavalry. Infantry constables were hired and their companies were made up of three types of infantry usually in equal proportions: foot lancers, crossbowmen and shield bearers. Such infantry were regarded as a necessary complement to any large cavalry force, although always in relatively small numbers and in an essentially subordinate role. Again Venice, as a relatively infrequent participant in land warfare in Italy at this stage, had little experience of the problems of this recruiting and few links with professional constables. SS. reg. 36, 142V-143 (10 July 1497). ST. reg. 16, 61V-63 (23 Dec. 1508). Pieri, Rinascimento e la crisi militare, 272-5; Mallett, Mercenaries and their Masters, 155. 74

Military development and fighting potential A third type of infantry was the locally conscripted militia. An obligation to militia service for all men capable of bearing arms was a standard feature of communal statutes in medieval Italy. Although in fact a levee en masse was rarely used, elements of the local militia, recruited either as volunteers or conscripted on the basis of one man per household or some similar proportion, were frequently called upon to join armies in the fourteenth century. Such troops rarely had any training, their arms provided by themselves or at best by their local communities were usually inadequate, and they could never be relied upon to follow the army far from their homes. Once again in 1400 for obvious reasons Venice had little experience of these problems, but the Lombard signori whom it was about to replace had relied heavily on militias in their small campaigns and the militia tradition was perhaps stronger in this part of Italy than elsewhere.42 After 1404 Venice's role in the recruitment and use of infantry in Italy began to change rapidly. The war against the Carraresi, essentially a war of sieges, involved the use of large numbers of professional infantry, and at the end of the war a few constables, notably Quarantotto da Ripamortorio, were retained to provide substantial infantry garrisons for the newly acquired cities. While outlying fortresses could be garrisoned by handfuls of provisionati, the cities of Padua, Vicenza and Verona required large companies both to defend them and to police them. Similarly one of the first tasks of Venetian officials sent out to administer the Terraferma was to overhaul the militia arrangements. New lists of able-bodied men between the ages of 18 and 60 were drawn up43 and quickly put to use in 1411 when large companies of militia from all over the Terraferma were called out to prepare and defend the Livenza fortifications against the Hungarians.44 This employment of the militia as pioneers on large-scale field fortifications was to be a significant feature of Venetian militia policy in the first half of the century and accounts for the very large numbers of militia which usually accompanied Venetian armies. In January 1420, towards the end of the second Hungarian War, 2900 infantry were with the army in Friuli; of these, 1000 were left with the field army for the final stages of the campaign and a further 1150 were allotted to garrisoning the newly acquired territory.45 In the years following 1425 the numbers of infantry required increased steadily. The siege of Brescia in 1426 and the new expansion of the territory implied new commitments. The system of expanding the condotte of veteran constables as a means of mobilization was applied to the infantry in 1431, and by 1437 an infantry 42 43 44 45

Bayley, 34-6, 234-7. S S . r e g . 4 , 79V (5 D e c . 1409). Sanuto, Vite tie dogi, 837. S S . r e g . 7, 130V (17 J a n . 1420).

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Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 force of 6000 with the army was the aim of the Venetian recruiters.46 Both the captain-general at that time, Gianfrancesco Gonzaga, and later Colleoni were great believers in the value of infantry and encouraged Venice to employ as many as possible. At the same time a new infantry commander had emerged to take the place of Quarantotto, who retired in the late 1420s. This was Dietisalvi Lupi da Bergamo, who joined Venetian service with Carmagnola in 1425 and had risen to the rank of governor of the infantry by 1433.47 Lupi commanded the infantry until at least the battle of Caravaggio in 1448, at which he was captured and a ransom of 5000 ducats was demanded for him. He was knighted by Michele Attendolo after Casalmaggiore in 1446.48 By the 1440s significant numbers of handgunmen were beginning to appear among the Venetian infantry. Lupi was said to have been the first to introduce handgun companies, and at Caravaggio where the Milanese were superior in the use of this weapon it was reported that smoke from the handguns obscured the battlefield.49 Another innovation which spread from Naples at this time was the arming of infantry with short sword and buckler, giving greater mobility and flexibility.50 In fact the old type of infantry company with its infantry lances, crossbowmen and shield bearers was going out of fashion in favour of a division between 'fire' companies of crossbowmen and handgunmen and assault companies equipped with swords or footlances. In the later stages of these wars the Venetian infantry reached numbers in the region of 10,000 men with the army, in addition to militia pioneer contingents of about the same size. By 1453 Matteo Griffoni da S. Angelo in Vada had emerged as captain of the infantry.51 He had originally been in Florentine service but had joined Venice in 1447 and remained captain from 1453 until his death in 1473.52 The impression of permanence given by the records of long service for Venice of many of her constables at this time is somewhat misleading. The constables, unlike the condottieri, did not have guarantees of peacetime 46 47

48

49

50 51 52

S M i . reg. 5 8 , 9 6 (19 D e c . 1431); Collegio, Registri Secreti, 4 , 56V (2 A p r . 1437). M . L u p i , ' M e m o r i e per servire alia vita di Dietisalvi L u p i ' , Miscellanea di storia italiana, vi (1865) 4 8 7 ff. Lupi, 514; Dietisalvi Lupi had a condotta for 500 infrantry. Also on Lupi, see A. Mazzi, 'L'atto divisionale della sostanza di Dietisalvi Lupi, condottiero della fantaria veneziana', Bollettino della civic a biblioteca di Bergamo, iv (1910) 1-38. A. Angelucci, ' G l i schioppettieri milanesi nel secolo X V , Politecnico, xxiv (1865) 9. T h e superiority of the Milanese handgunmen at this stage was a matter of concern and debate in the Senate (ST. reg. 2, 8iv; 8 Sept. 1448). P. Pieri, 'Alfonso V e le armi italiane', in Pieri, Scritti vari (Turin, 1966). Commemoriali, xiv, 119V; 19 May 1453 (Predelli, v, 81). For renewals of his condotta, see Predelli, v, 6, 31,49, 64, 86; his death is recorded in ST. reg. 7, 17V (4 Oct. 1473).

76

Military development and fighting potential contracts except in exceptional cases like Griffoni. Demobilization in 1454 and on subsequent occasions was therefore much more drastic with the infantry than it was with the cavalry. An infantry force of about 10,000 was reduced within a year to about 2500, with many constables paid off entirely.53 However, a system was devised which enabled Venice to recruit again quickly; this was the retention of certain constables a provisione, that is with a generous personal salary which enabled them to live and maintain a handful of followers during peacetime. It was clear that the level of training required of the ordinary infantryman was not high enough to warrant retaining large numbers in permanent service, but the retention of constables was considered important. There were, of course, also the elite of constables who were retained with their companies. Most of these men in the next twenty-five years saw service against the Turks. The army sent to the Morea in 1463 was largely made up of infantry, and most of the constables were those who had been retained in permanent service after the Peace of Lodi. Francesco da Teano, who took over command of the Venetian troops in the Morea after the departure of Sigismondo Malatesta in 1465, wasfifth-rankingconstable in 1454. Griffoni himself never went to the Morea but he did command the infantry at the siege of Trieste. Otherwise he spent these years at his headquarters in Crema.54 Both in the Colleoni War and the War of Ferrara the infantry force was built up very rapidly and just as rapidly demobilized at the end of hostilities. There is no evidence of how many infantry were employed in 1467, but the reorganization of 1468 allowed for the retention of only 1821 men in Italy with 21 constables in active service and 9 a provisione.55 In the War of Ferrara the infantry reached unprecedented numbers;56 demobilization at the end of the war involved reducing the force from 14,600 to 2500 men. Now 36 constables were retained a provisione and 29 in active service.57 Melo da Cortona, who had been promoted to be captain of infantry in 1479 in recognition of his services in Tuscany,58 was killed in this war and his place was taken by a recent recruit from the Florentine army, Andrea da Borgo Sansepolero. The dangers of maintaining so small a force of infantry in permanent service were revealed in 1487 when the sudden emergency created serious infantry recruiting problems for Venice. One solution to this 53 54 55 56

57 58

S T . reg. 3, 131 (20 Sept. 1454). S S . reg. 21, 191 (3 Oct. 1463); S T . reg. 5, 163V (30 June 1466). S S . reg. 23, 121 (21 June 1468). The Venetian proveditors Pisani and Pesaro reported on 7 July 1484 on the'. . . fantarie, le quali sono estimati, et con effetto sono, principal nervo e forteza de li exerciti in questi parti' (Senato, Lettere di Rettori, 11, 7 July 1484). S T . r e g . 9, 102, 102V a n d 104 (27 a n d 30 A u g . , 4 S e p t . 1484). S T . r e g . 8, 65V (6 O c t . 1479). 77

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 was to encourage a cavalry commander, Jacomaccio da Venezia, to give up his cavalry condotta and take on an infantry one, which he did with great success.59 However, once again after the war only 23 constables with 1684 men were retained in active service.60 This policy of rapid mobilization and demobilization of the infantry forces had two important side effects. It encouraged a gradual decline of the independent infantry company led by its constable serving under contract. This was a general phenomenon in the second half of the fifteenth century in Italy, and the mechanics of it are very clear in the Venetian case. By the 1480s more than half the constables employed by Venice were in permanent service, usually without troops to command in peacetime. When mobilization came they either took command of provisionati raised by Venetian recruiting agents, or went out and recruited themselves. But even in the latter case the men they raised were raised for Venice and paid directly by Venice; they were provisionati in the old sense of the word. Only the most senior of the fully employed infantry constables continued to have their own condotte. The second important side effect of the occasional need for rapid mobilization was the development of a selective, partially trained militia system rather similar to that of the English trained bands. The impetus for establishing such a system on a national scale came in the late autumn of 1477 after the standing forces in Friuli had been badly defeated by the Turks. At first it was thought that the force would number 15-20,000 men to be recruited from all the cities of the Terraferma. They were to be called the provisionati di San Marco. All the rectors of the Terraferma were instructed to set up committees of citizens to enrol suitable men, who had to be young and fit. They were to be commanded by constables deputed by the rectors and equipped with breastplate, sallet and a suitable offensive weapon. Recruiting was also to take place in Venice itself where 4000 men were to be raised by nobles deputed in each contrada.61 In 1478 the numbers envisaged were somewhat reduced and the major cities of the Terraferma were called upon to send 500 men each to Friuli.62 The selected men were exempt from taxes and were expected to undergo periodic training. In March 1479 the force was formally disbanded, as the Turkish threat seemed to have passed and Venice felt a greater need for money than for men.63 But later in the year when the Hungarians were threatening, a smaller force of provisionati di San Marco was again alerted.64 59 60 61 62 63 64

ST. reg. 10, 77V (8 Feb. 1488). Ibid., 74 (13 Jan. 1488). ST. reg. 7, 189V (14 Nov. 1477); Malipiero, Annali veneti, 116. ST. reg. 8, i8v (3 Aug. 1478). Ibid., 43 (20 Mar. 1479). SS. reg. 29, 51 v (5 Nov. 1479).

78

Military development and fighting potential This initiative for a trained militia does not seem to have been systematically maintained. The title provisionati di San Marco was not used again in the official records of the period. But it is clear that some element of part-time training of local militia was continued. By the late fifteenth century particular emphasis was being placed on the training of handgunmen. In 1490 the Senate deplored the extent to which Venice was dependent on German and other oltramontane handgunmen and appointed eight masters of the art to go out into the Terraferma to train two men from each village to use the guns. Rectors of the major cities were instructed to establish biannual competitions to stimulate interest in the use of the handgun.65 When in 1493 the Lieutenant-General of Friuli was ordered to call out a select force of 4000 militia, to include 1000 each of handgunmen, crossbowmen, archers and foot lancers, he reported that 900 handgunmen were already enrolled and carrying out regular practices.66 In the immediately subsequent years it is clear that a pool of partly trained men was available, but it was only in 1507, with the German threat mounting, that a systematically organized select militia was once more created. In that year Lactantio da Bergamo started to train 600 men in the Veronese; the basis of the training was the use of the handgun and the pike in the Swiss manner.67 In the next year the training scheme was extended to the entire Terraferma and the intention was to raise 10,000 men; Citolo da Perugia was responsible for training 1000 men in Brescia, and similar forces were raised in Bergamo, Padua and other cities.68 By 1508 there was clearly an intention in the Senate that the infantry should be essentially a national force, i.e. composed of Venetian subjects. This idea had been germinating slowly over the past thirty years as the permanent professional infantry forces had been kept to a minimum and sporadic attempts made to mobilize on the basis of recruitment within the frontiers. It was an idea which was still not really practicable in 1508. The gap between professional infantry and partially trained militia was too wide in practice, and even while militia training was in full swing in that year a number of professional constables were sent out to recruit in their home areas outside the frontiers.69 At the same time one of the effects of this 65

66

67 68

69

Dieci, Misti, reg. 24,208,222 and 230V (20 Aug., 25 Sept. and 24 Nov. 1490); P. Bembo, Delia historia vinitiana (Venice, 1552) 11. Collegio, Commissioni Secrete, 1482-95, 151V (30 Sept. and 2 Oct. 1493). For practices oflocal militia handgunmen in the citadel of Verona in 1506, see C. Ferrari, 'Com'era amministrato una comune del Veronese al principio del secolo xvi', Atti e memurie dell'Accademia di Verona, ser. 4, iii (1903) 232-3. ST. reg. 15, I6IV (10 June 1507); Sanuto, vii, i n . ST. reg. 16, 21V-22 (1 Aug. 1508); C. Pasero, 'Aspetti dell'ordinamento militare del territorio bresciano durante il dominio veneto', Commentari delPAteneo di Brescia, cxxxvi (1937) 34; G. Celli, 'Le ordinanze militari della repubblica veneta nel secolo xvi', Nuova antologia, ser. 2, liii (1894) 99. S S . r e g . 4 1 , 131V (8 J a n . 1509).

79

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 growing emphasis on a trained and select militia was to create a real distinction between such troops and the conscript pioneers who were also levied from the local populations. Related to this question of the emergence of at least the idea of a national infantry was the extent to which Venice used non-Italian infantry. On various occasions in the century Venice negotiated with the Swiss for military assistance; in 1483 the Duke of Lorraine was said to be bringing 4000 Swiss into Venetian service,70 and in 1500 a chancellery secretary was sent to recruit 2000 Swiss.71 But there is very little firm evidence of the service of such large numbers of mercenaries; nothing of the scale and continuity of the stradiots. Odd companies of Albanian infantry appeared in the ranks and Albanian and Dalmatian constables were common, as they were in fact in all the Italian armies of the fifteenth century. Cretan archers were also fairly common in Venetian service, and small bands of English archers were still appearing in the 1470s.72 Many of the early handgunmen were Germans, and in 1463, when Venice needed to recruit handgunmen quickly for the Morea, a company of 400 was raised in Trento.73 There was even a company of Gascons in Venetian service in Tuscany during the Pazzi War.74 But these were the exceptions; Venice's answer to the predominance of the Swiss and German pike infantry in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries was to try and train its own infantry in the same methods. Piero del Monte, who was the last captain of infantry of this period and commanded the infantry at Cadore, equipped the Venetian infantry with pikes 60 cm longer than those of the Swiss and tried to instil in them that discipline which made the pike squares so effective.75 At the same time there was also a strong emphasis on the use of hand firearms in Venetian infantry practice. A surprisingly high proportion of the men in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries were equipped with these weapons, which were clearly seen as viable for mass rather than specialist use. However, perhaps the most distinguishing and interesting feature of the Venetian infantry in the fifteenth century, as with the cavalry, was the continuity of command and the emergence of long-serving infantry leaders with considerable prestige. Dietisalvi Lupi and Matteo Griffoni, both knighted by Venice, between them led the Venetian infantry for forty years in the middle of the century. By the 1470s it was customary throughout Italy Piva, Guerra di Ferrara, ii, 9.

SS. reg. 37, 184 (10 Feb. 1500). Senate, Provveditori da Terra e da Mar, 24, 56V (3 Feb. 1478). Nine English archers, including a William of Nottingham, were signed up in Padua. ST. reg. 5, 55V (3-5 Oct. 1463). ST. reg. 8, 27 (20 Oct. 1478). The company of 173 men was sent to Ravenna for its winter quarters. Pieri, Rinascimento e la crisi militare, 453.

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Military development and fighting potential for senior infantry constables to have a small group of lances in their condotte and themselves to be mounted. Matteo Griffoni, when he was made captain of infantry in 1453, had 40 lances and 50 mounted crossbowmen as well as his 500 infantry. Jacomaccio da Venezia, who became captain of infantry in 1495, had earlier been a cavalry condottiere and still retained 200 cavalry in his condotta. The command of a considerable body of cavalry was an indication of the very real prestige in the army of these men; by the early sixteenth century the captain of the infantry ranked third after Pitigliano and D'Alviano, a fact that is not always fully appreciated by those who pour scorn on the development of infantry in fifteenth-century Italy. The captain of the infantry between 1499 and 1508 was the Neapolitan noble Gianbattista Caracciolo, whose wife Dorotea Malatesta,' una delle notabili e famose donne d'ltalia', was kidnapped by Cesare Borgia in 1501.76 The stir which this incident caused resulted in large part from Gianbattista's standing in Venice. His condotta from 1504 onwards included 100 lances in wartime and 50 mounted crossbowmen.77 He had the right personally to inspect all infantry companies in Venetian service and dismiss useless men; only the captain-general and the collateral-general had similar authority in the Venetian army. ARTILLERY

So far we have discussed the traditional elements of the late-medieval army and seen the gradually changing relationship between the two in the fifteenth century. It is now time to turn to the great novelty of the period, which was having an increasing impact on warfare by the end of the century, and contributed also in part to the growing importance of the infantry. Venice had the reputation, which seems to have been deserved, of being in the forefront of the development of artillery. It was thought by contemporaries to have been the first state to use artillery effectively on a large scale - against the Genoese in the War of Chioggia.78 Whether in fact artillery was no novelty in Italy at this stage. But Venice, in its Arsenal and the related furnaces and workshops in the Ghetto, certainly had one of the largest and most advanced gunfounding industries and gunpowder SS. reg. 38, 113V (17 Feb. 1501); Sanuto, iii, 1434; A. Caracciolo, Un ratto di Cesare Borgia (Naples, 1921); DBL, xix, 384-6. SS. reg. 40, 1 (2 Mar. 1504). F. Guicciardini, Storia d'ltalia, ed. C. Panigada (Bari, 1929) i, 71-2. On the whole question of the reception of artillery in the fifteenth century, see J. R. Hale, 'Gunpowder and the Renaissance: an essay in the history of ideas', in C. H. Carter (ed.), From the Renaissance to the Counter Reformation: Essays in Honour 0/ Garrett Mattingly (London, 1966) 113-44 a n d M. A. Vale, War and Chivalry (London, 1981) 129-46.

81

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 factories in the late fourteenth century.79 Venetian government interest was stimulated not only by the potential of guns in sea warfare, but also by her extended defence commitments in the east. Artillery, commanded in the later stages by the veteran engineer Domenico da Firenze, played a significant role in the siege of Padua in 1404-5.80 However, during the first half of the fifteenth century there seems to have been surprisingly little official interest in the role of the new weapons on land. There undoubtedly was an artillery train with the Venetian army during the wars in Lombardy, and the riverfleetswere generously equipped with small bombards. We know that guns were used by Carmagnola in the siege of Brescia in 1426, and by Attendolo and Colleoni to bombard the Milanese encampment at Caravaggio.81 But references in the Senate proceedings to how the guns were provided, organized and manned are very sparse. Antonio da Fiume was noted as one of the specialist gunfounders in the Arsenal in 1418, and his skill at repairing cannon was recognized with the award of a free house.82 Perhaps more significantly, in 1436 Master John, a goldsmith from Ulm, obtained permission from his city government to spend two years in Venice studying the republic's artillery technology and techniques.83 Bearing in mind that a predominance of gunners in this period were Germans, this is undoubtedly an interesting indication of Venice's reputation in the field. In 1440 a supervisor of gunpowder supplies to the army was appointed,84 and by the later stages of the Lombard wars gunners were enjoying the same sorts of rewards and pensions from Venice as other categories of troops.85 However, it was only in the early 1450s, in the very last years of these wars, that we begin to get any substantial information on the Venetian artillery. In 1451 Maestro Martino 'ab Ancoris', who had been making bombards for Venice since the mid-i44os, was appointed supervisor of Venetian gunfounding with an annual salary of 100 ducats.86 Then in the following year one of the most eminent gunfounders of the day, Maestro Ferlino, came to work in Venice. Ferlino had made his early reputation working for the Duke of Savoy and had then moved to Milan in 79

80 81 82 83

84 85

86

B. Z. Kedar, Merchants in Crisis: Genoese and Venetian Men of Ajfairs in the Fourteenth-Century Technological Depression ( N e w Haven, Conn., 1977) 163; C M . Cipolla, Guns, Sails, and Empires: Innovation and the Early Phases of European Expansion, 1400-1700 (London, 1965) 25 n. 1. S a n u t o , Vite de dogi, 817. Pieri, Rinascimento e la crisi militare, 276. S M i . reg. 52, 78 (17 F e b . 1418). T . V. Bowdek, 'Society a n d politics in late medieval U l m ' ( u n p u b . P h . D . thesis, C o l u m b i a University, 1972) 243. I a m indebted to D r H e n r y C o h n for drawing m y attention to this reference. SMi. reg. 60, 248 (1 Sept. 1440). When one of the Venetian bombardiers, Filippo, was killed by a handgun shot in 1447 his debt to the state was cancelled and his daughter given a dowry of 400 lire ( S T . reg. 2, 43; 31 Aug. 1447). Ibid., 9 (5 Nov. 1446); reg. 3, 4V (28 Sept. 1451).

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Military development and fighting potential 1443. The great 300-pounders which he cast for Filippo Maria Visconti and Francesco Sforza were known as 'Ferline', and it was a matter of great concern to Sforza when, in July 1452, his master gunfounder was captured by the Venetians at Cavenago.87 By November Maestro Ferlino was at work in the Arsenal on a huge bombard and was assigned a house in the Arsenal for his accommodation.88 In the next year a noted German gunfounder was working on some huge bombards weighing 6000 pounds each and capable of throwing stone balls of 400 pounds over a range of two miles.89 The practice range for these weapons was on the Lido, and in 1454 Ferlino was given land behind S. Biagio on the Giudecca for his workshop.90 In the second half of the fifteenth century interest in the new weapons grew rapidly. Not only did the Italian states begin to build up considerable artillery trains but a number of the leading condottieri also had their own guns.91 In Venice the Senate on a number of occasions expressed explicitly its belief in the fundamental importance of artillery in war, and in 1498 declared that ' the present wars are being decided more by bombards and artillery than by men-at-arms'.92 That this was not idle rhetoric is indicated by the growing concern which was shown by the Senate and the Council of Ten over the hiring of gunners and the making of cannon. In 1463 Maestro Francesco was at work casting six great bombards, one of which was so large that there was no furnace big enough in the city. The facilities of the Arsenal were to be improved to keep pace with the new artillery technology.93 At this time Bartolemeo da Cremona emerged as the key figure in the Venetian artillery organization. He was both a gunfounder and bombardier, as were many of the early artillery experts, and he was brought over from Bosnia in the autumn of 1463 to cast guns for the siege of Trieste and the Turkish War.94 In 1464 he was given a salary of 100 ducats a year,95 and he held the post of chief gunner and gunfounder in the Arsenal for over twenty years until his death in 1487, when he was replaced by Maestro Sigismondo Alberghetti, who commanded a salary of 200 ducats a year.96 Alberghetti 87

88

89 90 91

92

93

94 95 96

L. Beltrami, La Galeazesca vittoriosa (Milan, 1916) 13-14, 19; M. Morin, 'Lc bombarde del Maestro Ferlino', Diana Armi, ix, 6 (1975), 59-63. ST. reg. 3, 46 (24 Nov. 1452), 76V (23 Aug. 1453). In 1454 Ferlino was given a salary of 200 ducats a year (Morin, 63). ST. reg. 3, 67V (17 May 1453). Ibid., 107 (20 Mar. 1454). For example, Cola da Monforte had five bombardiers in his company when he joined Venetian service in 1477 (SS. reg. 28, 31V; 28 July 1477). 'Sono reducte le guerre de' tempi presenti piu in forze di bombarde et artigliare cha de zente d'arme' (ST. reg. 13, 64V; 27 Dec. 1498). S T . reg. 5,51 (2 Sept. 1463). Five years earlier Maestro Francesco d'Antonio was already noted for his work in t h e Arsenal a n d was earning 50 ducats a year ( S T . reg. 4 , 96V; 23 D e c . 1458). S T . reg. 5, 63V (4 D e c . 1463). I b i d . , 88 (9 A u g . 1464), 9 3 (29 S e p t . 1464). S T . reg. 10, 40V (2 M a r . 1487).

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Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 was also an Italian, but most of the gunners employed by Venice in the second half of the fifteenth century were still oltramontanes. In 1484 during the demobilization of the army after the Peace of Bagnolo only five active master gunners were retained, and they were all non-Italians.97 Similarly the Venetian gunners who were captured by Paolo Vitelli at Buti in 1498 and had their hands cut off were, so far as their names survive, non-Italians from Burgundy, Holland and England.98 At first these highly prized non-Italian experts were able to command high wages. Antonio da Brabante and Piero da Piemonte in the 1470s received 15 ducats a month, while locally trained men could only expect 5 ducats a month.99 With the growing availability of suitably trained Italians in the later years of the century, average salaries came down; but in the first decade of the sixteenth century the demand for gunners was such that their rewards were once more steadily rising. In 1502 a new commander of the artillery, Maestro Antonello da Trani, was employed at 15 ducats a month, while a subordinate gunner, Pierpaolo da Fossombrone, who had been with Cesare Borgia, got 8.100 Maestro Giovanni Maria da Treviso got increases in salary from 6 to 8, and then to 10 ducats a month in 1508-9.101 As for the guns themselves, most of the gunfounding for Venice was still done in the Arsenal or in associated shops in Venice itself. However, there was also a thriving industry in Brescia which was encouraged by Venice. In 1458 Maestro Almerico de' Nobili was sent to Brescia to take charge of the artillery and the workshops there, and was given a house in the city.102 A successor to De' Nobili as commander in the field must have been the Maestro Donato, who was killed at the siege of Figarolo in 1482 and who also had a house in Brescia.103 There was also a shop for the manufacture of gunpowder in Vicenza in addition to the resources of the Arsenal, where in 1494 a Venetian citizen, Paolo da Canal, was the chief explosives expert.104 Another feature of the development of the Venetian artillery in this period was a willingness to experiment. During the War of Ferrara, Alvise da Venezia, who was master of the gunpowder refinery in the Arsenal, was given permission to try out some new metal cannon balls filled with poison 97

ST. reg. 9, n o v (5 Oct. 1484). S T . reg. 13, 6ov (14 N o v . 1498), 63 (10 D e c . 1498). 99 A n t o n i o da B r a b a n t e a n d Piero da P i e m o n t e were b o t h employed in late 1472 ( S T . reg. 6, 186 a n d 189V; 5 N o v . a n d 4 D e c . 1472); Venetians trained b y Bartolomeo da C r e m o n a in t h e Arsenal were given 5 ducats a m o n t h after they h a d become masters ( S T . reg. 6, 145V; 7 Oct. 1471). 100 S T . reg. 14, 106 (27 Sept. 1502). 101 ST. reg. 16, 24 (21 Aug. 1508), 85 (27 Feb. 1509). 102 ST. reg. 4, 91 (16 Oct. 1458). 103 ST. reg. 10, 13V (8 June i486); his family were given a pension of 10 ducats a month and allowed to keep his house in Brescia. 104 For Paolo da Canal, see ST. reg. 12, 79 (28 Dec. 1494). 98

84

Military development and fighting potential gas at the siege of Figarolo.105 In 1488 Alvise de' Malgariti, a noted mining engineer and gunfounder in Brescia, was authorized to experiment with shrapnel balls.106 But perhaps the most fertile field of experimentation was with lighter, more mobile guns which could be used on the battlefield. Colleoni was reputed to have had mobile gun carriages for his guns at Molinella in 1467, and certainly by the 1490s Alvise da Venezia was experimenting with mobile carriages for the spingards in Verona.107 This was clearly a move to bring the Venetian artillery into line with the French artillery, which was already famous for its mobility in the field, and in 1496, when the one-time commander of the French artillery, Basilio della Scola, had joined Venetian service, this emphasis on modernity was renewed with a decision to make 100 long guns mounted on carriages and firing light 6- to 12-lb shot.108 Two years later Sperandio de' Savelli was hired to develop a recoil-less gun which he had invented,109 and then in 1500 came the decision, no doubt inspired by the example of the Turks, with whom Venice was by then at war, to develop a new type of mobile heavy gun, the basilisk.110 This was a cannon more than six metres long which fired 100-lb iron balls. The basilisk was first used at the siege of Cephalonia in 1501 and considerably increased the effectiveness of the Venetian artillery. It was these guns which enabled D'Alviano to sweep aside the Imperial resistance in eastern Friuli and Istria in 1508 and reduce in rapid succession the fortresses of Pordenone, Gorizia, Trieste and Fiume. The other essential feature of Venetian policy was a concern with the training of gunners. As early as 1471 a scheme was initiated for the training of Venetian citizens in the techniques of gunnery. Bartolomeo da Cremona offered to train twenty at a time in the Arsenal and this was eagerly taken up by the Senate.111 The trainees were to receive 5 ducats a month salary once they became masters. However, it was only in 1500, with the establishment of the Scuola dei Bombardieri by the initiative of Paolo da Canal, who seemed to enjoy the unofficial rank of chief gunner at this time, that more formal training facilities were set up.112 From this moment bombardiers who were not members of the Scuola became ineligible for state employment, and the officials of the Scuola took over responsibility for the training 105

07 08 09 10

11 12

SS. reg. 30,98r-v (30 May 1482); Maestro Alvise was attached to the river fleet in order to conduct his experiment. ST. reg. 10, 107-8 (29 July 1488). Belotti, Bartolomeo Colleoni, 387; Collegio, Commissioni Secrete, 1482-95, 167-8 (7 June 1492). Sanuto, i, 146. ST. reg. 13, 64V (27 Dec. 1498). Pieri, Rinascimento e la crisi tnilitare, 454; P. Giovio, Le vite del Gran Capitano e del Marchese di Pescara, ed. C. Panigada (Bari, 1931) 57. ST. reg. 6, i 4 5 v (7 Oct. 1471). Scuole Piccole, 257, iff (31 Oct. 1500).

85

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 and expertise of the bombardiers. When Zanino Alberghetti succeeded Paolo da Canal as head of the Scuola in 1504 it became the custom for the bombardiers to practise four times a month at Zanino's house on the Giudecca.113 In February 1508, in the face of the German threat, a crash programme for the training of 100 bombardiers a month by the Scuola was authorized. Facilities were to be provided to enable each trainee to fire at least two shots a day.114 In 1502 Maestro Niccolo da Rota, the chief gunner in Verona, was authorized to set up a school for training 30 apprentices at a time in the citadel in Verona.115 Efforts were also made to set up an artillery school in Padua in 1506, but this seems to have been a local initiative by holders of licences for the manufacture of gunpowder, presumably hoping to stimulate the demand for their product.116 Finally in 1508-9 Andrea Loredan, the Lieutenant-General in Friuli, set up a school for 100 trainee gunners in Udine under the charge of the veteran bombardier Maestro Angelino da Feltre.117 These indications of the growing demand for trained gunners are reinforced by what we know about the size of the Venetian artillery train. Of course much of the demand came from the war fleet and from the fortresses both in the empire overseas and on the Terraferma, but the size of the artillery train with the field army had also expanded steadily. In 1500 the Council of Ten took over responsibility for all Terraferma artillery, and after that particular emphasis was placed on the formation of a train of siege and field artillery for the army.118 Bartolomeo d'Alviano was placed in overall charge of this in 1503,119 and in the following year a proveditor of artillery was appointed to supervise the production and storage of guns and supplies.120 In 1506 the Ten ordered that all guns and munitions stockpiled for use in the Terraferma should be stored in the Arsenal, but quite separately from those intended for the galleys and the Mar fortresses.121 From this new store 44 pieces were available to be sent to Verona in November 1507 together with 1000 barrels of gunpowder,122 and in 113

114 115 116

117 118 119 120 121 122

Ibid., 3. Zanino Alberghetti was disgraced in 1507 for selling copper illegally and replaced by Giovanni da Argentina (Dieci, Misti, reg. 31, 199V and 232; 22 Sept. 1507 and 12 Jan. 1508). Dieci, Misti, reg. 31, 241 (24 Feb. 1508). Ibid., reg. 29, 125 (31 May 1502). Ibid., reg. 31,126 (30 Oct. 1506). Two bombardiers from Bergamo, Bernardino and Santino da Rota, were initially placed in charge of the Paduan school; but they soon gave up and were replaced by Giovanni Speroni da Caravaggio (ibid., 165V-166; 28 Apr. 1507). ST. reg. 16, 89 (2 Mar. 1509). See below, 167. Dieci, Misti, reg. 29, 226V (6 May 1503). Ibid., reg. 30, 69 (21 Feb. 1504). Ibid., reg. 31, 53 (14 Mar. 1506). I b i d . , 219V (19 N o v . 1507).

86

Military development and fighting potential February 1508 40 mobile twenty-pounders (passavolanti) were released, presumably to join D'Alviano's artillery train.123 On the eve of Agnadello the Venetian artillery with the army was commanded by Basilio della Scola, who since the days when he commanded Charles VIIFs artillery in 1494 had spent most of his time in Venetian service. Under him were four chief gunners and a train of at least 36 guns. The artillery had its own commissary, Baldissare dalle Stagnade da Verona, who was responsible for all the supplies and stores.124 Of the horses requisitioned throughout the state for the army in April 1509, half were allocated to the artillery.125 In the event, this artillery did not distinguish itself at Agnadello and was generally thought to be inferior to the French. This impression of inferiority was perhaps unduly heightened by the desertion of Basilio della Scola during the battle, but it remains probably a correct impression. It is clear that the French artillery in 1494 was better organized, more mobile and more effective in certain situations than any Italian artillery train. Venetian developments both immediately before the invasion and in the subsequent years were crucially affected by the French example. Nevertheless the traditional picture of a dramatic difference between Charles VIIFs artillery and that available in Italy must be modified. Mobile gun carriages, the use of horses to draw artillery, metal shot and properly trained gunners were not unique to the French in 1494. Venice had shown a concern for and an acceptance of all these developments in the years preceding the invasion, and the same was almost certainly true of Milan. FORTIFICATIONS AND ENGINEERING

The corollary to a revised view of the development of Italian artillery by the end of the fifteenth century must be a revised view of the fortifications against which that artillery was directed. The appearance of sophisticated gunpowder fortifications in central Italy in the second half of the fifteenth century bears this out, but it now remains to see whether the same tendencies can be observed in the Venetian state.126 123

Ibid., 237 (8 Feb. 1508). ST. reg. 16,93V (23 Mar. 1509). On Basilio della Scola, see G. Zorzi, 'Alcune notizie di Basilio della Scola, architetto militare vicentino, e delle sue fortificazioni a Vicenza e a Verona', Atti 1st. Ven., cxvii (1958-9). For the Venetian guns at Agnadello, see C. Promis, Dell'arte dell'ingegnere e dell' artigliere in Italia (Turin, 1841) 179. 125 ST. reg. 16, 98V-99 (16 Apr. 1509). 126 p o r a reassessment of the role of Italy in the early development of gunpowder fortifications and discussion of the work done in central Italy, see J. R. Hale, 'The early development of the bastion: an Italian chronology, C.1450-C.1534', in Europe in the Late Middle Ages, ed. Hale, R. Highfield and B. Smalley (London, 1965) 466-94.

124

87

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 The Terraferma state which Venice began to extend in 1404 was an area already dominated by a series of powerful walled cities, relics of the signorial states which had always taken a great interest in fortification. In each of these cities there were castles of considerable strength and round them were outworks of various types reaching out to the frontiers of the old signorie. Nearly every small town had its walls, river crossings were dominated by fortified bridges and castles, and the countryside was provided with earthwork redoubts for the defence of the rural population. Most of the major cities had a serraglio, a large area of country enclosed by ditches, ramparts and natural obstacles in which armies could be assembled and billeted safely and to which the country population could be pulled back in time of emergency. Venice also inherited well-established traditions of local contributions, both in terms of manpower and money, to fortifications. Finally the geography of the whole area was dominated by a network of rivers which both conditioned attitudes to defence and created special engineering problems and opportunities. Such was the Venetian inheritance, and during the first century of its rule the republic did little to alter the situation. For the defence of the main part of the Terraferma, the Lombard plain, it relied primarily on a strong standing army and on riverfleets.There was little attempt to create strongly fortified frontiers or to modernize radically the fortifications of the cities. However, Friuli and the eastern frontier presented different problems; here mounting pressure from the Hungarians and then the Turks placed Venice permanently on the defensive, and a concern for fortification was much more apparent. Between the collapse of the Carrara state in 1405 and the outbreak of war with Milan in early 1426 the effective frontiers of the Venetian state were the Mincio, Tartaro and Adige rivers, and the key to the defence of that frontier was the city of Verona and its associated fortifications. Hence it is in this area that we can trace most easily Venice's immediate reactions to the problems of fortification.127 In Verona itself, although the castle of S. Felice was gradually completed, the main concern was for the citadel. This was a walled enclave in the south-east corner of the city which had been created by the Visconti as a secure base for the Milanese garrison.128 Its defences faced both outwards and inwards, indicating its function as the strongpoint of an occupying force. In 1404 part of the inner walls of the citadel had been pulled down by the Veronese during the brief period of independence from Carrara rule, and after the surrender of Verona in 1405 the re-establishment 127

128

J. Law, 'The commune of Verona under Venetian rule' (unpub. D.Phil, thesis, Oxford University, 1974) 279-89; Sandri, 'Castra e bastitae del territorio Veronese', Studi storici veronesi, i (1947-8) 59-82. G. Barbetta, Le mura e le fortificazioni di Verona (Verona, 1970) 82-3.

Military development and fighting potential of the all-round security of this area became a prime preoccupation of the Venetians. Between 1413 and the early 1420s the enclave was gradually recreated very much in its old form, and the citadel of Verona served throughout the century as a base for a large contingent of Venetian infantry.129 Outside the city extensive surveys were quickly carried out by Domenico da Firenze, the Venetian chief engineer, and Giovanni Mantelino, who for nearly two decades was the chief engineer in Verona.130 Particular attention was paid to the serraglio between the Mincio and the Adige, new gates were ordered for the towns of Nogarolo and Soave,131 and decisions were taken on which of the local castles and redoubts to maintain and which to abandon. But a proposal to build a new fortress at Fagnano was abandoned because of the cost, which was reckoned to be 25,000 ducats.132 In all this Venice's initial concern was to make the local population bear the cost of whatever work was felt to be necessary. However, the growing reluctance of the communal council of Verona to authorize the raising of the necessary money, and the clear inability of the rural population to contribute on the scale required both hindered any substantial progress and eventually forced Venice to make contributions itself. Gradually a situation emerged in which, while local communities were still expected to provide all the labour and to contribute to the costs of purely local fortifications, Venice assumed responsibility for the upkeep of certain key fortresses and paid the expenses of major refortification work. From 1429 onwards the chief military engineer in the area became responsible directly to Venice rather than to the Veronese council.133 However, despite this gradual emergence of a central responsibility for fortifications, little major work was done in the area throughout the fifteenth century. The walls of Verona remained unmodified until the sixteenth century and no significant new fortresses were built. This was, of course, partly because the Veronese was no longer on the frontier after 1426, but the same picture seems to apply to most of the Venetian state in the first half of 129

130

131

132

133

Ibid., 93-4; SMi. reg. 53, 191 (16 Oct. 1421). After 1451 the garrison of the citadel was strengthened by the addition of 40-50 lances (SS. reg. 19, 44; 24 Feb. 1451). SS. reg. 3, 81 (12 Nov. 1407). For Domenico da Firenze, see G. Fasolo, 'Domenico de' Benintendi da Firenze, ingegnere del secolo xiv', AV., ser. 5, i (1927) 145-80. The engineers took with them Maestro Martino, a painter, 'qui possit loca dipingere' (L. Simeoni,' II giurista Barnaba da Morano e gli artisti Martino da Verona e Antonio da Mestre', NAV., n.s. xix (1910) 235). SMi. reg. 50,73 (23 Feb. 1414). Repairs were also ordered in the serraglio of Padua in 1417 (SMi. reg. 52, 4; 22 Mar. 1417). SMi. reg. 53, 26 (23 Jan. 1420). An earth redoubt was built at Fagnano, but it proved very difficult to get anyone to garrison it because of the marshy and unhealthy nature of the countryside. This was another factor leading to the abandonment of the project. Law, 'Verona', 200-1.

89

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 the fifteenth century. City walls badly damaged during the period of expansion were repaired, as were those of Motta in 1413 and those of Brescia after 1426.134 The critical years of 1438-41 produced aflurryof reconstruction in Peschiera and some of the surrounding towns which had been at the heart of the fighting.135 But there is little hint of innovation, or indeed of a serious preoccupation with the problems of fortification in these years. Maintenance of the army consumed all the availablefinancialresources, and there was a reluctance to squeeze the local populations any further for fear of provoking unrest. In the second half of the fifteenth century there was a growing awareness in Venice of the need for modifications to fortifications in the light of the increased effectiveness of artillery. There was also more money available for such work as the army was reduced to a peacetime footing. But, nevertheless, the work undertaken largely took the form of superficial modifications to existing defences. The thickening and scarping of walls, the building of ravelins and the clearing of fields of fire: these were the characteristics of the work on Venetian permanent fortifications in the second half of the fifteenth century. The new requirements were set out in detail in recommendations of the savi della terraferma for the renovation of the fortifications of Modon in 1462.136 At that time work on the walls of Asola along these lines was already going ahead, and subsequently work was authorized at Pontevico in 1469 and Orzinovi in 1471.137 All three towns were outlying points for the defence of Brescia, the walls of which were also scarped after 1467.138 In 1482 Adria was refortified as soon as it was captured from Ferrara, and in the late 1480s considerable work was undertaken at Crema, Feltre and Rovereto.139 These were all frontier towns, and the work done continued to take the form of modifications, particularly scarping of the walls, to make them less vulnerable to artillery. In the period after 1490 interest was concentrated on Brescia (where a new bastion was built by Giacomo Contrin), Anfo, Cremona and Caravaggio.140 The only 134

135 136 137

138 139

140

Bartolomeo di Benedetto da Piceno worked on rebuilding the walls of Motta in 1412-13 (Collegio, Commissioni Secrete, 1408-13, ioov; 15 Dec. 1412). For reconstruction in Brescia and the work of Niccolo Lupi da Vicenza, see Storia di Brescia, ii, 20. ST. reg. 1, 56 (20 Jan. 1442). SS. reg. 21, 82r-v (26 Mar. 1462). Asola became Venetian in 1441, but work on the fortifications was not authorized until 1458 and not completed until the end of the century (D. Bernoni, La vicende di Asola (Rome, 1876) 136). Pontevico was inspected by the engineer Ludovico da Crema in 1469 and reconstruction work was authorized (ST.reg.6,51V; i6Mar. i46o.),whileatOrzinovitheworkbeganin 1471 (ST.reg.6, i28v;2 Apr. 1471). Cristoforo da Soldo, 152-4; Storia di Brescia, ii, 168. For Adria, see Collegio, Commissioni Secrete, 1482-95, 16-17 (12 June 1482). Feltre was inspected in 1488 by Angelo Emiliani and Dionisio da Viterbo, and detailed plans drawn up (ibid., 122V-23; 9 Sept. 1488 and ST. reg. 10, 125V; 31 Dec. 1488). Scarping of the walls of Crema began in the same year (ST. reg. 10, 89V; 27 Mar. 1488), and Giacomo Contrin worked on the walls of Rovereto. C o n t r i n ' s torrione at Brescia collapsed shortly after t h e work was completed, a n d C o n t r i n was m a d e to rebuild it at his o w n expense a n d was b a n n e d from state contracts for a year until he was finally 90

Military development and fighting potential completely new fortress built in the western part of the Venetian state was the Rocca di Brancaleone at Ravenna, which was initiated in 1456 by Maestro Giovanfrancesco da Massa. The original intention here was to build a small additional fortress, but in the subsequent years the project expanded into a considerable bastioned castle, justified no doubt by Ravenna's exposed position on the Venetian flank.141 Apart from this, the fortifications of the main cities were left largely untouched; it was only in 1509 in the face of the threatened French invasion that Bartolomeo d'Alviano at last initiated a radical refortification of Vicenza.142 However, in Friuli the situation was somewhat different; here the growing threat of Turkish incursions in the 1470s and the damaging defeat of the Venetian forces in the area in 1477 led to a completely new appraisal of the fortifications of the Isonzo. The first solution tried was a defensive line of trenches and earthwork redoubts from just below Gorizia to Aquileia along the west bank of the Isonzo. This work, commenced in 1474, was entrusted to Maestro Cittadino de' Conti della Frattina in 1477; but its inadequacy was proved in that very year by the ease with which the Turks broke through.143 The emphasis then switched to the creation of strongpoints into which the army could be withdrawn and from which it could strike out at the Turks on theflankand rear as they advanced. Enrico Laufer da Francia and Giovanni Borella took charge of the construction of a serraglio between Foglianica and Gradisca large enough to hold 2400 cavalry,144 and by 1481 it had been decided to concentrate on the two fortresses at the extreme points. Gradisca was converted from the isolated fortress originally envisaged into a fully equipped garrison town with a new church, a castle and extensive barracks for troops.145 Six hundred survivors of the siege of Scutari who had to be evacuated when that city was surrendered to the Turks in 1479 were resettled in the new fortress town.146 In 1497 Giacomo Contrin, one of Venice's most experienced military

141

142 143 144 145

146

cleared of responsibility (Died, Misti, reg. 26, 131 and 22iv; 31 July 1494 and 18 Nov. 1495). Modifications to the fortifications at Cremona were authorized in 1502 to specifications drawn up by Vetturino Moron (Died, Misti, reg. 29, 97; 3 Mar. 1502), and consideration of the needs of Caravaggio was initiated in the same year (ibid., 133; 20 June 1502). SS. reg. 20, 113 (31 Dec. 1456), 145 (20 Mar. 1458). For details of the fortress which eventually emerged in Ravenna, see L. Marinelli, La rocca di Ravenna (Bologna, 1906); C. Ricci, 'Per la storia della rocca di Ravenna', Felix Ravenna, i (1911) 1-7; F. Mancini and W. Vichi, Castelli, rocche e torri di Romagna (Bologna, n.d.) 180-1; S. Bernicoli, Le torri della citta e del territorio di Ravonna (Ravenna, 1923) 47, 73. Zorzi, 'Basilio della Scola', 161-4. A. Mosetti, 'La rocca di Gradisca', Studi goriziani, ix (1933) 133-7; Malipiero, Annali veneti, 115. ST. reg. 8, 31 (14 Dec. 1478). Ibid., 119 (8 Mar. 1481); see M. Sanuto, Itinerario nella terraferma (Padua, 1847) 183 for a plan for the new fortress. Romanin, iv, 383. 91

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 engineers, completed the circuit of walls and added an additional bastion.147 However, once again in 1499 the fortifications of the Isonzo proved inadequate in the face of a Turkish invasion, and Leonardo da Vinci, who was sent to inspect the defences in 1500, pronounced them insufficient.148 In 1508 part of the work of Laufer and Borella was pulled down as outdated,149 and the occupation of Gorizia and Trieste by D'Alviano in the same year made the siting of a key base at Gradisca something of an anachronism.150 If Venice's concern with expensive permanent fortifications for specific towns and castles seems to have been limited in the fifteenth century, her involvement in the development offieldfortifications was a good deal more significant. While permanent fortifications were seen as a substitute for large standing forces in the fifteenth century, field fortifications very much accompanied the development of standing armies. They required not only large numbers of men to prepare them but also when used strategically in the form of defence lines, large numbers of men to defend them. In tactical terms also they were usually used in association with large armies. The field fortification came into its own in the wars in Lombardy in the first half of the fifteenth century when large, relatively slow-moving armies, operating in open country with considerable forces of auxiliaries and pioneers available, resorted to extensive works of earth ramparts, ditches and wooden palisades in a variety of situations. The growth of artillery also speeded up the development offieldfortifications, both to protect troops in the open against the new weapons, and to protect the guns themselves, particularly in siege situations.151 The strategic use offieldfortifications by Venice is best illustrated by the defence of the Livenza line in 1411-12 against the Hungarians. At that time the river Livenza roughly marked the frontier of the Venetian state, but even a century later when Venetian frontiers were far to the east the architect Sanmicheli recommended that Venice should concentrate her defences against the Turks on the Livenza.152 The riverflowsfrom the foothills to the 147

148

149 150 151 152

S S . r e g . 3 6 , 167 ( 6 O c t . 1497); S a n u t o , ii, 7 0 0 , 9 0 2 , 9 6 4 . O n C o n t r i n ' s w o r k see also A . M o s e t t i , ' I I torrione della Campana nella fortezza di Gradisca', Memorie stork he forogiuliesi, xxvi (1930) 189-204. This stage of the work was completed by 1499 when Contrin was reported to be unemployed, and his services were once again engaged by Venice for 20 ducats a month (ST. reg. 13, 90; 30 Aug. 1499). Leonardo da Vinci, / / Codice Atlantico, ed. Augusto Marinono (Florence, 1979) viii, 31-4; F. Savorgnan di Brazza, Leonardo da Vinci in Friuli e il suo progetto difortificazione dell1 Isonzo (Udine, 1935); E. Solmi,'Leonardo da Vinci e la repubblica di Venezia, nov. 1499-apr. i$oo\ASL., ser. 4, x (1908) 327-60. S S . r e g . 4 1 , 45V (5 O c t . 1507), 62V-63 (23 J a n . 1508). Tamaro, i, 369-70. Mallett, Mercenaries and their Masters, 168; Pieri, Rinascimento e la crisi militare, 276-7. M. Sanmicheli,' Discorso circa il fortificar la citta di Udine', ed. V. Joppi in Alcuni documenti di storia friulana, AS I., n.s. xiv (1861). 92

Military development and fighting potential sea some thirty miles east of Venice. The upper stretches between Sacile and Motta are fastflowingwith high banks; defence works were needed at only a few places where there were fords. Below Motta the river begins to flow across marshy land, and again the approaches and the crossings are few. On 20 July 1411 detailed instructions were given by the College to Bertolino Zamboni, an experienced soldier with some skill as an engineer, to prepare defences over a 22-mile stretch of the Livenza.153 The banks were to be heightened in places with wooden palisades, and all the fords covered by ditches and ramparts. Earth redoubts were to be built at the key points, and bunkhouses for the defending troops and pioneers. Fields of vision were to be cleared on the east bank. Pioneers and carpenters were called in from all over the Terraferma to carry out the work, and four engineers, including Andrea Bon from Venice, and Giovanni d'Este and Jacobino da Pavia from Padua, were enlisted to supervise. The line certainly served to check the Hungarian advance, although they did succeed in crossing in the autumn of 1412. However, the speed with which they then swept into the Vicentino indicated how valuable the Livenza line had been to Venice in the early stages of the war. Field fortifications on this scale were certainly not common, and the only other occasion when wefindsomething similar was in 1451 when Venice was fortifying the line of the Adda against Milan.154 In 1463 the new Hexamilion rebuilt across the isthmus of Corinth to defend the Morea was something more than a field fortification. It consisted of a wall twelve feet high and a double ditch, with 136 towers. Forfifteendays 30,000 workmen laboured to reconstruct this basically very traditional type of strategic fortification.155 The other main use of large-scale field fortifications was in the serragli, of which the most important for Venice was that of Verona. Although the serraglio of Verona ceased to serve as a frontier defence to the west in 1426, it still fulfilled that function to the south-west and south for most of the century. In the late 1460s there was a renewed burst of interest in its upkeep and effectiveness which enables us to get an impression of what sort of defences were involved. Between 1473 and 1477 the chief military engineer in Verona, Giorgio Sommariva, presented a series of reports on the state of the serraglio.156 The key to the system lay in linking up natural obstacles, particularly rivers and naturally marshy areas, with man-made fortifications 153

154 155 156

SS. reg. 4, 174 (15 May 1411); Collegio, Commissioni Secrete, 1408-13, 47-9 (20 July 1411). In September a committee of military experts was sent to inspect the progress of the fortifications (SS. reg. 4, 192; 1 Sept. 1411). SS. reg. 19 passim. Lopez, 'II principio della guerra veneta-turca', 79; Romanin, iv, 316. C. Cipolla (ed.), 'La relazione di Giorgio Sommariva', NAV., vi (1893) 111-216. A similar report is also to be found in the Gonzaga archives (ASMa., Archivio Gonzaga, x, 3668).

93

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 in the form of castles, walls and earth ramparts and redoubts. Sommariva pointed out that there was no point in keeping up the castles and earthworks if some attention was not also paid to preserving the marches. This, in fact, had not been done, as the local Veronese landlords had been busy draining the marches to provide good agricultural land, and diverting the streams to run their mills. As a result whole stretches of the natural defences of the serraglio were no longer effective. Following this report the Council of Ten ordered that the new irrigation ditches and river diversions should be broken down, to the intense resentment of the local landowners.157 The controversy raged on into the 1480s and it was only in i486 that Venice recognized that defence based on putting whole areas of agricultural land out of use was a somewhat anachronistic concept.158 However, the idea of the serraglio was not dead, and in 1492 Venice set about creating a new one in the Polesine round Badia Polesine where marches remained a natural feature of the landscape and local landowning interests were perhaps less vociferous.159 Examples of more localized engineering work employed for military purposes are abundant in this period. Fortified camps were a commonplace, as were earthwork redoubts and fairly complex systems of field fortifications to protect besieging armies. Carmagnola, in 1426, dug a ditchfivemiles long round Brescia to assist in his siege of the castles of the city, and the elaborate quality of the siegeworks used at Novara in 1495 indicate that such methods were no novelty in Italy.160 Mining and countermining were techniques that were employed throughout thefifteenthcentury, and indeed as early as 1405 Domenico da Firenze is said to have mined the Paduan fortress at Castelcarro.161 Similarly, bridging techniques were an essential part of the military engineer's art in Lombard warfare. In 1437 Gattamelata tried to get his troops across the Adda on a bridge of boats but was foiled by a sudden spate of the river.162 In the War of Ferrara the crossing of the Po was the key to Venetian success or failure in her attack on Ferrara. For this purpose two great floating bridges were prepared in Venice by Dionisio da Viterbo and taken down to the scene of operations by Bartolomeo Bon,163 while the Veronese engineer Maestro Bassano built a great permanent bridge at 57 58 59 60 61

62 63

Died, Misti, reg. 20, 127V (24 Oct. 1481). Ibid., reg. 22, 130 (29 Dec. 1484), i75r-v (28 May 1485); reg. 23, 63 (12 July i486). SS. reg. 34, 141 (4 Dec. 1492). Schullian, ii passim. C. Promis, 'Biografie di ingegneri militari italiani dal secolo xiv alia meta del xvm', Miscellanea di storia italiana, xiv (1874) 30. Eroli, 92-3. Sanuto, Commentarii della guerra di Ferrara, 50; Romanin, iv, 406. For Bon's role in this enterprise, see Collegio, Commissioni Secrete, 1482-95, 27V (13 Nov. 1482).

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Military development and fighting potential Lagoscuro, which was the focal point of the Venetian attack, protected by two triangular bastions with walls twenty feet thick.164 The War of Ferrara was also the occasion for another famous feat of impromptu military engineering, the creation in two nights of a causeway across the marshes of the Tartaro for Roberto da Sanseverino's army to cross unexpectedly into the Ferrarese in May 1482.165 The significance of such works lay as much in the feat of organizing large contingents of local labour as in any actual engineering skill. For the major campaigns the labour force was collected from all over the Terraferma, rural communities being obliged to furnish labour for defence works, particularly if they had no troops billeted on them. The pioneers were provided with their keep and a nominal wage, and often could be away from their homes for weeks at a time.166 The engineers and architects themselves are somewhat elusivefiguresin Venetian military history of this period. Domenico da Firenze, who assisted Venice during the siege of Padua after his capture, was an engineer of considerable reputation, but most of the other figures were essentially local and little-known men. In the first half of the century they were usually men whose main responsibility was as engineers employed by the communal councils of one or other of the Terraferma cities. However, in the second half of the century Venice does seem to have created the beginnings of a central military engineer's office. Ludovico da Crema was working on fortifications in various parts of the state between at least 1469 and the mid 1480s, and the Frenchman Enrico Laufer was another important figure of this period. Dionisio da Viterbo, Giovanni Ludovico da Imola, who had been with Federigo da Montefeltro, and Giacomo Contrin all held an unofficial position as chief engineer in turn through the last two decades of the century.167 In 1506 Venice acquired a military engineer of international 164

165 166

167

ST. reg. 11, 91 v (3 Jan 1492). According to some accounts, a new type of marble-sheathed wall was used on the bastions at Ponte Lagoscuro (A. Hershey, Alfonso II and the Artistic Revival of Naples, New Haven, Conn., 1969, 86). Piva, Guerra di Ferrara, i, 76-9. In 1482 300 guastat or i were collected from the villages of the Bresciano and taken to work at Figarolo for two months (ASB., Territoriale, reg. A, 5; 7 July 1482). Dionisio da Viterbo was employed in the War of Ferrara when Ludovico da Crema and Enrico Laufer were said to be getting too old (ST. reg. 8, 162V; 19 July 1482). He worked at Feltre in 1488 and was finally declared redundant in 1491 (ST. reg. 11, 86v; 17 Nov. 1491). There seems to be no justification for Rawdon Brown's suggestion (Sanuto, Itinerario nella terraferma, xi n. 12) that Dionisio was a classical nickname for the better-known Francesco Aleardi. Giovanni Ludovico da Imola was taken on full time in 1489 having previously worked for the Venetians at Cervia (ST. reg. 10,146; 1 June 1489). He was still one of the leading Venetian engineers in 1500 when he was sent to inspect fortifications in Friuli (ST. reg. 13, 120V; 13 Mar. 1500). Giacomo Contrin worked at Rovereto, Brescia, Gradisca and Candia, and was also responsible for frescoes in SS. Faustina e Giovita in Brescia (Mosetti, 'Torrione della Campana', 190).

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Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 standing when the Council of Ten employed Fra Giocondo, until recently in French service, and dispatched him to inspect fortifications in Corfu and the Morea.168 These engineers worked closely with the senior condottieri and infantry constables, and sometimes committees of soldiers, engineers and Venetian nobles were set up to plan and supervise fortification improvements. In 1500 such a committee, made up of Gianpaolo Manfroni, a senior cavalry commander, Gorlino da Ravenna, the captain of infantry, four engineers and two Venetian nobles, toured Friuli inspecting the fortifications and making decisions about their improvement.169 Luigi Avogadro was one of the soldiers whose advice was particularly sought about fortification work in the Bresciano.170 When in 1513 Sanmicheli was called upon to advise on the fortifications of Friuli against the Turks and the Germans he proposed that there should be a good castle at Udine which would safeguard the city for Venice (rather than new walls which would protect the inhabitants), strong fortresses on the main access routes through the mountains, and a fortified line on the Livenza to which the army could fall back to protect Venice itself.171 Embodied in this advice were the principles which had dominated Venice's thinking about fortifications throughout the fifteenth century. What was missing was the most essential point of all - that Venice's main defence lay in a strong standing army. RIVER WARFARE

A description of Venice's military activities and development in the early Renaissance would not be complete without some reference to the river fleets which at this stage played a considerable role in the land fighting. It is scarcely surprising that a city like Venice with its maritime traditions and the resources of expertise in thefieldof naval warfare should seek to utilize that experience in its land campaigns, and the Lombard plain with its wide, usually slow-flowing rivers was ideal terrain for the deployment of river fleets in support of the armies. The mouths of the two main rivers in the system, the Po and the Adige, werefirmlyunder Venetian control, and fleets built and assembled in Venice could be dispatched quickly to the scene of thefightingin central Lombardy. Entering from the Po, the main tributaries of the Mincio, Oglio and Adda could be navigated by small craft for much of 168 169 170 171

Died, Misti, reg. 31, 74 (28 May 1506); Sanuto, vi, 442. ST. reg. 13, 120V (13 Mar. 1500). Dieci, Misti, reg. 29, 97 and 133 (3 Mar. and 20 June 1502). Sanmicheli, 'Discorso' passim.

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Military development and fighting potential their length, while such fleets could also be introduced from the Adriatic into the main rivers of Friuli. The components of thesefleetswere oared craft of all types from full-size war galleys on the Po and Lake Garda down to barche, which were little more than rowing boats. Specifically designed for river use was the galleon, which was probably a small galley with an upper deck over the oarsmen on which troops and guns could be carried.172 Also used were ganzaruoli and rodeguardi, the latter having a crew of 24.173 The barca in 1404 had a crew of 5, 2 crossbowmen and 3 oarsmen, and was equipped with a small bombard.174 By 1482 barche carried crews of 10.175 The crews of these fleets varied relatively little from those of the main Venetian sea-going fleets: oarsmen from the lagoon and increasingly from Dalmatia, crossbowmen from Venice itself, and a leavening of professional infantry. The commanders of the river fleets were always Venetian nobles, as were the patrons of the galleys and larger craft; even contingents of barche had a noble in command of eachflotillaoften craft. Here indeed was an area in which Venetians in large numbers played a significant role in land warfare. In the very first campaign of the fifteenth century the fleets were very much in evidence. A mixed fleet commanded by Marco Grimani was operating on the Po by June 1404, while 150 barche were patrolling the marshy Polesine area to prevent help reaching Padua from Ferrara.176 By the autumn of that year another fleet had appeared on the Adige to assist with the siege of Verona, and in 1405 afleetof 100 barche on the Brenta cooperated with the army besieging Padua.177 In the peaceful years that followed this war a small Po fleet was kept in being to patrol the river and protect Venetian merchants using it. It consisted of one galeot of 22 benches, three of the larger galleons and six barche.118 In 1412 afleeton the Livenza under Pietro Loredan assisted in the defence of the fortified line, carrying supplies to the army and bombarding the Hungarian positions.179 This fleet consisted of 3 galleys, 3 galleons, 28 ganzaruoli and 50 barche.180 Floating gun platforms were used in 1419 to bombard the walls of Prata.181 172

F. C. Lane, Navires et constructeurs a Venise pendant la Renaissance (rev. ed., Paris, 1965) 47; A. Jal,

Glossaire nautique (Paris, 1848-50) s.v. 'galion'. Malipiero, Annali veneti, 253. Joppi, 'Cronachetta', 307. Malipiero, 253. SS. reg. 2, 21 (23 June 1404); Joppi, 307. SS. reg. 2, 66 (15 Oct. 1404); Sanuto, Vite de dogi, 809, 817. SMi. reg. 48, i6v (16 June 1408). SS. reg. 5, 6 (18 Mar. 1412); Collegio, Commissioni Secrete, 1408-13, 71 v and 76 (May-June 1412). Sanuto, Vite de dogi, 862. Cogo, 'Sottomissione del Friuli' 19.

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Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 With the outbreak of war with Milan in January 1426 afleetof 10 galleys, 40 galleons and 20 barche was ordered and began to assemble on the Po under Francesco Bembo; thisfleetoperated as far as the mouth of the Ticino just below Pavia.182 Bitter fighting took place with the Milanese river fleet, and indeed in June 1431 the Venetian Po fleet, then under the command of Niccolo Trevisan, was badly defeated below Cremona. Trevisan had 100 boats under his command, which was considerably more than the Milanese fleet. But hisfleetwas caught in a cross-fire from the river banks, and he lost 28 galleons and 8000 men. Carmagnola, who had supreme command over both land and river forces, was blamed in some quarters for not moving quickly enough to help the Po fleet, and this was a potent factor in the growing suspicion of him in Venice. But at the time it was Trevisan and his senior commanders who were sacked and disgraced.183 In the crucial campaigns between 1438 and 1441 river fleets again played a major part. At this timefleetswere operating on both the Po and the Adige, but it was the Milanese with Mantuan support who, in 1439, succeeded in getting afleeton the Adige by means of a canal dug for the purpose between Panego and the river.184 Gattamelata failed to stop this operation, and with the help of the fleet Piccinino captured Legnago and Porto and established control over the middle reaches of the Adige. In response to this Venice built a new fleet of galleons in Verona, and this fleet, co-operating with Francesco Sforza and Gattamelata driving up from the south, managed to re-establish control of the river.185 Meanwhile an even more ambitious amphibious project was being conducted on Lake Garda. A small fleet had been operating on the lake for some years, but in late 1438 it was decided in Venice that the only way to keep besieged Brescia supplied was by establishing superiority on the lake and sending in supplies by water. The shipbuilding resources of the lakeside towns were limited, and so Niccolo Sorbolo, a Cretan architect, was given the task of getting 80 craft, including at least 2 war galleys, from the Adige into Lake Garda overland. The difficult operation was completed in fifteen days in February 1439 under the cover of Gattamelata's army. It took 120 oxen to haul each galley over thefive-mileisthmus which separates the river from the lake.186 However, this first fleet was defeated on the lake by the 182 183

184

185

186

SS. reg. 9, 64 (12 Jan. 1426), 65 (13 Jan. 1426). Battistella, 273-89; A. Baldrighi, 'La battaglia navale sul Po del 1431', ASL., ser. 10, iii (1977) 331-6. G. Soranzo, 'Battaglie sul Garda nella guerra veneta-viscontea', Nova Historia, xiv (1962) 50. In the previous year Venice ordered the preparation of 60 galleons and 5 galleys for use on the rivers (SS. reg. 14, 131V; 14 July 1438). SS. reg. 15, 25 (10 June 1440); Leo, a Cretan master shipbuilder, was sent from Venice, and 15-20 carpenters from Padua, to prepare 25 galleons in Verona. Soranzo, 'Battaglie sul Garda', 46ft; id., 'L'ultima campagna del Gattamelata', 92-4.

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Military development and fighting potential Milanese under the experienced naval commander Biagio da Assereto, and it was decided to create a second fleet by sending the prepared timbers overland and assembling them in the lakeside port of Torbolo. The new fleet was planned to consist of eight galleys and four small sailing ships, and it succeeded in winning control of the lake in August 1440.187 The commander, Stefano Contarini, was then ordered to proceed down the Mincio for a co-ordinated attack on Mantua, but this never materialized.188 The Garda fleet remained in being for the remainder of the war and when it was finally laid up in 1454 there were still two war galleys in service.189 In the summer of 1448 afleetof 256 craft was being prepared to enter the Po and give support to Attendolo's army. The veteran Pietro Loredan was to command it. But the death of Loredan and the news of the defeat at Caravaggio, which effectively ended campaigning for the year, brought preparations to a halt.190 The War of Ferrara saw what was to be a final flurry of activity in this interesting field of warfare. An unprecedented number of craft were prepared in April 1482 for the campaign against Ferrara, which, with the proximity of the Po to the objective and the marshy nature of the land across which the Venetian armies had to move, was likely to be ideally suited to amphibious warfare. Over 400 vessels of all types and sizes were involved, in addition to the two huge floating bridges which were to be used for getting the army across the Po.191 However, it was becoming increasingly apparent in this war that riverfleetswere ineffective against well-directed artillery fire from the banks.192 There was no way in which small craft could be adapted to meet this new threat, and the days of effective river warfare were clearly numbered. Venetian river fleets in the fifteenth century made a significant contribution to the republic's strategy. They maintained essential supply lines in an area where the most useful routes were the water routes. They contributed to the defence of the state, the natural frontiers of which were rivers. But above all they brought a new dimension to the increasingly complex world of war: they provided a mobile platform for the bombardment of enemy positions and cities, they were able to infiltrate behind enemy

188 190

192

SS. rcg. 14, 230-3 iv (10 Oct. 1439). SS. reg. 15, 37V (29 Aug. 1440). ST. reg. 3, iiiv-112 (26 Apr. 1454). Soranzo, 'Battaglie sul Garda', 41-3. Malipiero, Annali veneti, 253; Romanin, iv, 405. Collegio, Commissioni Secrete, 1482-95, 17-50, contains many of the commissions given to commanders of river fleets during this war. The fate of the river fleet on the Po in late 1509 was final convincing evidence of the vulnerability ofriverfleetsby this time (R. Finlay,' Venice, the Po expedition and the end of the League of Cambrai, 1509-10', Studies in Modern European History and Culture, ii (1976) 37-72).

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Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 lines and cut communications, and they could assist armies in the assault of river positions. Finally they brought large numbers of Venetians, both nobles and common seamen and crossbowmen, into direct contact with the land war from which Venice itself was sometimes dangerously remote.

100

The organization and administration of the Venetian army

Throughout the fifteenth century the organization of the Venetian army continued to be based largely on the condotte between individual captains and the state. However, presented in these stark terms this gives an unduly static and conservative picture of that organization. During the century the nature of the contractual relationship changed considerably; contracts grew longer, embracing both war and peace service, and the large majority of the condottieri became accustomed to permanent service with the renewal of their contracts a formality. This increasing degree of permanence meant a growing need for a permanent administration which supervised the contracts, carried out inspections and provided centrally for the needs of the army. Inevitably the self-dependence of the companies was eroded, and many of the support services which had, in the fourteenth century, been handled by companies themselves as they moved from one employ to another became the responsibility of the employing state. At the same time considerable sections of the army were no longer organized on the basis of contractual employment, and these involved a centralized administration even more closely. Hence the starting point for this chapter must be a discussion of the emerging military administration. During the wars of the early years of the century military administration was in the hands of Venetian nobles, elected for short terms, and a group of military advisers, mostly men from the Terraferma nobility who had previous military experience. These men, among them such figures as Ludovico Buzzacarini and Paolo di Leone, both Paduans and former advisers of the Carrara, were employed in various capacities ranging from subordinate military commanders to recruiters, inspectors and informal military advisers.1 But it was Venetians who predominated and took the 1

On Buzzacarini, see DBL, xv, 643-6. Paolo di Leone was married into the Venetian Soranzo family, and after his capture, while fighting for the Carraresi in 1405, he served Venice in a variety of advisory capacities, particularly during the first Hungarian War. He advised on the Livenza fortifications and was frequently Venetian representative at the camp of Pandolfo Malatesta (see, in particular, SS. reg. 5, 56, 84 and 124V; 1412-13). Another of these earlyfigureswas the Veronese Frignano da Sesso, who completed his active life as captain of the citadel in Verona (SMi. reg. 54, 88v; 18 Feb. 1423). IOI

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 main responsibility for the organization of the army. In addition to the proveditors, whose role was well established as the civilian advisers to the army commander and therefore his link with Venice, there appeared the gubernatores, who were also usually Venetian nobles. Their task was camp organization: the supervision of provisioning services, the maintenance of discipline and occasionally military command. In 1413 two officials known as executores were appointed, both Venetian nobles, to fulfil a variety of administrative functions in the army.2 In addition the title 'proveditor' was used loosely to apply not only to the senior civilian representatives whose duty was to stay close to the captain-general, but also to younger nobles sent out from time to time to help with provisioning, enrolling of troops and inspections. In the autumn of 1404, and again in the spring of 1405, four nobles were elected to go out to the camp and supervise the inspections of the army.3 The civilian paymaster was also in evidence from the start; he was the man who actually brought the money out from Venice and was responsible for its distribution. At first the paymasters had fairly wide responsibilities in the military administration, but gradually they became distinct from the officials who arranged the condotte and decided how much was actually to be paid to each individual or company.4 It was this latter function which became the basis of the growing responsibility of the collateral (collaterale). The first mention of a collateral with the army in the field was in March 1405.5 Prior to this the collateral was a resident official to be found in many Lombard cities responsible for local recruiting and payment of garrison troops. There were many precedents for such officials in the Milanese state; they presided over the banca, the desk at which men were enrolled and at which they received their pay.6 The need for a semi-permanent official watching over the condottieri, attending to the renewals of their condotte in the field, keeping an eye on their companies, assessing their pay on the basis of their actual strength, and having a particular responsibility to prevent desertion - all this was clearly the outcome of a long campaign. For a brief campaign of one season renewal of condotte was not needed and what recruiting was required was carried out away from the campaigning area by specially dispatched recruiters. Pay did not become a complex problem; a brief inspection would reveal what a company was owed for what was probably its one and only payment. But 1404-5 produced the situation of a 2 3 4 5 6

SS. reg. 5, ioov(i2jan. i4i3)andCollegio, Commissioni Secrete, 1408-13, i i o v - m (28 Jan. 1413). SS. reg. 2, 67 and 93 (19 Oct. 1404 and 2 Mar. 1405). For a description of the role of the paymaster in these years, see the instructions given to Niccolo Baseggio and Giovanni Dolfin in 1412 (SS. reg. 5, 22; 10 May 1412). SS. reg. 2, 95V (8 Mar. 1405). C. Santoro, Gli uffici del dominio sforzcsco (Milan, 1947) xxvii-xxix. 102

The organization and administration of the army large army in the field for nearly eighteen months, with the contracts all being renewed to the companies in active service on at least two occasions. In this situation the role of the collateral assumed new dimensions. The man appointed to carry out these new and more onerous responsibilities in 1405, Antonio Belegno - a Venetian noble - had a salary of 100 ducats a month and was expected to employ seven followers: three armed men, two pages and two notaries. He was also allowed to engage up to four informers amongst the troops who would keep him alerted to disaffection and impending desertions. In addition he was allowed 50 infantry as his personal bodyguard.7 Belegno, in fact, coupled the duties of paymaster with those of collateral, but in the subsequent years the two tended to become distinct. In the years of peace between 1405 and 1411 the collaterals reverted to being resident in the Terraferma cities, and the known holders of the office were no longer Venetians. In Verona Domenico Bonaconte (or Bonagiunta) da Fondi, a Veronese lawyer, was collateral from at least 1406 onwards, while the parallel figure in Padua was Antonio Facino da Vicenza. It was Bonaconte who was sent in 1411 to the Romagna to enrol the company of Carlo Malatesta and who, on his return, acted as collateral with the army alongside a Venetian noble in 1412.8 Antonio Facino had a long career in Venetian service and was still acting as a special emissary for recruiting purposes as late as 1431.9 In the two wars against the Hungarians there was again a tendency to place Venetians in this key role, but the emergence of long-serving professional administrators had clearly begun.10 The situation therefore in the first quarter of the century was one in which traditional signorial and Visconti methods were fused with a Venetian desire to control as much as possible. The growing need for continuity in the organization of a permanent army, the expanding dimensions of the Venetian state, and the tendency for financing to become decentralized as Terraferma cities assumed more responsibilities for army pay all weakened the case for direct Venetian control. By the 1420s, and particularly after 1425, the problems of army administration had assumed new proportions. At this stage the variety of categories of civilian officials attached to the SS. reg. 2, 95V (8 Mar. 1405). Ibid., 181 (14 Jan. 1406); Collegio, Commissioni Secrete, 1408-13, 63V (28 Dec. 1411), 81 (17 July 1412); SS. reg. 5, 59 (31 Aug. 1412). Antonio Facino was inspecting troops in the Padovano in 1407 (SS. reg. 3, 52V; 20 Jan. 1407), was collateral in Padua in 1410 (SMi. reg. 48,133V; 23 Apr. 1410), was special emissary to Jacopo Caldora in the Marches in 1426 (SS. reg. 9, 132; 19 June 1426) and was still serving as a recruiter in 1431 (SS. reg. 11, 189V; 7 May 1431). The collateral elected to work with Filippo Arcelli in 1419 was Delfino Venier (SS. reg. 7,72V; 2 May 1419). 103

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 army had been reduced to four: the proveditors and paymasters, who were always Venetian nobles; the collaterals, who by this time were nonVenetians; and the supply officers, who were drawn from a number of sources. Of these the proveditors were essentially supervisors and advisers and their role will be discussed in the next chapter; the paymasters and supply officers were subordinate officials. It was in the hands of the collaterals that the main responsibilities for army administration were concentrated. That the collaterals achieved in the next thirty years the authority and importance that they did was, of course, in part due to the circumstances of the wars. But perhaps even more it was due to the personality and activities of one man, Belpetro Manelmi da Vicenza. Manelmi came from a Vicentine noble family and was probably trained as a notary or lawyer. He took over as collateral in Verona from Domenico Bonaconte in 1416.11 But prior to that he had already been concerned with military affairs in his native city of Vicenza. In November 1413 he was sent by the Venetian podesta in Vicenza to Venice to communicate certain facts and recommendations about the defences of the Vicentino, which had recently been inspected. In such circumstances it was usual that the emissary would himself have first-hand knowledge of the report he was presenting and probably had carried out the inspection himself. As a result of Manelmi's recommendations certain fortification repairs were authorized and some replacement of obsolete equipment ordered.12 From 1416 until the late 1420s Manelmi remained in Verona. In 1419 he was again in Venice to explain that the Porta dei Calzolai needed repairs.13 In 1424 he emerged victorious and vindicated from a confrontation with Giovanni Contarini, the Venetian camarlengo in Verona, who had accused him of financial frauds. The subsequent investigation showed that it was Contarini himself who was at fault, and Manelmi was beginning to gain a reputation in Venice for administrative efficiency and probity.14 In 1425 his salary was increased to allow him to employ a notary in his office; the relevant Senate minute described him as 'prudens', 'discreto' and 'fidelissimus'.15 Even earlier wefindhis name mentioned in a familiar fashion in correspondence between the Venetian Niccolo Leonardi 11

12 13 14 15

ASVe., Archivio Camera Fiscale, reg. 98, 31 (15 Jan. 1416). His salary was to be 10 ducats a month. I am indebted for this reference and for a number of others from the Veronese archives on Manelmi to Dr John Law. SMi. reg. 50, 44V (3 Nov. 1413). SMi. reg. 52, 140 (2 Jan. 1419). ASVe., Antico archivio del Comune, Reg. litterarum ducalium, reg. 9, 101 and n6v (27 May 1423 and 13 Mar. 1424). SMi. reg. 55, 126V (13 June 1425). 104

The organization and administration of the army and Guarino Guarini, which suggests that he had influential contacts in both Venice and Verona.16 The next stage of Manelmi's career came with the outbreak of war in Lombardy. The first collateral attached to Carmagnola's camp in April 1426 was Jacopo da Varano, but by early 1429 this post was held by Manelmi.17 By 1431 he enjoyed the title of collateral-general, suggesting a position of pre-eminence in a burgeoning organization.18 This position he held until his death on 16 February 1455. The duties which Manelmi carried out during these three decades in which he was chief administrator in the Venetian army were manifold. His first responsibility was to keep a record of all the contracts, many of which he played a part in negotiating, to carry out inspections and to enforce the regulations which governed the employment and service of the condottieri. While the ultimate decisions concerning the employment and control of cavalry captains lay with the captain-general and the authorities in Venice, Manelmi had almost a free hand in the regulation of the infantry forces. When Florentine infantry arrived in Lombardy to join the Venetian army in 1431 it was Manelmi who inspected them and wrote an angry report to the doge on their wretched state of preparedness.19 When some demobilization was in progress in 1433 it was again Manelmi who made the crucial recommendations on which infantry constables to dismiss and which to retain.20 As a result of his part in the reductions of the army in that year he was blamed in some quarters for the desertion of Antonello da Siena and some of the other leading condottieri who had taken umbrage at the ruthless way in which numbers were pruned. The Council of Ten categorically rejected these suggestions and recognized that 'Belpetro is most faithful to our state and with how much diligence he has exercised and continues to exercise the office entrusted to him.'21 In the following year when he was proposed for the job of negotiating the vital condotta with Gattamelata and Brandolini, Paolo Venier opposed the idea in the Senate on the grounds that he was 'unwelcome and hateful to all our men-at-arms', and called for his dismissal.22 Venier was decisively overruled, but it is scarcely surprising R. Sabbadini, Epistolario di Guarino Veronese, in Miscellanea di storia veneta della R. Dep. di storia patria, ser. 3, xiv (Venice, 1919) 123. Niccolo Leonardi's letter from Murano is dated late Sept. 1420. SS. reg. 9, ioov (9 Apr. 1426); reg. 10, 227 (24 Jan. 1429). SS. reg. 11, 202V (22 June 1431). F. C. Pellegrini, Sulla repubblica Jiorentina al tempo di Cosimo il Vecchio: appendice di documenti tratti dal R. Archivio di Stato di Firenze relativi alia tesi (Pisa, 1891) xxviii, lxxxviii.

SS. reg. 12, 182 (4 June 1433). Dieci, Misti, reg. 11, 87 (23 Sept. 1433): 'Belpetrus est fidelissimus nostri dominii et cum quanta diligentia exercuit et exercet officium sibi commissum.' SS. reg. 13, 63V (17 Apr. 1434): 'ingratus et odiosus omnibus nostris gentibus armigeris'.

105

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 that Manelmi's methods should arouse the resentment of some of the condottieri. His efficiency and diligence became a legend for the rest of the century; his practice of constantly riding round the billets carrying out regular inspections and probing into all the traditional malpractices of the condottieri made him the target of much abuse amongst the soldiers, but the object of grateful nostalgia in the collective memory of the Venetians.23 It is probable that this unpopularity with the captains gradually subsided as they became accustomed to Manelmi's methods and realized that in the last resort he was on their side as his reports and activity pressured Venice into according reasonable treatment to its soldiers. Certainly he was a close confidant of successive captains-general, and every proveditor who was sent to the camp was urged to listen carefully to his advice. Throughout the constant alarms and excursions of the wars in Lombardy, and particularly at the moments when Venetian troops were being withdrawn into quarters, one catches glimpses of the figure of Manelmi moving about with his following of vice-collaterals, notaries and guards, keeping his eye on every aspect of the army's life.24 Continuity and the effective utilization of accumulated experience are, of course, the keys to Venetian success in the fifteenth century, and nowhere is this more true than in the story of Belpetro Manelmi and his assistants. Under him were five vice-collaterals, theoretically based on the main cities of the Terraferma but in fact almost as ubiquitous as their chief. In so far as one can judge these men seem to have been hand-picked by Manelmi and they drew their remuneration not from central funds but from small authorized retentions on all financial transactions which they organized. The most prominent of the vice-collaterals was Chierighino Chiericati, another Vicentine noble, who appeared as Manelmi's secretary in the early 1430s and by 1437 was vice-collateral in Verona. Chiericati remained Manelmi's right-hand man until the latter's death and the dismantling of his department which followed. During that time he was responsible for the inspection and pay of Michele Attendolo's company in the 1440s and for the organization of the attempted coup against Colleoni at Isola della Scala in 1451. Later in his career Chiericati, who had known Pietro Barbo when he was bishop of Verona, was summoned to Rome when Barbo was elected 23

24

For an example of this frequent recollection of Belpetro's services, see ST. reg. 8,136V (31 Dec. 1481). For further eulogies, see B. Pagliarino, Croniche di Vicenza (Vicenza, 1663) 176, 226. In the year 1435, for example, Manelmi's activities included going to the Romagna to inspect troops and dispatch contingents to Brescia to strengthen the army in Lombardy (SS. reg. 13, 133V; 20 Jan. 1435), Visiting Gattamelata in Castel S. Giovanni and persuading him to co-operate with Niccolo da Pisa, and then negotiating a condotta with Niccolo (SS. reg. 13, 143; 7 Mar. 1435), inspecting the company of Giovanni Malavolti (SMi. reg. 59,106; 7 Apr. 1435), paying off troops in Brescia (SS. reg. 13, 183; 1 Oct. 1435), and finally carrying out a large-scale pruning of the army prior to winter quarters (SS. reg. 13, 187V; 3 Nov. 1435). 106

The organization and administration of the army Pope Paul II to become inspector-general of the papal army. He was preceded in this post by two other Venetian subjects who had probably gained experience in Manelmi's office, Stasio Gritti and Giovan Niccolo Manzini da Vicenza. The unusual completeness and efficiency of papal army records during the pontificate of Paul II may perhaps be attributed to the supervision of a man of Chiericati's experience, and certainly directly from his pen we have an important and revealing Trattatello della milizia. Chiericati wrote this treatise in 1471 in an attempt to retain his position under Sixtus IV, but it was to no avail and he returned to Vicenza for the last years of his life. Some sources suggest that he returned also to Venetian service as collateral-general in the late 1470s, but the main documents do not bear this out; however, both his brother Valerio and his son Ludovico were Venetian collaterals in this later period.25 Another of Manelmi's vice-collaterals was Andrea di Aureliano, who later became chancellor of Bartolomeo Colleoni, and whose son, Gianfilippo, having been associated with his father in Colleoni's service, returned to become one of Venice's leading collaterals in the later years of the century.26 A third figure who emerged under the tutelage of Manelmi was his brother Evangelista, who also held the rank of vice-collateral. Evangelista was a protege of Francesco Barbaro and was with him at the siege of Brescia in 1438/9. His account of that siege - the De obsidione Bresciae - was dedicated to Barbaro but does not reveal whether he was already a collateral at that stage.27 By 1446 he certainly was when he was sent to inspect troops in Cremona, and his career as a Venetian collateral was to be a long one, as he reappeared in that position in the 1470s.28 The death of Belpetro Manelmi in February 1455, which coincided neatly with a period of reduction and reorganization of Venetian military and financial commitments after the Peace of Lodi, provided the excuse for a complete transformation of the office he had presided over. As soon as the news reached Venice the Senate resolved that he should not be immediately replaced.29 A few days later the rectors in Vicenza were instructed to take charge of all the records of the collateral's office and send them to Venice. Manelmi's vice-collaterals were suspended pending their replacement by elected Venetian nobles, and the office was henceforth to be responsible to 25

26

27 28 29

On Chiericati, see DBL, xxiv, 673-4, a n ^ also G. Zorzi, 'Un vicentino alia corte di Paolo secondo: Chierighino Chiericati e il suo Trattatello della milizia\ NAV., n.s. xxx (1915) 369-434, who published the Trattatello. References to Andrea's activity as vice-collateral date from 1447-50 (ST. reg. 2, 17; 3 Jan. 1447 and SS. reg. 18, 162; 2 Feb. 1450). For Gianfilippo, see below, i n n. 48. Manelmi, Commentariolum. S S . r e g . 17, 17V (9 M a y 1446) a n d below, 109. ST. reg. 3, i 4 6v (20 Feb. 1455). 107

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 the provveditori sopra le camere.30 In the next month the arrangements for the election offivenobles for three-year terms of office were approved. The new collaterals were to be of equal rank and were to have their offices in Bergamo, Brescia, Verona, Padua and Treviso. Although their responsibilities were said to be the same as those of Manelmi and his assistants, it was clear that they were likely to be much more strictly controlled from Venice, and they were expressly forbidden to hold inspections without the presence of a Venetian rector.31 This reorganization of the office responsible for army administration was clearly the result of a number of interlocking factors. Undoubtedly the enormous prestige gained by Manelmi and the independent authority which he had built up for his office did cause concern in Venice, particularly with the war now over. However, the change must also be seen in the context of two broader trends in Venetian policy at this moment. First, a rigorous economy drive was in progress in an attempt to stabilize the finances after the ruinous expenses of the wars. The death of Manelmi was an opportunity for a careful check of army accounts to see what savings could be made, and indeed for the abolition of the expensive post of collateral-general itself. There is no hint that the inspection of Manelmi's accounts revealed any signs of fraud or peculation. Manelmi's reputation remained unsullied despite the speed with which his activities were investigated. The second point is that at this moment there was considerable concern in Venice about the extent to which all sorts of posts in the Terraferma had fallen out of the hands of Venetian nobles.32 There was clearly a feeling that the Venetian patriciate was in danger of losing its exclusive grip on state affairs, and in the military field the focus was on the office of collateral and on castellanships. There can be no doubt that the experiment of revived noble control of this crucial area of military organization was not a success. The new collaterals, who were eventually only four in number, were reluctant to go out to their posts and even more reluctant to stay there for three years;33 the jobs were unpopular and ended up in the hands of relative nonentities; the essential continuity of experience and contact with the soldiers were lost. To this had to be added the fact that the army inevitably went through a certain crisis of morale in its first long period of peacetime service. While clearly the duties of the collaterals were going to be reduced in peacetime, they were still not going to be carried out efficiently by men sitting at their desks in Brescia, Verona or Padua, and still less by men on long leave in Venice. By 1463, at least, non-Venetian vice-collaterals were to be found in the 30 31 32 33

Ibid., 148-9 (28 Feb. 1455). Ibid., 154V (8 Mar. 1455). Dieci, Misti, reg. 15, 41V-42 (11 Apr. 1455). ST. reg. 3, 166 (12 Aug. 1455). The post at Bergamo had not been filled by this time. 108

The organization and administration of the army Terraferma cities again, acting as assistants to the noble collaterals and conducting the business of local military organization, but not creating that essential coherence which Manelmi's office had achieved. By 1471 there was rising preoccupation in Venice about the state of the army. Concern was also expressed in Rome by Chierighino Chiericati in his Trattatello. His opinion of the nobles who had replaced him and his professional colleagues was predictable, but justified by other evidence: 'the example can be seen from the Venetian nobles elected every three years, how the state to which they have reduced those men-at-arms of the most Illustrious Signoria bears out the popular proverb, that he does not play the butcher who does not know how to cut up carcases'.34 He questioned the value of the large numbers of aging lanze spezzate, divided into unequal companies, which made up the bulk of the Venetian army by this time. He pointed to the failure of the expedition against Trieste in 1463 as the result of sending discontented, badly organized and poorly led troops.35 In 1471 action was finally taken. Three nobles were sent out into the Terraferma to carry out a thorough inspection of the army and put all the records into order. With them went Evangelista Manelmi, who had already reappeared as collateral in Ravenna in 1469. The commission reported back in July 1472.36 Its report was a black one of administrative chaos, of accounts not properly kept, of inspections not carried out and regulations not obeyed. All, it said, was now in order thanks to the diligence of Evangelista Manelmi, but it was up to the collaterals and the rectors to keep it so. The noble collaterals were, in fact, given another chance, although in Ravenna, which seemed to have been overlooked in the original arrangements, a nonVenetian collateral continued to hold office. In 1475 this was Valerio Chiericati, a brother of Chierighino who had at one time been the chancellor to the Venetian condottiere Antonello da Corneto.37 It was only in 1476 that the end of the experiment with noble collaterals finally came. The confusion in the largest company in the army following the death of Colleoni, rising political tensions in Italy, and the growing Turkish threat in Friuli contributed to the decision to initiate another largescale inspection of the army. This time the two inspecting proveditors were to be accompanied by Giovanni Niccolo Manzini da Vicenza, who had the title of vice-collateral and was very experienced in military affairs, 34

35 36

37

Zorzi, 'Chiericati', 428: 'lo exemplo se vede per li zentilomeni venetiani facti de tri anni in tri anni, como hanno bene reducto quele zentedarme de la Illustrissima Signoria e uno proverbio vulgare, che non se faci becharo chi non sa scorticare'. Ibid., 429. S T . reg. 6 , 1 7 1 (27 July 1472). F o r evidence of Evangelista M a n e l m i installed as collateral in R a v e n n a as early as 1469, see Collegio, N o t a t o r i o , reg. 11,58 (30 Aug. 1469) a n d S T . reg. 6,134V (10 J u n e 1471). T h e three proveditors were actually elected in t h e Senate on 26 D e c . 1470 ( S T . reg. 6, 115V). Zorzi, 'Chiericati', 423. 109

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 Andrea Aureliano and Piero Camuccia.38 The links with the past were slowly being taken up again, and as confirmation of this we have the preamble of a Senate minute of 26 May 1477: 'because the order and quality of our men-at-arms has so deteriorated, with very great damage to us, from that which prevailed in the time of Belpetro, that if steps are not taken it is to be feared that in the event of any disturbance our state will suffer damage . . . '39 In the circumstances a senior proveditor was to be appointed and sent out with an experienced collateral-general, who was not to be a Venetian noble. The proveditor chosen was Lorenzo Loredan, whose account of his year of office will be discussed later in this chapter; the new collateral-general was Manzini.40 By the time Loredan and Manzini set out on their tour in the autumn of 1477 all the vice-collaterals they encountered in the course of their work were non-Venetians. Francesco da Lodi held the post in Bergamo, Giovanmarco da Arzignano in Brescia (where he was still vice-collateral in 1495) and Giovanantonio da Galesio in Treviso.41 However, it would be wrong to assume that because the idea of using Venetians as collaterals had been abandoned the system of Manelmi had been completely restored. Manzini and his successors as collaterals-general never had the independent authority that Manelmi had enjoyed, even though some of them held the office for a number of years. The reason for this lies partly in the more settled conditions in which they found themselves, but also in the expanding numbers and activities of Venetian proveditors with the army, which is a phenomenon which will be discussed in due course. Manzini retired because of ill health in November 1478 and was replaced by his assistant, Piero Camuccia.42 In 1481 the Senate decided that a collateral-general, with a salary of 500 ducats a year and a large staff, was something of a luxury in peacetime, particularly as the vice-collaterals seemed to be functioning reasonably efficiently. So the post was downgraded to a salary of 200 ducats and put up for election again. Camuccia lost his job and Manzini, presumably restored to health, returned.43 In 1483 Ludovico Chiericati took over but was killed in the fighting round Lagoscuro;44 by the end of the War of Ferrara another 38

39

SS. reg. 27, 89-90 (7 June 1476). Manzini had been revisore generale of the papal army prior to Chiericati, and had almost certainly got his experience in Manelmi's office before 1455. SS. reg. 28,10 (26 May 1477): * perche Pe tanto deteriorado l'ordene et qualita de le nostre zentedarme cum nostro gravissimo danno da quello che le ierano in tempo di Belpiero che se questo non e proveduto Pe da temer che occorendo alcuna novita el stado nostro non patisca sinistro . . .' See below, 147-52. Senato, Provveditori da Terra e da Mar, 24, 42 and 56V (7 Jan. and 3 Feb. 1478). ST. reg. 8, 28 (9 Nov. 1478). Ibid., 136V (31 Dec. 1481). Ibid., 194V (15 Mar. 1483). 110

The organization and administration of the army figure had emerged, Mariotto da Monte, who had been a chancellor of Gattamelata and treasurer of the Societa di San Marco since 1456.45 In the cut-backs that followed the Peace of Bagnolo Mariotto's staff in the banco dey stipendiari was reduced to eight assistants: three chancellors responsible for issuing toilette, two accountants and three inspectors. In addition to these the vice-collaterals in the main Terraferma cities continued to have local responsibilities.46 From this moment onwards it is possible to chart a remarkable degree of continuity in the collateral staff. Mariotto da Monte died in office in 1493 and an election was held in the Collegio to appoint his successor. The list of candidates is an interesting indication of the depth of expertise in this field available to Venice.47 Six of the men were currently vice-collaterals, including Mariotto's son Hieronimo; Giovanmarco da Arzignano, who had been vice-collateral in Brescia since the 1470s; and Gianfilippo Aureliano, whose father had been one of Manelmi's assistants and whose experience included a spell as one of Colleoni's chancellors and a long period as vicecollateral in Ravenna.48 Four were sons of collaterals, Hieronimo da Monte, Gianfilippo Aureliano, Francesco di Piero Camuccia and Belpetro di Ludovico Chiericati. Two others had long experience as chancellors in the companies, and a number had direct military experience, including Giorgio Sommariva whose report on the Veronese serraglio has already been discussed and who had for a time been governor of Gradisca. At this time there was no formal appointment of a successor to Mariotto, nor was one made two years later when another election was held.49 Hieronimo da Monte seemed to hold the post unofficially until 1502, when in yet another election Gianfilippo Aureliano formally supplanted him.50 On this occasion there were again six candidates from among the vice-collaterals, all of whom could claim over twenty years' service in the office. Aureliano died in 1505 and was replaced by Hieronimo da Monte, by this time a very old man.51 45 46 47 48

49 50

51

S T . reg. 4, 10 (11 J u n e 1456). H e was a Tuscan from Monte S. Savino. S T . reg. 9, io8v (16 Sept. 1484). Collegio, N o t a t o r i o , reg. 14, 82 (6 M a r . 1493). G i o v a n m a r c o da Arzignano was already vice-collateral in Brescia in 1477 (Senato, Provveditori da T e r r a e da M a r , 24, 4 2 ; 7 J a n . 1478). Gianfilippo was t h e son of A n d r e a Aureliano (see above, 107), w h o also served Colleoni as chancellor for m a n y years. H i s long service as collateral in Ravenna is recorded in Dieci, M i s t e , reg. 20, 124V (9 O c t . 1481) a n d Collegio, Commissioni Segrete, 1482-95, 102 (10 M a y 1487). Collegio, N o t a t o r i o , reg. 14, 121 (6 M a r . 1495). Collegio, N o t a t o r i o , reg. 15,61 (19 J a n . 1502). T h e fact that H i e r o n i m o da M o n t e had been filling t h e post unofficially was recorded in the account of the next election (see n. 51 below). S S . reg. 4 0 , 126 (18 Sept. 1505); Collegio, N o t a t o r i o , reg. 15, 154V (21 N o v . 1505). At this stage a m o n g s t t h e candidates were still G i o v a n m a r c o da Arzignano; Gianjacopo Vimercato da C r e m a , w h o had been a vice-collateral for 22 years; Antonio Gislardi, w h o had served in that capacity in t h e e m p i r e , a n d particularly at Zara, for 29 years; a n d Belpetro Chiericati. Ill

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 The final change of our period came in 1508 on the death of Hieronimo.52 On this occasion a proposal to promote one of the vice-collaterals was turned down by the Senate, and Antonio Capodivacca, an influential Paduan noble, was given the post of collateral-general. This was an exceptional appointment as Capodivacca had no previous experience in the office, and there were suggestions that he had been successful as a result of paying large bribes to influential politicians.53 Capodivacca's appointment is an indication of the decline of the active influence of the collaterals. Throughout these later years their functions had remained basically the same, but they had inevitably become less onerous and more routine thanfiftyyears earlier as more and more real responsibility was being assumed by the proveditor-general. While the collaterals supervised and participated in all aspects of army administration, there were other categories of officials involved in the work. The most prominent of these were the paymasters, who were always Venetian nobles. Their responsibilities were purely concerned with the handling of money and paying the troops on the instructions of, and according to the records kept by, the collaterals. According to the pay system established, only certain sections of the army were paid directly by the official paymasters, and these men were usually only responsible for monies supplied from central funds. There were moments, as will be discussed later, when army financing was centralized and the contributions made to army pay from the Terraferma treasuries were sent to Venice. At these times the role of the paymaster became more important and allpervading. The paymasters also played a more active part on detached expeditions like those of the 1490s, or in the Morea. Gianpaolo Gradenigo, for example, was both paymaster and inspector with the Venetian troops in Pisa in the winter of 1497.54 They received pay and expenses of 50 ducats a month in the first half of the century, and more often 60 in the second. This had to cover the costs of employing at least one book-keeper, a servant and one or two armed guards. The paymasters were usually young nobles embarking on their political careers and getting theirfirstexperience of what was involved in the administration of the Terraferma and the army. The practice of sending out young nobles to assist the proveditors was also continued occasionally. This was probably usually done informally by a proveditor including a young protege in his following and paying his living expenses, but on at least one occasion the Senate officially appointed 52 53

54

ST. reg. 16, 53 (2 Dec. 1508); Sanuto, vii, 679-80. On Antonio Capodivacca, see DBL, xviii, 641-3. The election of Capodivacca, unlike those of his immediate predecessors, is not recorded in the Notatorio del Collegio, which already suggests that it was conducted in an unusual way. SS. reg. 36, 158 (5 Sept. 1497). 112

The organization and administration of the army equitatores who fulfilled this function.55 When, towards the end of the century, a large number of junior proveditors were appointed with very specific responsibilities the need for such assistants presumably declined. Finally, a variety of supply officers were attached to the army. The most consistent and common of these appointments concerned the supply of munitions, and in 1440 the maestro delle munitioni was receiving the considerable sum of 100 ducats a month for salary and expenses.56 By the later years of the century munitions supply was handled by the collateral's office, and the man responsible had the title of vice-collateral. But generally supply officers were appointed either from among the chancellery staff or were elected in the Collegio from among Venetian nobles and citizens. They were essentially subordinate officials taking their orders from either the proveditors or the collateral-general. Chierighino Chiericati in his Trattatello claimed that at one time he had 'governed' 10,000 cavalary and 6000 infantry in the Venetian army.57 He was referring presumably to the early 1459s when the aging Manelmi left more and more of the work to his chief subordinate; but at that time the collaterals really did see themselves as governing the army, as opposed to leading it, which was the job of the captain-general. He also claimed, and again not without justification, that it was the superior organization and consistent pay system imposed by the collaterals over a period offiveyears' truce which accounted for the Venetian success in 1446 and the great victory at Casalmaggiore. To test further the effectiveness of the administrative structure which has been described we must now look more closely at the various activities and services which were involved. The basis of Venetian army organization were the ordines a banca, the regulations which governed the employment and discipline of soldiers. In 1418 the Senate noticed that the regulations in force in Verona, which was at that time the headquarters of the army, were still those which had been drawn up during the Visconti occupation of the city in the 1390s. It requested that Belpetro Manelmi, the collateral in Verona, should put together all the individual instructions he had received from Venice concerning army organization and bring them, together with the Visconti regulations, to Venice so that a comprehensive set of Venetian regulations could be drawn up.58 How soon this work was done and when the first complete set of new regulations went into force is not clear. The only editions of Venetian army ordinances which survive for the century date 55 56 57 58

SS. reg. 14, 60 (26 Sept. 1437). SMi. reg. 60, 248 (1 Sept. 1440). Zorzi, 'Chiericati', 417. SMi. reg. 52, 133V (1 Dec. 1418).

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 from the early 1430s, which was a moment when a good deal of conscious reorganization and reform of the army was going on.59 One must assume therefore that these are revised editions of earlier ordinances, although it is not impossible that throughout the 1420s Manelmi and his colleagues continued to work with interim and piecemeal instructions, awaiting the announcement of the new and complete code. The army regulations which have come down to us from the early 1430s are contained in a very substantial and comprehensive document. It has 56 clauses and an appendix concerning the arms which cavalry and infantry were expected to possess and the penalties to be imposed for any shortcomings. The main clauses cover the procedure for the employment and mustering of troops, regulations for inspections and the time limits allowed for the making up of numbers of men and horses before fines were imposed, and regulations concerning pay. They go on to describe the oaths of fidelity and obedience which soldiers had to take. They were expected to swear to be faithful to Venice, to observe the regulations, not to consort with the enemy, to cause no civil disturbance, to hand over important prisoners, not to ride through the towns without permission andfinallynot to abuse the collaterals. The regulations then cover the duties of castellans and the practices which were specifically forbidden such as trading with the local population, leaving their posts without permission and taking on other employment. Finally come the clauses concerning desertion and the penalties to be imposed, and the obligations on the collaterals to enforce the regulations and not seek to defraud the troops. The early 1430s, from which the surviving editions of these regulations date, were undoubtedly an important moment in the history of the Venetian army. The sense of unease felt in Venice at the burgeoning size of the army and the fact that it seemed to be slipping out of its control certainly contributed to the spate of legislation on the subject in late 1431 and probably also to the downfall of Carmagnola in the following spring. In October 1431 the Senate called for proper recording of the condotte in a book which could be inspected in Venice, and for close adherence to the principle that all contracts and extensions of contracts had to be approved by the Senate.60 In the next month attention was turned to the accounting procedures with the demand that here too all transactions should be recorded in books in Venice.61 The attempts at large-scale demobilization in 1433 brought a further spate of instructions about army organization with 59

60 61

Two sets of the orders have come to light. One, dated 5 Dec. 1433, is in the Carte di Conte Francesco Sforza (ASMi., Archivio ducale, Visconteo, 20) and the other, dated 1434, is in Commemoriali, xn, 136-9 (Predelli, iv, 186-7). The two are virtually identical, with only small variations of arrangement. SMi. reg. 58, 90 (30 Oct. 1431). Ibid., 91V (18 Nov. 1431). 114

The organization and administration of the army particular emphasis on the procedures for the taking up of the extension clauses in contracts.62 It was in this context that the new editions of the ordines a banca appeared. Clearly major decisions about army organization had always been taken in the Senate, but from this moment onwards there is much more evidence of a concern for detail in the Senate minutes. Nevertheless, one cannot yet talk of an effective centralization of all military organization in the hands of the Venetian councils because it is very apparent that until 1455 much of the initiative still lay at the army headquarters with the captain-general and the collateral-general. The first concern of the army administration was with the selection of good captains and the hiring of troops. In the early years of the century most of the major contracts were discussed in the Senate and the negotiations with the condottieri were conducted by emissaries sent with full instructions from Venice. When there was a captain-general his advice was sought on which captains should be hired. Frequently the discussion took the lines of how to hire a company out of the service of another Italian state; the furnishing of guarantees, either in the forms of cash retentions or hostages, for good behaviour and fidelity was a frequent topic in the negotiations. By the late 1420s as rehiring became the rule it was the collaterals who played the key role, and the whole process became more of a formality. The chancellors of the condottieri would still appear occasionally in Venice to negotiate new contracts, but usually only if their masters wished to alter the terms. Most renewals seem to have been arranged between the collaterals and the captains on the assumption that unless there was an adverse report from the collaterals on the state of the companies concerned, renewal of the contract was a formality. The surviving contracts themselves illustrate this development. The early condotte are elaborate and detailed instruments often containing clauses which obviously relate to particular condottieri. Gradually the nature of the contracts became more formalized and much shorter. Clauses which spelled out in detail the obligations on both sides were replaced by general formulae calling for adherence to the regulations. Detailed recording of the rates of pay offered gave way to general promises of 'the same rates as our other troops'. At the same time came the features of the permanent condotta which have already been discussed: the lengthening contracts and the arrangements for different company strengths in peace and war.63 62 63

SS. reg. 13, 28V (3 Dec. 1433). The best source for Venetian military contracts are the Libri Commemoriali, where these characteristics of growing formalism can be easily observed. However, outlines of contracts often appear also in Senate parti, and occasionally in the early years also the full details of a major contract. Neither source can be relied upon to record all contracts in any particular period.

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 It would be wrong to suggest that individual deals between condottieri and their Venetian employers disappeared completely. The gradual emergence of the condotta a provisione for certain favoured condottieri, which tended to permit greater responsibility to the captain for paying his men and greater laxity in rules governing their inspections, will be discussed later.64 But there was also an increase in the use of secret clauses to modify in one direction or another the details of the contract. Venice was desperately concerned to avoid jealousies and rivalries amongst its condottieri, and also to avoid creating public precedents for exceptional concessions. The most common type of secret agreement concerned the number of men allowed in the company. There is evidence of secret deals with condottieri to maintain both more and fewer men than the number publicly inscribed in the contract. An allowance of extra men was usually prompted by the anxiety of Venice to placate a particular captain without arousing jealousies and creating precedents; on the other hand, a condottiere would sometimes agree to maintain fewer men as long as his public reputation was upheld by the higher figure in the contract.65 Obviously an awareness that these secret agreements were common must lead one to distrust the evidence provided by the contracts in the second half of the century. This makes it all the more unfortunate that the surviving administrative records for the whole of the century are so sparse. The emergence of the lanze spezzate as a cavalry force outside the condotta system has already been discussed, and clearly this development had considerable implications for the organization. While the collaterals were spared some of the paperwork when hiring such men, their responsibilities for the control of them became even more extensive than with the companies. While most of the republic's lanze spezzate had taken service, or rather had continued their service on a different basis, in large groups after the death of their condottiere leader, there was always a trickle of individual recruits to be dealt with. When a condottiere left Venetian service after some years of employment, there were usually a few of his men who chose to leave his company and seek a place in the lanze spezzate rather than uproot themselves and their families. With the infantry the evolution from a force consisting mainly of constables with their own contracts and companies to one in which constables were in permanent employment while the bulk of their men were recruited centrally was the key development. Again this had obvious implications for the work of the collaterals, and the task of infantry recruiting was one of their major responsibilities. But in fact when large 64 65

See below, 118, 123-4. A typical example of this is the arrangement with Cristoforo da Tolentino in 1450 (ST. reg. 2,153V; 18 Sept. 1450). After protests about the reduction of his company he was offered 250 lances dafama but could not enrol more than 200.

The organization and administration of the army numbers of new infantry were required in the later years of the period it remained common for long-serving Venetian constables to be sent off to recruit them outside the state. It would be pleasant at this stage to be able to make some observations about the social and geographical origins of the troops hired by Venice during the fifteenth century. This, however, would only be possible if a large proportion of the muster rolls, both of companies and of the lanze spezzate and infantry, had survived. As it is we have very little of this sort of material, and while it is possible to make some generalizations about the leadership of the army, next to nothing can be said about the rank and file. There was clearly a process of aristocratization and naturalization of the cavalry leadership during the century. While it was true that a condottiere had always required some wealth and standing (unless he was extremely fortunate) to set himself up with a company, the tendency for the cavalry leaders to become a sort of elite during the fifteenth century is clearly apparent. Venice certainly encouraged this process by instituting permanent service and by making greater use of the nobility of the Terraferma. A man like Bernardino Fortebraccio, although of Umbrian origin, was a 'Venetian' cavalry commander in the most complete sense of the word. It is probably true that by the first decades of the sixteenth century the majority of the men in his company would have been to all intents and purposes Venetian subjects. The tendency which seems to come in in this later period for Senate discussions on recruiting to emphasize the need for national troops as opposed to forestieri was the result of gradual evolution, not of any conscious change in policy.66 This was much more true of the cavalry forces than of the infantry, where traditions of permanent service were less well established. Nevertheless, the growing role of a select militia, the creation of a group of permanent constables, and the increased prestige of infantry leadership all tended to produce the same results. After the signing of the condotta the next step was the formal muster parade and the drawing up of the muster roll. The importance of accurate muster rolls was stressed by all military writers of this period. They had to include details of men, equipment and horses so that at subsequent inspections any substitutions could be detected. The timing of this initial muster parade depended on whether the company was being brought from a distance, in which case it was mustered on entering Venetian territory,67 or 66

67

In 1500 Taliano Pio and Lazzarino da Rimini were dismissed because their companies were made up entirely of foreigners (ST. reg. 13, 130; 30 May 1500). In 1506 the recruitment of Riminesi and Faentini was encouraged because they were now Venetian subjects (ST. reg. 15, 126V; 7 Oct. 1506). A typical example was the mustering of Sigismondo Malatesta's troops in 1437. Belpetro Manelmi was informed that the company was on its way from the Romagna and he was instructed to send a collateral to meet it when it crossed the Po north of Ferrara in order to carry out the muster parade (Collegio, Lettere Secrete, 4, 104V; 3 June 1437). 117

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 whether the condotta was a renewal of one to an existing company, when the muster would follow closely on the signing of the contract. In the early years of the century it was sometimes the practice to hold this initial inspection in Venice; the companies would parade with their arms and musicians in the courtyard of the Ducal Palace. In 1431 this practice was forbidden both because of the disturbance caused and because it was regarded as a rather dangerous custom.68 Henceforth any musters held in Venice were held in the Camera degli Armi, but in fact the large majority of musters were conducted in the Terraferma by the collaterals. After the initial muster periodic inspections were held to maintain efficiency and facilitate accurate payment of the companies. For most of the first half of the century monthly inspections were the rule and sometimes caused considerable resentment amongst the condottieri. Both Carmagnola and Francesco Sforza urged that during the campaigning season troops should be excused inspections as it was unreasonable to expect captains to maintain numbers and parade-ground efficiency in the field.69 By the 1440s the inspections of the captain-general's company had been reduced to six a year, but for the rest of the troops monthly inspections remained in force.70 However, the introduction of the new two-tier condotta in the early 1440s seemed to carry with it the implication that inspections would be waived in peacetime when the companies reduced their strength. In 1459 the condotta given to Jacopo Piccinino, which was an exceptional one in many respects, excused him all inspections.71 While this was to become a fairly common concession in most Italian armies in the second half of the fifteenth century, it remained very exceptional in Venetian organization. Only two other contracts are known to have excluded inspections completely, that of Roberto da Sanseverino in 1487, which was an emergency contract to get him into the field against the Germans quickly,72 and that of Francesco Gonzaga in 1489, which, being given to a ruling prince in peacetime, did not demand residence within the frontiers.73 There was, however, a compromise solution arrived at for prestigious condottieri in the later years of the century. They were sometimes excused the formality of muster rolls and hence the close link between inspections and pay, but were still expected to parade their troops for inspection periodically' for the honour of the state'.74 68 69

Dieci, Misti, reg. n , 27 (30 Aug. 1431). For Carmagnola's protests on this subject, see SS. reg. 11, 202V (22 June 1431); in 1440 Pasquale Malipiero was sent to Sforza to discuss the issue and point out the importance of inspections in the field (SS. reg. 15, 51V-52V; 30 Nov. 1440). SS. reg. 16, 79 (17 Mar. 1444). Commemoriali, xiv, 57; 7 Mar. 1450 (Predelli, v, 47). Ibid., XVII, o,6r-v; 27 July 1487 (Predelli, v, 306). Ibid., 128-9; I 2 Mar. 1489 (Predelli, v, 315). Ibid., XVIII, 26-27V; 20 Oct. 1495 (Predelli, vi, 13).

The organization and administration of the army However, a tendency to reduce the number of inspections generally was clearly apparent in the years of peace after 1454. Both because of the ineffectiveness of the collaterals in those years and because of the precedents for no inspections in peacetime which had already been established, it seems likely that very few inspections were in fact carried out in the period between 1454 and 1469. Then followed the years of intensive concern for and reform of the army, which served to remind the captains that inspections were still expected.75 In 1472, after the first complete inspections to be held for many years, it was announced that there should in future be four inspections a year.76 In 1475 this was reduced to three, but by this time it was no longer the practice to inscribe the junior member of the cavalry lance, the saccomanno, in the muster rolls or expect his presence at inspections.77 This was justified on the grounds that it was thefightingmen in the lance who were important and whose efficiency had to be maintained; but nevertheless in a period when captains were being increasingly left responsible for the pay of their men and the inspections were becoming more concerned with fighting efficiency than with the maintenance of numbers and accurate pay, it was a concession which could lead to serious abuses. However, Lorenzo Loredan, when he was proveditor-general in 1477/8, gave very precise directions to the collaterals as to what to look out for in the inspections. He stressed the need to check arms and equipment, the physical condition of the men and horses, and their skill in handling arms.78 In 1490 the need for four inspections a year was reiterated and in the now fashionable four-man lance only three were formally mustered.79 By this time it was clearly the practice to hold large-scale inspections rather than have the collaterals riding round the billets. Furthermore the main responsibility for the inspections now lay with the Venetian rector, for whom a collateral acted as a sort of adjutant. The current practice was clearly set out in a Senate minute of October 1490: the Lieutenant of Friuli was to hold a review of troops at Sacile, the Captain of Padua at Montagnana, and the Captain of Brescia at Chiari. All troops were to report to the nearest of these parades.80 The inspections held in the autumn of 1490 resulted in the 75

76 77

78

79 80

T h e concern began in J a n . 1469 w h e n a rigorous inspection of the lanze spezzate was ordered ( S S . reg. 2 3 , 1 6 0 ; 16 J a n . 1469). T h e r e followed t h e a p p o i n t m e n t of three esaminatori of the army in D e c e m b e r 1470 ( S T . reg. 6, 115V; 26 D e c . 1470). T h e three nobles chosen, w h o eventually started t h e great inspection in early 1472, were Paolo M o r o s i n i , Antonio Priuli a n d Andrea D i e d o ( S S . reg. 2 5 , 1 1 6 ; 28 F e b . 1472). ST. reg. 6, 171 (27 July 1472). S T . reg. 7, ioov (30 Dec. 1475); the three inspections were to be held between Mar. and Oct. For the practice of omitting the saccomanno from the muster rolls, see ibid., 150 (10 F e b . 1477). Senato, Provveditori da T e r r a e da M a r , 24, i 6 5 r - v (30 Jan. 1478). For further discussion of Loredan, see below, 150. S T . reg. 11, 20V-21 (10 Sept. 1490). Ibid., 27 (9 Oct. 1490). 119

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 dismissal of 128 useless men-at-arms. The inspections were particularly severe on the Colleoneschi, although some of these veterans were found posts as gate guards.81 These mass inspections were to remain the practice for the remainder of this period, although it was quickly accepted that there could only be two a year because of the expense involved.82 However, the inspection in quarters did not entirely disappear although it was difficult to make it very effective because by this time some of the larger companies had billets all over the Terraferma.83 While one of the intentions of the mass parade was to make it more difficult for captains to lend troops and horses to each other in order to deceive the inspectors about shortfall in numbers, evasive practices of this sort clearly remained very common. Manelmi and his collaterals in the 1430s and 1440s had been able to maintain reasonable control by frequent, unexpected inspections of individual companies and by the personal knowledge of the companies which the long-serving collaterals had built up. They probably relied as much on memory as on the muster rolls to detect substitutions in the ranks they were inspecting. But this was a system which became impracticable in the years after 1454; even the same collaterals could not have expected to find the companies ready for inspection in the way that they had been during the wars. So the system was allowed to break down, and the new arrangements which emerged towards the end of the century were more fitted to the requirements of a large peacetime army. The largescale biannual parade enabled the inspectors to weed out useless troops and ensure that numbers and equipment roughly approximated to the levels contracted for. The inspections, with the dismissals of useless men and thefinesimposed for missing men and horses which theoretically accompanied them, were seen as the key to maintaining a well-disciplined army. The refusal of a captain to present his troops for inspection struck at the roots of the whole system and produced some of the most notorious conflicts between Venice and her condottieri. The classic case was that of Gaspare da Sanseverino, better known as Fracassa, who in 1489 was accused of refusing to obey 81 82

83

Ibid., 43 (31 Dec. 1490). In 1501, for example, there appears to have been only one inspection, which was postponed from the summer to the autumn because of lack of money to pay the troops after the inspection (ST. reg. 14, i6v; 12 June 1501 and 35V; 26 Aug. 1501). However, the decisions which followed the report of the inspectors in Nov. showed clearly that two inspections a year were normal practice (SS. reg. 38, 175-6; 15 Nov. 1501). On the inspections in Aug. 1503, see Sanuto, v, 62-3. The inspections in 1505 were held en masse at Montechiari and Ghedi for troops beyond the Adige, and at San Bonifacio and Lonigo for those to the east of the river (SS. reg. 40,125; 18 Sept. 1505). But in 1508 the intention was to hold the inspections in the quarters allotted to each company; this proved impractical because of the dispersal of the companies, but nevertheless the inspectors did actually visit all the quarters to inspect whatever troops they found there (SS. reg. 41, ii5v;26 July 1508 and 117; 1 Aug. 1508. Also ST. reg. 16, 35V-36; 25 Sept. 1508). 120

The organization and administration of the army orders and of'maltreating' his men.84 Fracassa had been under suspicion earlier in the year for conspiring against the state, and he was clearly being watched very closely.85 The 'maltreatment' of the troops consisted of not paying them any money; as a result of this the company had largely dwindled away. Fracassa, and his brother Antonmaria who spoke up for him, claimed that this was because Venice had not paid him any money. To this Venice replied that of course it had not, because he had refused to allow the company to be inspected. One can see that the situation was a vicious circle; presumably Fracassa's pay had got into arrears, a very common situation, and he had allowed his company to run down. Then he refused to allow it to be inspected because of the fines and loss of reputation that he knew would ensue. At this point Venice could accuse him of refusing to obey orders and breaking his contract, and so the decision was taken to dismiss him.86 Thus, in Venetian eyes, inspections were at the heart of the matter. But it was not as simple as that; regularity of pay and the broader dimensions of the relationship between the condottieri and the state were clearly also involved. A broader look at the whole question of discipline will help get the role of inspection into perspective. The inspections, in fact, only covered certain aspects of discipline. Discipline within the companies, the behaviour of troops amongst themselves, was entirely the responsibility of the condottieri; they alone had the right to discipline their men for brawling amongst themselves, cheating and robbing each other, etc. If trouble occurred between the troops of different companies then the captain-general and his marshals became involved, particularly if the army was in the field.87 Discipline in the camp was maintained on the basis of camp regulations issued by the captain-general.88 Carlo Malatesta in 1412 was authorized to employ a special provost company to enforce camp discipline.89 However, if 84

85 86

87

88

89

SS. reg. 34, 42V (26 Oct. 1489). At this stage the matter was postponed, but in November the Senate agreed to pay one month's wages on condition that an inspection was held immediately (ibid., 44; 5 Nov. 1489). Dieci, Misti, reg. 24, 9 8 - 9 (21 a n d 27 F e b . 1489). S S . reg. 3 4 , 6 4 (14 M a y 1490). T h e vote was a narrow one; 92 senators voted for dismissal a n d 71 for a c o u n t e r - m o t i o n to postpone t h e decision. T h e reasons for t h e Senate decision were amplified when A n t o n m a r i a ' s protests over his b r o t h e r ' s dismissal were discussed two m o n t h s later; however, t h e dismissal was confirmed (Ibid., 68; 8 J u l y 1490). I t is interesting to note that w h e n , on t h e eve of Agnadello, Fracassa's n a m e was p u t forward as one of the new captains to be hired, the Senate agreed with a good deal of reluctance a n d a vote of 119 to 67 ( S S . reg. 4 1 , 162; 20 A p r . 1509). Venetian rectors were ordered n o t to intervene when fighting broke o u t between m e n in t h e companies of G a t t a m e l a t a a n d Brandolini. T h i s was a p r o b l e m which h a d to be left to t h e two condottieri ( C o m m e m o r i a l i , x i n , 1 2 3 - 4 , I 2 F e b . 1442; Predelli, iv, 268). F o r an example of c a m p orders issued by the a r m y c o m m a n d e r , see those issued b y Francesco Sforza and G a t t a m e l a t a in 1439 ( C o m m e m o r i a l i , x m , 5 4 r - v , 23 J u n e 1439; Predelli, iv, 222). Commemoriali, x, 116; Feb. 1412 (Predelli, iii, 357). 121

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 fighting amongst the troops took place in a Venetian city, or even more if the ill discipline of the troops involved civilians or was directed against civilians, then the Venetian rectors and the collaterals had responsibility for dealing with it.90 This complex system of overlapping responsibilities for discipline led to confusion and clashes. There clearly had to be close co-operation between the army commander and the Venetian officials if discipline at this level was to be maintained, and this meant that those officials frequently found themselves having to be lax over the enforcement of the inspection system in order to keep the good will of the captains. In fact the most notorious cases of poorly maintained companies were reported by the collaterals to the Senate, but there the matter was frequently dropped to avoid difficult confrontations.91 Another area that needs to be considered is that of desertion. The ultimate responsibility for preventing desertion from the ranks of the companies lay with the condottieri themselves; it was up to them to keep up numbers and to issue passes to any of their men moving about the countryside as individuals. Any member of the companies found away from his company without a pass could be arrested by a Venetian official and sent back to be disciplined by his captain. With the lanze spezzate and the infantry the situation was somewhat different; here Venetian officials could take direct action against deserters, action which could take the form of either mutilation or hanging.92 However, it was not the desertion of individual soldiers which was the main problem, but the infidelity and desertion of captains. This could both erode the morale of the whole army and be militarily dangerous. At the same time it was notoriously difficult to do anything about such defections once they had taken place. The Senate tended to give as much publicity as possible to such events in order to blacken the reputation of the deserter and hopefully to prejudice his chances of gaining other employment. It could offer rewards for his recapture and decree that he should never again be accepted into Venetian service. It could seize his estates and possessions, and sometimes even his family if the deserting condottiere had been unwise enough to leave them behind. But in 90

91

92

In 1440 Francesco Sforza was called upon to stop troops bullying the local citizenry, but it was his brother Alessandro's troops who were involved and so this could be seen as a special plea (SS. reg. 15, 51V-52V; 30 Nov. 1440). In 1458 a proposal to retain Cristoforo da Tolentino, despite a highly critical collateral report on his company, was passed in the Senate by an overwhelming majority (SS. reg. 20, 144V; 23 Feb. 1458). Similarly in 1506 the Senate found it hard to do anything about an inspector's report that Bernardino Fortebraccio had only 39 effective men-at-arms in a company of 204 (SS. reg. 40, 143; 21 Feb. 1506). After the defeat at Calliano in 1487 one of the vice-collaterals was sent round the countryside retrieving unearned pay from select militia men who had deserted; in cases where the men had been received back into their families, their fathers were to be held responsible for paying back the money (Collegio, Commissioni Secrete, 1482-95, i n ; 17 May 1488). 122

The organization and administration of the army the last resort the best way to prevent such desertions was by maintaining good relations with the captains, and making it worth their while to remain in Venetian service.93 Once again, therefore, strict enforcement of the inspection system could militate against such a good relationship. On the other hand, the collaterals argued, through their spokesman Chierighino Chiericati in his Trattatello, that the secret of securing faithful and effective service lay in regular and fair distribution of pay, and this in turn depended on the inspection system.94 Here lay the dilemma; a dilemma one might say between a politician's solution and a bureaucrat's solution. On the whole the bureaucrats got their way in the first half of the century, the politicians increasingly in the second half. Or perhaps it would be fairer to say that the solutions worked out in the second half of the century were a sort of compromise. Anyway the time has come to move on to the question of pay, which was so intimately linked to inspections. Venice used two methods of paying condottiere troops during the fifteenth century. The first was based on the ordines a banca and the inspections. The collaterals authorized monthly payments to the company calculated on the basis of the actual number of men presented for inspection. In addition to the sum thus arrived at the condottiere received a caposoldo, a percentage over and above the figure for his men, usually i ducat per lance, for his own expenses and as a bonus for his officers. Finally, in special cases the condottiere would receive also a personal salary (provisione) out of which he was expected to maintain a personal retinue in addition to his contracted company strength. The size of the company, sometimes the rate of pay, and the arrangements for caposoldo and provisione would all be laid down in the original contract. The essential instrument by which the collateral authorized payments was the bolletta which the condottiere presented to the relevant paymaster or treasurer. The second method was embodied in a much simpler type of contract which just stated a total annual sum which would be paid for a certain number of troops. This sum, again known as the provisione, was paid in instalments to the condottiere. Again in very special cases even the number of troops was not specified and it was left to the captain to maintain an 'appropriate' number. The implications of the former method were that paymasters actually paid the troops individually, while in the latter payments were clearly left to the condottiere. But this further distinction did not necessarily apply; in some cases, either as a result of specific concessions to the condottiere or of laxness in the system, the computed amount was collected in bulk by the 93 94

For discussion of some of the more notorious cases of desertion, see below, 182-4. Zorzi, 'Chiericati', 428. 123

Part I: c. 1400 to condottiere and distributed by him. However, clearly the ordines a bane a method (which does not, as some historians have suggested, mean banker's order) imposed much stricter control, even if it did not involve actual supervised pay parades.95 Historically this first method was the prevalent one for most of the first half of the century. Condotte a provisione were used only for very small companies when the force was regarded as no more than a personal retinue, or for detached companies and condotte in aspetto when frequent inspections and the presence of a paymaster were impracticable. The only records which have survived for the payment of a large company in this period are those relating to Michele Attendolo's company in the 1440s, and these suggest that the system was carefully enforced and the payments accurate and regular.96 The condottieri themselves obviously preferred to receive provisioni, and there was increasing pressure, initiated by Carmagnola, for a shift towards this method. Carmagnola argued that if condottieri were left completely responsible for their companies then better companies resulted, as the reputation of the condottieri was at stake.97 But this was not an argument calculated to appeal to the collaterals, and by 1454 only certain very prestigious captains had won the right of provisione payments. Francesco Sforza's condotte took this form, but they were contracts shared by Venice and Florence.98 Jacopo Piccinino's 1450 condotta and its renewals was the only major provisione contract awarded by Venice alone in this period, and he was specifically excused inspections of his troops.99 After 1454, in the prolonged periods of peace when inspections became less necessary and frequent, and the condottieri more settled and trusted, there was a steady growth in the use of the provisione system.100 The provisione gradually became known as the stipendio, and it became increasingly recognized that condottieri would not employ the full company contracted for, but leave a number of places unfilled {paghe morte) in order to provide themselves with a personal income to replace the old caposoldo. At the same time the growth in the proportion of lanze spezzate and infantry 95

96 97 98

99 100

The two systems of paying troops are clearly apparent from the surviving contracts, and their detailed implications emerge from a variety of miscellaneous sources. No clear statement of the distinctions has come to light, although a later manuscript in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, gives a summary (Perret, 'Boffile de Juge', 2iqn). Arezzo, Archivio della Confraternita dei Laici, carte di Francesco di Viviano, nn. 151, 156, 157. SS. reg. 10, 22 (10 Feb. 1427). For one of these contracts, see G. Canestrini (ed.), Documenti per servire alia storia della milizia itialiana, ASL., xv (1851) 146-55. Commemoriali xiv, 57; 7 Mar. 1450 (Predelli, v, 47). Following the agreement of a condotta a provisione with Giovanni Conti in May 1454, the Senate proposed that similar contracts should be given to all the leading condottieri (SS. reg. 20, 2ov; 17 May 1454). 124

The organization and administration of the army provisionati, who were always, by the very nature of their employment, paid directly by the state paymasters, meant that the pay organization was fully extended to deal with these troops and was consequently more prepared to leave responsibility for the companies to the condottieri.101 Parallel to this development was the increasing use of advances (prestanze). Initially the prestanza, an advance of several months' pay on or shortly after the signing of the contract, was a special payment conceded to allow the captain to prepare his troops and bring them, often considerable distances, to join Venetian service. If the advance had not been used up by the time the company reached Venetian territory, then it was paid off by a reduction of monthly pay during the early months of service. With the growth of permanent service it became customary to pay advances on the re-signing of each contract even though no special mobilization or journeying was involved. By the 1440s it was also becoming the practice to pay advances both each spring to enable captains to prepare their troops for active campaigning and after any action which had involved losses of horses and equipment. After the defeat at Caravaggio in 1448 the condottieri were paid advances of 30 ducats a lance to enable them to buy horses and re-equip their troops quickly.102 With the increasing use of advances pay became more irregular and the monthly pay parade was no longer necessary. In fact the whole development meant that inspection and pay became steadily separated. Two other facets of pay need to be briefly considered. All payments to troops, whatever system of pay they were on, were subject to a retention by the state of \ ducat per lance per month for the so-called onoranza di San Marco. Retentions of this sort were a traditional device used by all Italian states to involve soldiers in some aspects of the life of the state. In the Venetian case the money was intended to assist with the upkeep of the fabric of the Basilica di S. Marco. On the other hand, another payment to troops which became increasingly common in the later years of the century was from the proceeds of the so-called tassa dei cavalli or horse tax. The origins of this tax are extremely obscure in Venetian practice, although well established in Milan. Basically it was a commutation of foddering and pasturage rights conceded to cavalry troops in the condotte, and as such its evolution will be considered in more detail later in this chapter.103 101

102 103

The almost complete lack of surviving material relating to the pay of Venetian troops in the fifteenth century makes it impossible to be more specific about trends in this area. A collection of bollette issued by the vice-collateral Giovanmarco da Arzignano in Brescia in 1495 gives some idea of the paperwork involved, but it is an isolated survival (Miscellanea carte non appartenenti ad alcun archivio, 7, conti ed elenchi di soldati). A proposal in 1505 by the inspectors that all troops should be paid individually rather than through their captains was withdrawn (Sanuto, vi, 248). SS. reg. 19, 185 (7 Feb. 1452). See below, 137. 125

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 The picture which emerges of rates of pay in the Venetian army is one of a slow fall during the first half of the century to a level which remained fairly constant from 1454 onwards. However, this is a picture which is complicated by the increases in the size of the cavalry lance in the later years of the century. In 1404 15 ducats per lance per month was the standard rate of pay; infantry received 3! ducats per man.104 By 1411 the rate had fallen to 13 ducats per lance, and by 1425 the average was 11-12 ducats per lance, although there was a growing practice of paying different rates in different parts of the Terraferma.105 By this time it was rare for the actual rate to appear in the contract, and rates of pay were fixed from year to year depending on the costs of food and supplies. In 1444 Michele Attendolo's troops were getting 10 or 11 ducats per lance depending on whether they were billeted in the country or in cities. If they were billeted within city walls then the costs of food were increased by gabelles; hence the higher rate of pay.106 By 1452 Carlo Gonzaga, one of the most prestigious condottieri, was getting 10 ducats per lance for his troops, and many of the smaller companies were down to 8 ducats.107 For the remainder of the century pay became standardized at around 7 or 8 ducats per lance, although the number of payments was accepted as being ten rather than twelve. Hence the rate of pay was frequently expressed as 70 or 80 ducats per year. Infantry got 2-2^ ducats per man per month and stradiots 4 ducats per month plus two sacks of corn.108 Sometimes the pay of the smaller companies was calculated in florins rather than ducats, which meant a lower rate of pay, as the florin was worth rather less than the ducat. In such cases a change from florins to ducats was a form of concession or promotion granted to a minor condottiere. In the 1490s the standard rate of pay was increased to 100 ducats per lance per year to take account of the increases in the size of the lance from four to five men.109 However, the evidence suggests that pay rarely reached this level in fact, and at the same time the number of payments dropped to eight a year.110 There are some indications that reductions in the number of payments meant reductions in pay. By i486 only four payments were made in peacetime, and one has the clear impression that troops received less pay in peace than in war.111 But 104

105

06 07 08

09 10 11

Chierighino Chiericati summed up the trends in Venetian pay levels in his Trattatello delta milizia (Zorzi, 428), and his figures are confirmed from the contracts and other surviving material. In 1409 Venice had hoped to reduce the rate of pay to 12 ducats per lance per month, but found that it was necessary to pay 13 (SS. reg. 4, 74V-76; 12-26 Nov. 1409). SS. reg. 16, 79 (17 Mar. 1444). Commemoriali, xiv, 95; 18 Feb. 1452 (Predelli, v, 68). ST. reg. 8,76V-77 (14 Dec. 1479) is one of the more explicit statements on pay rates at this time. For the pay of stradiots, see ST. reg. 9, 79V (21 May 1484). C o m m e m o r i a l i , x v m , 124V; 7 O c t . 1498 (Predelli, vi, 36). S T . reg. 14, 107V-108 (24 S e p t . 1502); reg. 15, 6v (30 M a r . 1504). ST. reg. 10, 20 (27 July i486). 126

The organization and administration of the army once again without the evidence of the administrative records themselves one cannot finally determine what Venetian troops actually received around 1500. The issue is further complicated by the practice of paying troops in kind. To issue cloth to captains in lieu of a part of their pay was a common practice in all Italian armies. In the earlyfifteenthcentury some captains got lands in payment of arrears of pay, and in 1474 Marco Pio got one-quarter of the pay of his company in salt from Cervia.112 The problems of discovering how much money troops got from their employers and how much individual men got from their captains are made more difficult by the undoubted abuses in the system. Endless complaints reached Venice about captains not paying their men what was due to them. But what was due to them in actual cash? Food had to be paid for, and the indications are that these accounts were settled by the treasurers of each company in bulk and the men's pay docked accordingly. Of the 15 to 8 ducats allowed per lance how much was reasonably deducted by the captain to pay for upkeep? At what point could troops feel justifiably aggrieved at the small amount of cash in their pockets? Another characteristic abuse stemmed from captains selling their bollette to third parties for sums well below their face value. When such a transaction took place - and they were formally forbidden by the Venetian authorities - the captain clearly had less than the proper amount to pay his troops. But such practices were forced on the captains by the failure of the relevant treasuries to honour the bollette as well as by the convenience of using a paper credit system.113 There were also instances of captains and chancellors paying their men in forged money, which seemed to circulate freely in the Veneto.114 This leads us to the central question of how far the abuses and deficiencies in the pay system stemmed from the corruption and cupidity of the captains and how far from the inability of Venice to produce the sums promised. There can be no doubt that a chronic inability to provide for the proper pay of troops was a fundamental weakness of fifteenth-century Italian states. Venice prided itself on being reasonably efficient in this respect in the first half of the century, and the evidence of the payments to the Attendolo company and the obvious popularity of Venetian service amongst the condottieri suggest that this pride was at least partly justified. But in the second half of the century troops were frequently months, or even years, in arrears with their pay. It is possible to suggest that there was an element of deliberate policy in this, as captains who were owed large sums of money by SS. reg. 26, 102V (24 May 1474). The prevalence of this particular abuse was stressed in a Senate parte of 1475 (ST. reg. 7, 8iv; 27 July H75)For an example, see Dieci, Lettere, 1, 364 (5 May 1475), which ordered the arrest of Bernardo da Crema, chancellor of the lanze spezzate Corneschi, for this fraud. 127

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 a state thought twice before deserting and writing off that credit. But the main cause of the problem was straightforward shortage of cash and an overstretching of the financial resources of the state. It is therefore necessary now to look at the wider horizons of war finance and how the money to pay troops was raised in the Venetian state. Prior to 1417 the army was paid for out of whatever funds were available, both in Venice and the Terraferma, with the traditional device of forced loans as the main form of extraordinary income. At times of rapid mobilization the bankers were called upon to advance funds, and special levies were placed on goods carried on the galleys to pay off the debts incurred.115 Andrea Priuli put up 26,000 ducats to pay an advance to Carlo Malatesta in February 1412 and was again called on in 1417 to provide the necessary payments for Pandolfo Malatesta.116 However, in November 1417 systematic direct taxation was imposed on the Terraferma cities to help pay for the army. The occasion for this new development was the need to mobilize the army as the truce with the Hungarians came to an end, and Padua, Verona and Vicenza were each called upon to raise the money necessary to pay 100 lances and 100 infantry; this was reckoned to be about 12,000 ducats a year each.117 This tax, known as the collect a lancearum et peditum or later the dadia delle lanze, was based on the estimo and was levied throughout the century, and was always only regarded as a contribution to the total expenses of the army. Indeed, the proceeds of these taxes tended to decrease as tax exemptions were granted, particularly to Venetians buying up land in the Terraferma.118 However, it was clearly Venetian policy in these early years to make the Terraferma largely responsible for paying the expenses of its own defence, and all surpluses from the Terraferma treasuries tended to be used for this purpose.119 With the large-scale mobilization going on in 1424/5 it was clear that Terraferma revenues could not support the increased expenditure, and the salt office and the officials of the Rialto were called upon to provide extra funds.120 As the military expenses of the period between 1428 and 1438 were 115 116 117

SMi. reg. 50, 82 (10 Mar. 1414). SMi. reg. 49, 94 (22 Feb. 1412); reg. 52, 14 (16 May 1417). SS. reg. 6,175V-176V (4 Nov. 1417). There was some discussion in the Senate about how to go about persuading the Terraferma cities to make this contribution, but complete agreement on the need to take such a step and the justice of making the Terraferma subjects responsible for meeting the costs of their own defence. Also on the collecta lancearum, see E. Besta (ed.), Bilanci general! della repubblica di Venezia, i (Venice, 1912) clxxvii, and C. B. C. Giuliari, Documenti dell''antico dialetto Veronese nel

118

119 120

secolo XV (1411-J2) (Verona, 1879) 6-13. The history of the tax in Verona was summed up in a Senate pane of 1503 from which it was clear that for half the century Verona had been paying only half the originally intended sum. This was the result of a concession granted in 1449 because of the damage done in the Veronese by the army retreating from Caravaggio, and never effectively revoked (SS. reg. 39, 105; 1 Sept. 1503). Apart from the preambles of the 1417 legislation, see Sanuto, Vite dey dogi, 958. S M i . reg. 55, 75 (22 D e c . 1424).

128

The organization and administration of the army reckoned at 7 million ducats, and the Terraferma produced less than \ million a year for all expenses, this situation certainly continued.121 During the next fifteen years a system by which companies were allotted to individual Terraferma treasuries for their pay gradually evolved. The allotment was based on the billeting arrangements, and captains sent their bollette to the appropriate treasury as soon as the collaterals had carried out their inspections. It became the practice to insist that payment of the allotted companies was the first claim on each Terraferma treasury, and given the close relationship between good pay and good discipline it was clearly in the interests of the local authorities to make the system work so that troops billeted in the area would remain satisfied. In 1442 8100 ducats a month was being raised in the Terraferma cities for the army, and three years later the Terraferma had surpluses of 84,940 lire a month (about 15,000 ducats) which went straight to pay the army.122 But frequent resort to loans from Venetian bankers and from the Jews of Mestre show that it was only in peacetime that military expenses could be met from Terraferma revenue.123 In 1448 the army was reckoned to be costing 75,000 ducats a month, a figure far in excess of that available from the Terraferma treasuries.124 In the early 1450s the cost of the land war was estimated to be 550,000 ducats a year.125 In the later stages of the wars in Lombardy, therefore, a considerable part of the money required for the army was being raised in Venice, and constant campaigning meant that the companies often spent months away from their normal billets and out of touch with the treasuries which were responsible for their pay. At the same time a steady decline in the rates of interest available on bonds in the Monte Vecchio meant that forced loans were becoming in effect direct taxes, and this process was to be formalized after H53-126 This was the context for a proposal in 1449 that the pay system should be centralized and all monies should be sent from the local treasuries to Venice for distribution to the army.127 However, the suggestion received little support in the Senate at this stage, and the old system of the companies drawing their pay direct from local treasuries was largely maintained up to 121

122 123

124 125

126 127

For the estimate of Venetian military expenditure in these years, see Romanin, iv, 219; the figure for Terraferma revenue comes from the Mocenigo oration (Besta, 95). ST. reg. 1, 55r-v (9 Jan. 1442); Collegio, Notatorio, reg. 8, 5V-6 (5 May 1444). In 1439 Moses the Jew, of Mestre, was forced to lend 4000 ducats at 12% to pay the arrears of Gattamelata (SMi. reg. 60,156V; 6 July 1439). Large-scale dependence on the Soranzo and Garzoni banks for advances to cover army pay were a feature of the 1440s (F. Ferrara, 'Documenti per servire alia storia de' banchi veneziani', AV.y i (1871) 111-14). ST. reg. 2, 75V (18 July 1448). Besta, 118-19. Army pay in 1450 was reckoned to consume about 36,000 ducats a month, of which almost half was paid from central funds (SS. reg. 18, 207V; 20 July 1450). L a n e , Venice, 2 3 8 . ST. reg. 2, 100 (7 Jan. 1449). 129

Part I: c. 1400 to 1454 and in thefirstyears of peace which followed. But by the later 1460s the idea of a centralized pay system was being aired again, and from then until the end of the century there was a constant fluctuation in the method used. Undoubtedly the main factor which prompted a shift to centralized financing of the army was the war with the Turks. The concentration of troops in the Morea and on the eastern frontier made it increasingly impracticable to expect companies to maintain direct links with the treasuries in Lombardy and to draw their pay from them. With the war costing 1,200,000 ducats a year Venice was having to dig deeper and deeper into its pockets to survive.128 In 1469 the system of direct payments to troops from the Terraferma treasuries was suspended; loans were raised in Venice to provide the necessary cash, and the treasuries then sent their surpluses to Venice to pay off the loans.129 In 1473 and 1474 the same steps had to be taken, although they were always regarded as emergency measures.130 The fact that throughout these years large sections of the army remained based in Lombardy made it difficult to envisage a complete transformation of the old system. It was also clear that pressure from Venice on the local treasuries to send in as much money as possible had led to the suspension of payments of all kinds at local level, accompanied by widespread complaints and distress. In March 1474 it was reported that the army was eight months in arrears with pay.131 The new dimension of the Tuscan campaign of 1478/9 continued the need for centralized financing, but on 14 December 1479 the Senate ordered a complete restoration of the old system of local responsibility for the paying of troops.132 In the following years it was the norm in peacetime for the old system to prevail, but the War of Ferrara, the German War and the Fornovo crisis all brought about returns to centralized financing. The mobilization for the War of Ferrara cost Venice 400,000 ducats in one month at a time when the total annual contribution of the Terraferma treasuries was not expected to be more than half that figure.133 However, it was in July 1488, a moment of 128

129

130

131 132

133

Romanin, iv, 350. For some idea of the extraordinary fiscal measures needed to pay these sums, see Besta, 135-9. S T . reg. 6 , 6 8 (18 A u g . 1469); in addition to t h e problems of dispersal of troops at this stage, Colleoni claimed that h e was owed 34,000 ducats in back pay ( S S . reg. 24, 30V; 9 J u n e 1469). S T . r e g . 6 , 1 9 4 v - i 9 5 ( i 4 j a n . 1473); reg. 7 , 2 ( 1 M a r . 1473); A S P . , D u c a l i , reg. B , 164 (16 J u n e 1474). A step towards more organized central accounting of army finance was taken at this time, but demands for payment to Venice of all funds destined for the army always included numerous exceptions for local garrisons, etc. ST. reg. 7, 31 (5 Mar. 1474). ST. reg. 8, 76V-77 (14 Dec. 1479). In the reallocation of companies to individual treasuries which accompanied this decision, Bergamo, Brescia, Verona and Vicenza alone were responsible for paying 19,041 florins a month to troops. Malipiero, Annali veneti, 253; the Lippomanno and Pisani banks were heavily involved in advancing money for war expenses at this stage. 130

The organization and administration of the army peace, that an attempt was made to centralize army finance on a permanent basis. An acute pay crisis had arisen despite the peacetime situation; the Terraferma treasuries were failing to fulfil their obligations, and the troops were getting restive, as they had received only one and a half months' pay since the signing of the peace with the Germans in the previous autumn.134 For two years all payments for troops originated in the central treasury in Venice, and provincial rectors were expected to ensure that all local surpluses were sent in to meet the costs. But once again it was soon apparent that the central officials could exercise even less pressure on the local treasuries than the soldiers themselves. Receipts fell off and the army was not better paid. In September 1490 the decentralized system was introduced once more; the obligations of the provincial treasuries for army pay were set at 167,400 ducats a year, and all other creditors of those treasuries had to take second place to the army.135 For the remainder of this period up to 1508 there was continual doubt and dissatisfaction in Venice about the army pay system, but no systematic attempt to centralize it again was made. The mobilization in the spring of 1495 involved large sums being raised centrally and a call for repayment from the local treasuries, but little came in.136 Frequent inspections of local accounts were ordered to try and improve cash flows to the troops. Finally in 1508 the sum required from the Terraferma treasuries was raised from 172,450 to 211,550 ducats, which was recognized to be still somewhat short of the total amount needed to pay the peacetime army.137 At this point the standing army cost about one fifth of the total revenue of the state, which was reckoned at 1,150,000 ducats.138 After pay the next most important concern for the troops was billets, and it was this area of administration which caused the greatest tensions between the army and the civilian population. The problem of billeting assumed two distinct dimensions; temporary billets during the campaigning season and the permanent quarters allocated to the companies for the winters and during peacetime. On campaign, while it was sometimes the case that the army would be camped in the open, it was more usual for at least a proportion of the troops to be billeted on the local population. The camp 134

135

136 137 138

SS. reg. 33, I47r-v (24 July 1488). Hieronimo Valier led the opposition to the proposal on the grounds that centralized financing had been tried many times in the past and had never worked well, but he got little support. ST. reg. 11, 21 (12 Sept. 1490), 36-7 (8 Dec. 1490). The funds set aside in the provincial treasuries for priority payments to the army were known as the limitationi. ST. reg. 12, 95 (8 June 1495). S T . r e g . 16, 57 (12 D e c . 1508), 57V-58V (16 D e c . 1508), 61V-63V (23 D e c . 1508). Lane, Venice, 237. The total needed for the standing army was reckoned to be 235,134 ducats, while surplus income from the Terraferma at this stage was estimated at just over 200,000 (Besta, Bilanci, 164-5). I n I 5°4 2 5> 000 ducats a year was being spent on the garrisoning of Rimini and Faenza alone (SS. reg. 40, 41; 11 July 1504).

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 orders issued by the captain-general included provision for a special billeting squadron made up of representatives from all the companies to accompany the army commander at all times and assist in the allocation of billets each night.139 The presence of the army in an area could lead to unusually heavy billeting burdens on the local population, and it was in this situation that the greatest tensions arose. It was particularly difficult for the collaterals and the company chancellors to ensure that fair payment was made for billets and food in such temporary conditions. Troops were much more likely to cause damage and take what they wanted without payment when they were in transit. However, this was the exceptional situation; for most of the time billeting was far less intensive and onerous. When not on campaign the army was spread out in permanent billets right across the Terraferma. This was a system which had developed by the early 1430s and continued throughout the century.140 For the purposes of billeting the Terraferma was roughly divided into three areas. The frontier zones, the Bergamasco, Cremonese, Friuli and the Romagna, usually supported relatively few troops in permanent billets but tended to bear the brunt during campaigning seasons. There was a tendency for the size of garrisons in the main frontier towns like Ravenna, Crema, Bergamo and Gradisca to increase in the latter part of the century, but the country areas of these zones seemed to get off fairly lightly. The main permanent billeting areas were the Bresciano, Veronese, Vicentino and Trevigiano. Here the bulk of the companies were concentrated during peacetime. Finally, the Padovano and the countryside immediately surrounding Mestre and the lagoon seems to have been regarded as a reserve area. Relatively few of the permanent companies had billets here, although there did tend to be one or two large companies based on old garrison towns like Montagnana and Monselice. But the billeting capacity of the area was mostly reserved for newly arrived companies awaiting inspection and for companies in transit from the western to eastern frontier or vice versa. The main point of this dispersal was to facilitate the provisioning of the army and particularly to ease the problem of finding fodder for the horses, and to reduce the burden on the civilian population, rather than any particularly sophisticated strategic plan. No doubt one of the reasons for leaving the areas closer to Venice relatively free of permanent troops was to protect the food supplies of the city itself. Nevertheless, the billeting pattern undoubtedly conformed to some extent to strategic requirements. The area between Treviso and 139 140

Commemoriali, xm, 50; 23 June 1439 (Predilli, iv, 222). See above, 121-2. One of the first occasions when the system was specifically spelled out was at the end of the campaigning season of 1431, when shortage of supplies was given as the reason for the wide dispersal of the army into quarters (SS. reg. 12, 19; 14 Sept. 1431). 132

The organization and administration of the army Sacile became increasingly important in the second half of the century, as a large part of the army was required to watch the eastern frontier. The responsibility of the employing state to provide suitable billets for troops was usually spelled out in the contracts, but billets were provided free by Venice only to certain specific companies.141 The captain-general could usually expect to get free billets for his men, but this was the exception rather than the rule. Nevertheless the obligation on most troops to pay a fair rent for their quarters was not always easy to enforce. The collaterals had overall responsibility for supervising the billeting system, but very quickly local communes began to appoint civilian officials to assist with the allocation of billets and represent the interests of the householders on whom troops were quartered. The problems inherent in the system were quickly made clear by the extent to which it became the practice for local authorities to levy special taxes on those who did not have troops billeted on them in order to provide compensation for those who suffered undoubted damage from the system, and those who had to provide free billets to favoured companies. These taxes soon came to resemble a sort of protection money, an avoidance levy, which in some cases the troops collected themselves as a bribe to go elsewhere.142 Such practices were naturally frowned upon by the Venetian authorities, and troops were specifically forbidden to exact money from the civilian population under any circumstances.143 However, the emergence of these organized compensation systems, which one can observe in the Veronese and the Bresciano in the 1440s, eased the traditional billeting burdens on local communities considerably. They also probably had the effect of taking the pressure off troops to pay their own rent. It was no doubt easier to raise money from householders anxious to avoid having troops billeted on them than it was to get it out of captains and chancellors who were already having difficulty collecting their pay in full. This would particularly have been the case after 1454 when the organization was clearly 141

This was made clear to Michele Attendolo when he approached Venice for a condotta in 1430. He asked for free billets and was told firmly that he would have to pay - 'as do our other troops' (SS. reg.

142

For discussion of the problems of billeting in the Veronese in the first half of the century, see Law, 'Verona', 283-9. While the surviving archives of the Terraferma cities yield a certain amount of disparate material on the question of army billeting in the fifteenth century, no sustained series of records has come to light. For an example of a formal agreement on billets with Michele Attendolo in 1444 which brings out the extent to which compensation systems had grown up, see Giuliari, Documenti dell'antico dialetto Veronese, 8-9. I am indebted for information on this subject, as on a number of others related to the Padovano, to the kindness of Dr Michael Knapton, who showed me the preparatory drafts of some chapters of his thesis ('Capital city and subject province: financial and military relations between Venice and Padua in the later fifteenth century', Oxford D.Phil., 1978). ST. reg. 6, 28V-29 (5 July 1468). One can follow these instructions being transmitted to the Bresciano on 9 July in ASB., Territoriale, reg. M1, 24-5.

143

11, 109V-110V; 18 May 1430).

133

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 beginning to creak.144 It is also in the context of informal changes of this sort that one has to see the decline in formal rates of pay. On the whole it was the country areas that had to bear the main burdens of accommodating troops. In the early years of the century there was a greater tendency to hold large garrisons in the cities for reasons of internal security. The surrender of Verona in 1405 meant an immediate influx of soldiers, and the communal council responded by appointing a citizen to supervise the billeting arrangements within the city.145 He was expected to check houses before troops took them over and keep a record of damage done. However, by 1408 the size of the garrison was being limited and efforts were being made to accommodate it entirely within the citadel. This meant in fact removing those Veronese families which had settled within the walls of the citadel.146 But once this had been achieved an acceptable degree of separation between troops and civilian population was established and the problems within the city were considerably reduced. The same process can be seen taking place in Padua, where by 1408 troops were being withdrawn into a compound round the Palazzo del Capitano and the citadel itself.147 Within these citadels the normal form of accommodation for troops was in ordinary houses which the men rented either for families or in bachelor groups. There is no indication at this stage of the building of special barracks for them. Special temporary barracks were built for the pioneers and troops constructing and manning the Livenza fortifications in 1411, but this was an exceptional situation.148 By this time, and increasingly after 1420 as the size of the army really began to expand, billeting normally took the form of the allocation of companies, or parts of companies, to rural villages where the men were either billeted with families or took over houses entirely. By the middle of the century it is clear that billeting obligations and the emerging complementary tax systems were primarily a rural problem; the cities were largely insulated from them.149 The exceptions to this general practice in the later part of the century were the frontier garrison towns. During the 1470s the troops garrisoning the eastern frontier were increasingly concentrated in Gradisca and Foglianica, while households throughout Friuli were called upon to contribute to the expenses of the garrison through special taxes.150 In Gradisca special accommodation for 144

150

Alvise Querini reported a case of exactly this sort from Rovigo in 1484 when the men-at-arms were busy collecting bribes off the countryfolk to go and billet themselves elsewhere (Senato, Lettere di Rettori, 11; 7 Sept. 1484). ASVe., Archivio del Comune, 395 at 31 July 1405. SMi. reg. 48, 2 (29 Apr. 1408). Ibid., 39 (16 Oct. 1408), 72V (19 Apr. 1409). SS. reg. 4, 219V (18 Dec. 1411). Pasero, 'Aspetti dell'ordinamento militare', 25. ST. reg. 7, 39V (17 May 1474); reg. 8, 107 (12 Sept. 1480).

134

The organization and administration of the army the troops was built, although it still took the form of small houses rather than large barrack blocks. Ravenna, which was also being converted into a garrison town at this stage, presented different problems because of its large indigenous population. When in 1462 it was planned to increase the garrison with the addition of Cristoforo da Tolentino's company there was a great outcry, because this would have involved commandeering 60 houses in addition to those already occupied by Bertoldo d'Este's troops.151 As a result the strengthening of the garrison was postponed and work went ahead on the fortress, which was to include accommodation for a considerable number of troops within its outer walls. In Rimini, which by 1506 had temporarily become a Venetian garrison town, arrangements were made to convert the cortile della gabella vecchia into a barracks complex with 52 rooms for soldiers.152 One of the main problems associated with the growing permanence of the billeting arrangements was that troops tended to become too integrated into local communities. Some of the companies were clearly sinking their roots deep into local life; soldiers bought property, although expressly forbidden to do this, married local girls and even took up occupations within the local economy. Chierighino Chiericati saw it as one of the main responsibilities of the collaterals to organize a move round of the companies every two years to avoid these dangers.153 But there is little evidence of this happening in any organized way. While in the first half of the century the local collateral might have had sufficient authority to move troops round his own area, the growing tendency to centralize military administration in the second half of the century meant that the administrators became more remote from these local problems. By the 1490s the savi della terraferma claimed responsibility for billeting arrangements, but there are no signs of any periodic and large-scale reallocation of billets.154 As a result companies could become widely dispersed, and there were even cases in frontier areas of troops being billeted by their captains outside Venetian frontiers altogether.155 A related issue, and one to which we shall return, was the extent to which the development of permanent quarters affected the attitudes of the troops in the field. The prospect of getting back to their established billets, their families and even their 'civilian' occupations weighed heavily with the companies towards the end of the campaigning season. The issue of when to disperse the army to quarters was one that was fiercely contested between 151 152 153 154

155

ST. reg. 5, 26 (10 Dec. 1462). ST. reg. 15, ioov (22 Apr. 1506). Zorzi, 'Chiericati', 432. ST. reg. 11, 65V (21 May 1491). In 1505 a proposal to rationalize the billeting system and reallocate billets was decisively defeated in the Senate (SS. reg. 40, 127V; 25 Oct. 1505). ST. reg. 11, 117V (3 Aug. 1492).

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 successive captains-general and the Venetian authorities, and it was probably considerably influenced by pressure from below to get back to the comfortable and organized life of the permanent quarters.156 While the main responsibilities for billeting the troops seemed to rest with the collaterals, when it came to provisioning and munitions a wide variety of lesser officials were involved. However, one aspect of provisioning, the provision of fodder and straw for the horses and wood to keep the troops warm, was closely linked to the condotte and to the billeting arrangements, and therefore did involve the collaterals directly. The detailed contracts which survive from the early part of the century make it clear that cavalry troops were entitled to free allocations of bedding straw and firewood provided by the communities on which they were billeted. The provision of free straw was justified by the fact that the eventual stable manure was considered to remain the property of the landlords and families on whom the troops were billeted, and therefore there was a balanced mutual advantage in the arrangement.157 Wood was usually a free commodity anyway in country areas, as it was largely cut on common land. The normal allocation of these commodities was ten cartloads of wood and four or five of straw per lance each year. It was not usual for infantry constables to get even the supply offirewood,although in 1469 Matteo da Sant'Angelo, the captain of infantry, was regarded as a special case and given a free allocation of wood in his billets in Crema.158 On the question of fodder for horse the issues were rather more complex. The normal contract did not specifically allow either free allocations of fodder or pasturage rights. Favoured companies, such as those of the captains-general, sometimes got concessions, as they did free billets; indeed the two tended to go together. However, in practice strictly controlled pasturage rights were allowed. Troops were normally allowed to put their horses on non-agricultural land such as marshland or woodland at any time, and on stubble from the middle of June until October. An exception to this was stubble sown with clover, which was protected.159 They were also, in some circumstances and in some areas, given access to grass pasture in May and early June, but this seems to have been the result of special negotiation and special concession.160 Normally, at least until the middle of the century, 156 157

158 159

160

See below, 178. The importance of this exchange of'goods and services' was emphasized in billeting regulations issued in the Bresciano in 1467 (ASB., Territoriale, reg. M1, 23; 20 May 1467). See also on this subject Commemoriali, xv, 112 (Predelli, v, 160-1). However, once again captains-general tended to get special concessions, and in his 1468 condotta Colleoni was allowed to sell his stable manure (Commemoriali, xv, 110-11; 24 Oct. 1468 - Predelli, v, 176-7). ST. reg. 6, 66v ( n Aug 1469). Giuliari, Documenti dell'antico diuletto, 8 - 9 . Belpetro M a n e l m i was negotiating over these rights with local representatives in the Bresciano in 1444 (ASB., Territoriale, reg. M1, 12; 16 May 1444). For example, see ASB., Territoriale, reg. M 1 , 12 (29 May 1443).

136

The organization and administration of the army the line was taken that if they wanted grass or hay then they had to pay for it. However, there was an increasing tendency after the 1440s to allocate limited supplies of hay free to troops, normally a cartload per lance per month, and to compensate the suppliers out of taxes.161 This in turn threw up a host of related disciplinary problems, as troops were sometimes found to be selling their free supply of fodder at a profit, and claiming more than they were entitled to by citing contract strengths rather than actual strengths. This gradual and rather informal extension of the concessions allowed to troops, and the subsequent increased pressure on the rural population, led in the second half of the century to an equally informal process of commutation. Clearly also troops took what they required in defiance of all regulations, thus accelerating the process. Increasingly in the second half of the century one finds reference to horse taxes, a system of commutation already well established in the duchy of Milan. Like the billeting compensation levies, these were in theory collected by local rectors and probably imposed initially on those of the rural population who were not involved in providing fodder for the cavalry.162 But by the late fifteenth century it is clear that some general horse tax system, in lieu of commitment to provide for the needs of the horses, was beginning to operate, and often this must have been levied by the troops themselves.163 So well established was the idea of a horse tax by 1500 that some men, not necessarily soldiers at all, were authorized to draw their entire salaries in the form of an equivalent amount of horse tax. Ettore di Ridolfo Gonzaga, who was given a provisione of 8 ducats a month for life after his father's death at Fornovo, asked in 1503 that this be converted into tax proceeds for twenty horses.164 This formula, twenty units of horse tax being the equivalent of 8 ducats per month, was not an unusual one, and clearly as horse taxes could be collected directly from the local population they represented a more secure form of income than a provisione which had to be squeezed out of a local treasury. The extent to which, by the early years of the sixteenth century, horse taxes were being used to provide perquisites and salaries for a wide range of posts makes one wonder how far one can see here a genuine shift of the real tax burden towards the rural population. His horse was the most valuable item of equipment that a man-at-arms possessed. His war horse could cost anything from 20 ducats, a price which 161 162

163

164

Ibid., fols. 1 iv, 20, 23; Ferrari, 'Com'era amministrato una comune', 235-6. The informal arrangements which were emerging were referred to in a Senate minute of 1468 (ST. reg. 6, 28V-29; 5 July), but the tassa de cavalli was not formally recognized and regulated until 1517 (M. Knapton,' II fisco nello stato veneziano di terraferma tra '300 e '500: la politica delle entrate', in / / sistema fiscale veneto, ed. G. Borelli et al. (Verona, 1982) 21-2). Giorgio da Martinengo, billeted in Asola and sent to Friuli, was instructed to continue collecting his taxes in Asola (ST. reg. 7, 167V; 10 June 1477). ST. reg. 14, 142V (14 Mar. 1503).

137

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 would scarcely distinguish it from the nag ridden by his sergeant, to the 200 ducats paid for each of the four great Hungarian war horses which Hermes Bentivoglio sold to Pandolfo Malatesta in 1507.165 However, the average price for a standard mount was 30-40 ducats, which already represented nearly half the annual wage for the entire lance formation.166 In these circumstances it is not surprising that the inspectors concentrated a good deal of attention on the horses when drawing up the muster rolls and using them, and that condottieri felt particularly keenly the problem of how to replace horses lost in battle. In the muster rolls the horses of a company were described as carefully as the men, indeed often with greater care. Frequently their value was also recorded, and all the horses in a company were branded with the condottiere's emblem. These precautions were taken to avoid improper substitution and to make the task of inspecting the companies and ensuring their battleworthiness easier. The collateral was usually accompanied on his inspections by a marshal who was supposed to know about horses, and any well-established condottiere company also contained a marshal who presumably also doubled as a vet. The growing tendency in fifteenth-century warfare to concentrate one's hostility on the enemies' horses, a practice supposedly initiated by the Sforzeschi in the early part of the century, considerably exacerbated the problem of replacement. Horses figured prominently amongst the booty shared out after any battle, and they were also extremely vulnerable to the growing fire-power of fifteenth-century armies. Horse armour was an inevitable but costly innovation, and initially few could afford it. In these circumstances the replacement of horses was a burning issue. Earlyfifteenth-century condotte always contained clauses imposing strict time limits within which lost horses had to be replaced if the condottieri were to avoid heavy fines. These regulations were framed at a time when it was still common practice for the employing state to pay the cost of replacement of horses, and therefore they were less harsh than they appeared. But already in these early years of the century employers were rejecting this obligation, which had been standard in the fourteenth century, and this caused rising friction and genuine hardship to the condottieri. Venice, when confronted with these problems in the early years of the wars in Lombardy, compromised in various ways. Sums were paid secretly to favoured condottieri to help them out of their difficulties without, hopefully, creating 165 Venice advanced half the money to Pandolfo, who was currently in its pay (ST. reg. 15, 166; 10 July 166

1507). This was the average price in 1477-8 when Lorenzo Loredan was concerned with the re-equipping of the army after the defeat by the Turks in the autumn of 1477 (Senato, Provveditori da Terra e da Mar, 24, 175-7).

138

The organization and administration of the army precedents;167 the time limits for replacing horses were extended. In 1432 it was agreed that condottieri would not be fined for failing to replace lost horses until they had been in winter quarters for a month.168 Gradually the practice evolved of giving advances to condottieri who had lost horses in battle to enable them to replace their mounts quickly. Like so many Venetian solutions, this seemed fair and reasonable in theory, but quickly led to distortions of pay arrangements which had far wider and more serious ramifications. The actual process of replacing lost horses was supposed to be checked very carefully by Venetian officials. They were concerned not only to ensure that the horse had been lost legitimately, particularly if some form of compensation was in question, but also that the replacement was a suitable one. Condottieri were expected, when practicable, to take the skin of the dead horse to a Venetian rector to show him the branding and prove both their ownership of the horse and its value. The replacement horse had to be inspected and branded at the earliest possible opportunity. In practice, of course, such regulations were impossible to enforce effectively, particularly after a disaster like Caravaggio, in which 10,000 horses were lost. The problem of replacing horses was not just one of cost, but also of limited supply. The rearing of horses does not seem to have been a widespread occupation in Italy. A certain amount went on in the Kingdom of Naples, and, at the top of the market, the Gonzaga were noted breeders of fine war horses. But the main sources of supply for Venice were Germany and Hungary. German horse dealers were often to be found in the Veneto and at times they were encouraged in their trade by special bonuses from the Venetian government for horses imported into the state. Herman of Nuremburg & Co. was a particularly activefirmof horse dealers in the 1470s and 1480s, sometimes supplying over 100 horses at a time to the army.169 But the problem remained acute, particularly with regard to good war horses. A small source of supply which was tapped with some reluctance was the horses acquired by each Venetian rector in the Terraferma at the beginning of his term of office for himself and his entourage. It was the normal custom for the dozen or so horses needed by each official to be bought in Venice or Padua, and then disposed of at the end of the tour of duty. Such rectors were strictly forbidden to sell to soldiers direct, but it was common practice to sell to the collaterals at an agreed valuation, and the 167

168 169

Venice, under pressure from Carmagnola, put up iooo ducats to help replace lost horses in 1427, but urged him to pretend that it was his own money (SS. reg. 10, 55; 20 June 1427). SS. reg. 12, 126 (5 Sept. 1432). ST. reg. 8, 63 (23 Sept. 1479); reg. 9, 7V (4 June 1483), 94V (23 July 1484). Horse dealers were exempted from paying duties after Caravaggio (ST. reg. 2, 84; 24 Sept. 1448), and were offered special bonuses for supplying the army in 1479 (ST. reg. 8, 39; 9 Feb. 1479).

139

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 horses were then passed on to the army.170 This practice was stopped in 1491, as it was clear that the rectors were in fact selling direct to the troops at inflated prices.171 By this time the requisitioning of horses at times of mobilization was the standard way of solving the problem quickly; but as civilians were, in theory, forbidden to possess war horses unless they had been formally released by the army as unsatisfactory or surplus to requirements, such requisitioning should not have produced very effective mounts and was presumably intended to provide horses for the baggage train and artillery.172 The obscurities and difficulties which surrounded the system of providing and maintaining horses largely disappear when we turn to the provision of supplies to the troops themselves. However, although the broad outlines are clear, relatively little detail on provisioning can be gleaned from the surviving records. Troops were always expected to pay for their food supplies in Venetian territory, although living off the land in the truest sense of the word was one of the advantages to be gained from invading neighbouring territories. In quarters the companies dealt directly with civilian suppliers in a normal way; it was only when the army was assembled in the field that provisioning became a problem for the military administration. Basically there were two ways to solve it; either the official provisioners could buy supplies in bulk and sell them to the troops, or they could encourage merchants to come and sell to the army. The latter method required a fairly static camp to be effective on a large scale; a siege situation was a typical one in which merchants would receive concessions on the normal sales and transit duties if they would supply the besieging camp.173 The army provisioners frequently resorted to ferrying bulk supplies from Venice by sea and river, but occasionally they requisitioned supplies of grain from local communities at artificially low prices. Predictably, we know more about the abuses in the system than about the system itself, so it is difficult to say more than that provisioning worked effectively on some occasions but not on others. Similarly, although we know that all castles were supposed to be stocked with considerable quantities of food supplies and munitions at all times, the only moments when the records mention the problems of maintaining these supplies is when, due to some fraud or inattention, the supplies dropped below the expected levels. However, the provisioning of castles was the responsibility of local Venetian rectors and not of the army provisioners. 170 171 172 173

ST. reg. 2, 82V (11 Sept. 1448); reg. 6, 143 (16 Sept. 1471). ST. reg. 11, 59V (20 Apr. 1491). For the ban on the civilian possession of war horses, see S T . reg. 8, n 8 v (22 Feb. 1481). Sanuto, Vite de dogi, 813. In the War of Ferrara, merchants were encouraged to come and sell

provisions in the camp by the lifting of duties, but it was soon discovered that some of the provisions exempted from duty were being sold in Venice (ST. reg. 9, 10; 23 June 1483). 140

The organization and administration of the army The supply of munitions and arms was only partly organized centrally. Traditionally condottieri were responsible for arming their men properly, and they bought the necessary equipment wherever they could. However, with the growing permanence of the army there was an obvious tendency to maintain some central supplies, and by 1431 at least there was a member of the Venetian chancellery staff, Carlo Riversi, with the army and responsible for munitions.174 In moments of crisis quantities of arms, particularly handguns, were sent from Venice in bulk; these tended to come either from the Arsenal or the armoury of the Council of Ten. Throughout the century the Arsenal, and the proveditors of the Arsenal, were responsible for the supplies of artillery, powder and shot needed for the army. Saltpetre for making gunpowder was imported in bulk, usually from southern Italy. By the 1480s one of the vice-collaterals was responsible for munitions supply to the army, but probably even by this time his main concern was with the artillery train rather than with maintaining a full stock of replacement equipment.175 But around 1500 the Council of Ten began to take a keen interest in the artillery and ordered that guns, powder and shot should be stockpiled at various points in the Terraferma.176 Venice was also fortunate in having the arms industry of Brescia close at hand to furnish the army in the field. On the provision of clothing to the army we know nothing apart from the practice of paying a part of what was due to the companies in cloth. This was originally a matter of convenience and shortage of specie rather than the beginnings of the establishment of a uniform for the army. But by 1509 at least the Venetian provisional were clothed in red and white striped jerkins which were presumably issued centrally. Apart from provisioning there were few services that were organized centrally in the Venetian army. Traditionally the larger condottiere companies contained such figures as chancellors, marshals, musicians, chaplains, and even doctors or barber-surgeons. Certainly the captaingeneral would have been attended by such men as part of his suite. Maestro Vinciguerra was Carmagnola's doctor and Antonio Cermisone attended Gattamelata, although whether actually in the field is not known.177 174 175

176 177

S M i . r e g . 5 8 , 57V (19 M a y 1431). ST. reg. 10,7 (20 Apr. i486). For the military equipment offered by Venice to Pius II for the crusade in 1463, see ASF., Strozziana I, cclvi, 2. The list included 1500 bombards, 14,000 handguns, 7000 breastplates, 2 shiploads of lances, 6000 spades, 3000 scaling ladders, 7000 barrels for bridge repairs, etc. Dieci, M i s t i , r e g . 2 8 , 112V-113 (28 F e b . 1500). S e e below, 167. Vinciguerra claimed 434 ducats off Carmagnola's estate after his execution (Dieci, Misti, reg. 11,85V; 27 Aug. 1433). The Bergamasque humanist Giovanni Michele Alberto Carrara was doctor to Roberto da Sanseverino during the war of Ferrara (DBL, xx, 685). 141

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 However, in 1437 Pietro Loredan, the proveditor, was instructed to find a doctor and a barber-surgeon to serve in the army, and undoubtedly such provision was common in fifteenth-century armies. In this case the doctor was to be paid 15 ducats a month and the barber-surgeon 6.178 In October 1482 Giovan Antonio da Feltre, prior of the college of doctors in Venice, was consulted by the Collegio on the salaries to be paid to doctors serving in the army.179 Alessandro Benedetti at Fornovo also seems to have been acting as army doctor rather than attendant on Gonzaga or any of the leading condottieri. But he offered his services on this occasion in order to gain experience of treating war wounds and adding to his anatomical knowledge; there is no indication that he held a regular appointment as a military doctor.180 Similarly there was a lack of centralized control for most of the fifteenth century in the whole question of the training of the army. Condottieri were responsible for the skill and training of their men, and undoubtedly informal jousting and tilting were an essential part of life both in the camp and in quarters. The tournament remained a very popular form of public entertainment and ceremony in the Veneto, and even in Venice itself, and was an occasion for the troops to show off their skills. There are indications that at least some of the inspections were intended to be military exercises as well as formal parades.181 The initial muster of a company had this dual purpose from an early stage, but this is very different from any sort of central concern for day-to-day training. At a different level, of course, there had long been such a concern in Venice with regard to promoting the skill of individual Venetians in handling the crossbow. This skill was fostered by frequent public competitions at which prizes were offered; but these were primarily intended to provide trained men to defend the galleys. However, when in 1490 formal training was introduced for the handgunmen of the select militia, competitions and prizes were an essential feature of the arrangements. Regular training sessions under approved masters of the art were established at the same time, and, as we have seen, concern for the formal training of bombardiers was also a feature of the later years of the fifteenth century.182 By the turn of the century this interest in encouraging individual skills was being translated into a concern for regular military exercises of whole companies and divisions of the army. The tendency towards mass parades and inspections in the late 1490s certainly carried, with 78 79 80

81 82

Collegio, C o m m i s s i o n i Secrete, reg. 4 , 102V (1 J u n e 1437). Collegio, N o t a t o r i o , reg. 13, 19 (9 O c t . 1482). I n addition to his diary of t h e campaign edited by Schullian, see R. Massalongo, 'Alessandro Benedetti e la medicina veneta del ' 4 0 0 ' , Atti. 1st. Ven., lxxiv (1916-17) 197-259. See below, 148, 149-50. See above, 85-6. 142

The organization and administration of the army it the implications of occasional large-scale manoeuvres, and the 1507/8 militia regulations contained provision for the sort of company training which was essential for pike infantry.183 By this time the condottieri were being encouraged to take on apprentices, although this was only the formalization of a very traditional practice.184 A final area of day-to-day concern of the military organization was the handling of prisoners and booty. Here once again we must refer to the contracts for a view of the traditional practices. Prisoners and booty were the property of the condottiere companies who took them, with certain clearly defined exceptions. As regards prisoners, rebels of the employing state, enemy princes and their families, and senior captains were all regarded as prisoners of the state if captured and had to be handed over by the captors in return for an agreed ransom paid by the state. Booty was divided between movables, which belonged to the captor and his men, and property, fortresses, city walls, buildings, etc., which had to be handed over to the representatives of the state intact and without recompense.185 Furthermore a levy of 10% was imposed by the state on all booty captured. The enforcement of these contractual arrangements was a part of the duties of the collaterals and proveditors. In practice the fate of a prisoner depended largely on his economic and social standing. Rank-and-file soldiers were usually released immediately by their captors after being stripped of their arms and horses; neither the companies nor the state had the facilities to keep them as prisoners, nor indeed was there any interest in setting up such facilities. In a mercenary system there was no concern with depriving the enemy of potential manpower, as this could always be recruited afresh; the damage was done by forcing him to re-equip and rehorse his troops. For the same reasons there was little point in killing or mutilating prisoners; such practices would only lead to reprisals and were rare except in particular circumstances when known deserters were involved, or specially trained men who would be hard to replace, like bombardiers and handgunmen.186 Men of any social standing were held for ransom. Such prisoners tended to gravitate into the hands of condottieri, as a man-at-arms usually found it easier to sell a prisoner to his captain, who was more likely to have the facilities for keeping 184 185 186

Q3 for manoeuvres in the Bresciano in 1498. ST. reg. 15, 22(3 July 1504). Mallett, Mercenaries and their Masters, 8 5 - 6 . The classic case was the mutilation of Venetian bombardiers and handgunmen by Paolo Vitelli after the fall of Buti in 1498, but it is clear from Venetian sources and from the rewards and pensions given to such men that the practice of mutilating and killing captured gunners was fairly common in the late fifteenth century. After Buti the Venetians thought of retaliating by offering the stradiots 3 ducats for each head of a Florentine mounted crossbowman they brought back, but the idea was voted down in the Senate by a small majority (SS. reg. 37, 38V; 29 Aug. 1498).

143

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 him and negotiating the ransom. Sometimes the negotiations took a considerable time and in these circumstances the condottiere would often hand his prisoner over to the state for safekeeping while retaining his rights to that part of the eventual ransom which was not consumed in maintenance charges.187 Thus the prisons in the Ducal Palace often contained prisoners of war, although it was also sometimes the practice to release such men on bail after they had taken an oath not to leave the city.188 The distinctions between the prisoners of the condottieri and those of the state were carefully observed, not just because the latter tended to command higher ransoms but also because it could often be a matter of state policy not to ransom them at all for the time being. State prisoners of war when released were required to take an oath not to fight against Venice for a specific period. This was standard practice in Italy, and the oaths were more often honoured than not, as the personal dangers involved if one broke the oath and was subsequently captured again were considerable.189 Venetian condottieri who returned from an enemy prison in this situation were allowed to retire temporarily on reduced salaries until the terms of the oaths expired.190 It was not normally the practice for Venice to pay the ransoms of its captured condottieri, although the state would help to arrange an exchange if that was practicable. A Venetian condottiere who was recovered by exchange was normally expected to pay his ransom to the state, through reductions in pay, to compensate for the ransom which the state had lost in negotiating his exchange.191 The capture of booty on a large scale made surprisingly little impact in the surviving Venetian military records, and we have no means of knowing how far the 10% levy was enforced. The large number of horses captured at Casalmaggiore in 1446 and divided up amongst the condottieri seems to have been an unusual windfall worthy of note; but on this occasion there is no reference to the state's share.192 Otherwise it is clear that the state moved quickly to claim its rights in respect of captured towns and castles, and there 187

188

189

190 191

192

Gattamelata sent Gaspare de' Canedoli to Venice for safekeeping in 1434, and was expected to pay his expenses (SS. reg. 13, 140; 23 Feb. 1435). Cesare da Martinengo was held prisoner in Venice for some months in 1440, although at the request of Francesco Sforza he was allowed his freedom within the city on bail of 20,000 ducats (SMi. reg. 60, 208; 12 Apr. 1440). The Milanese infantry constable Cristoforo da Montecchio, who was captured in the War of Ferrara by Sanseverino and released on oath, found a very different fate awaiting him when he was captured for a second time before the oath had expired. He was imprisoned by the Council of Ten, tortured and strangled in his cell (Dieci, Misti, reg. 22, 65-6; 31 May-i June 1484). For the case of Giovanni Malavolta in this situation, see SS. reg. 13, 253 (25 July 1436). Venice paid 1500 ducats to ransom the condottieri captured by the Turks in 1477. This money was subtracted from the back pay which had accumulated during their imprisonment (ST. reg. 8, 14; 1 July 1478). S a n u t o , Vite de dogi, 1122.

144

The organization and administration of the army is no evidence that the division of booty raised any particular tensions between soldiers and the state. Nor is there any indication that access to booty had any effect on the normal pay procedures of the republic. One of the major problems in the relations between any late-medieval army and its employer was demobilization. Demobilized troops, particularly if released in complete companies, were liable to prey on the civilian population and become organized bands of outlaws. Venice in the fifteenth century largely avoided this through the precocious development of its permanent army. Only in 1405 did Venice face the problem of largescale demobilization involving the paying off of large numbers of condottieri, and this moment has already been discussed.193 After this, demobilization usually took the form of reductions of companies; this could be accomplished without difficulty, as it was only a trickle of disorganized men who were concerned, and they naturally tended to be the oldest and least effective members of the companies. The collaterals were expected to keep a careful note of all men dismissed, particularly if they were dismissed for inefficiency, and circulate details to their colleagues to ensure that they would not be re-employed elsewhere in the Venetian state.194 Infantry companies were frequently disbanded in their entirety, but this posed fewer problems, as any danger from such a source could be quickly stifled by using cavalry against them. There remained the problem of breaking up the company of a captured, disgraced or dead condottiere. In the case of captured condottieri the policy was always to wait some time before taking any decision to dissolve the leaderless company. Temporary arrangements would be made for its control in the hope that the condottiere would soon be ransomed or exchanged. Much depended, both in such cases and in cases of the death of the condottiere, on whether there was a natural successor - son, brother, nephew, brother-in-arms, etc. If there was, and if the company was not notably inefficient, then the change of leadership would be accepted and formalized without question. When there was no natural successor or when the company was unsatisfactory for some reason, then it was quietly disbanded. Usually the best men were invited to join the lanze spezzate, and sometimes other condottieri would be invited to take over sections of the company and add them to their own. But in such circumstances there was always a fairly ruthless weeding out of the poorer-quality troops. In 1432 Carmagnola's company was broken up without difficulty by the proveditors offering full pay, and employment to all those who wished to stay on in Venetian service. Some of the squadron leaders were given their own 193 194

See above, 24-5. SMi. reg. 55, 69 (18 Nov. 1424).

145

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 condotte, and many of the men were drafted into the lanze spezzate.195 Similarly after Gianfrancesco Gonzaga's retirement in 1437 the bulk of his company was broken up by allotting sections of it to other condottieri.196 When Carlo Gonzaga died in Venetian service in 1457 his 63 men-at-arms were inspected by the Lieutenant of Friuli; 13 were found to be useless and were dismissed, and the rest were formed into two small companies under his leading squadron commanders.197 The exceptional circumstance was when a condottiere had to be disposed of forcibly because he was threatening desertion or consistently disobeying orders. In such cases, and Colleoni's impending desertion in 1451 was the most outstanding one, the captain-general and the proveditors were called upon to mobilize faithful troops, and particularly lanze spezzate, against the suspect company and if necessary destroy it by force. In 1451 Colleoni himself escaped such a coup at Isola della Scala, but most of his troops were rounded up and large numbers of them were drafted into the lanze spezzate because they were basically good men.198 In 1484 and 1485, after the Peace of Bagnolo, demobilization on a fairly large scale was ordered. Large numbers of infantry were dismissed, but this posed no great problems. Amongst the cavalry a number of minor condottieri were dismissed altogether after individual balloting in the Senate, but the main device employed, as usual, was either reducing the captains to personal provisioni, or merely reducing the size of their companies.199 So far this discussion has been largely confined to the field army; it remains to say a few words about the organization of garrison troops. To some extent, of course, the units were interchangeable; infantry companies in peacetime usually served as garrison troops, and when fighting broke out the garrisons in rear areas were stripped of men to fill up the ranks of the infantry. But some element of permanent guard had also to be provided. The citizens of the cities of the Terraferma were expected to play their part in guarding the walls, but gates and key points in the defences were entrusted to Venetian-appointed castellans and provisionati. Similarly, outlying castles had their castellans appointed centrally, although whether the appointment was actually made in Venice or in the nearest provincial centre depended on the strategic importance and size of the castle. Castellanships allotted in Venice were divided among Venetian nobles, Venetian citizens and professional infantry constables. Responsibility for 195 196 197 198 199

SS. reg. 12, 80 (14 Apr. 1432). SS. reg. 14, 84 (28 Dec. 1437). SS. reg. 20, 114V (20 Jan. 1457); ST. reg. 4, 26 (22 Jan. 1457). Belotti, Colleoni, 211 and SS. reg. 19, 65V (22 June 1451). ST. reg. 9, 100 (25 Aug. 1484), 103 (30 Aug. 1484); SS. reg. 32, 96 (2 Oct. 1484).

146

The organization and administration of the army inspecting castles and garrisons and for maintaining standards of discipline and the necessary stocks of provisions and munitions for each lay with provincial rectors. A whole section of the army regulations covered the garrisons, and particularly the relations between garrison troops and the civilian population, which were intended to be kept to a minimum.200 On the whole Venetian garrison troops were of poor quality; many of them were semi-retired infantry veterans or men whose standing as soldiers at all could be questioned. Standards tended to be higher in the frontier areas, where there was a greater tendency to use permanent infantry companies as garrisons. In 1502 there was a major inspection of all garrisons by Vincenzo Valier, the proveditor-general, and Gianfilippo Aureliano, the collateral.201 The result of their report was a dramatic pruning of the garrisons and castle guards throughout the Terraferma. Many small castles were stripped of their garrisons altogether and put up for rent to Venetian nobles and others who became responsible for their maintenance. The main motive for this overhaul of the system was economy, and the effects of Valier's proposals were to save c. 11,500 ducats a year. But certainly the small country stronghold guarded by perhaps two men must have seemed an anachronism by the sixteenth century, and this review of the whole garrison organization was long overdue.202 Because of the nature of the surviving records it is very difficult to get an overall impression of how the military organization which has been described in this chapter actually functioned in practice. Judging by the admiration bestowed on Belpetro Manelmi later in the century, he did achieve something special in the way of making the system work. However, the one moment at which we can look closely at the operation of the Venetian military system is in the difficult period of the late 1470s. The extent to which the organization had been allowed to run down since 1455 and the imminent threat from the Turks produced a surge of reform activity in Venice. A series of powerful proveditors-general were elected to supervise the reforms and get the army back into order. On 28 August 1477 Lorenzo Loredan was elected to this post,203 and a letter book containing copies of all the official letters which he wrote during the thirteen months of his tenure has fortunately survived to us.204 During those months Loredan travelled all over the Terraferma inspecting troops and garrisons, trying to 200 p o r 1;^^ regulations, see above, 113-14. S T . r e g . 14, 96V-101 (24 A u g . 1502), 115—17 (29 O c t . 1502). 202 In 1493 it was reported to the Council of Ten that the castellan at Belluno had turned the castle into an inn, where Germans stayed on their way to and from Venice (Dieci, Misti, reg. 26, 72; 27 Sept. 1493)203 S S . reg. 2 8 , 4 3 v (28 A u g . 1477). 204 Senato, Provveditori da Terra e da Mar, 24 passim. 201

147

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 mobilize an effective force in Friuli to resist the Turks, and, together with the new collateral-general, Giovanni Niccolo Manzini, dealing with a wide variety of problems of military organization. The two immediate problems facing Loredan when he set out for Brescia in early September 1477 were the condition of the recently arrived company of Cola da Monforte, Count of Campobasso, and that of the long-serving but now leaderless Colleoneschi. Cola da Monforte had only recently arrived in Brescia after his long march from eastern France, and the initial impression which Loredan received of the troops was a poor one. In appearance and equipment they were more like servants than men-at-arms, he remarked sadly, and their horses were painfully thin after the journey.205 However, within ten days of his arrival he started to muster them. Cola da Monforte had a condotta for 500 cavalry, and by 5 October 482 had been entered in the muster rolls, including 132 men-at-arms. On that day Loredan rode with the company into the country for the second part of the mustering procedure, military exercises. By this time he recorded grudging admiration for the way Cola had got his troops into order. The number of horses was almost complete, although some were still very thin; the men were now fully equipped with many new arms, and Cola had clearly spent money heavily amongst the armourers of Brescia.206 The company was now ready to go to Friuli, where its presence was urgently needed, and in early November the new march started. Loredan caught up with the company again in January 1478 at Conegliano. By this time a number of men had deserted and Cola tried desperately to avoid inspection, as he knew his numbers were well down. Loredan insisted on inspecting what he could, and finding only 408 horses refused to issue a pay bolletta for any more than that, even when ordered by Venice to pay Cola in full in order to keep him happy.207 One of the factors in Venice's anxiety to placate Cola da Monforte was that after a brief period in which he had commanded the Friuli army, following the death of Girolamo Novello fighting the Turks in the previous year, he was now being subordinated to Carlo Fortebraccio, who had returned from Umbria to take command. Loredan thus found himself in the middle of one of those delicate issues of precedence and ruffled personal feelings which so often affected military relationships. This problem was only resolved by the death of Cola in mid July 1478, when his company, on Loredan's advice, passed immediately to his sons.208 While Cola da Monforte was preparing to move to Friuli in October 1477, Loredan turned his attention to the Colleoneschi. Here was a large body of 205 206 207 208

Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid.,

3v

(27 Sept. 1477). 6v a n d 13V (6 a n d 26 O c t . 1477). 49V a n d 57 (11 J a n . a n d 3 F e b . 1478). 138V-139 (15 July 1478); ST. reg. 8, 26v (12 Oct. 1478).

148

The organization and administration of the army veteran troops who had lived for years in the southern Bergamasco and who were reluctant to accept the command of anyone after the death of their beloved leader. At the start Loredan regarded them with a mixture of suspicion and exasperation; his answer to the problem was to divide them up under experienced condottieri, but this encountered a sort of mulish esprit de corps which foiled all his attempts at rational organization.209 Eventually he got part of the company together and sent them off to Friuli in the wake of Cola da Monforte, but by the following spring most of them seem to have drifted back to their billets in the western part of the state. By this time Loredan's sympathies for them had somewhat increased; he had begun to realize that most of the defects with which he was wrestling sprang from poor and erratic pay. The very fact that the Colleoneschi now had no recognized leader to speak out for them meant that they were amongst the worse-paid sections of the army. So Loredan made great efforts to get some money to them and seemed gradually to win their confidence. By 24 April 1478 he was able to report that 750 cavalry of the Colleoneschi had crossed the Mincio on their way to Friuli and that they were now a fine body of men.210 He begged Venice to pay them regularly from now onwards in order to keep them this way; otherwise they would begin to sell their horses and drift home to their billets, where they could at least maintain themselves without pay. However, the optimism was short-lived; by mid July no further pay had arrived and the muttering had started again. Oaths were being taken in the company not to turn up to inspections and not to allow themselves to be split up; Loredan left his post in October with the problem still unresolved.211 The other major company with which Loredan had to deal during his term of office was that of Carlo Fortebraccio, which assembled at Noale after a march from the Romagna in May 1478. Count Carlo was an old-style condottiere who both kept a fairly tight rein on his men and knew exactly what had to be done to maintain a working relationship with Venice. As soon as he arrived his troops started bullying the local population, and this quickly produced results; chancellors scurried from Venice with money and Loredan moved in to start the mustering.212 Within a fortnight the whole process was complete; Carlo had 720 cavalry out of a condotta for 778, and on 7 June they exercised at Mestre, where any interested Venetians could watch. In addition to the heavy cavalry Carlo had a company of mounted 209 210 211 212

Senato, Provveditori da Terra e da Mar, 24, 22 and 30 (6 Nov. and 1 Dec. 1477). Ibid., 52 and iogv-nov (21 Jan. and 24 Apr. 1478). Ibid., 136 and 138V-139 (10 and 15 July 1478). Ibid., 119 (22 May 1478). The Senate immediately despatched 2000 ducats to Loredan to keep Fortebraccio happy (ST. reg. 8, 9; 22 May 1478).

149

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 crossbowmen and one of infantry which he paid for himself.213 Immediately after the parade he set off for Friuli to take charge of the rest of the army, and his presence there also began to have beneficial results, although Loredan continued to have doubts about the way in which he treated his own company.214 Although Loredan frequently complained that he was doing the jobs of the collaterals for them, and he showed himself to be particularly strict on the whole issue of relating pay to detailed inspections, there were other aspects to his activities. Whenever he had a moment he inspected garrisons and fortifications. When in Padua in February 1478 he inspected the garrison in the castle and found that the castellan had enrolled, amongst others, his own three-year-old son and a twelve-year-old servant as crossbowmen, eight pensioners over 64 years of age (Loredan himself was 65 at this stage, so perhaps the implications of aged incapacity were a little unfair) and a paralytic Greek who was incapable of bearing arms. This castellan had just been dismissed for other infringements of the garrison regulations, so the state of the garrison can have been no great surprise to Loredan.215 On the whole, however, he found the garrison troops he inspected in good order although very much in arrears with their pay.216 At the end of March, while in Brescia, he took the opportunity to ride over and see the new fortifications being erected at Pontevico and was considerably impressed with the work. When he inspected the garrison he found that one provisionato had set up a school for local children in the castle, and he was instantly dismissed; but otherwise again the men were in good order. The castle had eight spingardelle and fifteen old galley bombards, which he considered inadequate for so important a site, and there was also an almost complete lack of the provisions of food which were supposed to be maintained.217 When Loredan finally arrived at the front line in Friuli in May 1478 he also reported extensively on the fortifications at Fogliano and Gradisca. His impression on the whole was a poor one, although he fully endorsed the strategic importance of the two places.218 Another area of interest for Lorenzo Loredan was the militia, and the newly formed provisionati di San Marco. He entirely approved of the idea of the select and trained militia, as he regarded the normal levies as worse than 213 214

215

216 217 218

Senato, Proveditori da Terra e da Mar, 24, 122V, 124 and 125V-126 (30 May, 3 and 8 June 1478). On 10 July 1478 Loredan reported that Carlo Fortebraccio had got the army organized in a way that it had never been before (ibid., 136), but his own troops complained that he did not pass pay on to them and behaved in a thoroughly arrogant way. Ibid., 57V-58 (5 F e b . 1478). F o r t h e dismissal of the castellan, see Dieci, Misti, reg. 19, 90 (28 J a n . 1478). S e n a t o , Provveditori da T e r r a e da M a r , 24, 58V-59 a n d 90V-91 (9 F e b . a n d 27 M a r . 1478). Ibid., 91V-92 (31 M a r . 1478). F o r t h e refortifying of Pontevico, see above, 9 0 . Senato, Provveditori da Terra e da Mar, 24, 116-17 (13 May 1478). 150

The organization and administration of the army useless.219 But his experience with the new provisionati was not a positive one. The Terraferma cities were reluctant to provide the necessary arms and the recruiting went slowly.220 In Friuli itself the 800 provisionati sent from Padua quickly melted away, and when Loredan came to inspect them in September 1478 he found only 122 left. Despite the reluctance of the local proveditor to pay so ineffective a force at all, Loredan insisted that those few who had served faithfully should be rewarded.221 The last few months of Loredan's term of office were spent at the front and often in the field with the army. Having spent the winter and spring desperately trying to get an army together, he was able now to see the results of his efforts. By July 1478 about 5000 cavalry, including Milanese and Ferrarese contingents, and 1500 professional infantry had assembled. All were inspected by Loredan, and none of the companies were more than 5% under par in terms of numbers.222 Carlo Fortebraccio had got everything organized in a way that impressed him; the camp marshals had been appointed, and for a brief moment one has the impression of a machine working smoothly. A Turkish raid was easily repulsed and the main body of the Turkish army moved off southwards, clearly reluctant to try conclusions with Fortebraccio's troops. However, there was another side to the picture. The quarters in the front line were wretched and proper supplies of provisions were not getting through. On 15 August Loredan received instructions to go to Fogliano himself to be with the troops; it was pouring with rain and he had no tent; the quarters were swimming in mud and many had no roofs. After spending a night sharing a room with Count Antonio da Marsciano, he found a bed for himself 'in quarters which would be more suitable for fools or even astrologers who have to gaze at the stars than for me'.223 As soon as the Turkish threat had passed he hurried back to Udine with relief. By this time the even more fundamental problem was emerging again - pay. Loredan had repeatedly urged that at least for the three summer months Venice should send regular pay. But the days passed and money arrived only in hundreds rather than thousands of ducats. By September the army was breaking up fast;224 troops were selling their horses in order to live and borrowing fresh mounts off the Milanese and Ferrarese for inspections, as neither of those states insisted on branding their horses.225 Loredan tried 219 220 221 222 223

224 225

Ibid., 24 a n d 150V (15 N o v . 1477 a n d 18 A u g . 1478). Ibid., 106 (14 Apr. 1478). Ibid., 159 (27 Sept. 1478). Ibid., 130-4 (25 June-5 July 1478). Ibid., 148-54 (15-27 Aug. 1478): 'in stantia che sarebbe molto piu apto a zanocchi over ad astrologi che hanno a contemplar lo stelle che a me'. Ibid., 155-60 (3-20 Sept. 1478). I b i d . , 137V (12 J u l y 1478).

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 disciplining one of the captains in an attempt to make an example; he arrested Giorgio della Massa, an infantry constable who had married a granddaughter of Roberto da Sanseverino, for disobeying orders, not paying his men and maintaining his company at only one-sixth of the contract strength. Giorgio was sent to Venice under armed guard but subsequently was allowed quietly to leave Venetian service.226 But there is no evidence that Loredan's action did anything to stem the tide. Lorenzo Loredan left office on 12 October 1478 an exhausted and disillusioned man.227 His disillusionment lay not so much with the soldiers themselves as with the behaviour of the government in Venice. He had taken up his office a year earlier never having had a similar appointment with the land army but with a strong belief that handling soldiers would not be very different from handling galley crews, that all that was needed was a firm hand and a good leadership.228 By the end he had come to realize that the problems were infinitely more complex, that professional soldiers were much more independent and used to very different standards than galley oarsmen; they could not be fed on ship's biscuit.229 He developed during the year a good deal of sympathy for the soldiers he alternately bullied and cajoled; above all he fought for their rights over pay. It is clear from his letters that the centralized pay system was just not working; the one moment when he managed to collect together a reasonable sum of money was when he was authorized, despite the current regulations, to draw direct from the treasuries of Brescia, Bergamo and Crema. This enabled him to raise several thousand ducats quickly and get the mobilization moving in the spring of 1478.230 But his frustration at the difficulties was expressed in the form of the almost ritual reference to the 'days of Belpiero'.231 Once again, therefore, it must be remembered that Loredan was facing exceptional problems; morale and organization had been crucially affected by the long years of peace and neglect; thefinancialsystem in force at the time was an aberration which was abandoned in the following year; the collaterals, who at one time clearly had exercised a salutary degree of continuous control, had only just recovered their influential positions. In the Loredan reports there is, therefore, not just a view of the Venetian army at a nadir in its fortunes, but also an indication of the determination with which the system of military organization could be enforced and had been enforced in the past. 226 227

228 229 230

231

Ibid., 142V, 145 a n d 163 (27 J u l y , 8 A u g . a n d 10 O c t . 1478). He had to stay on beyond his appointed span because his successor, Niccolo di Ca' Pesaro, was slow to take up the post (ST. reg. 8, 23 and 25V; 18 Sept. and 1 Oct. 1478). S e n a t o , Provveditori da T e r r a e da M a r , 24, 73 (28 F e b . 1478). Ibid., 1 3 2 - 3 (2 July a n d 22 A u g . 1478). Ibid., 76V-77V a n d 8 2 - 3 (9 a n d 12 M a r . 1478). S o m e infantry in t h e Bresciano were as m u c h as eighteen m o n t h s in arrears with their pay. Ibid., 88v (23 Mar. 1478). 152

Control and policy making The army created by Venice in the fifteenth century was a cumbersome and unreliable instrument the effectiveness of which depended very largely on how it was wielded. The organization already described was the means of control in peacetime, but in war dynamic and effective leadership in the field and swift and informed decision making in Venice were essential adjuncts to that organization. Above all, perhaps, what was essential for effective military action was the smooth passage of orders and advice from the councils in Venice to the commanders in the field so that policy could be translated into action. How far did Venice in the fifteenth century achieve these desirable goals? Lorenzo Loredan in his tour of duty as proveditor-general in the late 1470s commented frequently on the necessity for firm leadership in military affairs.1 But in fact he never had to deal with a captain-general, as Colleoni had died quite recently and had not been replaced. Hence he was not directly confronted with that crucial dilemma inherent in all emerging standing armies of how to maintain control from the centre and yet at the same time entrust the precious weapon to a prestigious and often ambitious military commander. Venice, as a state committed to a practice of collective decision making, found it particularly difficult to accept that success in war depended to a large extent on the authority and determination of one man, the military commander. On the other hand, Venetian nobles as individuals were more than usually accustomed to the necessity for strong personal leadership in their maritime experience. Hence Venetian policy on this issue tended tofluctuateduring thefifteenthcentury. For thefiftymiddle years of the century, from the appointment of Carmagnola in 1426 to the death of Colleoni in 1475, there was an almost continuous series of prestigious captains-general. During the middle years of the century the appointment of a captain-general, with all the authority that the title carried, was felt to be necessary both to attract men of sufficient calibre and to maintain control over the coterie of condottieri who were being welded into a permanent army. But in the first and last quarters of the century acceptance of this 1

Senato, Provveditori da Terra e da Mar, 24; see above, 147-52.

153

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 necessity was far less apparent. Prior to 1425 the army was rarely large enough, nor its permanent features sufficiently delineated, to make it clear that a powerful permanent commander had to be accepted. After 1475 and the death of Colleoni the very static nature of the army and the relative freedom from war once more seemed to erode the necessity. The problem of how to reconcilefirmleadership in thefieldwith effective control from Venice was particularly apparent in the early years of the century. Although a captain-general was quickly appointed for the war with the Carrara in 1404, his authority was effectively limited to one of the three armies employed, and the size of the personal company allowed to him did not give that pre-eminence which his rank required.2 Command of the army before Verona was vested in a committee made up of Venetian nobles as well as the two leading captains.3 There was a constant tendency to suggest, despite traditional preconceptions to the contrary, that armies might be best led by Venetians. As soon as the war was over the post of captain-general was left vacant for six years of relative peace. The Hungarian crisis of 1411 caused the debate to be reopened. On 12 December a proposal to move immediately to the appointment of a captaingeneral, Carlo Malatesta, was defeated in the Senate.4 It was clear from a subsequent debate that the hesitation was caused as much by an inability to agree on a suitable leader as by reluctance to concede the principle of supreme command.5 Two days later a proposal to appoint a Venetian to command the army was defeated even more heavily, and the Senate contented itself with appointing proveditors pending afinaldecision on the captain-generalship.6 Finally, on 24 December the nettle was grasped and Santo Venier dispatched to open negotiations with Malatesta.7 Even so the company offered to him was absurdly small and it was clear that the Senate had not recognized the principle that the captain-general had to be given an effective pre-eminence based on the size of his own following. Malatesta, with the excuse that he was still bound by contract to Ladislas of Naples, was able to spin out the negotiations until he had won a contract for 500 2 3 4 5 6

7

Zorzi, 'Chiericati', 432; Chierighino Chiericati suggested in 1470 that the captain-general should have 1500 cavalry and 300 infantry, and no other captain more than 1000 cavalry. See above, 22. SS. reg. 4, 217 (12 Dec. 1411). The voting figures were 37 in favour and 54 against. Ibid., 217V-218 (14 Dec. 1411). Ibid. The chosen Venetian captain was to be given a condotta for 100 lances and 100 infantry, and a salary of 400 ducats a month. The proposal came from Antonio Contarini but received only 17 votes. Eventually, at the end of a long debate Barbone Morosini and Jacopo Trevisan, the elder, were sent as proveditors. SS. reg. 4, 222 (24 Dec. 1411). Venier had a commission to negotiate a condotta for 300 lances and 300 infantry.

154

Control and policy making lances; but even so he was in danger of having his company outnumbered by those of some of the captains who were hired as his subordinates.8 After the first Hungarian War Pandolfo Malatesta, who had replaced Carlo during the campaign, was able to hang on to the title of captaingeneral but only with a contract in aspetto.9 In practice the standing forces during thefiveyears' truce with Sigismund were once more under the direct control of the Senate. As has already been seen, in the second Hungarian War the title of captain-general was never conceded to Filippo Arcelli, but circumstances enabled him to conduct an effective campaign without it.10 Even as late as 1432, in the period of uncertainty which followed the execution of Carmagnola, Venice once more probed the possible alternatives to the appointment of an all-powerful captain-general. Once again the hesitation stemmed as much from a disagreement over the available candidates as from a dislike of the principle, but nevertheless the possibilities of appointing a Venetian to command the army or of entrusting that command to a committee of nobles and condottieri were seriously considered.11 Indeed, the latter alternative was actually put into effect, but it was clearly by now a temporary arrangement. By the end of the year Gianfrancesco Gonzaga's decision to offer his services as captain-general resolved the problem and was generally accepted as the right solution.12 By this time it was clear that the new dimensions of the Terraferma state after 1421 and the war with Milan had made the continuous employment of a captain-general a necessity. Once the need for that continuity and commitment was recognized it also became more likely that the choice would fall not on the sort of princely adherent who had been employed in the first quarter of the century, but on a stateless professional soldier whose outside interests and commitments would be more limited. At this stage one must explore briefly in what the authority given to the captain-general consisted. The main lines of this authority were laid down in the special contracts given to the captains-general.13 They included the right to obedience from all land forces, and complete jurisdiction in civil and Ibid., 24ir-v (13 Feb. 1412). In July it was heard that Gianfrancesco Gonzaga wanted to join Venice with 600 lances, and this was declined (reg. 5, 37V; 1 July 1412). See above, 28-9. See above, 30-1. SS. reg. 12,91 (7 June 1432), 95 (21 June 1432). The committee set up on 21 June consisted of the two proveditors, Guidantonio Manfredi, Luigi da Sanseverino and Piero Gianpaolo Orsini. The three condottieri were to take it in turns to be supreme commander for one month each. Ibid., 138V (3 Dec. 1432). Gonzaga was given a condotta for 600 lances and in addition command of 200 of the lanze spezzate. For the best accounts of the authority of the captain-general, see the condotte of Malatesta Malatesta (Commemoriali, ix, 162V; Predelli, iii, 299-300), Carlo Malatesta (Commemoriali, x, 16; Predelli, iii, 357) and Carmagnola (Commemoriali, xi, 67; Predelli, iv, 151; also published in Ricotti, ii, 446-9).

155

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 criminal cases over the soldiers except in places where Venetian rectors had authority, i.e. specifically, cities and major fortresses. The captain-general had the right to participate in the formulation of war policy and was entitled to a full briefing on the republic's political and military intentions. He did not normally have authority to hire and dismiss condottieri, but his advice was frequently sought and he had a general responsibility for maintaining standards within the companies.14 His own contract frequently contained special clauses which allowed him the right to pay his own troops, and entitled him to free billets and supplies of straw and fodder. The official emblem of his authority was the baton, a broken lance shaft about five feet long, which was formally handed to him either during a state reception in Venice or by specially appointed nobles in the field. Undoubtedly, despite the clear contractual statements of the captaingeneral's authority, the real nature of his relationship both to Venice and to the army which he commanded depended on the current military and political situation, and on his own personality and prestige. The captainsgeneral from Carmagnola onwards all had differing relationships with Venice. Carmagnola himself, and even more so Francesco Sforza, who as captain-general of the League occupied a peculiarly independent position vis-a-vis Venice, were men of great prestige and political ambition who had to be treated with extreme delicacy. Their periods of command, coinciding as they did with moments of intense military activity, were ones in which not only control of the army but also control of policy seemed to be largely vested in the captain-general. Gonzaga and Sigismondo Malatesta, on the other hand, although both having independent bases outside the territory of the republic, were unable to claim the same sort of authority and were regarded with some suspicion and reserve because of their outside commitments. Michele Attendolo and Jacopo Piccinino, although experienced captains without states of their own, were both accepted by Venice with some reluctance and under pressure. Attendolo was appointed because of pressure from his cousin Francesco Sforza, and after the latter's departure was fairly strictly controlled by Venice until his dismissal after Caravaggio. Piccinino owed his appointment to the sudden death of Gentile da Leonessa and the urgent military needs of the last years of the wars. He also was discarded abruptly as soon as possible. Gattamelata and Gentile della Leonessa represented yet another phenomenon, the faithful Venetian 14

The point about the responsibility for hiring and firing is not made clear in the condom. But in 1427 Carmagnola tried to dismiss one of his captains, Bernardo Morosini, and was told firmly that he did not have the power to suspend contracts in this way. Morosini was allowed to complete his contract and was then quietly dropped (SMi. reg. 56, 139; 30 Nov. 1427). During the demobilization of 1420 the advice of Filippo Arcelli was sought about which condottieri to retain and which to dismiss (SS. reg. 7, 170V; 24 July 1420).

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Control and policy making captain promoted to supreme command. In both cases the ultimate authority of the captain-generalship was delayed (and in Gentile's case never in fact given) not because of the usual suspicion but to avoid arousing jealousies amongst former colleagues and equals. With Colleoni Venice had found a captain-general who was attached by long-standing links to the state, enormously prestigious, and yet relatively modest in his ambitions. But in the last resort it was the long period of tense yet peaceful confrontation after Lodi which made the relationship a lasting one. Venice could not risk being without a captain-general, and yet the opportunities for Colleoni to claim real independent authority were limited. A captaingeneral in permanent quarters could never expect to exercise the authority over the army which was possible in the field. Colleoni's famous deathbed advice to his employers that they should never again entrust so much authority to their captain-general was, even if not apocryphal, unlikely to have carried much weight on its own. But by the mid 147os the enormous cost of the Colleoni condotta and the extent to which a substantial part of the standing army had become dependent on one man were undoubtedly an embarrassment.15 It was certainly the case that for the remainder of the century Venice rarely appointed a captain-general. The feeling seems to have grown among the Italian states after Lodi that a captain-general was essentially a war appointment, and indeed that to make such an appointment was already an expression of bellicose intent. The distinction between the necessary authority of the commander in war and the greater responsibility and control exercised by the civil authorities over the standing army in peace was a natural development following the growing acceptance of standing armies. The result was a proliferation of lesser titles conferring less authority; the Venetian army commander of the last quarter of the century was more frequently ranked as lieutenant-general or governor-general than as captain-general.16 Roberto Malatesta was given the title of captain-general in December 1479, four years after the death of Colleoni, but this was with the Pazzi War still in progress and with the threat of the Turks barely subsiding.17 Malatesta in fact initially refused to fight in Friuli if called upon, but was cajoled out of this clause of the contract. While Malatesta was still alive both 15 16

17

B. Belotti, Studi colleoneschi (Milan, 1939) 131-3. There was in fact some confusion in contemporary minds about the exact significance of, and distinction between, the titles of captain-general and lieutenant-general. Franchino Castiglione in 1430 advised Filippo Maria Visconti that the lieutenant was supreme in all matters concerning administration, quarters, garrisons, etc., while the captain commanded in thefield(Osio, ii, 466-7). A French manuscript cited by Perret (Bibliotheque Nationale, ms. fr. 5599) states, on Venetian military organization, that the lieutenant-general was senior to the captain-general, but this was clearly not the case, and all Venetian evidence suggests the contrary in the fifteenth century. SS. reg. 29, 63-4 (16 Dec. 1479).

157

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 the Duke of Lorraine and Roberto da Sanseverino had the title of lieutenant-general, and even when Malatesta died after Campomorto in 1482 Sanseverino remained lieutenant-general for the remainder of the War of Ferrara. But, interestingly enough, when the Colleoni heirs sought permission to rent Malpaga on a long lease to Roberto da Sanseverino in 1484 the Council of Ten refused.18 Sanseverino already had his ownfiefof Cittadella in the Padovano by this time, and Venice did not wish to see a repeat of Colleoni's immense local authority in the Bergamasco.19 When Roberto da Sanseverino was briefly reinstated in Venetian favour in 1487 after his Neapolitan adventure, he still did not receive the title of captain-general;20 and after his death at Calliano in that year Venice had no captain-general for a number of years. By these later years of the century it was clearly a matter of policy to avoid such an appointment in time of peace. It was also an economy measure at a time when the costs of the army were causing rising concern.21 In fact the next captain-general was Francesco Gonzaga, who received the title only after Fornovo in 1495, when he had, in a sense, proved himself. It is probably true to say, however, that the fact that Venice did not immediately appoint a captain-general at the time of mobilization in the spring of 1495 was because the right man was not available, i.e. Pitigliano or Trivulzio.22 Gonzaga was relatively inexperienced, and indeed one of the conditions of his contract was that he should have his uncle, Ridolfo, with him because he was a man with a distinguished military record. But again after Gonzaga's disgrace in 1497 Venice did without a captaingeneral until Pitigliano was promoted to the title in 1504. The 1499 campaign in the Milanese was conducted by Pitigliano as governor-general. Obviously the delay in promoting Pitigliano was again not just a matter of a growing reluctance to appoint captains-general except in an emergency. But nor was it a matter of waiting for Pitigliano to prove himself — except perhaps in terms of fidelity. Pitigliano was already by the late 1480s recognized as the leading soldier in Italy, and Venice was very fortunate to have him. There was, it is true, still talk of a secret negotiation with Trivulzio in 1498, and it is probably the case that Venice was trying to keep the key appointment vacant for as long as possible in case it could be used to 18 19 20 21

22

Died, Misti, reg. 22, 45 (7 Apr. 1484). The grant of Cittadella to Roberto da Sanseverino is in SS. reg. 31, 117 (17 Dec. 1483). SS. reg. 33, 82V (12 June 1487). For some abortive negotiations between Venice and potential commanders in this period, see the articles by Perret on Jacopo Galeotto, Boffilo del Giudice and Marshal d'Esquerdes cited in ch. 2, n. 137Francesco Gonzaga took service with Venice in 1489 but with no title (SS. reg. 34,2; 11 Mar. 1489); he was made governor-general on the eve of Fornovo (Dieci, Misti, reg. 26, i88v; 5 June 1495) and captain-general after the battle (Commemoriali, xvm, 2iv; 20 Oct. 1495; Predelli, vi, 13).

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Control and policy making win over a figure like Trivulzio.23 Such a policy depended, of course, on Pitigliano not getting restive, and by 1504 he was doing just that; hence his promotion at that moment.24 For the last five years up to Cambrai Venice did then have a captaingeneral and the army was fully used to his authority. Pitigliano's base was at his fief and palace of Ghedi in the Bresciano, a site perhaps chosen more with an eye to the annual muster of a standing army than the defence of a threatened frontier as Malpaga had been. Ghedi was well placed as an assembly point for troops quartered all over the western half of the Terraferma. This perhaps even suggests the beginning of the resolution of the problem of what to do with a captain-general in peacetime; he was to be given a role in the supervision of army organization in a way that had clearly not been formulated in the time of Colleoni. At this stage in the discussion of control and policy making it is necessary to leave the army, which has been the main focus of all that has been said so far, and come in to Venice itself, to the councils and committees which at least by the second half of the fifteenth century were taking an increasing and continuous interest in military affairs. It is important to re-emphasize at this point that the Venetian commitment to a mainland policy, and hence to its military implications, was to some extent of accidental and casual growth. Venice did not plan a standing army and a coherent military policy in the fifteenth century; Venetian councils had gradually to take more and more account of mainland affairs and of the problems of military organization. Hence it has seemed logical to discuss first the emerging phenomenon of a military commitment, and then to look for the impact on Venetian policy and decision making, and ultimately on Venetian society as a whole. Throughout the fifteenth century decisions concerning peace and war, and the major diplomatic and military issues, were discussed and concluded in the Senate in the traditional manner. This was the relatively restricted council made up of about 200 experienced nobles, partly elected, partly coopted and partly ex officio.25 The Great Council, on which all nobles over the age of 25 had a seat, had little role in this area of decision making, confining itself to electing to minor military posts, castellanships, etc. On the other hand, the doge, who had no formal or independent power in any sphere of policy making, could deploy very considerable personal influence. Francesco Foscari is always credited with being the leader of a mainland expansionist group, and his dogeship, 1423-57, embraced the entire period 23 24 25

Died, Misti, reg. 27, 224V (28 July 1498). Commemoriali, xix, 23-5; 24 Mar. 1504 (Predelli, vi, 73-4). G. Maranini, La constituzione di Venezia dopo la serrata del Maggior Consiglio (Florence, 1931) 192-225; A. Da Mosto, UArchivio di Stato di Venezia (Rome, 2 vols., 1937-41) i, 34-8; E. Besta, / / Senato veneziano: origini, attribuzioni e riti (Venice, 1899); Lane, Venice, 254-6.

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Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 of the wars in Lombardy. There can be no doubt that Foscari did have a considerable interest in mainland policy and expansion. He was involved in the 1404-5 war and was the first man to be named as one of the savi super terris de novo acquisitis in 1421,26 This said, it remains a matter of conjecture how much influence on war policy he exercised as doge, or how consistent a promoter of warlike policies he was. However, his successor, Pasquale Malipiero, had also played a leading part in Terraferma and military affairs before his election, and Cristoforo Moro, whose dogeship covered the first years of the long Turkish war from 1463, was noted for his religious zeal and crusading fanaticism.27 That Venice should commit itself for the one and only time in the fifteenth century to large-scale land operations in the Balkans at the moment when the doge was a man of such qualities may not be entirely coincidental. However, whatever one may conjecture about the personal influence of the doge, military decision making was ultimately the responsibility of the Senate. Day-to-day executive authority was delegated by the Senate to the College, which acted as the steering committee of the Senate. At times of crisis the College was in almost constant session and inevitably at times it seemed to assume an almost independent authority. But that authority was derived from the Senate and could be checked by the Senate. A typical example of the way in which the decision-making process worked can be found in the whole area of recruiting. A decision to increase the size of the army could only be taken by the Senate, and the Senate also had to discuss and approve any large contracts. But the day-to-day business of implementing Senate decisions on overall numbers was conducted by the College, which had the authority to conclude small contracts.28 The College was made up of the doge, the six ducal councillors, the Heads of the Council of Ten and the Quarantia Criminal, the main judicial council, and three groups of savi elected by the Senate. It was the savi who acted as the real executive in Venetian government, and as far as military and Terraferma matters were concerned it was that group of five savi known ultimately as the savi delta terraferma who had the most influence on policy. It was they who tended to initiate proposals in this area of policy and who, within the College, implemented Senate and College decisions. Given this concentration of influence, not to say authority, in military matters in the hands offivemen at any one time, it is important to examine a little more closely the emergence and function of the savi delta terraferma.29 26 27 28

29

SMi. reg. 53, ioov (14 Jan. 1421). See below, 161. On Pasquale Malipiero, see below, 172; on Cristoforo Moro, see Romanin, iv, 228-9. It is striking that in 1404-5 the Senate showed great reluctance to delegate day-to-day conduct of the war to the College; but in 1412 there was a clear vote in favour of doing this (SS. reg. 5, 86v; 28 Nov. 1412), and this method continued for the rest of the century. On the institution of the savi della terraferma, see Da Mosto, i, 22 and Besta, Senato, 65-6. 160

Control and policy making By about 1400 two groups of savi were elected every six months by the Senate; the savi agli ordini concentrated on maritime and commercial affairs, and the more influential savi del consiglio on internal affairs and foreign policy. The wars of the first two decades of the fifteenth century, and the considerable expansion of mainland and military business which they engendered, led to the creation of a series of temporary groups of savi to assist the savi del consiglio. These were variously known as the sapientes super guerra, sapientes super rationibus guerrae and sapientes ad providendum ad custodiam, dijfensionem et conservationem terrarum et locorum acquisitorum de

novo. The election of groups of savi specifically responsible for the direction and financing of war, and for the custody and organization of the new conquests, was haphazard and unco-ordinated.30 In the last resort responsibility for these affairs remained with the savi del consiglio. Even as late as the 1418-20 war with the Hungarians the successive groups of savi alia guerra elected to concert military policy were seen essentially as a wartime and temporary phenomenon. However, at the end of this year, which had seen a remarkable expansion of Venice's eastern frontiers, there was a clear change of mood in Venetian policy. This has already been noted in terms of military organization and it also manifested itself in institutional terms in Venice. In January 1421 the five savi alia guerra in office since July of the previous year were replaced by five sapientes super terris de novo acquisitis who had a

combined responsibility both for military organization and control of the mainland state.31 At this point the new savi were not expected to be full members of the College and only attended when matters relating to their specific areas of responsibility were being discussed. However, it was soon apparent that Terraferma business was of such weight and importance that the savi responsible were quickly accepted as full members of the College. From January 1421 onwards the elections of the savi responsible for the Terraferma fell into the same pattern of continuity as those of the other two groups of savi, and one can say that the new office had been established. The actual title 'savi della terraferma' became the accepted one in the 1430s. Also by the 1430s a system of rotation had been established which ensured that a savio normally served for a year, with two or three changing every six months. Prior to that it had been customary to re-elect at least some of the previous group at each six-monthly election, and indeed some men served for rather more than a year at a time.32 30

31

32

A proposal to reappoint savi alia guerra in the autumn of 1413 just after the truce with the Hungarians had been agreed was defeated by 44 votes to 40 (SMi. reg. 50, 42V; 2 Oct. 1413). But in the immediately subsequent years there was an office known as the offitiales in terra nova (ibid., 53V; 30 Nov. 1413). SMi. reg. 53, ioov (14 Jan. 1421). The two men who survived from the five savi alia guerra appointed in the previous July (ibid., 60; 13 July 1420) were Francesco Foscari and Niccolo Giorgio. Lists of the savi della terraferma can be reconstructed from the Senate minutes. 161

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 The principles of Venetian government by which all decisions were taken collectively in committees, with constant rotation of office and a built-in system of contumacia by which individuals were prevented from holding the same office for long periods, sometimes obscure the very real continuity of experience and authority which individual Venetian nobles could achieve. The broader implications of this will be discussed later, but as far as the savi della terraferma went it is clear from an analysis of those elected that at least until about 1460 the office tended to rotate among a relatively restricted group of Venetian nobles. It was on the whole true that the office of savio della terraferma was not regarded as a senior political appointment, and even men who held it a number of times tended to concentrate that experience within a ten- or twelve-year period of their political careers. This tendency, while ensuring that savi were usually men in their 30s and 40s, also had the effect of concentrating the attention of ambitious and interested nobles on this office for a specific period. There are a number of examples of men holding the office seven, eight or even nine times within a period of less than twenty years. It is particularly clear that at moments of military crisis the savi elected tended to be men with long experience in the office, while in moments of peace more inexperienced men were introduced to the peculiar problems involved.33 Thus in the period up to 1460 the savi della terraferma were the Venetians most involved in the military organization and the process of military decision making. In any decade of that period about 40 nobles held the office, and in most decades five or six men held the office in five of the ten years. After 1460 the pattern begins to change subtly; the office of savio della terraferma clearly became less important; election more than three times in a man's career became increasingly rare; the introduction of inexperienced nobles more frequent.34 Various reasons can be adduced for this changing atmosphere. Obviously the long period of peace after 1454 led to a decline in the interest of Venetian nobles in Terraferma military affairs; with the organization established in the army, and the relationships between mother and subject cities laid down, there was less interesting and innovatory work for the savi della terraferma to do. It is also true that from the 1470s onwards the authority which had been concentrated in the hands of the savi seemed 33

34

Tommaso Michiel was savio nine times between 1426 and 1441; those holding the office eight times in approximately the same period were: Vito da Canal, Marco Lippomanno, Federico Contarini, Andrea Bernardo and Niccolo da Canal. There were also six men who held the office seven times during the war years, and seven who held it six times. It is obviously difficult to make a sharp distinction between the wartime and the post-war years, because of an overlap of experience. T w o m e n achieved unprecedented records of service between about 1450 a n d 1470: Paolo Morosini a n d Niccolo da Canal both served eleven times, b u t both completed about half these terms of office in the last years of the war. Actually in the period 1454-84 only Antonio Priuli served eight times; three men had seven periods of office, and four had six.

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Control and policy making to be gradually dispersed. Collaterals and proveditors on the spot proliferated in the later years of the century, and matters which previously had been referred to Venice got more instant attention. Finally, it is clear that by the end of the fifteenth century a new focus of authority for certain aspects of military policy was emerging in Venice, the Council of Ten, and this undoubtedly cut into the traditional supremacy of the Senate and its executive committees in this field. The question of the increasing role of the Council of Ten in political affairs is a vexed one, particularly for the fifteenth century.35 There is a popular tendency to regard the Ten as an overpowering influence almost from the moment of its creation in the early fourteenth century, whereas contemporary evidence suggests clearly that it was only in the later fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries that the Ten began to assume a role of predominance among Venetian councils. In 1497 Domenico Malipiero commented on the extent to which the Ten seemed to be exceeding its powers: 'under cover of doing the most secret things it meddles with many matters which are none of its business'.36 The field of military affairs is a good one in which to chart the progress of the authority and interference of the Ten in the fifteenth century. At the beginning of the century the competences of the Ten were clearly understood and adhered to. The council had been established to deal with problems of internal security; faction within the political class, conspiracies against the state, and popular unrest and uprising were its specific concerns, and the necessary advantage which it enjoyed in dealing with these matters was the secrecy which surrounded its deliberations and activities. Given the reputation of the Ten for secrecy, and the difficulties which inevitably attended the maintenance of secrecy in the larger and more open Venetian councils, it is scarcely surprising that there was a tendency to allot to the Ten any matters which required discreet and confidential handling. But it was a tendency which should not be exaggerated; there was a strong element of conservatism, and a desire to protect the traditional constitutional forms, among the Venetian nobility. While there were undoubtedly specific occasions when the Ten was brought into affairs which were normally outside its competence, it cannot be said that that competence had been allowed to extend very far by 1400. The security of the state was certainly being seen in an external as well as an internal context, but this did not mean that the Ten had as yet any role in diplomacy or military affairs. It meant only that conspiracies against the state - or indeed on behalf of the state 35 36

Maranini, 412-46; Da Mosto, i, 52-5; G. Cozzi, 'Authority and the law in Renaissance Venice', in Hale, Renaissance Venice, 3 0 4 - 5 . Malipiero, Annali veneti, 492.

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Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 were investigated or initiated by the Ten, whatever their source or objective. It was on these grounds that the Ten took the lead in the arrest and execution of Carmagnola, and also in the action taken against the defecting condottiere Alvise dal Verme. It was also on these grounds that the Ten spent a good deal of its time in the 1430s and 1440s hatching up plots to murder Filippo Maria Visconti and Francesco Sforza.37 But in the first half of the century the Ten's time was still mostly devoted to problems of internal security — a category which had been extended around 1400 to include cases of sodomy, an offence which was seen as disruptive of the moral fibre of the state and which became one of the major preoccupations of the Ten in the first half of thefifteenthcentury. Throughout the period up to the Peace of Lodi there is no indication that the Ten had any role to play in the day-to-day administration of the army or the formation of military and foreign policy. At exactly this moment, however, there was a significant episode which brought the Ten into military affairs, the final defection of Colleoni from Milanese to Venetian service. This was a move which had been prepared for some months, and the secret negotiations involved had been handled by the Ten. As a result of this prior involvement the Ten had a major share in the drawing up of the condotta which completed the whole manoeuvre, and subsequently over the next twenty-five years claimed the responsibility for all further negotiations relating to renewals of Colleoni's condotta?* That the Council of Ten should be involved in the handling of Venice's top military contract over this whole period was indeed a significant extension of its authority. In part it had come about by accident because of the circumstances of the initial negotiation; but at the same time the tenacity with which the Ten defended its right to participate in subsequent years is an indication both of the internal pressures behind the extension of the competences of the Ten in this period and of the wider political significance attached to the Colleoni condotta. This was not just another military contract; it was a matter of prime concern to the security of the state and in a certain sense the hinge of Venetian foreign policy. By the time this episode ended in 1475 the Ten was already concerned in a number of other areas relating to the military sphere, particularly fortifications and provisioning. As has already been suggested, the Venetian government showed little concern for fortifications before 1454 and therefore one should perhaps see the growing involvement of the Ten in this 37 38

V. Lamansky, Secrets d'etat de Venise (repr. of 1884 St Petersburg ed., New York, 1968), i, 6-9. Dieci, Misti, reg. 14, 193 (20 Feb. 1454) for the discussion of the original contract by the Ten, and ibid., reg. 15, 49V (2 May 1455) for the determination of that council to keep control of dealings with Colleoni. See also Belotti, Colleoni, 257-8, 289, 301, 321-5, 363.

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Control and policy making area in subsequent years as part of a general change in Venetian interests. At the same time this was obviously a natural extension of a concern for the security of the state, and increasingly in the second half of the century the Ten took the lead in matters relating to fortifications in the Terraferma. In 1470 on the death of Borso d'Este it was the Ten which discussed a series of measures relating to the defence of the frontiers facing Ferrara,39 and throughout the 1470s there is growing evidence in the archives of the Ten of an interest in the maintenance of fortifications. Closely associated with this was the question of keeping fortresses well provisioned, which was an essential feature of the maintenance of their defensive capability, and which linked up with a long-standing concern of the Ten for grain policy as a facet of internal security. That there was already an awareness of the dangers of the extension of the authority of the Ten is clear from the legislation of 1468 which sought to define the Council's competence in traditional terms.40 But the atmosphere of secrecy and deception which pervaded Italian diplomacy in the period after Lodi was an inevitable encouragement to the intervention of the Ten in a broader spectrum of political affairs. In this sense the first half of the 1480s was a particularly significant period, with the intense diplomatic activity of 1480-2, followed by the War of Ferrara. An articulate concern for the maintenance of secrecy in political discussion and decision making was much more apparent at this time than during the Visconti wars. The closeness of links between Venice and Ferrara meant that a number of Venetian nobles were suspected of divided loyalties, and there are many indications that the confidentiality of Senate debates could no longer be relied on.41 The later stages of the war, when Venice was pitted against the rest of Italy, produced an atmosphere close to paranoia about security. In these circumstances it was not surprising that the Ten intruded more and more into diplomatic and military affairs. Zaccaria Barbaro, the ambassador in Rome, was writing direct to the Ten in 1480 on the intentions of papal policy in the Romagna;42 proveditors in thefieldwere also, for thefirsttime, in direct contact with the Ten.43 The huge costs of the war quickly also absorbed the limited financial resources of the Ten and drew the Council into fiscal policy. The early stages of the peace negotiations in Cesena in April 1484 were directed by the Ten,44 but on the other hand the reports of 39 40 41 42 43 44

D i e d M i s t i , reg. 17, 145V, 146, 149 (14 M a y , 18 July, 3 Sept. 1470). Cozzi, 304. Dieci, Misti, reg. 20, 141-2 (23-8 June 1482). For the discussion of the first of these dispatches, see ibid., 42V-43 (23 June 1480). Ibid., regs. 2 0 - 2 passim. Ibid., reg. 22, 51V-52 ( 2 4 - 6 Apr. 1484).

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Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 Roberto da Sanseverino's negotiations in June which ultimately led to the Peace of Bagnolo were passed on to the Senate.45 A comparison of the range of activities of the Ten before and after the War of Ferrara presents a very clear contrast. From this moment onwards it is clear that the Ten was prepared to enter almost any field of public policy if there was any suggestion that security was at stake, and it is no longer possible to predict what sort of issue is likely to appear in the minutes of Ten discussions. In the remaining years preceding 1494 the interests of the Ten in Terraferma fortifications increased steadily. Discussion in the Council ranged from physical improvements and dealings with engineers and architects to concern for provisioning and the appointment of suitable castellans. But intervention in the area of appointments brought the Ten into conflict with the traditional prerogatives of the Great Council, and this could lead to an abrupt check to the development of its authority. An interesting example of this is the discussions which took place over the castle at Anfo in the early 1490s. The importance of Anfo as a shield for the Bresciano against a German attack had been made apparent in 1487, and the castle had been considerably strengthened at that time. In 1491 the Council of Ten selected it as being of special strategic importance and decided to take full responsibility for the castle and to elect a noble castellan for it.46 This discussion produced a considerable reaction in the Great Council, and in August 1492 the Ten was forced to abandon its attempt to make the appointment independently and to allow an election to take place in the normal way in the Great Council. The castle of Anfo remained, however, under the protection of the Ten.47 Following this confrontation, the Ten observed a discreet formality over the appointment of castellans to those fortresses in which it took a special interest. The needs of the post would be pointed out to the Great Council, which would be invited to make an election - as in the case of Rovereto in 1493.48 In 1499 the takeover of Cremona and its surrounding castles was an immediate concern of the Ten, although the brief campaign in the Milanese which had led up to that takeover had not been. The castles concerned were added to the list of those regarded as of special importance, and constables were appointed by the Ten to take them over. In February 1500, during the brief crisis of Ludovico Sforza's revival, the Ten again intervened and appointed special proveditors to supervise these castles. However, it was clearly stated that this was an emergency action, and in April 1500 the Ten's 45

46 47 48

Ibid., 70V (16 J u n e 1484). T h e key d o c u m e n t s for t h e Venetian side of the negotiations at Bagnolo are to be found in S e n a t o , L e t t e r e di Rettori, 11. See also Cessi, ' L a pace di B a g n o l o ' , 2 7 7 - 3 5 6 . Dieci, Misti, reg. 2 5 , 39 and 47V-48 (21 M a r . and 28 Apr. 1491). Ibid., 152 (25 A u g . 1492). Ibid., reg. 26, 71 v (27 Sept. 1492).

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Control and policy making appointees were withdrawn and constables were elected in the normal way by the Great Council.49 Linked to the growing concern for fortifications was a parellel and even more comprehensive concern for artillery. Here was another area of military policy which represented something of a vacuum, in that Venetian concern for artillery before 1454 had been haphazard and probably more related to the naval than to the military side of its policy. In the second half of the century it was the Ten which began to co-ordinate the manufacture, storage and allocation of artillery and the recruitment and training of gunners. The formal takeover of all responsibility for artillery did not come until 1500, but prior to this the Ten's interest was clear and on the whole did not seem to provoke a conflict with the prerogatives of any other Venetian council.50 The decision taken in 1490 to equip and train considerable numbers of militia throughout the state with handguns was a decision of the Ten, as were a series of consequent decisions to establish local competitions to promote the skills of the handgunmen and stockpile arms for them.51 After 1495 the Ten became involved in military activity at various levels, but it was still usually over specific issues in which security was involved and secrecy essential; there is little evidence before 1509 of major new extensions of competence. When military proveditors did decide to send reports direct to the Ten on some particularly confidential issue, the Ten tended to reply after consultation with the College. An exception to this was the move into the Romagna after the death of Alexander VI, when the Ten with a special zonta acted as the directing authority.52 On the other hand, the Ten tended to keep out of any discussion of condotta negotiations, but sometimes it inevitably became involved because of the secrecy in which such negotiations were often conducted. The search for a commander-in-chief in 1495 is a typical example of the way in which responsibilities in such matters were now divided up. Originally in 1489, when the possibility of employing Francesco Gonzaga had first been discussed, the Ten had specifically handed the matter over to the Senate, asking at the same time that the debate be conducted in conditions of the tightest possible security.53 By early 1495 the need to make a decision on a supreme commander was urgent, and it was the Senate which was expected to make that decision. However, before doing so it asked the Ten for any relevant information it might have on Ibid., reg. 28, 96V, 104, 106 and 127V (30 Dec. 1499, 5 Feb., 10 Feb. and 29 Apr. 1500). Ibid., reg. 28, 112V-113 (28 Feb. 1500). Ibid., reg. 24, 208, 222, 230V and 236 (20 Aug., 25 Sept., 24 Nov. and 29 Dec. 1490); reg. 25,103 and 119V (26 Jan. and 11 Apr. 1492). Ibid., reg. 29, 250V (3 Sept. 1503); reg. 30, 242-54, where the discussions on this episode are collected together. See also G. Soranzo, 'II clima storico della politica veneziana in Romagna' passim. Dieci, Misti, reg. 24, 102V (7 Mar. 1489).

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Part I: c. 1400 to Trivulzio and Pitigliano, two of the possible candidates. The Ten obliged with details of a negotiation in 1484 with Trivulzio and with secret reports from Rome on Pitigliano.54 Finally, in June 1495 Gonzaga was appointed governor-general by the Senate after the Ten had once more urged the greatest confidentiality.55 But it was the Ten in June 1497 which voted to dismiss Gonzaga for negotiating with the French,56 while a decision on whether or not to re-employ him in September 1498 was passed by the Ten to the Senate.57 The conclusion must be, therefore, that by the early sixteenth century the Ten had considerably increased its areas of competence and had also established precedents for playing a part in most areas of decision making. The increased use of special zonte, which turned the Ten into a broader and more inclusive committee, made this a more acceptable process to the other committees. As far as control of military policy went, the War of Ferrara had been a crucial stage in these developments; but even in the early sixteenth century it remained undisputed that the Senate decided on matters of peace and war, and that appointments at all levels remained largely out of the hands of the Ten. An interesting debate in September 1480 in the Ten throws the whole question into sharp relief. The matter at issue was a proposal to occupy Gorizia; a majority in the Ten came to the conclusion that if the affair could be arranged by negotiation then it fell within the competence of that council, but if force was envisaged then only the Senate could make the ultimate decision. Whether this principle could have been stated quite so clearly thirty years later is doubtful, but it remained broadly true as a statement on the final control of policy.58 Just as the Senate on the whole retained control over the main lines of military policy throughout the fifteenth century, so certainly it retained control over the appointment of the men largely responsible for coordinating the execution of that policy, the proveditors in campo. The proveditors were elected in the Senate, and their function was to accompany the captaingeneral, pass on to him instructions from the Senate, advise him on the political implications of military developments, and report back to the Senate on the conduct both of the army and of the captain-general.59 The post was a long-established one and in fourteenth- and early-fifteenthcentury condone of captains-general it was formally written in that the 54 55 56 57 58 59

Ibid., reg. 26, 162 (5 Jan. 1495). Ibid., i88v (4 June 1495); SS. reg. 35, 113 (5 June 1495). Dieci, Misti, reg. 27, 135V, 136, 124 and 144 (17 May, 19 May, 21 June and 26 June 1497). Ibid., 230V (12 Sept. 1498). Ibid., reg. 20, 22 (6 Sept. 1480). J. R. Hale, 'Renaissance armies and political control: the Venetian proveditorial system, 1509-29', Journal of Italian History, ii, 1 (1979) 11—31.

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Control and policy making captain-general had to accept these civilian commissaries in the camp.60 Prior to 1404 it was probably the case that the duties of the proveditors were limited to these essentially 'civilian' functions. Ricotti's famous judgement on the role of the proveditors reflects this early period and the undoubted resentment felt by the military at the presence of these men in the camps:' an inconvenient, and indeed damaging, official in any energetic campaign, and such that he seemed more able to spy out and punish failures than to facilitate victories '.6I But as thefifteenthcentury advanced and the Venetian military commitment became more continuous, the proveditors took a larger share in various aspects of military organization and became more integrated into the military scene. At the same time the number of civilian officials with the army proliferated, and the proveditors in campo assumed some responsibility for this burgeoning structure of military organization. However, it is as difficult to define precisely at any moment the relationship between the temporary but extremely prestigious proveditor and the permanent collateral-general, as it is that between them and the soldier captain-general. Proveditors were, for much of the century, purely wartime appointments; both the soldiers and the military organization run by the collaterals continued in peacetime without them. Hence, although they undoubtedly had considerable powers of interference, their role was primarily as supervisors, inspectors and co-ordinators rather than as executive agents. They sometimes handled army pay and certainly had some funds at their disposal for subversion and information-gathering activities, but on the whole money was handled by the paymasters, over whom the proveditors exercised only an informal authority. On occasion they assumed direct responsibility for provisioning and the commissariat, but this sphere again was usually in the hands of specially appointed officials. On other occasions they actually commanded troops, although usually only in circumstances of a small force detached from the main army, or in the absence of the captain-general on leave. The picture is to some extent complicated by the fact that the title of provveditore was used at certain times for lesser civilian officials responsible for specific aspects of military organization or for special territorial areas; but the men whose role we are particularly concerned to examine at the moment were the proveditors in campo, usually two in number, who acted as the direct link between the Senate and the army. In 1404-5 both the dispersal of the armies and a natural desire in Venice to keep a tight hold on what was an exceptional and novel level of military 60 61

See the condotta of Lucchino dal Verme (Commemoriali, vn, 32; 2 Feb. 1464; Predelli, iii, 26). Ricotti, ii, 18: 'magistrate incomodo, anzi dannoso, in ogni robusta impresa, e tale che sembrasse piu atto a spiare e punire i falli che a facilitare le vittorie'. 169

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 commitment led to a large number of proveditors being sent out. However, each of the main armies had proveditors in campo attached to it, and it is amongst these that we can see emerging some keyfigureswhose experience in this capacity extended both forwards and backwards. Carlo Zeno, one of the heroes of the War of Chioggia, was with the army before Padua for most of the war.62 Gabriele Emo and Jacopo Soriano were with the army before Verona throughout the siege of that city.63 Fantino Michiel and Francesco Bembo served as proveditors throughout the war and directed the demobilization which followed it.64 In the first Hungarian crisis of 1411-12 it was Michiel and Bembo who were immediately chosen to accompany Carlo Malatesta's army.65 By this time the pre-eminence of the proveditors in campo was clearly established, and the use of the title for lesser officials to a large extent disappeared. In 1418-20 the leading figure in this capacity was Niccolo Giorgio, who had served in 1412 and was to be one of the key personalities in the establishment of the savi della terraferma in 1421-2.66

But it was in the period 1426-54 that one gets a striking impression of continuity in this key office, and of the emergence of a group of about a dozen men who dominated the ranks of the proveditors in campo for a whole generation of war. Fantino Michiel, whose experience with the army went back to 1404, continued to serve regularly as proveditor until 1432, and Santo Venier, who had first appeared in this capacity in 1411, also extended his service into the early 1430s.67 Tommaso Michiel, another of the proveditors in the Carraresi war, was one of the savi della terraferma nine 62

63

64

65 66

67

Zeno was appointed, along with Pietro Emo, on i July 1404 (SS. reg. 2, 23). For a description of his activities during the war, see Jacopo Zeno, Vita Caroli Zeni, ed. G. Zonta, RRIISS., xix, vi (Bologna, 1941) 114-20. Gabriele Emo was a key figure in Venetian relations with Verona and had a long-standing interest in the latter city (Law, 'Rapporti di Venezia con le provincie di Terraferma', 83). He was a governor of the army throughout the siege and received the Veronese surrender on behalf of Venice. F a n t i n o M i c h i e l was a p p o i n t e d proveditor of t h e condone on 21 M a r . 1405 ( S S . reg. 2 , 9 9 ) a n d briefly c o m m a n d e d a river fleet o n t h e Adige in Apr. (ibid., 107). H e b e c a m e a governor of the c a m p besieging Padua on 30 July 1405 (ibid., 13 iv). Francesco Bembo was active throughout the war, first as proveditor at Bassano (ibid., 15V; 6 June 1404), then as governor of the main army between Feb. and July 1405 (ibid., 131 v). The activities of these two men during the demobilization period are discussed above, 24-5. S S . reg. 5, 59 (31 A u g . 1412). Niccolo Giorgio h a d been sent as orator to Carlo Malatesta on 5 July 1412 (ibid., 41 v). H e was appointed proveditor with Arcelli o n 27 J u l y 1419 (reg. 7, 94), and t h e a p p o i n t m e n t was renewed on 19 J u n e 1420 (ibid., 160). F o r his role as savio, see above, 161. Michiel went as orator to C a r m a g n o l a in August 1426 ( S S . reg. 9, 152V) and remained with the a r m y until early s u m m e r 1427. H e also spent most of 1431 a n d 1432 as proveditor (reg. 1 1 , 178 and 191 v). S a n t o Venier h a d been t h e original negotiator of the condotta of Carlo Malatesta in 1411/12 (reg. 4 , 222), was proveditor in 1419 (reg. 7, 94) a n d special orator to Carmagnola to congratulate h i m o n his victory at Maclodio in 1427 (reg. 10, 92V). H e then spent most of 1432 with t h e a r m y as proveditor, and at times c o m m a n d e r (reg. 12, 78V a n d 127V; S M i . reg. 58, 131). 170

Control and policy making times between 1426 and 1441 and during that period was also proveditor on a further four occasions.68 Pietro Loredan, the hero of Motta in 1412 and Gallipoli in 1416, had his share of land experience as proveditor and actually commanded the army during the absence of Carmagnola at the baths in 1428. He eventually died while commanding the Po river fleet in 1438.69 Giorgio Corner, the man more than any other responsible for the fall of Carmagnola, was an experienced proveditor who had been with the army frequently since 1426.70 The career of Andrea Giuliano, about whom we know more than about most of these men, indicates the extent to which experience as proveditor in campo tended to go with a broader experience and specialization in Terraferma offices.71 Giuliano, a pupil of Gasparino Barzizza and associate of Francesco Barbaro, had his first military experience in 1414 when he led 25 lances from Verona to Parma to join the D'Este forces. Subsequently he wasfivetimes proveditor in campo and held rectorships in most of the major Terraferma cities. Francesco Barbaro himself, whose name is enshrined in the annals of Venetian military history as the defender of Brescia during the long siege of 1438/9, seems to have been proveditor only once; but he also had an impressive record of service as a Terraferma rector.72 The second half of the wars produced a new crop of Venetian patricians whose careers were completely bound up with the army for a number of years. Gherardo Dandolo was seven times proveditor between 1435 and 1453;73 Federico Contarini combined six spells as proveditor with eight terms as savio delta terraferma between 1427 and 1448, when he died of 68

69

70

71

72

73

For Tommaso Michiel's outstanding record as savio delta terraferma, see above, 162. He was proveditor in 1405 (SS. reg. 2, 103V); 1420 (reg. 7, 160); 1427 (reg. 10, 41V), when he was present at Maclodio; and in 1441 (reg. 15, 86v). He was also twice sent as special orator to Francesco Sforza in 1435 and 1439 (reg. 13, 169V; reg. 14, 2oov). F o r L o r e d a n ' s formidable naval record, see C. Argegni, Condottieri, capitani e tribuni (Milan, 1936) ii, 106. H e was with the a r m y in 1426, w h e n he was accompanied by Flavio Biondo as his secretary ( S S . reg. 9, 150V a n d 161; B . N o g a r a , Scritti inediti e rari di Flavio Biondo ( R o m e , 1927) xlvi-xlix), in 1428 ( S S . reg. 10, 130V a n d 170) a n d in 1437 (reg. 14, 28v). Giorgio C o r n e r was with the a r m y in 1426,1427 a n d 1431 for long periods ( S S . reg. 9 , 8 1 ; reg. 10,92V; reg. 12, 34V a n d 63V). H e r e t u r n e d to his post after t h e execution of Carmagnola and remained with the a r m y t h r o u g h o u t t h e s u m m e r of 1432 until his capture b y t h e Milanese in t h e Valtelline. On Andrea Giuliano, see S. Troilo, Andrea Giuliano: politico e letterato veneziano del Quattrocento (Biblioteca dell'Archivum Romanicum, ser. 1, xvi-xviii, 1931-2). P. Gothein, Francesco Barbaro: Fruh-Humanismus and Staatskunst in Venedig (Berlin, 1932) 332-41; N . Carotti, ' U n politico umanista del Quattrocento: Francesco Barbaro', RSI., ser. 5, ii (1937) 18-37. G h e r a r d o Dandolo was proveditor at the successful siege of Lizzana in Sept. 1439 ( S S . reg. 14, 222V) and took over as governor of Piacenza from T a d d e o d'Este in 1447. H e defended the city unsuccessfully against Francesco Sforza and at its fall was briefly a Milanese prisoner ( S T . reg. 2, 42 and 66; S S . reg. 17, 170). In addition he was proveditor in campo in 1435 (SS. reg. 13, 183V), 1439 (SMi. reg. 6 0 , 1 4 3 ; S S . reg. 14, 213), 1441 ( S T . reg. 1,14V), 1448 ( S T . reg. 2, 8iv) and 1453 ( S S . reg. 17,231).

171

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 rabies in the camp on the eve of Caravaggio.74 Andrea Dandolo, who first served as proveditor in 1441, profited from his considerable experience in the later stages of the wars in Lombardy to get the appointment as proveditor with Sigismondo Malatesta's army in the Morea in 1464.75 But these later years were dominated above all by two men, Pasquale Malipiero, the future doge, and Jacopo Antonio Marcello. Malipiero was often derided by Venetian chroniclers as an unsuccessful doge and a man of peace in contrast to his formidable predecessor, Francesco Foscari; but his career as a proveditor indicates not only considerable experience of military affairs but also a reputation amongst his fellow patricians as the man to send out in a crisis. He was seven times proveditor between 1440 and 1453, and in the last six years of this period he was rarely absent from the army.76 Marcello was one of the most distinguished men of his generation and must have been very close to the dogeship on a number of occasions. A noted humanist and artistic patron, he started his military career at the siege of Brescia in 1438. He accompanied Gattamelata on his famous escape march from the beleaguered city, and returned by the same route in the next year with the relief army.77 It was he who was sent to take over Ravenna in 1441, and he was proveditor at the victory of Casalmaggiore in 1446, after which he was knighted by Michele Attendolo.78 In 1448 he was called in to organize the shattered army after Caravaggio and was with it almost continuously for the next six years.79 In 1463 he was elected again to act as proveditor for the army sent to besiege Trieste, and wasfinallykilled by a cannon shot leading Venetian amphibious forces in Apulia in 1484.80 74

75

76

77

78

79

80

Federico Contarini was also a Milanese prisoner for a spell in 1439 after the surrender of Porto (SS. reg. 14, 199), and was with Gattamelata and Francesco Sforza during the early part of the siege of Brescia in 1438 (ibid., 151V). In addition he was proveditor in 1433 (SMi. reg. 58,192), 1437 (reg. 60, 37), 1446 (SS. reg. 17, 64V) and 1448 (ST. reg. 2, 76). For his death on the eve of Caravaggio, see Sanuto, Vite de dogi, 1128. A n d r e a D a n d o l o ' s periods of service as proveditor with the army in L o m b a r d y were in 1441 ( S S . reg. 15, 80), 1449 ( S T . reg. 2, 111), 1450 (ibid., 140V), 1451 (ibid., 199V), a n d 1452 (reg. 3 , 25). F o r t h e M o r e a campaign, see Soranzo, ' S i g i s m o n d o Pandolfo Malatesta in M o r e a ' passim. Pasquale Malipiero's service in t h e early 1450s was so continuous that it is difficult to sort out different t e r m s of office. H e was with t h e a r m y t h r o u g h o u t the s u m m e r of 1440 ( S M i . reg. 60, 2 1 1 ; S T . reg. 1, 5), from a u t u m n 1447 to m i d s u m m e r 1448 ( S S . reg. 17, 185; S T . reg. 2, 61 and 76), in spring 1449 (ST. reg. 2, io6v) and for much of 1450 (SS. reg. 18,201), 1451,1452 (SS. reg. 19, i28vand 160) and 1453 (ibid., 191; ST. reg. 3, 93V). A very eulogistic and rather distorted picture of Marcello as the great war hero emerges from Argegni, ii, 200. But his involvement in the siege and relief of Brescia is clearly documented (SS. reg. 14,151V, 197, 213 and 236). W . Barbiani, La dominazione veneta a Ravenna (Ravenna, 1927) 3 6 - 8 . H i s role at Casalmaggiore is m e n t i o n e d in S a n u t o , Vite de' dogiy 1 1 2 2 - 3 , a n d a ^ s o m S S . reg. 17, i 8 v . H e was with t h e a r m y t h r o u g h o u t 1447 ( S T . reg. 2, 17 a n d 26; S S . reg. 17, 185). A t t h e time of Caravaggio he was C a p t a i n of Verona; b u t he was sent to join t h e army d u r i n g t h e retreat. H i s presence with t h e a r m y is further d o c u m e n t e d in 1449 ( S T . reg. 2, 110), 1450 (ibid., 127; S S . reg. 18, 201), 1452 ( S S . reg. 19, 128V, 133V a n d 151V) a n d 1453 (ibid., 191; S T . reg. 3 , 93). For his presence at Trieste, see Sanuto, Vite de dogi, 1178, and on the Apulia campaign and his death, see Romanin, iv, 415. For his extensive activities as a humanist patron and his relationship particularly 172

Control and policy making Marcello was to take his place alongside some of Venice's great naval commanders as a war hero, and was popularly regarded in Venice as the victor of Casalmaggiore. This was undoubtedly a distortion of the role of the proveditors in this period; although they certainly did command troops on occasion, their main function was as advisers and administrators. Nevertheless, the considerable and often continuous experience acquired by a small group of Venetians in the first half of the fifteenth century must have affected the reputation and standing of these men both in Venice and in the army. These were not just civilians sent out with no knowledge or experience other than the instructions they had received from the Senate. They were nobles with considerable experience of both military and Terraferma affairs; most of them had served as rectors in the Terraferma cities and they would have been particularly aware of the logistical and disciplinary problems involved in the creation of a standing army. Their office carried considerable prestige, not least because of the high salaries which were paid. In the early years of the century 50 ducats per month for salary and the expenses of a small following was a fairly standard rate of pay for proveditors.81 But in the late 1420s 100 ducats per month was standard, and in the exceptional circumstances of the late summer of 1428 when Carmagnola retired to the baths, Pietro Loredan, who took over virtual command of the army, got 200 ducats per month.82 In 1437 and 1438 200 ducats per month was again the rate offered to proveditors, and this was expected to cover the expenses of sixteen followers.83 But by the 1440s there was growing opposition to these high emoluments. When in April 1440 there was debate on the selection of a prestigious proveditor to be sent to join Francesco Sforza, a proposal to offer a salary of 160 ducats per month was defeated, and Pasquale Malipiero, who eventually went, had to be content with ioo.84 Later in that year the Senate specifically decreed that salaries paid to any Terraferma officials, including proveditors, should not exceed 50 ducats per month, and two years later this limit was reduced to 30 ducats.85 But in the crisis of 1448 these laws were suspended and the proveditors were offered 170 ducats per month.86 In 1452 100 ducats was

81 82 83 84 85

86

with George of Trebizond and Battista Guarino, see M. Meiss, Andrea Mantegna as Illustrator: An Episode in Renaissance Art (Hamburg, 1957) passim; J. Monfasani, George of Trebizond: A Biography and a Study of his Rhetoric and Logic (Brill, 1977) 174-6; H. Martin, 'Sur un portrait de JacquesAntoine Marcelle, senateur venitien', Me'moires de la Societe nationale des antiquaires de France, lix (1900); Vale, War and Chivalry, 59-61. SMi. reg. 48, IOIV (2 Sept. 1409). SS. reg. 10, 51 (16 May 1427), 170 (23 Aug. 1428). SS. reg. 14, 118 (21 June 1438). SMi. reg. 60, 210-11 (26 A p r - 3 May 1440). SMi. reg. 60,240V (8 Aug. 1440); ST. reg. 2,69 (20 May 1448). The latter discussion referred back to a decision of 1442. ST. reg. 2, 7 5 v (18 July 1448).

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Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 again regarded as too high, and the proveditors got 60 ducats per month, with an obligation to maintain fifteen cavalry out of this sum.87 The main purpose of these high salaries was to enable the proveditors to employ a respectable following of essential assistants and of armed men. Such a retinue was seen by those with experience of the post as a necessary contribution to the prestige and standing of the proveditor, but at the same time was regarded with deep suspicion by the ordinary Venetian nobles. Hence the frequent debates on the issue of Terraferma salaries in the Senate reflected considerations other than purely economic ones. Obviously, however, after 1454 the situation with regard to the proveditors changed in a number of important respects. With only spasmodic and usually brief outbreaks of war, the appointment of prestigious war proveditors became much more rare, and inevitably continuity of experience in this role tended to disappear. However, the growing central concern with army organization and discipline which began with the great inspections of the 1470s led to the emergence of proveditors, and particularly the proveditor-general, as civilian officials with more specific administrative responsibilities. Increasingly proveditors were appointed in peacetime and began to take over many of the responsibilities of the collaterals. At the same time at the highest level the proveditor-general maintained and even increased his standing as the representative of the employing government with the military captains. Thus by the end of the century the proveditor-general occupied a much less ambiguous position in the army than his predecessors before 1454. He virtually controlled all the administrative services, was responsible for getting the army into thefieldin an emergency, and, even in war, assumed a role which could no longer be described as just civilian adviser to the captain-general. His control of many of the essential support services together with his position as the representative of the government made it possible to see him in certain circumstances as more important to the army than the captain-general himself.88 At the same time proveditors appointed by the Senate began to take charge of certain arms. The Balkan light cavalry, the stradiots, from the moment of their introduction into Italy in the late 1470s were always led by a proveditor,89 and by the 1480s a proveditor was also responsible for the 87 88

89

SS. reg. 19, 128V (24 Mar. 1452). The range of activities of Lorenzo Loredan, proveditor-general in 1478/9, has already been discussed above, 147-52. In 1496 the Senate declared categorically that it was the proveditor who commanded the Venetian contingent in Pisa (SS. reg. 36, 84V; 25 Nov. 1496), and by 1508 all bollette had to be countersigned by the proveditors (ST. reg. 16, 1; 1 Mar. 1508). See the commission of Niccolo Contarini, proveditor-general of the stradiots, in 1484 (ST. reg. 9,89; 6 July 1484). On this development of the role of the proveditors, see Hale, 'Renaissance armies and political control', 14-15.

174

Control and policy making artillery. In the spring of 1509, when proveditors were appointed to command the light cavalry and the artillery, the men chosen were Giustiniano Morosini, who had been a proveditor in the German War in 1487 and later led the stradiots in Pisa in 1496, and Vincenzo Valier, who had also led stradiots during the Pisan campaign and had been proveditorgeneral in 1502.90 Therefore, by the end of the period some of the proveditors were beginning to get a deserved reputation as soldiers. Inevitably in the circumstances described above there is less evidence of long continuity of a handful of men in the office of proveditor in the second half of the century. Antonio Loredan, who seemed the natural choice as proveditor-general at the beginning of the War of Ferrara, had long experience of the office in the Balkans, but he died at his post in the autumn of 1482.91 Of the proveditors elected to confront the German attack in 1487 Hieronimo Marcello had experience in the role going back to 1478, Luca Pisani had served during the War of Ferrara and was to reappear as proveditor at Fornovo in 1495, and Giustiniano Morosini was still available to lead the light cavalry at Agnadello.92 Of the key figures in 1495 Pisani, Marcantonio Morosini and Piero Marcello all had previous experience in either the War of Ferrara or the German War; Marcantonio Morosini was again chosen as proveditor in 1499 for the campaign against Milan, and Marcello also reappeared frequently in subsequent years.93 However, in 1508-9 the key men were Andrea Gritti, Giorgio Corner and Giorgio Emo all leading political figures but, apart from Gritti, with considerably less experience of military affairs than their counterparts in the 1450s, Jacopo Antonio Marcello and Pasquale Malipiero.94 But of course at Agnadello there were also proveditors of subordinate rank leading the light cavalry and the artillery who were among the most experienced Venetians available. Having considered the personalities and role of the proveditors in the fifteenth century in some detail, we can now return to the problem of their 90

91

92

93

94

ST. reg. 16, 92V (23 Mar. 1509). These men got 80 ducats a month for expenses. For Morosini see below; for Valier's appointment as proveditor-general, see ST. reg. 14, 69 (26 Feb. 1502). Antonio Loredan was proveditor in the Morea in 1466 (SS. reg. 22,189V) and distinguished himself as the commander of the defence of Scutari in 1478 (Romanin, iv, 380). He died of marsh fever at the siege of Ferrara in August 1482 (SS. reg. 30, 114; 10 Aug. 1482). For the appointments for the German War, see SS. reg. 33,74V and Collegio, Lettere Secrete, filza 1, 219. Hieronimo Marcello had been proveditor in Conegliano in 1478 during the Turkish invasion (ST. reg. 8,11 v) and was responsible for the big inspections of 1485 (SS. reg. 32,145). For Luca Pisani at Fornovo, see Schullian, pp. 8iff. Giustiniano Morosini commanded the stradiots in Pisa in 1496 (SS. reg. 36, 26). M a r c a n t o n i o Morosini and Piero Marcello had both been with the army in 1482 ( S S . reg. 30, 1 iov; S T . reg. 8, 181 v). Marcello took over in Friuli from Andrea Zancani after the defeat b y the T u r k s in the a u t u m n of 1499 ( S S . reg. 37,138). Marcantonio Morosini and another of the Fornovo proveditors, Melchior Trevisan, were the two proveditors chosen to accompany Pitigliano's army which invaded the Milanese in 1499 ( S S . reg. 37, 105V). S a n u t o , viii, 22.

175

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 relationship with the captains-general, and wider questions of the control of the army which could be exercised through these men. Undoubtedly there were frequent tensions between the army commanders and their civilian advisers. Both Carmagnola and Gianfrancesco Gonzaga were on occasion at loggerheads with their proveditors, and Sigismondo Malatesta and Andrea Dandolo were scarcely on speaking terms in the Morea in 1464. But the extent of these dissensions can be exaggerated, and the causes of them were complex. Obviously an important potential area of dispute was over the strategic conduct of the war. If it was a question of taking the offensive then there were always two schools of thought about whether to attack with a swift blow deep into enemy territory or to launch a careful staged advance involving reducing all the enemy strongpoints on the way. In the Venetian context this debate usually centred on the Adda frontier and how to attack across it. In June 1427 it was Carmagnola who persuaded the Senate to agree to a sudden thrust across the river;95 but four years later in December 1431 the roles were reversed and the proveditors were urging Carmagnola to strike.96 Carmagnola's reluctance on the latter occasion is easily explained by the lateness of the season and the uncertain state of the river swollen by autumn rains, just as the urgency of Venice's demands stemmed from a desire to make quick gains before a truce was signed. The same issue came up in 1437 when, after initially counselling caution, Venice began to exert pressure for an offensive across the Adda. Gianfrancesco Gonzaga claimed that he was not strong enough to attack, and once again it was clear that a desire to achieve some positive success before the impending truce was a factor in the Venetian thinking. The proveditor on this occasion was the imperious Pietro Loredan, who could certainly not have been accused of being rash and inexperienced in military affairs; but at the same time he was unlikely to be the best man to cajole a reluctant captain-general into attacking before he was ready.97 Another contentious issue connected with an offensive strategy was that of devastation. On the face of it one would expect condottieri to be only too willing to agree to a systematic plundering campaign, but the issue was not as simple as it appears. In 1412 Carlo Malatesta was instructed to ravage Friuli in order to punish the local lords who had allied with the Hungarians, and to make it difficult for the Hungarian army to live off the land.98 But Malatesta was reluctant to carry out this policy, partly because it meant also devastating the lands of the Patriarch of Aquileia, and Malatesta was 95 96 97

98

S S . r e g . 10, 59V (2 J u l y 1427). SS. reg. 12, 46V-47 and 56 (28 Dec. 1431 and 28 Jan. 1432). Tarducci, 'L'alleanza Visconti-Gonzaga', 265-70. See also Collegio, Commissioni Secrete, 4, 120 (7 July 1437) and passim. SS. reg. 5, 27V (3 June 1412).

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Control and policy making personally committed to a policy of restoring Church unity. Furthermore, a thoughtful captain-general was always concerned about the provisioning and foddering of his own troops and horses in a devastated area, and this could lead him to oppose a scorched-earth policy. In the second Hungarian War Venetian policy had totally changed; now there was a real possibility of major territorial gains in Friuli, and Venice was anxious not to antagonize the local population or cripple the resources of the area. Hence Filippo Arcelli was ordered to avoid doing any more damage than was necessary, particularly in the cities which he occupied." Such restraint clearly went against the grain with a man like Arcelli, and once again there were seeds of tension here. In a defensive situation the main strategic issue was whether to keep the army together and concentrate on harassing the enemy army and thus slowing up his advance, or whether to divide up the army and use it to garrison strongpoints in order to prevent them falling into the hands of the enemy. Once again it is impossible to say that the commanders tended to choose one solution and the Venetian government another. Pandolfo Malatesta in the winter of 1412 came under heavy Hungarian pressure and was urged by the Senate to concentrate on defending the towns. He chose to ignore these instructions and followed a policy of strategic withdrawal, keeping his army intact and using it to harass the Hungarian supply lines. Tempers rose in Venice and the Senate tried to go over Pandolfo's head and order the army to break up. But, probably as Pandolfo had anticipated, the Hungarian advance soon came to a halt and his policy was vindicated.100 Indeed, his success on this occasion was quoted by the Senate to Gonzaga in the autumn of 1437 when he found himself in the same position,101 and it seems to have been a lesson in defensive tactics which was applied again in 1509. Disagreements over strategy there undoubtedly were, but no general pattern of over-cautious soldiers confronted by rash and inexperienced civilian advisers emerges. The disagreements stemmed from basic differences of approach to given situations and roles could be quickly reversed. Another potent source of tension was the role played by army commanders in negotiations with the enemy. Here one has to distinguish between negotiations aimed at suborning the general himself and those which were genuine attempts to end the fighting. Obviously one of the main tasks of the proveditors was to detect and stop any attempt to win over the general to whom they were attached, and as such attempts were extremely common they tended to generate an atmosphere of suspicion even if the 99 100 101

SS. reg. 7, 160 (19 June 1420). SS. reg. 5, 85V, 90 and 98 (27 Nov. and 13 Dec. 1412, 2 Jan. 1412). SS. reg. 14, 69V (6 Nov. 1437).

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Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 general concerned had no intention of changing sides. Frequently what appeared to be a direct approach by an enemy emissary to the captaingeneral was a preliminary to the opening of genuine peace negotiations, and this was where ambiguities and misunderstandings arose. The Senate, of course, had ultimate responsibility for decisions on peace and war, and yet inevitably in some circumstances these questions were opened at army headquarters itself. Particularly was this so when the captain-general was a man of international standing like Carmagnola or Francesco Sforza. In 1440/1 after much initial suspicion and reluctance the Senate accepted that the peace was to be negotiated at Sforza's camp largely by Sforza.102 The situation at Bagnolo in 1484 was somewhat similar, although in that case the leading political figures on the side of the League, except for Lorenzo de' Medici, were all present, and on the Venetian side it was the proveditors rather than Roberto da Sanseverino who did the actual negotiating.103 But perhaps the most contentious issue of all in the relations between captains-general and proveditors, and the most frustrating one for the Senate in Venice, was that of getting the army out into the field and withdrawing it to winter quarters. This was a complex issue, partly reflecting the willingness of the general tofight,but more importantly linked to logistical problems like the state of fodder and provision supplies, and conditions of pay. An army which was underpaid and poorly supplied could live more easily dispersed in winter quarters, and no general was going to bring it out of those quarters unless pay and supplies were guaranteed. This was the main issue at stake between Carmagnola and his proveditors as each year he announced his intention of dispersing the army to quarters in early autumn and the proveditors, urged on from Venice, pointed out the potential dangers of early dispersal and tried to bully him into keeping the campaign going.104 Undoubtedly the conflict was in part the teething troubles of a newly created permanent army; Venice was obviously seeking to gain greater control over the new and expensive instrument it had created, while Carmagnola was pointing out the problems of providing fodder in August and September and keeping unpaid soldiers disciplined. Although later commanders occasionally clashed with proveditors over the same issue, there is no doubt that after the early 1430s the latent tensions considerably eased. This easing of tensions applied generally to the whole sphere of relations between army commanders and their Venetian employers. A number of 102 103

SS. reg. 15, 29V, 30V and 36 (18 July, 30 July and 20 Aug. 1440). Cessi,' Pace di Bagnolo' passim. For the dispatches of the proveditors, see Senato, Lettere di Rettori, 11.

104

See particularly SS. reg. 10, 76V-78 and 8gv (1 Sept. and 6 Oct. 1427) and reg. 12, 7-8 (17-20 Aug. 1431). See also Battistella, Carmagnola, 293-5.

178

Control and policy making factors contributed directly to this, not least the growing experience of the proveditors in the 1430s and 1440s, which made them more sympathetic to the problems of the army leaders and more able to present these problems to the Senate. The continuity of experience of these men has already been discussed, and undoubtedly proveditors like Jacopo Antonio Marcello enjoyed wide respect in the army. Proveditors returning from the front were always invited immediately to join the Senate and contribute to its discussions so that the most recent information and observations were available. Above all the Senate and the College usually showed an acute awareness of the difficulties of military control from a distance. Discussions of military affairs frequently ended with a vote to leave the decisions to the men on the spot; if instructions were sent they were usually phrased as advice. Sometimes instructions sent to the proveditors were presented in the form of two or three alternatives, and the proveditors were left to pass on the one that seemed most appropriate in the actual conditions when the letter arrived. When in September 1431 the Senate heard that a part of the Milanese army had been moved to Genoa it felt that the moment was auspicious for an attack. But two letters were sent to the preveditors, Giorgio Corner and Andrea Giuliano; one gave instructions for an attack on Soncino, but the other was to be used and shown to Carmagnola if it was discovered that the rumour about Milanese troop movements was false; this merely encouraged him to keep the army in the field and await an opportunity.105 This sort of approach gave the maximumflexibilityto the proveditors and the commanders in thefield.On the eve of Fornovo in 1495 the Senate wrote at one point to the proveditors: ' You must, in the name of the Holy Ghost, carry out what is decided and agreed amongst yourselves without waiting for any further orders or mandates from us.'106 This leads to another point, the extent of consultation that went on in the army before a decision was made. It was traditional for a captain-general to consult with a council of his senior condottieri, and in the Venetian army such discussions were always joined by the proveditors. The proveditors were frequently told by the Senate to canvass the views of some of the condottieri before putting a particular course of action to the captaingeneral. Famous and probably typical was the great debate before the decision to attack was taken at Caravaggio in 1448. It was often said that that fatal decision had been imposed on Michele Attendolo by Venice, but it is clear that a large group of the condottieri were in favour, and this gave the proveditors the determination to overrule the cautious captain-general.107 105 106

SS. reg. 12, 15V (10 Sept. 1431). SS. reg. 35, 129V (26 June 1495): 'Dobiate, nel nome del Santo Spirito, exeguir quanto fra vui sera

determinato et concluso senza expectare altro nostro ordine et mandate' 107

Ricotti, ii, 80; Cristoforo da Soldo, Cronaca, 83.

179

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 Finally, the point needs to be restated that there were not fundamental differences in the approach of the military and the civilians to military problems. The basic attitude of the Senate and the captains-general was similar; caution always pervaded their decisions. Pitched battle was always the last resort, only to be risked if all the conditions were favourable. This was the fundamental thinking of most condottieri, and also of most governments. Instructions from the Senate contained constant reference to the dangers of risking the army in battle. Both politicians and soldiers were committed to the same type of warfare; attrition and manoeuvre were the techniques, with battle as the last resort, the final flourish in a campaign or the coup de grace to a totally outmanoeuvred enemy. The execution of Carmagnola is not to be seen as symbolic of Venice's dealings with its captains. It was a particular moment in the emergence of the standing army, and a particular confrontation with a captain who had become impossible to deal with in any other way. On the whole the system of control worked as well as could be expected given the state of communications and the problems of converting collective decisions into effective action.

180

Soldiers and the state Doge Mocenigo, witnessing the growth of a standing army in the early years of the fifteenth century, warned Venetians on his deathbed of the dangers of becoming vassals of the military.1 This danger, added to that which had always affected Venetian thinking - the fear that the involvement of individual nobles in military affairs would give those men pretensions and prestige out of keeping with the traditional corporate spirit of the Venetian nobility - led to an official policy designed to keep the army at a distance and firmly under control. In a certain sense, therefore, Venice encouraged a strict separation between the military and civilian spheres, and seemed unaffected by humanist and Machiavellian rhetoric about the dangers of a mercenary system and of such a separation leading to a sapping of the moral fibre of the civilian population. It is this formal sense of separation which has pervaded the preceding chapters. But beneath this lay a whole series of informal links, and indeed what might be described as an implicit policy of integration, which distinguished the Venetian approach to military problems from that of most of the other Italian states, and particularly Florence. The Machiavellian critique was a critique of Florence, and when he himself sought to apply it to Venice he did so on the basis of very little real understanding of the situation in Venice.2 Undoubtedly Venice had its problems with soldiers; it suffered its share of treacheries and infidelities; it had cause for complaints about ill discipline and poor service. Nor can it really be said that it achieved notable success with the formal methods of control of such problems and the punishment of offenders. The execution of Carmagnola was an exceptional event, just as was the killing of Baldaccio d'Anghiari by Florence, of Tiberto Brandolini by Milan and of Jacopo Piccinino by Naples. It was carried out only after a motion to arrest the captain-general had been initially defeated in the Council of Ten, and with an eventual majority of two in that council and its zonta; the doge and three of his councillors voted against the death 1 2

Sanuto, Vite de dogi, 946ff; Romanin, iv, 93-5. Machiavelli's lack of perception on Venetian military affairs comes out in a number of his works; for detailed reference, see below, 200 n. 5. 181

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 sentence.3 It was probably true that an episode like that of the execution of Carmagnola had a deterrent effect on the leading condottieri in the years immediately following, and certainly the Venetian proveditors achieved a more sustained and effective control over the captains than the commissaries of other states. Nevertheless the problems continued. In 1436 Alvise dal Verme rejected orders to reduce the size of his company and abandoned Venetian service.4 An initial hope that he would retire southwards and join Naples proved premature, and within a few months he was in the service of Milan and righting against Venice.5 This was regarded by Venice as a particularly flagrant desertion, because Dal Verme was Veronese and even had an honorary seat on the Venetian Great Council. His estates were confiscated and sold.6 No sooner had the echoes of this scandal died away than in 1437 the captain-general, Gianfrancesco Gonzaga, came under suspicion of rendering half-hearted service and negotiating with the Visconti. His conflicts with his proveditors have already been discussed, and it was said that he was so fearful of some Venetian reprisal against him that during the last months of his service he never slept in a town and took all his meals on horseback.7 His withdrawal from service and subsequent realignment with Milan again infuriated Venice, which regarded him as a bitter enemy for the rest of his life. The dismissal of Michele Attendolo after Caravaggio was probably more the result of the ill-disciplined behaviour of his troops in the retreat than of losing the battle. But a problem arose when he subsequently took service with Florence. There was no question of a broken contract in this case, but it was clearly unacceptable that an enemy commander should be a Venetian feudatory, and Attendolo had been given Castelfranco as a fief. This caused particular embarrassment, as Attendolo's estates were managed by his sonin-law, Bartolomeo Pisani, a prominent Venetian noble. At first the Venetian reaction was to cut off the income from the fief in the hope that Attendolo might be persuaded to abandon his Florentine employment; but in the end the fief was confiscated.8 Colleoni, with his two notorious desertions in 1442 and 1451, was another example of the fragility of Venice's relations with some of its senior captains, Dieci, Misti, reg. n , 37V and 45 (28 Mar. and 5 May 1432). SS. reg. 13, 189V and 228 (26 Nov. 1435 and 4 May 1436). G. Cornaggia-Medici, 'Per la condotta di Luigi dal Verme ai servigi del Duca Filippo Maria', ASL., lx (1933) 193-8; see also G. M. Varanini, II distretto Veronese nel Quattrocento (Verona, 1980) 110-11. SS. reg. 14, 25V and 74V (23 Mar. and 30 Nov. 1437). Tarducci, 'L'alleanza', 273; see above, 176. For Attendolo's dismissal, see SS. reg. 18, 39 (24 Sept. 1448); for the debate over the fate of hisfief,see ST. reg. 2, 198V (1 July 1451), reg. 3, 2ov (14 Feb. 1452) and SS. reg. 19, 129 and 131V-132 (27 Mar. and 18 Apr. 1452). 182

Soldiers and the state and its apparent impotence when confronted with condottiere infidelity. Undoubtedly had the attempt to arrest him in 1451 been successful he would have suffered the same fate as Carmagnola; but he survived to add an entirely new dimension to the concept of the permanent captain-general.9 There was also clearly a disciplinary factor in the decision to end the contract of Jacopo Piccinino in 1454, as his troops were notoriously ill controlled.10 But at the same time the captain-generalcy had been promised to Colleoni, and Piccinino had to be removed. That this was achieved without rancour was due as much to the restless ambition of Piccinino as to the tact and discretion of the Venetians responsible.11 Tact and discretion were not qualities which were obvious in some of the lesser episodes of condottiere infidelity and ill discipline with which Venice had to deal. In 1452 Evangelista Savelli surrendered Cerreto to the Milanese and deserted. A sum of 5000 ducats was offered for his capture alive and 3000 for his dead body.12 In 1469 Antonello da Corneto was arrested and imprisoned for unspecified dereliction of duty,13 and in the previous year the Count of Pisa was dismissed for refusing to serve in the Morea.14 Giorgio da Martinengo was tried by the Council of Ten for desertion in the face of the enemy in 1478 and imprisoned.15 In 1485 Luca Savelli was suspected of paying his company in forged money and two of his men were arrested for passing the coins. It was clear where the responsibility lay, but presumably Savelli left hurriedly, because his men were released and compensated out of his abandoned goods.16 The final flurry of our period came in 1499 when the family of Roberto da Sanseverino were ejected from their fief of Cittadella.17 Presumably the crisis here was provoked by the war between Milan and Venice, in which most of the Sanseverineschi werefightingagainst Venice, but the behaviour of the family in Cittadella had aroused suspicions earlier when in 1489 Antonmaria da Sanseverino was reported for behaving like an independent signore in the town and distributing his livery to the townsmen.18 Perhaps one of the most revealing episodes was that which came to light during the War of Ferrara and concerned Galeotto Pico della Mirandola. In 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

For the instructions sent to Niccolo da Canal by the Ten to seize Colleoni dead or alive and destroy his company, see Dieci, Misti, reg. 14, 47V-48V (12 May 1451). Cristoforo da Soldo, Cronaca, 89. Commemoriali, xiv, 146; 19 Oct. 1454 (Predelli, v, 104-5). ST. reg. 3, 49V (8 Dec. 1452). ST. reg. 6, 67 (13 Aug. 1469); SS. reg. 25, 22V (18 Apr. 1471). Zorzi, 'Chiericati', 403. ST. reg. 7, 192V (7 Dec. 1477). Dieci, Misti, reg. 22, 150 and 155 (11 and 26 Mar. 1485). Ibid., reg. 28, 81 (23 Oct. 1499); Sanuto, iii, 39, 44, 58. Collegio, Lettere Secrete, filza 1, 40 (11 Aug. 1489).

183

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 September 1483 Galeotto appeared before the Council of Ten at his own request and made a long statement which showed neither himself nor some of the other captains of the day in a very good light.19 He reported that in the previous year, with the consent of the proveditor Loredan, he had made an approach to Gianjacopo Trivulzio, an old comrade in arms, who had expressed his willingness to abandon his senior position in the Milanese army and join the Venetians. This had come to nothing, as Trivulzio had fallen ill; but in the spring of 1483 the negotiation had been renewed. According to Trivulzio the Milanese were angry with Galeotto because he had not warned them that Roberto da Sanseverino was planning to attack across the Adda. Added to this expectation that a Venetian condottiere should pass secrets to the enemy, and the knowledge that the Milanese commander was prepared to desert, came also the information that Roberto da Sanseverino himself had been negotiating a change of sides in return for the lordship of Cesena. No doubt the heads of the members of the Council of Ten were whirling at this point, particularly when Galeotto also told them that he had had to report all this direct to them because any report to the Senate would be immediately leaked to the Duke of Ferrara by his sympathizers on that council. No action was taken by the Ten as a result of this report, and no dramatic changes of side in fact took place. One gets the impression that the long years of peace since 1454 had not so much eroded the fighting spirit of the Italian captains as created an atmosphere of social cohesion and camaraderie amongst them which made it difficult to take the brief outbreaks of war seriously, and made communication between friends in the opposing armies almost a matter of course. Even the Council of Ten seemed to take the possibility of the desertion of its commander-in-chief less seriously than it would have done fifty years earlier. This is not to say that there were not serious issues at stake in the War of Ferrara, and undoubtedly for the duke himself, and for his subjects, it was a matter of life or death. The story of Galeotto Pico has an epilogue which again is revealing. In i486 he was suspected of bribing Venetian chancery officials and nobles and of trafficking in state secrets. A warrant was issued for the arrest of his chancellor, Francesco da Fino, and a number of Venetian nobles and secretaries were arrested.20 As a result of the inquiries, and the torture of Giovanni Diedo, sentences of exile or deprivation of office were passed on Diedo himself and others; Francesco da Fino, who was never caught, was banished in perpetuity; and Galeotto Pico was dismissed from his condotta, never again to be employed.21 It seems that nothing was actually proved 19 20 21

D i e c i , M i s t i , r e g . 2 1 , 136—g\ (6 S e p t . 1483). Ibid., reg. 23, 32V and 43 (22 Mar. and 5 May i486). Ibid., 46V-7 (13 May i486).

184

Soldiers and the state against Galeotto and his chancellor, but the possibility of an attempt by a senior condottiere to interfere in the running of the state was sufficient to provoke a violent reaction. With the growing power of the Council of Ten in the second half of the century the machinery for dealing with difficult captains undoubtedly improved. Earlier there had been frequent resort to the device of infamy painting in the cases of treacherous condottieri whom Venice had failed to catch. The practice of painting an effigy of the offending captain, usually hanging upside down, on the walls of public places, particularly the public brothel at the Rialto, was of course always accompanied by an offer of a reward for the capture of the traitor. Boldrino da Gazo was 'painted' for betraying Oderzo to the Hungarians in 1412,22 and the same was ordered for Piero Navarino after his desertion in 1427.23 Evangelista Savelli, the betrayer of Cerreto in 1452, also appeared in effigy hanging upside down on the walls of public buildings throughout the state.24 While such devices might appear no more than admissions of failure, this would be to neglect the potent impact of public ridicule in the fifteenth century, particularly on soldiers. In all the cases so far discussed it was thefidelityof the captain which was at issue, and while it could be argued that Venice took a firmer line with condottiere disloyalty and disobedience than other Italian states, the differences were certainly not great. A much more difficult and continuous problem was presented by the behaviour of the troops themselves, particularly vis-a-vis the local population on whom they were quartered or through whose lands they were marching. While a low murmur of complaint is apparent in Venetian official sources throughout the century about the impact of billeting troops in the state, it reached a crescendo in the 1440s. The behaviour of the troops of Francesco and Alessandro Sforza in the Veronese in 1440 brought a request from the Senate to Francesco to intervene and stop his men from forcing civilians to sell goods at low prices.25 In 1443 there was a clash in the Trevigiano between some of Gentile da Leonessa's men and the local population in which three soldiers were killed.26 In this case, as in 1450 when Colleoni's company was causing trouble in the Veronese, the answer was quickly to move the troops to a less populous area.27 Undoubtedly a particularly black moment came with the 22 23 24 25 26 27

Sanuto, Vite de dogi, 861. SMi. reg. 56, 126 (6 Sept. 1427). ST. reg. 3, 49V (8 Dec. 1452). S S . reg. 15, 51V-52V (30 N o v . 1440); A S V e . , Archivio del C o m u n e , 58, 75 (8 N o v . 1440). ST. reg. 1, IOIV and 104V-105 (27 July and 23 Aug. 1443). Ibid., 137V (10 Aug. 1444). For similar complaints and action about Colleoni, see SS. reg. 19,12V and 22V-23V (12 Oct. and 19 Nov. 1450) and Anonimo Veronese, Cronaca, 21-2.

185

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 retreat after Caravaggio, when the damage done by ill-disciplined soldiery in Peschiera and parts of the Veronese left its mark for years. The contributions of Verona to the dadia delle lanze were reduced permanently as a result of these episodes.28 In the long run the answer to these problems lay not in local palliatives like moving companies round, nor even in occasional retribution against the soldiers concerned, which was in fact very difficult for Venetian rectors to carry out. Exceptional seems to have been the case of the two soldiers from Antonmaria da Sanseverino's company who were summarily hanged by the Council of Ten for trying to murder a young Venetian noble on the steps of the Rialto.29 The answer lay in the gradual tightening of the whole system of inspections and control, in effective pay which kept the companies contented, and above all in creating an atmosphere in which the captains felt themselves under a permanent obligation to Venice and took a pride in the effectiveness of their companies to carry out that obligation. The Venetians had a precocious awareness of this solution from early in the fifteenth century, and alongside the pattern of lengthening contracts and tightening administration there grew up a complicated rewards system, which must now be examined. The rewarding of soldiers for success in a siege or battle was, of course, commonplace in Italian warfare; indeed, the normal allocation to the army of the bulk of movable booty was in itself a standard form of reward. Venice, like all other states, was accustomed to offering carefully scaled rewards to an army faced with a particularly obstinate siege. This happened at the siege of Padua in 1405, just as it did at that of Rovigo in 1482.30 At Trieste in 1463 1000 ducats was offered to the first man over the walls, which was an unusually high rate.31 In 1439 the Senate offered a total of 15,000 ducats to be distributed to the army of Sforza and Gattamelata if they relieved Brescia.32 Similarly there was a flood of rewards to the successful condottieri after both Maclodio and Casalmaggiore. But what was peculiar to Venice was a much more systematic system of rewards, designed not so much to encourage isolated acts of bravery as to turn fidelity and long service into norms. 'Because the condition of our men-at-arms is of the greatest importance and also to proceed in that matter with mature deliberation and 28

29 30

31 32

SS. reg. 39,105 (1 Sept. 1503). Evidence for the ill discipline of the army on this occasion comes from, among other places, Peschiera. The local council asked for relief from the obligation to provide guastatori for fifteen years in compensation for the damage done to them, but this was refused (ST. reg. 2, 93; 30 Nov. 1448). Dieci, M i s t i , reg. 2 2 , 138 (27 J a n . 1485). Sanuto, Vite de dogi, 828-9. For the rewards offered at the siege of Rovigo, see Piva, Guerra di Ferrara, i, 83. SS. reg. 21, 194 (11 Oct. 1463). SS. reg. 14, 239V (24 Nov. 1439).

186

Soldiers and the state maximum attention in order that the below-mentioned condottieri serve us and maintain the honour of our state not as mercenaries but from inclination' ran the opening of a Senate decision in 1433 to retain 5000 cavalry and 2000 infantry in permanent service.33 Clearly the emphasis of such a policy was on the captains, of both cavalry and infantry, but it extended also to rewards to faithful and long-serving rank-and-file troops. The most effective way of retaining the services of a condottiere was to make him a feudatory of the state. In this way he was not only provided with a place for his family to live and an area in which to quarter his troops, produce his own provisions, and even recruit replacements for his company, but he was also given some responsibility for civic administration. He was presented with a miniature signoria, which in fifteenth-century Venetian parlance was known as a 'nest'. In fact the degree of control and autonomy conceded in a condottiere fief varied greatly and was rarely extensive. Captains-general were often rewarded with enclaves which included a small town and over which they had very considerable authority, at least to the point of appointing local officials if not actually administering justice. But the normal fief was essentially a rural area over which the authority of the condottiere feudatory was little more than that of an influential landowner. But this, in fifteenth-century Italy, was already considerable, and undoubtedly the allocation of suchfiefsserved to satisfy one of the basic needs of the condottiere. The practice of enfeuding condottieri became standardized in the early 1430s. Prior to that the gift of Chiari and Roccafranca to Carmagnola as fiefs in 1429 was an exceptional reward to a successful commander-in-chief.34 In 1432, as the Venetian intention to create conditions of permanent service became increasingly clear, a number of the leading condottieri asked for fiefs, and in December of that year the Senate accepted the practice for the future.35 During late 1432 and 1433 Luigi da Sanseverino received Fontanella; Colleoni, Bottanuco; Piero Gianpaolo Orsini, Bariata; and Cesare da Martinengo, Orzivecchi.36 Later in the 1430s Cavalcabo de' Cavalcabo was given Seniga, and Gattamelata and Brandolino Brandolini shared Valmareno.37 Michele Attendolo was rewarded with Castelfranco as 33

34 35 36

37

SS. reg. 12, 182 (4 June 1433): 'Quia factum gentium nostrarum est maxime importantiae et in eo procedendum matura cum deliberatione et maxime attento que infrascripti conductores non ut stipendiarii sed partialiter nobis serviverunt et honorem et statum nostrum sustinerunt'. Commemoriali, x n , 65; 27 Feb. 1429 (Predelli, iv, 152-3). SS.reg. 12,141 (15 Dec. 1432). Alvise dal Verme had an inherited fief at Sanguinetto (Varanini, 65-8). For these enfeudations, see Commemoriali, x n , 124 and 134; 1 June and 1 Aug. 1433 (Predelli, iv, 168 and 180 - Luigi da Sanseverino and Cesare da Martinengo); SS. reg. 13, 2v (7-8 Sept. 1433 - Piero Gianpaolo Orsini); Belotti, Colleoni, 82-3. SMi., reg. 59, 94V (7 Mar. 1435 - Cavalcabo de' Cavalcabo); SS. reg. 13, 200 (17 Feb. 1436) and Commemoriali, x n , 151 (Predelli, iv, 196 - Gattamelata and Brandolini).

187

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 a fief in 1447,38 and another spate of enfeudations came in the early 1450s with Gentile da Leonessa receiving Sanguinetto; Guido Rangoni, Cordignano; Cristoforo da Tolentino, Aviano; and Giovanni Conti, Ragogna.39 All these fiefs were located close to Venice's frontiers, initially mostly in the Bresciano and Bergamasco, but later in the Trevigiano and Friuli. The exception, both in timing and location, was the fief of Cittadella given to Roberto da Sanseverino in 1483.40 Cittadella was one of the main garrison the heart of the Venetian towns in the Padovano and hence much close state than was normally allowed for a condottiere fief. It was also the only major fief conceded in the period 1454 to 1494. Undoubtedly the large-scale distribution of fiefs to condottieri was a feature of the years between 1430 and 1454. This was both the period when the army was at its largest and when land was more readily available after the expansion of the Terraferma state. It was also the period in which the greatest effort was made to secure the loyalty of a military group made up predominantly of foreign captains. After 1454 the more limited leadership requirements of a peacetime army were met out of the families already enfeoffed, and increasingly from families of Terraferma nobility which were encouraged to take up military careers. From this moment onwards it was only the occasional foreign general who received fiefs from Venice. Roberto da Sanseverino was one example, and after 1494 there were the examples of Niccolo Orsini, Count of Pitigliano, who was given Ghedi, and Bartolomeo d'Alviano, who received Pordenone 'in feudo nobile e gentile' after his victory over the Germans in 1508.41 Much has been written about a new feudalism in the fifteenth century linked to and encouraged by the emerging princes, and at first sight Venetian policy seems tofitinto this picture.42 Not only werefiefsgranted to soldiers, but also Venetian patricians were allowed to buy up and take over existing fiefs in the Terraferma. In addition many of the incumbent feudatories were allowed to continue to enjoy their feudal rights and privileges, particularly in the frontier areas of the new state. This was 38 39

40 41

42

Commemoriali, xm, 193; 9 Jan. 1447 (Predelli, iv, 307). S S . reg. 19, 157 (26 Sept. 1452 - Gentile da Leonessa); C o m m e m o r i a l i , xiv, 145, 161 a n d 137V-138 (Predelli, v, 6 8 , 7 1 , 106 - Cristoforo da T o l e n t i n o , Giovanni Conti a n d G u i d o Rangoni). C o m m e m o r i a l i , xiv, 24V-25 (Predelli, v, 282). Pitigliano m u s t have b e e n given G h e d i soon after he joined Venetian service in 1495, b u t I have n o t found any formal document of investiture. For D'Alviano's investiture, see SS. reg. 41, io6v (20 June 1508); Commemoriali, xix, 121 v-i 22v; 15 July 1508 (Predelli, vi, 99-100); A. Battistella,' Pordenone e i D'Alviano', Memorie storiche forogiuliesi, ix (1913) 246. See particularly D . B u e n o de Mesquita, ' L u d o v i c o Sforza and his vassals', in Italian Renaissance Studies, ed. E . F . Jacob ( L o n d o n , i960) 184-216. F o r discussion of the Venetian situation, see G . Fasoli, ' L i n e a m e n t i di politica e di legislazione feudale veneziana in T e r r a f e r m a ' , Rivista distoria del diritto italiano, xxv (1952) 61-94; A. Ventura, ' I I dominio di Venezia nel Q u a t t r o c e n t o ' , in Florence and Venice: Comparisons and Relations, i (Florence, 1979) 176.

188

Soldiers and the state frequently done in return for specific military commitments like that agreed with Parisio da Lodrone in 1439 to provide 600 infantry when called upon to do so.43 This was all part of the defensive system of the Terraferma state; apart from anything else a feudatory could be expected to maintain his castles in reasonable condition. But it would be wrong to imagine that this policy represented either a significant feature of Venetian control over the state or a sort of disintegration of that control. The areas involved were either isolated enclaves or the rural fringes of the state, and the authority and degree of civil control conceded in the new enfeudations were strictly limited. Those conceded to soldiers were primarily intended to confer prestige and emolument, not be a means of local control. Enfeudation was not, of course, the only means by which soldiers acquired land in the Venetian state. Condottiere 'nests' were also built up by gifts of land without any feudal implications, and by encouraging soldiers to buy confiscated estates of rebels at favourable rates, or receive them as part of their pay. Infantry captains like Dietisalvi Lupi, Scaramuccia da Forli and Battista Grosso da Mandello were often given lands both as outright rewards and in lieu of pay.44 Again such grants were much more common in the first half of the century than in the second. Associated with the acquisition of land was also the granting of palaces and houses in the Terraferma cities to soldiers. The quartering of troops in the cities was not encouraged, but it was attractive to a captain, and in some senses advantageous to Venice, to allow favoured condottieri to have city bases. Colleoni's palace in Bergamo and that of Carmagnola in Brescia are obvious examples, but in addition Taddeo d'Este was given a palace in Padua in 1435, and Antonello da Corneto had a palace in Vicenza which was seized at the time of his disgrace.45 Along with the palace often went citizenship of the city in question, which allowed the condottiere to enjoy the same gabelle reductions as other residents. Again in the second half of the century, as more and more of the established Terraferma nobility, most of whom already had city bases, became involved in the Venetian army, this military presence in the cities became an even more natural part of the urban scene. The most prestigious, if not necessarily the most effective, form of reward was reserved for captains-general and other very senior commanders, and 43 44

45

SS. reg. 14, 194 (6 Apr. 1439). F o r Dietisalvi L u p i , see Mazzi, ' L ' a t t o divisionale della sostanza di Dietisalvi L u p i ' , 7 - 9 ; these estates were in t h e Bergamasco, as were those given to Scaramuccia da Forli in 1442 (Commemoriali, XIII, 189V; Predelli, iv, 273). Battista Grosso was rewarded in 1453 ( S T . reg. 3, 55V; 15 J a n . 1453). F o r Colleoni's activities in Bergamo and the building of his palace, see Belotti, Colleoni, 2 6 6 - 7 . Carmagnola was busy building a palace in Brescia in 1430 ( S M i . reg. 57, 257; 6 July 1430), b u t both T a d d e o d'Este a n d Antonello da Corneto acquired existing palaces (Dieci, Misti, reg. 11, 130V; 6 Apr. 1435 and S T . reg. 6, 109V; 5 N o v . 1470).

189

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 this involved conferring a position within Venice itself. All the captainsgeneral and a number of other leading condottieri in the fifteenth century were elected honorary members of the Great Council and hence Venetian nobles. Among those who enjoyed this privilege without actually being captain-general were Jacopo Cavalli, Taddeo d'Este, Roberto da Sanseverino and Bartolomeo d'Alviano.46 Nobility was conferred in perpetuity, but in fact relatively few of the privileged condottiere families survived by the end of the century. Carmagnola, Gattamelata and Colleoni all had no sons; the line of Taddeo d'Este died out in 1463; and Michele Attendolo, Alvise dal Verme and the sons of Roberto da Sanseverino were all expelled from the ranks of the nobility for desertion. The privilege, while largely honorary, had a practical purpose in that it allowed the captain-general to appear as of right in the relevant Venetian councils when consultation on military affairs was required. Girolamo Riario, when he was made a Venetian noble during his visit to Venice in 1481, was invited to participate in a session of the Great Council and to make a nomination in the election of the Captain of Ravenna.47 His nominee, Bernardo Bembo, was elected, but although Riario had a condotta from Venice at this time his special treatment was that accorded to a nephew of the pope rather than a Venetian soldier. Normally such nobles were excluded from playing a role in Venetian political affairs. However, election to the Great Council was on special occasions accompanied by the gift of a palace in Venice. This again had a practical function in providing a place of residence for the captain-general when he came to consult with the Senate, and the very fact of the gift was intended to give the impression that Venice intended the relationship to be a long one. It was also in terms of value one of the most extravagant rewards that Venice could bestow, as such a palace could be worth as much as 6000 ducats. Pandolfo Malatesta was promised a palace when he was made a noble in 1413, and the promise was honoured three years later when a palace of the Lion family in S. Eustachio on the Grand Canal was bought and given to him.48 It was this palace which passed in 1427 to Carmagnola as part of his rewards after Maclodio, and was then confiscated and sold in 1433. Another such palace was that known as 'Del Cagnon' in Calle Corner, S. Polo. This was given to Jacopo dal Verme in 1388 and passed to his son Alvise. After Alvise's defection in 1437 it was confiscated and given to Gattamelata in 1439 49 The palace then passed to Giovanantonio di Gattamelata, and on his 46 47 48 49

Sanuto, Vite de dogi, 443-4. A S F . , Archivio Mediceo avanti il Principato, x x x v m , 330 (23 Sept. 1481): letter of Fra Matteo da Forli, who accompanied Riario to Venice, to Lorenzo de' Medici. S S . reg. 5, 125 (29 Apr. 1413); G . Tassini, Curiosita veneziane (Venice, 1897) 670. Tassini, 196. 190

Soldiers and the state death without heirs it reverted to Venice, which immediately gave it to Francesco Sforza.50 Sforza subsequently exchanged it for the Ca' del Duca, which was being built by Marco Corner in S. Samuele. The other notable condottiere palace of this period was the' palazzo delle due torri' built by the Giustiniani in the late fourteenth century at S. Pantalon and bought by the republic for Gianfrancesco Gonzaga in 1430.51 After Gonzaga's defection in 1438 it was seized and given to Francesco Sforza, who lost it in his turn when he was fighting against Venice in 1447. This was the palace which was auctioned in 1452 to the Foscari and was then rebuilt as the existing Ca' Foscari. Finally there was the palace bought from Domenico Pieri in 1483 and given to Roberto da Sanseverino. This was in S. Agnese and was confiscated in 1500 from Roberto's heirs.52 The appearance of the captain-general in Venice was always the occasion for considerable ceremony and festivity, and everything possible was done both to impress the soldier with the magnificence and power of the state and to reassure him of the high regard and confidence extended to him. The most celebrated of all such visits was probably that of Colleoni in 1458, but most of the fifteenth-century captains-general had the opportunity to savour the delights of a ceremonial visit to Venice.53 Alongside thefiefs,lands and palaces which were showered on Venice's senior condottieri, particularly in the first half of the fifteenth century, there were inevitably cash bonuses and cash pensions. The record of these rewards is probably by no means complete, as it was always necessary for Venice to exercise a degree of discretion and secrecy in the matter to avoid provoking jealousies amongst the captains. But the evidence of large cash rewards in addition to normal contractual provisions is clear-cut. Galeazzo Gonzaga, Count of Grumello, and Pandolfo Malatesta each received life pensions of 1000 ducats a year as special rewards for their services in the early wars.54 Filippo Arcelli in 1419 got 500 ducats a year for life and the gift of a superb silver helmet worth 1000 ducats.55 Carmagnola was promised a life pension of 2000 ducats a year after Maclodio,56 and as late as 1508 D'Alviano received a gift of 1000 ducats and all the captured German artillery after his victory at Pieve di Cadore.57 Sometimes the cash gifts were in fact 50 51 52 53

54 55 56 57

SS. reg. 20, 97 (14 June 1456). Tassini, 280; Commemoriali, xn, 83V (Predelli, iv, 160). Priuli, ii, 7; Romanin, iv, 417. On Colleoni's visit, see A. Angelucci, Ricordi e documenti di uomini e trovati italiani per servire alia storia militare (Turin, 1866) 77-9 and Mallett, 'Venice and its condottieri', 121-2. For the preparations for Roberto Malatesta's visit in 1480, see ST. reg. 8, 93 (14 Apr. 1480). Sanuto, Vite de dogi, 830 (Gonzaga) and SS. reg. 5, 125; 29 Apr. 1413 (Malatesta). S S . r e g . 7, 103V (11 Sept. 1419). Commemoriali, xn, 66v; 17 Oct. 1427 (Predelli, iv, 121). SS. reg. 41, 7 8v (4 Mar. 1508). 191

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 compensation for losses in battle, like the 100 ducats given to Niccolo da Tolentino after his quarters were burnt down during the siege of Brescia in 1426.58 Nor did the gifts always stem from Venice itself; Terraferma cities, grateful for the protection given them by Venice's army, were sometimes cajoled into such generosity. After Francesco Sforza and Gattamelata had rescued Verona from the assault of Piccinino in 1439 the city council offered a gift of 10,000 ducats to Sforza and 3000 to Gattamelata.59 There was no doubt an element of coercion in this transaction, but the coercion came at least in part from Venice, whose proveditor Andrea Donato played a leading role in arranging the gifts. Gifts of cash to the chancellors of leading condottieri were also common as a reward for getting or retaining the services of their masters for Venice. The allocation of a life pension was particularly appropriate at the moment when a condottiere retired from active service, although in most cases it is not possible to identify a precise moment of retirement in the career of a fifteenth-century captain. In 1440 when Antonio da Martinasco, who had been Carmagnola's senior squadron leader, finally retired still in Venetian service, he was already enjoying a life pension of 200 ducats a year conferred in 1437. However, it was calculated that he was owed back pay of over 2000 ducats, and this was to be rapidly paid off at the rate of 150 ducats a month.60 Other notable retirements were those of Deifebo dalPAnguillara in 1488, when he received a pension of 800 florins a year,61 and of Piero da Cartagena in 1499 with a pension of 20 florins a month.62 It was one of the rhetorical conventions of Venice's relationship with its condottieri that both parties referred to the contracts between them as being binding for life. Whether or not that had in fact been the case, Venice was well aware of the need to honour faithful soldiers at their death and to make it clear that the state accepted a responsibility for their families. The state funerals ordered for captains-general who died in service were further occasions for Venice to convince soldiers of the respect in which they were held. Paolo Savelli, who died during the siege of Padua in 1405, was given a state funeral in Venice attended by the doge.63 He was subsequently commemorated by the wooden equestrian statue in the Frari, thought to be the work of Jacopo della Quercia.64 Another famous military funeral in Venice was that of Bertoldo d'Este, the hero of the Morea campaign of 1463 58 59 60 61 62 63 64

SS. reg. 9, 164 (10 Sept. 1426). ASVe., Archivio del Comune, 58, 41 and 116V-119V (28 Dec. 1439 and 7 Nov. 1441). SS. reg. 14, 77 (5 Dec. 1437); SMi. reg. 60, 217 (23 May 1440). ST. reg. 10, 78V (11 Feb. 1488). ST. reg. 13, 88 (5 Aug. 1499). Romanin, iv, 26. W. Valentiner, 'The equestrian statue of Paolo Savelli in the Frari', Art Quarterly, xiv (1953) 280-92. 192

Soldiers and the state and particularly dear to Venetian hearts because of the very long service of his father Taddeo.65 On this occasion a funerary oration was pronounced by Bernardo Bembo. The state funeral of Taddeo d'Este himself was held in Brescia in 1448,66 while those of Gattamelata, Gentile da Leonessa and Colleoni also took place in the Terraferma. The Senate voted 250 ducats for the expenses of Gattamelata's funeral in Padua,67 while the cost of the obsequies for Colleoni in Bergamo were met out of his legacy to the state.68 The famous equestrian monuments erected in honour of these two faithful servants of the republic both occasioned some debate and doubts in the Senate, and in the case of Donatello's monument to Gattamelata the costs were met by Gattamelata's son, Giovanantonio. But with the Colleoni statue the state could afford to be more generous in the light of the considerable financial advantages accruing to it from his will. The events surrounding the death of Colleoni throw a good deal of light on the practical background behind the rhetoric of the state funerals and the laudatory funerary orations. While it was important to do honour to the dead captain and to be seen to be respecting commitments made to him and his family during his life, it was even more important in this particular case to ensure the security of the state and to take full advantage of the great financial windfall which resulted from Colleoni's death. The proveditors who hastened to the bedside of the dying captain had three immediate practical objectives: to make arrangements for the future of his companies and the maintenance of discipline amongst what amounted to the core of the army on the western frontier, to ensure continuity of local administration in Colleoni's extensivefiefsand estates, and to secure control over his treasure. This last objective seemed the most urgent one and led to the most immediate results; within a month 232,000 ducats had been sent to Venice for safekeeping and preparations were in hand for selling off Colleoni's movable effects to raise more money.69 Colleoni in hisfinalwill left 100,000 ducats to Venice for the purposes of the war with the Turks; in fact the net financial gain to the republic must have been considerably greater than this, and in this respect Venice has always been accused of not keeping faith with its prestigious employee. However, these starkfiguresdo not give the whole picture; considerable sums were spent by Venice on the funeral of the condottiere, on legacies to his family and dowries to his two remaining unmarried daughters and on back pay to his troops. In the matter of 65 66 67

68 69

Sanuto, Vite de dogi, 1172, 1179. Cristoforo da Soldo, 79. ST. reg. 1,85V (16 Jan. 1443) and Eroli, Gattamelata, 148. LauroQuerini gave the funerary oration on this occasion, and Mantegna is said to have done a painting of the death of Gattamelata. Belotti, Colleoni, 5 2 6 - 7 . Dieci, Lettere, 1, nn. 416-54 (19 Oct.-30 Dec. 1475); Belotti, Colleoni, 533-5.

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Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 Colleoni's fiefs and estates the failure of Venice to honour its obligations and the testamentary wishes of the captain-general was more clear-cut. Only two of his ten fiefs passed to his heirs although all had been granted in perpetuity; the rest were reintegrated into the state.70 The formal excuse for this breach of faith was that the local populations had asked for it, but the reality of the situation was that this conglomeration offiefshad been created specifically for the maintenance of a large section of the Venetian army, and without that justification their continued alienation from the state could not be tolerated. Colleoni's troops, after inspections and some dismissals of veterans and incompetents, were largely enrolled into the lanze spezzate.71 His heirs, the sons of his daughter Ursina and Gherardo da Martinengo, were given small condotte befitting their modest standing as soldiers, and in these circumstances they could hardly expect to continue to enjoy the vast territorial jurisdictions exercised by their grandfather. Raison d'etat took precedence over keeping faith with Colleoni and his family in these exceptional circumstances, and there is no evidence that Venice's decisions at this time either surprised or particularly vexed the rest of its military hierarchy. In fact, while Venice was prepared to allow companies to pass from father to son, and indeed encouraged such a process in the right circumstances, there was always a concern to ensure that the heir was a proper person to exercise military command. Family traditions of service were encouraged, and the son of a faithful condottiere enjoyed favourable treatment and could expect to inherit at least a part of his father's condotta; but the size of that part depended entirely on Venice's view of the military usefulness of the heir.72 Bernardino di Carlo Fortebraccio was able to succeed naturally to his father as leader of the Bracceschi companies because he was a proved and established captain by the time his father died in 1479. But on the death of Guido Rossi Venice insisted that his younger son, Beltramo, should share a reduced condotta with the elder, Filippo Maria, because he was a better soldier.73 This point leads us to the broader discussion of Venice's concern for the families of its condottieri, both during and after their lifetimes. As part of the move towards permanent captains in the 1430s and 1440s it became accepted that such men were entitled to claim allowances and pensions for their wives and families. At a time when most of the captains were of foreign 70 71 72

73

Belotti, 537. Died, Lettere, i, n. 423 (6 Nov. 1475). Antoniazzo da Doccia's company passed to his sons after his death in 1493 (ST. reg. 12, 11; n June 1493), but Giuliano di Giovanbattista dall'Anguillara was allowed to inherit only a part of his father's company in 1481 (ST. reg. 8, 136; 28 Dec. 1481). SS. reg. 34, 78-9 (5 Nov. 1490).

194

Soldiers and the state origin it was natural that Venice should seek to ensure their permanent allegiance by making arrangements for them to settle their families within Venetian frontiers. As early as 1431 Italiano Furlano had been given an extra 200 ducats a year to maintain his family in the Veneto,74 and in 1439 Colleoni was given a house in Padua and a special allowance of 20 ducats a month for his wife to live there.75 By the 1450s Giovanni Conti, Cristoforo da Tolentino, Guido Rangoni, Orso Orsini, Antonello da Corneto and Ludovico Malvezzi all had their families settled in Terraferma cities with suitable allowances.76 Indeed, in 1455 it was discovered that Cristoforo da Tolentino was drawing two allowances for his wife: one of 1200 lire a year in Padua and another of 600 lire a year in Treviso. The allowance paid in Padua was promptly stopped.77 In 1484 Roberto da Sanseverino was getting 100 ducats a month for his wife living in Padua.78 State support for the families of deceased condottieri was an even more extensive phenomenon, involving not only the continuation of pensions for the newly widowed, but also allowances for sons and dowries for daughters. The sons of Guerriero da Marsciano, a faithful condottiere who died in 1440, all received life pensions of 50 lire a month,79 and in 1491 one of his granddaughters, Bernardina di Berto da Marsciano, was confirmed in a life pension of one-third of this sum from the treasury of Treviso.80 The daughters of Giovanni Villani, who had served Venice for fifty years, received dowries of 300 ducats each after their father's death in 1488,81 and those of Jacopo Catalano, killed in action in 1450, got 500 ducats each for their dowries.82 But in fact specific evidence for the support of widows and bereaved children of soldiers is more apparent for the lower ranks, as the families of the captains were on the whole provided for for life during the lifetimes of the captains themselves. Small pensions allotted to wounded, mutilated, retired and deceased soldiers of junior rank and their families were commonplace and must have amounted to a very considerable drain on the treasuries of the Terraferma cities. Frequently the provision took the form of a minor post conferred for life on a retired soldier, but straight cash 74 75 76

77 78 79 80

81 82

SMi. reg. 58, 91 (12 Nov. 1431). S M i . reg. 60, 124 (19 F e b . 1439). S T . reg. 2, 200(11 July 1451 - C o n t i ) ; reg. 3, I 5 i v ( i 3 M a r . 1455 - Tolentino); S S . reg. 14,159V (23 Oct. 1438 - Rangoni); S T . reg. 4, 25 (18 D e c . 1456 - O r s i n i ) ; S S . reg. 2 1 , 13 and 15V (1 July and 16 Aug. 1460 - Corneto and Malvezzi). S T . r e g . 3 , 151V (13 M a r . 1455). S T . reg. 9, 88 (1 July 1484). S T . reg. 3, 82 (28 Sept. 1453). Dieci, Misti, reg. 25, 58V (22 J u n e 1491). Descendants of Guerriero were still being given posts in recognition of their ancestor's services in 1507 (Dieci, Misti, reg. 3 1 , 200; 22 Sept. 1507). S T . reg. 10, 117 (30 Oct. 1488). S T . reg. 2, 142V (18 M a y 1450).

195

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 allowances were also very common. Retirement pensions of between 5 and 10 ducats a month were usual for cavalry squadron leaders and infantry constables like Angelo da Roma, a former squadron leader of Giovanni Conti who had stayed on in the lanze spezzate; Bernardo d'Arezzo, another squadron leader of the lanze spezzate; and Rodrigo Spagnuolo, a longserving constable.83 For the rank andfilewith good records of service or who had retired as a result of war wounds, pensions of 6-12 lire per month were standard. Ferrando da Spagna, an infantry corporal in the company of Tiberto Brandolini who had his right arm shot off in the siege of Soncino in 1446, was offered a retirement pension of 6 lire a month which he refused, as he said that he wished to continue serving with his left arm only; he was given a gift of 40 ducats instead.84 But in fact infantry constables were less likely to retire than were cavalry soldiers, partly because they were more able to continue to serve in some nominal capacity than was a cavalryman who at a certain stage could no longer ride. Hence the emphasis here was on provision for wives and families of dead soldiers, many of whom died in Venetian service in the Balkans. The extent of Venice's concern with rewarding faithful service is well demonstrated by the measures agreed after the battle of Fornovo in 1495.85 In addition to a large lump sum normally set aside after a major battle for assistance to the families of the dead, a wide variety of specific rewards and compensations were offered. Francesco Gonzaga was made captain-general, had his personal allowance increased by 2000 ducats a year, and received 1000 ducats a year allowance for his wife and a lump sum of 10,000 ducats as compensation for the losses in his company. Bernardino Fortebraccio, who was badly wounded, had the size of his company doubled and got a personal allowance of 500 ducats a year. The family of Ridolfo Gonzaga, who was killed, got a pension of 1000 ducats a year, and in 1501 his daughter received a dowry of 1600 ducats.86 The sons of the dead captains Ranuccio Farnese and Vincenzo Corso were promised condotte when they grew up, while their daughters got allowances of 400 ducats a year each. Francesco Berardi and Carlo Strozzi inherited the small companies of their brothers who were killed in the battle. Niccolo da Nona, the captain of the stradiots, had the size of his company increased, and the family of the dead constable Giovanni Blanco got a house in the citadel of Verona and a pension of 6 ducats a month. Afinalform of reward deserves attention although little information on it 83

84 85 86

ST. reg. 5, i49v(4Feb. 1466 -Angelo da Roma); reg. 3,17V (14 Jan 1452-Bernardo d'Arezzo); ibid., 131 (20 Sept. 1454 - Rodrigo Spagnuolo). ST. reg. 2, 41V-42 (18 Aug. 1447). SS. reg. 35, i44r-v (24 July 1495). S S . r e g . 3 8 , 157V (4 A u g . 1501).

196

Soldiers and the state has come down to us from the fifteenth century. This was the award of knighthood - the title of Cavaliere di San Marco - which seems to have been reserved for middle-rank soldiers, particularly infantry captains, and nobles who had rendered conspicuous military service. Among the small number of soldiers who received this honour were Giovanni di Beltramino, who distinguished himself at the siege of Padua in 1405, Dietisalvi Lupi, the captain of infantry in the 1430s and 1440s, and Dionigi Naldi, a distinguished infantry captain who joined Venetian service in 1504.87 The knights were given a surplice of cloth of gold lined with crimson silk, but evidence is lacking to suggest that there was a sufficient number of them to constitute an active military order. Given this evidence of the conscious and systematic integration of the army into the economy and society of the Venetian state, one can scarcely continue to talk of a sharp separation between the military and civilian spheres. Certainly the economic and social impact of the standing army was much more apparent in the Terraferma than it was in Venice itself. The allocation of large bodies of troops to permanent quarters in certain areas of the Terraferma inevitably affected economic and social relations in those areas. The captains, whether formally enfeuded or not, took their place in the ranks of the local landed nobility; their troops integrated themselves into local society at all levels. The men took over property and land, and provision of the needs of the companies became a key element in the local economies. While there were undoubtedly local tensions inherent in this situation, particularly in the early days, the gradual formation of local 'garrison economies' soon led to a situation of mutual interdependence. In the cities, where the presence of the troops themselves was less apparent, the frequent residence of their captains, the growing involvement of Terraferma noble families in military command and administration, and the commitment of the treasuries and bureaucracies to military expenditure and organization could not but affect the local scene. In 1458 the practice which had grown up of Venetian rectors bringing in the troops from all over their jurisdictions to turn their entry into a city into a great military display was severely discouraged by the Senate. In future only troops quartered within three miles of the city were to be used for this purpose.88 Apparent here, as in the later shift from large-scale inspections and manoeuvres to local parades, was a realization that it was the movement of large bodies of troops, rather than their sustained local presence, which caused unrest and tensions. Nor could Venice itself remain unaffected by these developments. In a century when Venetians became increasingly aware of the political 87 88

Sanuto, Vite de dogi, 829, n 23 (Beltramino and Lupi); ST. reg. 15, 2ov (10 June 1504 - Naldi). ST. reg. 4, 77V (24 July 1458).

197

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 implications and economic possibilities of Terraferma expansion, the whole question of military defence became one of fundamental importance. As Venetian nobles took posts as rectors in the Terraferma cities, as their clerical brothers filled the bishoprics and high ecclesiastical posts, and as individuals and families spread their landholding commitments in ever widening circles, they were confronted at every turn by the complex mechanism and problems of the standing army. In June 1403 the Senate decreed that no Venetians were allowed to buy or rent property from any lord or foreign state. In 1431, the moment at which a policy of settlement of military captains on the land became clear, this ban was extended to nobles buying or renting land from captains of over 100 lances.89 Here again we see the formal attempt to preserve a separation between the Venetian ruling class and its new employees. But by 1433 this policy was abandoned and the 1431 law was repealed.90 The formal reason given for the change of direction was that Alvise dal Verme had a good deal of property and it was unfair to him to restrict his freedom to sell or lease to whom he wished. While this concern for the interests of a powerful soldier is indicative, it was also obviously not the only reason why Venetian policy changed. The acquisition of Terraferma land was becoming too important an issue for many Venetian nobles to be fettered in this way; and at the same time the extent of the lands being acquired by Venice's soldiers was too great to be isolated and protected. However, it remained Venetian policy throughout the century to monitor closely the relations between prominent Venetians and the soldiers. In July 1487 another Senate decree called on all members or ex-members of the Senate and the College to declare what dealings they had had with soldiers since the beginning of the War of Ferrara. Failure to do so was to be punishable by ten years' exile.91 The timing of this decree suggests a direct response to the affair of Galeotto Pico della Mirandola already referred to; but the introduction to the decree conveys a more general impression of a continuing concern for control over the relations between Venetians and their soldiers. 89 90 91

SMi. reg. 58, 92 (22 Nov. 1431). This decree referred back to that of 1403. I b i d . , 232V ( 2 6 A u g . 1433). ST. reg. 10, 57V (23 July 1487).

198

Venice and war On 4 September 1497 Caterina Cornaro, the Queen of Cyprus, visited her brother Giorgio when he was podesta of Brescia. The visit was the occasion for a series of splendid pageants; Brescia had for years been more or less the headquarters of the Venetian army, and the military played a full role in the festivities. In the procession of entry for the queen rode Albanian stradiots, the mounted crossbowmen of the governor-general, Pitigliano, and the companies of men-at-arms of Marco da Martinengo, Luigi Avogadro and Gianfrancesco Gambara, all themselves Brescian nobles and Venetian captains. There followed the clergy of the city and a cortege of Venetian nobles. Alongside the podesta rode the governor-general himself. Caterina was escorted to the palace of Ludovico da Martinengo where she was to reside; this was the palace which had belonged to Colleoni, to whom it owed its redecoration and splendour.1 A few days later Francassa and several of his brothers, the sons of Roberto da Sanseverino, arrived from Milan with their men. Some of the Sanseverineschi had until recently been in Venetian service and their presence gave an edge of military rivalry to the great joust that was to follow. This was fought out on 10 September among the Sanseverineschi, the troops of the governor-general and the companies of the local Brescian captains. It was rumoured that the Marquis of Mantua, himself recently Venetian captain-general, was present in disguise. All this portrays eloquently the fusion of civilian and military which was characteristic of life in the ex-signorial cities of Lombardy in the late Middle Ages, and which to a large extent Venice had absorbed by the end of the fifteenth century. Giorgio Corner himself was one of those Venetian nobles who had a deep commitment to military affairs and was to be one of the proveditors at Agnadello.2 The court of Caterina at Asolo included soldiers, notably the Venetian captain Tuzio Costanza, who had distinguished himself at Fornovo and now played an important part in the social and artistic life of that old condottiere fief of Castelfranco.3 The military parades 1 2 3

Sanuto, i, 762-4. See above, 175. L. Puppi, 'Le case di Tuzio Costanza', Italia medievale e umanistica, xiii (1970) 253-64.

199

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 and jousting were spectacles scarcely less common in Venice itself than they were in the Terraferma cities. Venice is a city of myths, and we are confronted here with two apparently contradictory myths. On the one hand, there is the tradition of the merchant city, isolated and remote from land affairs, and keeping military command out of the hands of its citizens. Gasparo Contarini remarked in the De magistratibus that it was only in his own time in the early sixteenth century that the old tradition that Venetian nobles could not command detachments of more than 25 soldiers had been abandoned, and this tradition was supposed to go back to the twelfth century and Venice's first involvement in land warfare.4 This was the tradition which Machiavelli denounced in the Istorie Florentine', 'the Venetians, as they turned to the mainland, put aside those arms which had achieved glory for them at sea, and, following the custom of the other Italians, placed their armies under the command of others'.5 On the other hand, there was the rather more recent myth of Venetian imperialism, of a Venice avid for territorial gain in Italy, switching all its considerable expertise and resources into a programme of naked aggression in the fifteenth century. This was the image created by Florentine and Milanese propaganda from the middle of the century onwards and culminating in the diatribes which preceded and accompanied the League of Cambrai.6 In fact, of course, these myths reflect conflicting realities in Venetian attitudes. There was in the fifteenth century a constant tension between conservative ideas, usually associated with the older patricians of each generation, of protecting Venetian trade and eastern interests, and avoiding mainland entanglements, and the more radical attitudes of younger generations of politicians, often described as the giovaniy who had as individuals accumulated experience of the realities of the Terraferma commitment, and who tended to see aggression as the best method of defence of a new and important alignment.7 At a number of moments in the fifteenth century there is evidence of open conflict between these two positions. In 1404-5 the war party was led by the doge himself, Michele Steno, supported by men like Rosso Marino, Paolo Zeno and Francesco Foscari.8 In the years that followed, one of the principal proponents of a 4 5

6 7 8

G. Contarini, De magistratibus et Republica Venetorum (Basle, 1547) 179-82. See also B. Tamassia Mazzarotto, Le feste veneziane (Florence, 1961) 286. N. Machiavelli, Istoriefiorentine,1, xxxix. For similar comments by Machiavelli, see II principe, xii; Discorsi, in, xxxi; L'arte della guerra, 1. See also I. Cervelli, Machiavelli e la crisi dello stato veneziano (Naples, 1974) 68, 78-80. Rubinstein, 'Italian reactions to Terraferma expansion' passim; Valeri, 'Venezia nella crisi italiana' passim. For one of the best expressions of the conservative position, see D. Morosini, De bene instituta re publica, ed. C. Finzi in Collectanea Caralitana (Milan, 1969) 49-56, 120-2, 157-66, 209-12. British Library, Add. Ms. 27,430, 'Corona venetorum', 63V. 200

Venice and war strong military stance in the Terraferma, in addition to Foscari, was Alvise Loredan. With the ducal election which followed the death of Doge Mocenigo in 1423 the antagonisms seemed to come to the fore again. A combination of the recent extensions of Venetian frontiers in the second Hungarian War and the rising threat of a renewed Milanese quest for hegemony in northern Italy gave a keener edge to the arguments of the giovani, and the election of Foscari undoubtedly prepared the way for a fullscale Terraferma commitment. It is probably equally true that the enormous costs of the wars which followed 1426, together with a growing preoccupation with events in the eastern Mediterranean, strengthened the opposition of the conservatives and contributed to the discrediting of Foscari in the 1450s. By the early 1480s the tensions were well to the fore again. The Senate was bitterly divided over the policy towards Ferrara, with once again the older politicians, led by Francesco Venier, urging caution and retrenchment, while the giovani, for whom Francesco Michiel was the chief spokesman, pressed for an armed confrontation.9 Even during the War of Ferrara there was plenty of evidence of lukewarm attitudes towards the war and the expenses and dangers which it involved. Of course these antagonisms were not just a matter of conservative eastern Mediterranean interests versus a policy of Terraferma expansion. There were few in Venice, even amongst the giovani, who seriously supported a policy of unlimited aggression in Italy. The issue over Ferrara was more one of whether greater economic advantage in the crucial lower Po area was to be gained by direct takeover or by the traditional policy of covert influence. The issue was complicated after early 1483 by the appearance of the papacy amongst Venice's enemies, which added to the ranks of those opposed to the war within the city. Finally both the decision to seek a French alliance and attack Milan in 1498-910 and the decision to take the offensive in the Romagna in the autumn of 1503 provoked the same bitter debates in the Senate.11 By this time there can have been few in Venice who seriously thought of dismantling Venice's military machine or abandoning a Terraferma commitment; the debate was about the scale of military preparedness and the nature of the commitment. The army had become an important part of the fabric of the Venetian state, but the degree of interest in, and commitment to, it among Venetian politicians varied widely. Venetian attitudes towards the army seemed to be little affected by the humanist dilemma which beset the Florentines. Humanists were, among other things, the propagandists of the emerging state; they preached the 9 10 11

Romanin, iv, 2946°. SS. reg. 37, 43, 59, 63 (8 Sept., 17 Nov., 21 Nov. 1498). SS. reg. 39, 126 (8 Nov. 1503) and Soranzo, 'II clima storico della politica veneziana in Romagna' passim. 201

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 need for strength in war and for commitment of the citizens to the preservation of the state. They were also, for the most part, committed to an historical viewpoint and they were aware that the emergence of small, professional armies was a relative novelty. They thus found themselves deploring the excesses of the mercenaries and the extent to which their presence undermined the willingness of citizens to fight, and at the same time praising the military virtues displayed by contemporary condottieri.12 However, humanists were also, particularly in Venice, realists. They appreciated that they lived in an age of growing professionalism and technical sophistication, in which the amateur and the part-timer had little chance. Most of them were able to appreciate that strength in war and a reliance on citizen militias for that strength were contradictory aims in the circumstances and that the former was more important. In a city which made a fetish of republicanism like Florence the debate tended to be distorted, as mercenaries were associated with signoria, and their undoubted utility had to be set against the fear of a military coup. But in Venice there was little of such fear both because of the natural security of the city and because the Venetians had the means to defend that city against any land army - their sea power. Certainly the acquisition of the Terraferma state laid Venetians open to some of the same doubts and worries which beset the Florentines, but on a much reduced scale. A potent factor in this more uninhibited approach to mercenaries and standing armies was undoubtedly Venice's long-standing commitment to the defence of an overseas empire. Petrarch, who was in Venice in 1364 and witnessed the great joust staged to celebrate the end of the Cretan revolt, remarked: 'one must admire this race of sailors not only for their expertise in naval matters, but also for their efficiency and brilliant skill in all the arts of soldiering and field camp organization'.13 A tradition of individual training for defence of the state and itsfleetswas deeply ingrained in Venetians. All male citizens had been expected to practise with the crossbow since the thirteenth century. Targets were regularly set up in many of the main campi for this practice under the tuition of master archers, and regular competitions were held on the Lido to stimulate enthusiasm and confirm skills.14 The main purpose of this training was to provide bowmen to defend the galleys, but companies of Venetian archers also quickly made their appearance in the mainland wars. The gradual decline of the relative utility 12

13 14

For assessments of these contrasting views, see Bayley, War and Society in Renaissance Florence passim and D. J. Wilcox. The Development of Florentine Humanist Historiography in the Fifteenth Century (Cambridge, 1969) 97-8. Petrarch, Lettere seniles (iv.3), ed. G. Fracasetti (Florence 1869), ii, 227. P. Molmenti, La storia di Venezia nella vita privata dalle origini alia caduta della repubblica (6th ed., Bergamo, 3 vols., 1922-5) i, 170; Romanin, ii, 394. 202

Venice and war of the crossbow in the fifteenth century contributed to a lessening in the enthusiasm for this training. In 1418 it was noted in the Senate that the posts of noble bowman on the galleys (four were nominated to each galley) were being monopolized by a small number of men who were the only ones who bothered to keep up the training. This was seen as being not only damaging to the defensive capabilities of the city's population, but also a dangerously oligarchical sociopolitical trend, as the post of noble archer was regarded as one of the first rungs on the ladder of a political career. It was decreed therefore that henceforth a noble who went as archer on a galley could not be chosen again until two years had elapsed.15 Thirty years later it was once more noted that the habit of archery practice was declining amongst the nobles and that the obligation to compete in the biannual competitions on the Lido was not being observed. Efforts were made to ensure that the 150 nobles who went each year as archers on the galleys were suitably skilled in the use of the crossbow.16 In 1460 a third annual competition was introduced, on the feast of St Bartholomew in August, and although this was suspended during the plague years of 1464 and 1465 it was revived in 1490.17 By that time it was being recognized that the crossbow was being superseded by the handgun even at sea, and so in 1506 similar competitions were introduced for the new weapon.18 But if there was some decline in this traditional form of military activity for Venetians in the fifteenth century, there was a dramatic increase in public and private concern with land warfare and all that this involved for the state. The creation, maintenance and increasing institutionalization of a standing army affected Venetian life at all levels. As evidence of this at the highest level one has only to look at the increasing amount of time spent by the Senate on discussing military affairs. Here was a forum in which the core of the nobility became involved with and informed about the state of the army and the nature of its role. The variety of semi-military posts held by Venetians has already been extensively discussed in the previous chapters. In this context one has to remember that it was not just the proveditors, paymasters and administrative commissaries attached to the army, and the castellans of the fortresses, who imbibed this experience, but every rector who took up office in the Terraferma. Detailed research into the careers of prominent Venetian nobles of the fifteenth century is still in its infancy, but enough has been done to suggest that the accumulation of'military' and Terraferma offices was becoming a major avenue to high political office in the republic. This was certainly an area of specialization to which a 15 16 17 18

SMi. reg. 52, 84V (31 Mar. 1418). Died, Misti, reg. 13, 89 (10 Jan. 1448). Ibid., reg. 24, 185 and 203V (14 Apr. and 4 Aug. 1490). Ibid., reg. 31, 100 (18 Aug. 1506). 203

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 significant number of senior Venetian politicians devoted much of their careers. Many of the men who emerged as Venice's leading ambassadors had served a political apprenticeship on the Terraferma, and there also seems to have been a strong link between Terraferma experience and a development of humanistic interests.19 Most of those fifteenth-century Venetian nobles who were noted as humanists, like Francesco Barbaro, Andrea Giuliano, Jacopo Antonio Marcello, Ludovico Foscarini, Bernardo Giustinian and Bernardo Bembo, were men whose political careers had been largely taken up with mainland affairs and who had been actively involved with the army. The exact nature of these connections needs to be examined more closely, but it is clear that prolonged residence in a city with an active intellectual life and a strong sense of a local classical tradition, like Verona, had a considerable influence on some of these men. An inevitable result of the proliferation of offices connected with the control of the army was the growth of links between individual Venetian nobles and the republic's long-serving captains. Many of the leading condottieri had their particular supporters and patrons in the Senate, and usually one can trace such a relationship to a period when the Venetian concerned had been proveditor with the army or a Terraferma rector. Tommaso Malipiero was a confidant of Carmagnola, and in 1426 the captain-general asked that Malipiero's term of office as proveditor be extended because of their good working relationship.20 Ambrogio Badoer had a long-standing friendship and political relationship with Gianfrancesco Gonzaga. It was he who negotiated the condotta of 1432 and who was usually sent by the Senate whenever there was need for consultation with the captain-general.21 Andrea Morosini conducted the secret negotiations with Colleoni in 1453-4 a n d w a s chosen for this task by the Senate because he was known to be on good terms with the condottiere. There was even a suggestion that Colleoni's daughter, Caterina, should marry Paolo di Andrea Morosini and that he should have a condotta in Colleoni's company.22 When he went to Venice in 1458 Colleoni stayed in the Morosini palace. Niccolo Trevisan spoke up on a number of occasions in the Senate on behalf of Bernardino Fortebraccio in the late 1490s.23 At times these relationships could cause very considerable suspicion, as in the case of Andrea Donato and Francesco Sforza in 1447. Donato was brought back in chains from Crete, where he was doge, to give evidence to the Council of 19

20 21 22 23

For confirmation of these ideas, see Margaret King, 'The patricians and the intellectuals: power and ideas in Quattrocento Venice', Soctetas, iv (1975) 295-312. SS. reg. 9, 140V (8 July 1426). SS. reg. 12, 138-40 (3-11 Dec. 1432). SS. reg. 19, 153 (1 Aug. 1452); Belotti, Colleoni, 224, 245, 254-9. See, for example, SS. reg. 37, 22V (20 June 1498).

204

Venice and war Ten about his dealings with Sforza. It transpired that he had, among other things, received a gift of 900 ducats from Sforza; he was sentenced to a year in prison and ten years' deprivation of office.24 Donato had been proveditor with Sforza in the early 1440s, and this was probably the beginning of their contact. Contacts between soldiers and Venetian nobles were not always connected with holding office; increasingly after 1433 the quest for Terraferma estates brought them together. The Pisani family, leading bankers, were particularly interested in land acquisition and bought up much of the land confiscated from Alvise dal Verme in 1437; subsequently Bartolomeo Pisani married the daughter of Michele Attendolo and managed the condottiere's fief at Castelfranco.25 One also finds Venetians owning properties leased to soldiers, as in the case of Francesco Querini's wife, who was a Marcello; she owned a house in Gradisca leased to Carlo Orsini.26 Bankers like the Pisani and the Soranzo also had a considerable part to play as the financiers of soldiers, both on an official basis when requested to advance pay by Venice, and unofficially as moneylenders. Many of Venice's captains were in debt to Venetian nobles, and this is perhaps the clue to many of the contacts and much of the interest in Venice in their activities and welfare. However, owing to the paucity of private business records surviving in Venice it is difficult to document this phenomenon. In April 1482, as the army was being mobilized for the War of Ferrara, Roberto da Sanseverino was bombarded with petitions from Venetians concerning military posts for particular soldiers and help with military contracts of various sorts.27 That Venetians should be interested in the business potential of the army is hardly surprising, and there is a good deal of evidence of war profiteering by Venetian nobles in this war. But that Venetians should be acting as patrons for soldiers and seeking preferment for them is more striking, and the Senate ordered that this should stop immediately. Any soldiers who appeared to have been employed as a result of a petition from Venice were to be dismissed. But it is the evidence of the direct involvement of Venetians in military activity which most convincingly erodes the myth of Venice's detachment from the affairs of the army. It was not unusual for proveditors to take over command of the army during the temporary absence of the condottieregeneral, with full authorization from Venice. In May 1420 Marino Loredan, who was captain of Treviso, commanded the army during the absence of 24

25 26 27

Died, Misti, reg. 13, 61-65V, 72V-76 and 96 (29 Mar-12 Apr. and 28 May-22 June 1447, 13 Mar. 1448). See above, 182. Collegio, Notatorio, 15, i8v (9 Feb. 1500). ST. reg. 8, 144 (1 Apr. 1482).

205

Part I: c. 1400 to is08 Arcelli, who had gone to fulfil a vow at the shrine of S. Antonio in Padua.28 In 1427 Pietro Loredan commanded in the absence of Carmagnola at the baths, and in 1432 Giorgio Corner and Santo Venier led the campaign in the Valtelline.29 An expedition against the Germans in the Alto Adige in 1413 was led by Francesco Bembo.30 In addition the riverfleets,the co-operation of which with the army was such a feature of warfare in Lombardy in the fifteenth century, were always commanded and officered by Venetians. Nor can one detect any serious animus against Venetians serving as minor condottieri in the fifteenth century, and although there was clearly some restraint on such men rising to high command the maximum figure of 25 soldiers imposed by tradition on the size of their military commands was often ignored. One of the most distinguished of such Venetian soldiers was Michele Gritti, who was given a condotta for 100 cavalry in 1432 and rose to the command of 100 lances in 1437.31 He served as a middle-rank condottiere for fifteen years until his desertion to Milan in 1447 provoked a move in the Council of Ten to confiscate his estates. But even then his kinsman, Benedetto Gritti, was instructed to write to him to say that he had two months to return to Venetian service before the confiscation would take effect.32 A contemporary of Gritti was Bernardo Dandolo, who was a squadron leader in the company of Michele Attendolo; after 1448 he joined Gentile da Leonessa in the same capacity.33 In the second half of the century the examples of Venetians as longserving condottieri multiplied, and it seemed to be almost a policy to insert such men into positions of importance in the lanze spezzate. Jacopo Badoer and Vettore Malipiero commanded squadrons in the lanze spezzate in the 1470s;34 Giovanni Gradenigo started as a captain under Guido Rossi in 1487 and by 1495 had his own company of 100 cavalry;35 Alvise Valaresso joined the company of Carlo Fortebraccio in 1478 and served for twenty-four years before hefinallygave up his condotta for 80 cavalry in 1502;36 and Giovanni Diedo was another whofinallygave up a condotta in 1500, having previously served with Pitigliano.37 All these men were clearly described in the records as Venetian nobles and their presence in the army seems to have been regarded as a desirable rather than a suspect factor. 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

37

SS. reg. 7, 150 (5 May 1420). See above, 37, 171. S S . r e g . 5, 132V ( 3 0 M a y 1413). SMi. reg. 58, 124 (20 May 1432); SS. reg. 14, 70V (16 Nov. 1437). Died, Misti, reg. 12, 78 (28 June 1447). S T . reg. 2, 90 (19 N o v . 1448); S S . reg. 19, 148V (20 J u n e 1452). S T . reg. 7, 61 (27 D e c . 1474), 72 (4 A p r . 1475). Collegio, L e t t e r e Secrete (1490-4), 113V (15 Sept. 1491); S T . reg. 12, 90V (27 A p r . 1495). S e n a t o , Provveditori da T e r r a e da M a r , 24, 121 (29 M a y 1478); S T . reg. 14, 107V-108 (24 Sept. 1502). ST. reg. 13, 4V and 130 (7 July 1497 and 30 May 1500). 206

Venice and mar However, in terms of numbers the most significant involvement of Venetians in the land wars was when contingents of crossbowmen from the city joined the army. There was undoubtedly a feeling, particularly in the early years of the century, that in moments of greatest military stress the population of Venice itself should be pressed into service alongside the mercenaries. After all, many Venetians were proficient in the use of the crossbow and were accustomed to the form of discipline of the galleys. Hence in 1404-5 large numbers of Venetian crossbowmen were sent both to the river fleets and to defend the camps and forts round Padua. Contingents usually numbered 100 to 200 crossbowmen divided into companies of 25, each commanded by a noble. In December 1404 200 were sent to the camp at Piove di Sacco commanded by Giovanni Diedo; further contingents arrived in the camp in April, June and October 1405.38 On the outbreak of war with the Hungarians in December 1411 one of the first reactions in Venice was to prepare 250 crossbowmen commanded by ten nobles,39 and in July 1419 100 Venetians were sent to the army under Marino Contarini.40 In 1427 Jacopo Barbarigo led the Venetian contingent which fought with the army throughout the summer.41 In this case there was no conceivable threat to Venice itself, and the practice of strengthening the army with experienced fighters from the city seemed as natural as the extensive use of the less well-trained Terraferma militias. In 1431 there were 700-800 Venetian crossbowmen with the Pofleet,and these men were selected on the basis of their performance in archery practice in the city.42 In 1437 150 crossbowmen were present with the army on the Adda, and in 1438 450 were raised for service in Verona and Padua.43 In 1440 300 men were sent from Venice to Padua to serve in this capacity.44 By 1440, however, there seemed to be a change in Venetian policy on the use of the crossbowmen. There is no further evidence of contingents of Venetians joining the army before the end of the wars in 1454, although naturally the presence of them in the river fleets continued. It seems that with the standing army now fully established and maintained at a high level of mobilization, and with the war concentrated in the plains beyond the Adige, there was no longer a need to involve contingents from the city. From this moment onwards the presence of the Venetian crossbowmen, commanded by nobles, was an exceptional occurrence in Venice's land wars. In 1463 300 were sent from Torcello to the siege of Trieste commanded by 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

SS. reg. 2, 77V (16 Dec. 1404), 107, 121V and 159-60 (18 Apr., 18 June and 20 Oct. 1405). SS. reg. 4, 224 (25 Dec. 1411). SS. reg. 7, 89V and n o v (18 July and 2 Oct. 1419). SS. reg. 10, 42 and 105V (16 Apr. and 30 Nov. 1427). SMi. reg. 58, 50 (16 Mar. 1431). S S . reg. 14, 23 and 124 (16 M a r . 1437 and 4 July 1438). S S . reg. 15, 21 (3 M a y 1440).

207

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 Alvise Lando, the podesta of Torcello,45 and in 1474 free pardons were offered to convicts who would go to help to defend Scutari from the Turks.46 In 1482, after the capture of Figarolo, it was decided to garrison that town with 50 Venetian crossbowmen because of its great importance.47 After that it was not until the famous defence of Padua in 1509 that Venetians were involved once more in such numbers in the defence of the Terraferma state 48 Once again one is left with the impression that in the fifteenth century Venetians were very much involved in the military problems of the defence of the Terraferma, but that the main weapon for that defence was a trained, professional standing army. Once that had been established and as long as it remained effective the level of direct personal involvement by Venetians was reduced, just as concern for fortifications as an alternative means of defence remained at a low level. But this did not mean that interest in military affairs in Venice declined. Evidence from the early days of printing and from book collecting in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries suggests that warfare was a major concern of the literate elite in Venice.49 The writings of the northern Italian humanist educators which emphasized the importance of military exercises and discipline as a part of a balanced education were a major component of any fifteenth-century private Venetian library. The dreams of Aldus Manutius and his patrician connections for an academy seem to have included this long-standing preoccupation.50 Even a conservative like Domenico Morosini devoted large sections of his De bene instituta re publica to the problems of war and the need for powerful defences.51 A further indication of the interest in military affairs in Venice was the prevalence and popularity of the jousts and tournaments in the city. The custom of holding jousts in Piazza S. Marco to celebrate military victories, the election of doges and weddings in ducal families went back to the thirteenth century; one of the earliest recorded was that held in 1253 to celebrate the election of Doge Ranier Zeno. On that occasion a company of Istrian cavalry fought against one from the Veneto and Lombardy. This element of a full-scale mock battle was to be a standard feature of Venetian tournaments, and it was the seriousness and the genuine military purpose of 45 46 47 48 49 50

51

Malipiero, Annali veneti, 207. S T . reg. 7, 45 (12 July 1474). S T . reg. 8, 163 (29 July 1482). See below, 333. J. R. Hale, 'Printing and the military culture of Renaissance Venice', Medievalia et Humanistica, n.s. viii (1977) 21-62. Willibald Pirckheimers Briefwechsel, ed. E . Reicke, i (Munich, 1940) 280-2: letter of John Cuno to Pirckheimer of 21 Dec. 1505. I am indebted to D r Martin Lowry for drawing my attention to this reference. See above, 200 n. 7.

208

Venice and war the proceedings which impressed Petrarch in 1364. In 1381 a tournament was held to celebrate the end of the War of Chioggia and the admission of 30 new families to the Great Council.52 This tradition was continued for most of the fifteenth century. Notable among the recorded tournaments were those of 1400 to mark the election of Doge Michele Steno, 1406 to celebrate the fall of Padua, 1415 for the election of Doge Mocenigo, when 460 knights accompanied the marquises of Ferrara and Mantua to the proceedings, and 1441 in honour of the marriage of Jacopo Foscari, the son of the doge.53 On this occasion Francesco Sforza, Gattamelata and Taddeo d'Este all were present with their leading captains. The best-known of fifteenth-century tournaments was that held in May 1458 to celebrate the election of Doge Pasquale Malipiero.54 Colleoni presided over two days of martial display of which the first was devoted to individual jousts between condottieri, and the second to a mock battle for possession of a wooden castle erected in the Piazza. Seventy men fought on each side, with Bertoldo d'Este and Antonello della Corna commanding one contingent and Orso Orsini and Ludovico Malvezzi the other. Bertoldo d'Este was again the hero of a joust in 1463 on the eve of his departure for the Morea.55 The last serious tournament held in Venice took place in 1485 to celebrate the end of the War of Ferrara; it was attended by Roberto da Sanseverino, Giulio Cesare Varano, Ercole d'Este and other leading condottieri.56 At about this time horses were banned from the calli of Venice, as stone was increasingly used for the bridges and for paving, and this was presumably a factor in the ending of the tournament tradition. The significant point about all these occasions was that the main participants were all professional soldiers. While there was undoubtedly a tendency in the fifteenth century for the tournament to become a great public spectacle devoid of real military significance, it also remained an important form of exercise and training for the soldiers themselves. Venetian tournaments, unlike those held with increasing frequency in Florence, were not occasions for the urban patriciate to show off their aristocratic accomplishments. Although conducted against a background of great pomp and display, they were primarily genuine military exercises in which the soldiers practised their skills and displayed their talents under the discerning eyes of the employers.57 52 53 54 55 56 57

Tamassia, Le feste veneziane, xiv-xv; Romanin, ii, 256. Tamassia, xiv; Romanin, iv, 266; Tassini, Curiosita veneziane, 392; Sanuto, Vite de dogi, 833, 894, noo-i. Angelucci, Ricordi e documenti, 77-9. Molmenti, Storia di Venezia, i, 190. Malipiero, Annali veneti, 296-7. For valuable remarks on the joust in fifteenth-century Italy, see M. Tosi, // torneo di Belvedere in Vaticano e i tornei in Italia nel Cinque cento (Rome, 1946) 26-36. 209

Part I: c. 1400 to 1508 After 1485 martial display and activity in the city were limited to mock naval battles, the archery and handgun competitions, and the 'battles of the bridges' fought out amongst the artisans and working classes. However, the tournament tradition continued in the Terraferma cities, closer to the military encampments but still attended by many Venetians in both official and unofficial capacities. An awareness of the military traditions in Venice itself and the relationship at various levels between Venetians and the emerging military elite in the fifteenth century is essential to an understanding of the precocious growth of the standing army. Undoubtedly there were strategic and geographical factors which helped to explain Venice's acceptance of the need for a permanent army and its comparative success in establishing it. The permanent threat from aggressive oltramontane powers on the northern and eastern frontiers in addition to the problem of defending the internal Italian frontiers placed Venice in a unique position, while the terrain of Lombardy called for particular solutions which only Milan shared. But equally important factors for understanding Venetian military developments lay within the city itself. A superficial explanation might suggest that the mercantile attitudes of the Venetian nobility led to an expectation of value for money and a determination to monitor closely this expensive investment. But such an explanation leaves unsolved the problem of the marked contrast between Venice's achievement in the military sphere and that of Florence, where one might expect similar attitudes to prevail.58 More important, therefore, one has to consider the sense of discipline which seemed to prevail in Venetian society, the maturity of the republic's bureaucratic and political organization, and above all its military traditions formed in the previous centuries. The German invasion of 1508 and Venice's effective counter to it showed the military organization which had been built up at its best. Speedy and effective mobilization for the defence of the frontier, the availability of seasoned commanders and troops, and effective collaboration between the army and civilian officials all contributed to the victory at Pieve di Cadore. The rewards given to D'Alviano and others after the success were also part of the pattern. However, the events of 1509 were to reveal the weaknesses which still existed in the system, and were to cast a shadow over Venice's achievements in the sphere of military organization in the previous century. It is necessary to avoid the hindsight of Agnadello if one is to get those achievements into perspective. 58

M. E. Mallett, 'Preparations for war in Florence and Venice in the later fifteenth century', Florence and Venice, i (Florence, 1979) 149-64.

210

PART II

I5O9-l6l7 J. R. Hale

8

The historical role of the land forces i509-1617

Throughout the sixteenth century the Mediterranean was dominated by the Ottoman Turks, Spain and Venice. All were imperial powers. Only one, however, was named after a mere city. Remarkable as had been the creation of the Venetian empire overseas, more remarkable still was its survival. And this was dependent on the retention by Venice of control over its second, later empire, that of the mainland. After wars that left by 1530 the other political units of Italy either the subjects or the nervous satellites of Spain, Venice, uniquely, maintained its independent status. This independence added a final element to the pre-existing admiration for the stability and rationality of the city's constitution and for the harmony that prevailed among its social groups. Exaggerated both by the republic's own propaganda and the envy of other states, these elements formed the core of what has been dubbed the Myth of Venice. But this myth could not have elicited the fascinated admiration of other states, even of imperial powers like seventeenth-century England and the Netherlands,1 had Venice itself not remained the capital of an empire. Slight as its presence was to become among the burly contestants of the European political scene, Venice's power over the imagination was due to its power by land and sea. And at the base, the fulcrum of that power, were the armed forces, the republic's soldiers. In the changed conditions of the sixteenth century, when Venice was no longer challenged overseas by a weak Byzantine empire and a remotely based Genoa but by the expansionist Ottoman Turks, the navy could not have defended the republic's possessions without the manpower of the Terraferma: not simply sailors and oarsmen and untrained scapoli, or marines, but, as the techniques of galley warfare developed, professional fighting men drawn from the army. Venice's military administration supplied deterrent garrisons for the bases overseas from the mainland forces 1

Z. N. Fink, The Classical Republicans (2nd ed., Evanston, 1972); E. O. G. Haitsma Mulier, The Myth of Venice and Dutch Republican Thought in the Seventeenth Century (Assen, 1980). 212

The historical role of the land forces as well as through supplementary contracts. And in other ways the Terraferma came to overshadow the empire da Mar. Not only in the broad economic view did its increasing exploitation provide agricultural and industrial compensation for Venice's decreasing income from trade with the Levant, but its resources offered an essential security for the loans needed for mobilization in times of crisis or war. Again, to protect its empire da Mar Venice needed allies: its diplomats would have carried little weight if they had not negotiated as the agents of a European territorial power. And that territory would not have existed had it not been guarded by the republic's land forces. Their size and expense, remarkable for a minor European power, are outlined in chapter 16. In composition they remained as they had been before Agnadello: a standing army, recovering slowly from c. 4500 to c. 9500 overall and reflecting in its novel concentration overseas both the increasing threat from the Turks and the confidence that on the Terraferma a non-aggressive stance and modernized fortifications would ensure a breathing space for the obtaining of mercenaries. Stand-by contracts with military entrepreneurs were designed to produce for mobilization at short notice an 'extraordinary' force of up to 10,000 men, almost exclusively infantry. In actual war numbers could be inflated still further to contribute to overall totals that went as high as c. 2O,,ioo2 in 1509, c. 29,700 in 1529 and c. 35,800 in 1570 and 26,000 in 1617 through additional contracts negotiated from scratch on the manpower market. And, finally, as a fourth tier within the mobilization process, there were native militias comprising an average strength on the Terraferma of 20,000 and overseas, from the 1560s, of c. 18,000. Seldom used as combat soldiers save in 1509 and during the manpower shortage that characterized the 1615-17 War of Gradisca, they were envisaged as an essential defensive supplement to the standing force in access routes and garrison towns pending the arrival of professional 'extraordinary' troops. Any consideration of manpower, moreover, must embrace the programme of re-fortification that, as part of the republic's increasingly determined policy of armed neutrality, was intimately linked to the purpose of the land forces and, less clearly, to their size. At first it was believed that the stronger a city's walls the smaller a garrison need be. But because up-todate fortifications were planned not only to absorb shock but to mount a maximum of offensive firepower, this turned out not to be the case. Reviewing the progress of the programme in 1545, the senior officer Luigi Gonzaga said that some were already deploring it because ' it means that we 2

Excluding a militia force of c. 10,000. Field army, 22,660; garrison force, 6,445. For this and the succeeding figures and sums, see ch. 16. 213

Part II:

i$og-i6ij

have to maintain a standing army at great expense'.3 Instead of increasing the standing army on the Terraferma, however, the republic built it up only overseas (and then chiefly because of the delays involved in transporting reinforcements), relying instead on militia drafts and on increasing the number of volunteer subjects inscribed and trained in afifthcombat tier, the gunnery 'schools' (scuole) of the mainland towns and cities; by 1606 this corps comprised on the Terraferma 104 full-time professionals and 4755 part-timers, unpaid save when called out for service in garrison, in the field or on shipboard. All these considerations suggest the use of the phrase 'land forces' rather than the word 'army' - save in the sense of a heterogeneous body under arms at any one exceptional moment. And they point to the links among these forces, the functioning of government and the life of the people. From one point of view the historical role of the land forces was to preserve Venice and its empire so that they continued to have an independent history; from another, it is that of a component of the society they were protecting. Their narrowest, if quintessential, function was to fight. Between the opening campaigns of the War of Cambrai in 1509 and the settlement of the War of Gradisca in 1617 Venice was four times involved in open warfare. Between 1509 and 1529 it first lost, then regained and then, equally crucially, hung on to its Terraferma, which thenceforward remained intact until the coming of Bonaparte. Between 1537 and 1540 the republic staved off heavy Turkish pressure on the empire da Mar and secured, albeit with the loss of some Peloponnese and Aegean ports-of-call, thirty years of peace in the Mediterranean. The War of Cyprus in 1570-3 led to the loss of that island, but thanks to the naval victory, in association with Spain and the papacy, of Lepanto, and the evidence that Venetian garrisons could effectively face the Turks' advantage of having interior lines of communication in the Balkans, Venice secured a respite from further pressure that lasted until Sultan Ibrahim's attempt on Crete in 1645. The last conflict, the War of Gradisca, was the first of Venice's own choosing. Thoroughly inglorious, it was also successful. Above all, the republic's freedom to wage a war in territory - Friuli and Istria - marching with Habsburg and Turkish lands without either of these powers choosing to escalate the conflict to its own advantage indicates the respect granted to Venice's ability to protect its possessions by land and by sea. For the broader function of the armed forces was to supply a deterrent which, together with fortifications, preserved the peace by supplying the teeth within the fixed smile of armed neutrality. Venice emerged from the peace settlement of Bologna in 1529 ringed by potential enemies. Its western 3

Capi di Guerra, Ba. 3, sub nomine. 214

The historical role of the land forces and northern borders confronted, from Milan to Austria, Habsburg territory. Southwards were lands - Mantua, Ferrara - too small not to defer to Habsburg policy as, a year later, did Florence on the extinction of its Last Republic. The same shadow of deference to the Empire clouded the independence of the papacy, part of whose state constituted another of the Venetian Terraferma's southern neighbours. The western shore of Venice's commercial highroad, the Adriatic, was in papal or Neapolitan hands - and the Kingdom of Naples was a Habsburg colony. Within Italy Venice was an anomaly, as it was within the ever more Ottomanized Mediterranean. Both by land and sea its empire was encircled by powers covetous of the wealth generated by the republic's possessions and the greater ease they could give to communications within their own. By sea Venice had no political choice: it was either to coexist or perish. By land there was the possibility of playing the balance-of-power game by invoking the repeatedly baffled but persistently alert Italian interests of the French. But Venice had played this game, repeatedly, before 1529 and had come to distrust it. While maintaining, indeed intensifying, a European diplomacy designed to reassure other powers of the harmlessness of Venice's anomalous position and gain information about the minutest threat to it, the republic determined to stay out of power politics, and this meant demonstrating that it had the power to defend itself. This stance did not emerge in any clearly defined way in the years immediately following the Bologna settlement. They were years of exhausted stock-taking. It was the Turkish War of 1537-40 that turned caution into a deliberate policy of armed neutrality. Venice itself had insufficient warships to maintain a guard squadron in the north Adriatic in addition to patrols and a battle fleet capable of matching a Turkish armada. It was forced to seek allies with naval strength, Spain and the papacy, and became convinced that the war's unsatisfactory conclusion was due to disparate aims and delay-haunted mutual antagonisms. If war meant allies then war must be avoided. During the last throes of the diplomacy that produced the 1559 international settlement of Cateau-Cambresis, Bernardo Navagero, the major historian of the Turkish War,4 was the republic's ambassador in Rome. Stimulated by the parallels he saw, the relazione5 he presented on his return to Venice was also a cogent definition of the lessons learned in 1537-40. From his observation post beside the pope he had come, he said, to a number of conclusions. First, it was folly to go to war without a precise knowledge of the forces available to wage it with. This pointed to the second 4 5

See below, 227 n. 7. E. Alberi, Relazioni degli ambasciatori veneti al Senato (Florence, 1834-63) ser. 2, ii, 404-9. 215

Part II: conclusion, ' that all alliances are full of difficulties because each party has different aims, and as each is out for his own advantage, problems arise from the moment a treaty is signed; thus many opportunities for attacking the enemy are lost and, besides, the forces promised not being, in practice, actually raised, either for lack of pay or irreconcilable differences of opinion among the commanders, the enemy gains time and you lose reputation, which is important in all affairs'. It was essential, he went on, to be free to seize the opportunity either to press home an attack or negotiate for peace, as soon as a propitious moment arrived. Besides, friendships and antipathies were not necessarily lasting. 'It is better, in my view, to treat all enemy rulers as potential friends, and friends as potential enemies.' Neither the statements of potential allies, nor the value accorded them by Venice's diplomats, were to be trusted, for 'men often deceive themselves in speaking of what is a very secret thing, a man's mind: for this can change according to situation and chance'. In another conclusion, 'I have also noted that it is wise to overestimate the enemy's strength and to underestimate that of oneself and one's allies.' And, he sums up,' I have become convinced, Most Serene Prince, that wars are always to be avoided for the disadvantages they bring.' In its remarkable steadiness as an expression of Realpolitik, Navagero's report represents the mood in which Venice had determined to stay out of trouble and put up with abuse. In 1536 the Duke of Urbino had taken for granted that Venetian policy included the possibility of renewed expansion.6 In 1559, Venice's new commander-in-chief recognized as an article of faith that' he who has the command of your army has to look to the defence and conservation of your state and not put it to the hazard of battle'.7 Given the axis-seeking, dynasty-establishing and - with the Infidel or Protestant in mind - occasionally ideologically nuanced tone of current international political life, Venice's colourless isolationism, gilt as it was on the outside by a robust diplomacy that took for granted the republic's place above the salt at Europe's conference tables, was bound to be an affront. Its agents were not surprised to be told by Pope Pius V in 1569, on the eve of the next Turkish War, that' all other rulers, from the greatest to the least, hate and speak ill of you. All resent your attitude and say that the republic shows no interest in nor cares to esteem or favour anyone else.'8 But neither were they particularly dismayed. Isolation had been constantly troubled by eddies from European rivalries or Turkish predation. The years 1542,1544, 1546, 1551, 1552, 1554,1561, 1566, 1568, 1569 itself: all these were years of 6 7 8

Died, Secreta, reg. 4, 128V. Materie Miste Notabili, Ba. 7, 77-77V. Cessi, Storia della repubblica di Venezia, ii, 121. 2l6

The historical role of the land forces impending crisis on land or sea or both and had involved some degree of mobilization; successful as its diplomacy in Europe or in Constantinople seemed to be, the republic was never tempted to trust it. These precautionary mobilizations had the effect of keeping the fortification programme moving, the permanent army expanding, at least overseas, the stand-by contracts refreshed, the militia and artillery scuole systems tested. But because of the financial cost of military preparation the relationship between diplomacy and the armed forces was not consistently or logically thought out. The Venetian patriciate's instinct was to survive and prosper on the cheap. 'Armed neutrality' became a considered policy but only when it had been judderingly induced by successive scares. As Paolo Paruta, like Navagero an ambassador, and the historian of the next Turkish War, remarked, 'the years of peace felt uncomfortably like years of war' so that neutrality had perforce to be armed by a seagoing fleet and its reserve and by expenditure on fortresses and garrisons.9 By the time Venice had affronted its Habsburg and papal allies by withdrawing unilaterally from the War of 1570-3, the deterrent role of the armed forces and of an evolving programme of fortification had become accepted as a routine, if constantly grudged burden. Overseas this position reflected the lesson of the loss of Cyprus: that were the Turks to attack Crete it was uncertain that reinforcements could be transported in time to save the island. On land it reflected the consciousness that any war with the Habsburgs would have to be fought on two fronts, the Milanese and the Austrian, and possibly, given the pro-Spanish sympathies of the rulers of Mantua and Ferrara and the latent hostility of the papacy, on three. Indeed, while it is artificial to make too sharp a division between land and sea forces (a 'great' war galley in 1601 required 132 soldiers as part of its crew), from the War of Cyprus to the War of Gradisca that opened in 1615 Venice was more preoccupied with territorial than maritime defence, with men and bastions rather than ships. And in spite of an information service that stimulated activity in the Arsenal whenever the Turks were reckoned to be free from major commitments against Persia or in central Europe, and a diplomacy which kept the republic to a reprobated neutrality when other Italian powers were sending forces to aid the Empire in the Turkish wars of 1593-1606, the powers most feared were those bordering the Terraferma and beyond the reach of oars. The new fortress town of Palma was begun in 1593 with defence against both Austrian and Turkish armies in mind, but after the Habsburg-Turkish Peace of 1606 it was Austria that was seen as the greater threat. Long-standing frontier disputes in Friuli and the northern Vicentino were treated with new seriousness, as were Austrian claims to 9

Delia historia vinetiana della guerra di Cipro (Venice, ed. of 1645) 7. 217

Part II: isog-1617 Marano and other ex-Imperial enclaves and to free navigation in the 'Venetian' Adriatic. It was archducal protection of the Uscock pirates of Senj that goaded Venice in 1615 into the anti-Austrian War of Gradisca. Equally a cause of defensive expenditure on the Terraferma was the Spanish occupation of Milan. Agitating concentrations of troops built up there because it was the point of departure for troops taking the 'Spanish road' to the Netherlands. Troop movements and improvements to fortifications near the frontier produced spasms of alarm in Venice, especially as relations with Habsburg Austria became more uneasy at a time when the success of Venice's sole potential ally near enough to be of any help, Henry IV of France, brought the focus of a renewed Franco-Spanish rivalry southwards: to Savoy, and to a tense diplomatic squabble for control over the Valtelline. The valley was as important for the continuity of the 'Spanish road' and communications between Milan and the Tyrol as it was for Venice's contacts with France. A condition of the republic's independence, it seemed, as viceroys in Milan and Naples rattled their sabres, was Spain's preoccupation - and who knew how long it would last? - with the Netherlands. All the same, without the news of the sailing of an unusually large Turkish fleet, or of Spanish ships massing in Naples and Messina for a rumoured attack on Dalmatia, or of troop movements on the northern or eastern frontiers, the instinct to save money would probably have rusted the tiers that constituted the armed forces into a futile diagram. As it was, precautionary mobilizations in each of the years 1574-7, in 1580, 1582, 1599, 1606-7 (when during the Sarpi crisis Venice scraped together contracts for 12,350 additional troops10 and learned, in a shrinking manpower market, how necessary it had become to mobilize its own subjects - militia, artillery scuole, volunteers - on an unprecedented scale)11 and 1613 kept the defence procedure in rehearsal. The unnaturalness of distinguishing too clearly between war and peace when describing the historical role of the armed forces was clearly enough put in 1575 by Venice's professional commanding officer, Sforza Pallavicino, when he told the College that military planning should envisage only three situations. One, obviously, was war. The others were 'lesser danger' and 'greater danger'.12 Like other European military organizations, Venice's took account of yet another role of the armed forces: their police function. For most of the Cinquecento this calls for no special comment. But the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries represented a minor crisis in the realm of law 10 11 12

Prow. Gen. in Terraferma, Ba. 46, 14 Aug., 8 Oct.; no Polesine or Friuli figures. See below, 327 seq. Materie Miste Notabili, Ba. 3, n.p., 17 May. 2l8

The historical role of the land forces and order in the Veneto as elsewhere in Italy. The exiles of earlier generations could no longer find support from other governments, whose political allegiances had become both fixed and more delicate. The roughand-ready use of outlawry by an overworked judiciary had banished so many that, unable to find a niche abroad, they crept or blustered their way back. It was the time of the sponsored bravo, so magnificently evoked in Manzoni's / Promessi Sposiy and of the brigand. The government had traditional means of dealing with domestic violence. The availability of arms in private houses or municipal armouries meant that subjects could turn out prepared when the bells sounded the hue and cry.13 One of the functions of the militia was to provide posses to hunt criminals.14 Rectors' guards could be supplemented by garrison units. Corsican troops came to be particularly relied on in the earlier seventeenth century, because they had no local affiliations, and bands of them were raised to scour whole areas for bandit gangs, especially in the sparsely patrolled areas of the Polesine and Friuli.15 The problem was grave enough for individuals to offer to raise units specifically for police duties - offers looked on disapprovingly, as the government suspected that the man who wanted to catch a thief often wanted to be a bigger one himself.16 The problem in the capital itself was sensitive but reasonably easy to deal with. The arsenalotti were available to supplement the normal guards in the Piazza and at the Rialto. As well as the boat patrols of the Council of Ten there were fast armed vessels based on Chioggia and specifically designated as 'contra fuorusciti (exiles)'.17 At the height of the Sarpi crisis in 1606, to keep a check on strangers and would-be plotters against the state, three proveditors ' sopra il quieto et pacifico stato della citta' were appointed over twelve patricians chosen from those living nearest the Piazza, and one patrician and one citizen in each of the 69 contrade. Householders were enlisted for street patrols and so many arms were handed out that as late as 1611 the Arsenal was still missing 1032 arquebuses and 3225 helmets.18 It was harder to deal with the 'many assassinations and crimes committed by the outlaws and other evil-living persons who infest the countryside and terrorize travellers and our subjects'. In 1584 the Senate received so many complaints of the breakdown of law and order in the Terraferma that it appointed a proveditor 'per la quiete del stato', with the duty of rounding E.g. SS. reg. 85, 122V (16 Apr. 1586). E.g. ST. reg. 77, 49 (7 June 1607). E.g. SS. reg. 99, 109V-110 (13 Dec. 1608); reg. 100, 63V (31 Oct. 1609); ST. reg. 81, 146V (22 Nov. 1611). E.g. ST. reg. 76, 98 (10 Oct. 1606). S M . reg. 52, 32 (27 Apr. 1591). ST. reg. 76, 24V-26V, 43; Collegio, Notatorio, reg. 68, 37; SM. reg. 69, 173V. 2IQ

Part II: isog-1617 up brigands. He took 2 captains, a lieutenant, n o light horse and 40 infantry and was given authority to call on men-at-arms and garrison soldiers.19 The procedure was repeated in August 1610 when 2 proveditors 'sopra la quiete et pacifico viver nello stato nostro di terraferma' were appointed, one for each side of the Mincio. Each took 100 Corsican infantry and could call for additional support from the militia and the capelletti20 who were employed in war but whose chief peacetime function was to assist local authorities to 'round up cutthroats and assassins and keep the country secure'.21 While this indicates the strain that brigandage was putting on the normal law-and-order services of the Terraferma it also shows the government's reluctance either to arouse militiamen's fear of reprisal by sending them against the retinue of some robber landlord, or to worsen the local image of an always resented, because expensive, soldiery in garrison. The police role of the standing army was thus a minimal one. Venice's armed forces were raised not with a view to the surveillance of a population whose loyalty was cautiously but increasingly taken for granted after 1517, but for independent political survival both in war and in what must not too readily be called 'peace'. 19

SS. reg. 84,87-87v (18 Apr.). The quotation is from a similar proposal that was not accepted (reg. 85,

20

SS. reg. 100, 146-7V, 154-6V. SS. reg. 95, 122-122V (16 Apr. 1586).

21

123-4.V; 16 A p r . 1586).

220

The wars (i) CAMBRAI, ' RECONQUISTA ' AND RETENTION 1 5 0 9 - 1 5 2 9 1

The aim of those who signed the aggression treaty of Cambrai in December 1508, or subsequently joined it, was to turn back the clock of Venetian history on the Terraferma by a century. France, through Louis XIFs' right' to Milan which had led him to invade Italy in 1499, was to recover cities filched from that duchy: Cremona, Crema and the Ghiaradadda, Brescia and Bergamo. Maximilian, on behalf of the Empire and of his own house of Austria, was after not only Verona, Vicenza and Padua but also Treviso and Friuli. The Marquis of Mantua wanted the towns - notably Peschiera, Asola and Lonato - his predecessors had been forced to cede in 1441; the Duke of Ferrara those he had surrendered in 1484, among which Rovigo was the largest. Further afield, Pope Julius II claimed the Romagnol towns of Faenza, Rimini, Ravenna and Cervia as the property of St Peter, and Ferdinand of Aragon the string of ports from Trani to Otranto as part of 'his' Kingdom of Naples. The success of the initial pounce of this league of combatants was traumatic - defeat at the battle of Agnadello on 14 May 1509, and the consequent loss by Venice of the whole of its Italian possessions except Treviso and the villages on the fringe of the lagoon. From 1509 to January 1517 Venice was chiefly engaged in the reconquista? The process was halting and subject to repeated reversals. 1

2

This chapter may be skipped by readers familiar with the political history of Venice. It is designed to provide chronological reference points for the thematic chapters which follow, and to compensate for the absence of any conveniently available narrative of these wars. Two summaries have been helpful in compiling what follows: the chronological table in the Fondazione Giorgio Cini volume La civiltd veneziana del Rinascimento (Florence, 1958) and the admirable 'Historical abstract' in L. A. Burd's edition of // Principe (Oxford, 1891) 131-65. Otherwise: Romanin, Storia documentata delta repubblka di Venezia; Kretschmayr, Geschichte von Venedig; Pieri, //Rinascimento e la crisi militare italiana; Robert Finlay, 'Venice, the Po expedition and the end of the League of Cambrai, 1509-10', Studies in Modern European History and Culture, ii (1976) 37-72; A. Bonardi,' Venezia e la lega di Cambrai', NA V., ser. 3, vii (1904) 209-44; M. Brunetti, 'Treviso fedele a Venezia nei giorni di Cambrai', AV., xxiii (1938) 56-82; A. Santalena, Veneti e imperiali: Treviso al tempo della lega di Cambrai (2nd ed., Venice, 1901); V. Marchesi, 'II Friuli al tempo della lega di Cambrai', NAV., vi (1903) 501-37; F. Seneca, Venezia e papa Giulio II (Padua, 1962); C. Pasero, Francia, Spagna, Impero a Brescia, 1509-1516 (Brescia, 1958); A. Ventura, Nobilita e popolo nella societd veneta del '400 e '500 (Bari, 1964). 221

Part II:

isog-i6iy

Thus in July 1509 the remains of the army of Agnadello reoccupied Padua, and most of the towns in the strip of mainland running from Este to Monselice up to the mountains at Feltre and Belluno either were reoccupied or declared for Venice. In August they were lost again as a German army moved down to besiege Padua. Unsuccessful in assault after assault, that army withdrew in October. A Venetian detachment had already, through a happy accident in August, captured one of the Cambrai signatories, the Marquis of Mantua. Now, in November, Venice moved against Ferrara, but its fleet on the Po suffered a second important defeat in late December at Polesella. In 1510, peace in February and then alliance in October with Pope Julius II (who had become increasingly nervous of the initial success of the league he had helped call into being), especially as his new Holy League included another Cambrai signatory, Ferdinand of Aragon, augured well. But by June almost the whole of the area from Este to Belluno (this time including Vicenza) that had once more declared for Venice after the German withdrawal was again in enemy hands. In August the army tried and failed to retake Verona. The year 1511 was consumed in policing what little remained of the Terraferma in Venetian hands - the area between Padua and Treviso and the lagoon - and aiding Julius IPs inconclusive war against Ferrara. In February 1512 Brescia, impatient with the exactions of the French occupiers, revolted and declared for Venice, suggesting the wisdom of the republic's longer view: that allies would fall out (supported by the pope's and Ferdinand's defection) and subject cities pine for the lighter rein with which they had become familiar before 1509. Within two weeks, however, a French army under Gaston de Foix recovered and sacked it with a savagery and a dispatch that cast doubt on the outcome of any policy of wait-and-see. Yet in April de Foix was killed at the battle of Ravenna by a papal and Spanish army. The main French force (though not its garrisons in Venetian territory) withdrew from Italy and the republic negotiated a truce with Maximilian, albeit an uneasy one. In September Venice regained Crema through treachery, not by force of arms - but a winter blockade of Brescia was fruitless. Under the Treaty of Blois in March 1513 which linked Venice to France against the Emperor, Venice promised Cremona and the Ghiaradadda to Louis XII, plus support for helping him to regain Milan, in return for French assistance in the Terraferma. On 6 June, however, the defeat of the French army at Novara meant that Venice's forces (which had not been present) were left alone to confront the pope's Italian and Ferdinand's Spanish troops as well as the Germans of Maximilian, who released himself from his truce with the republic. Milan, now governed by Massimiliano Sforza under vigilant Swiss protection, allowed free passage for Spanish and German troops. With their army penned in Treviso and Padua, the 222

The wars inhabitants of Venice once again, as in 1509, saw in September the farms and villages across the lagoon sacked and fired. In early October, Bartolomeo Alviano, Venice's commander-in-chief, struck north-west from Padua to draw off the marauders by threatening to cut them from their base in Verona. In this he was successful, but they arrived at Vicenza in numbers and order sufficient to inflict a major defeat on his army at La Motta, a few miles from the city itself. After this third major defeat of the wars Venice was left in control only of Padua, Treviso and Crema. Throughout 1514, with Venice assisted by no ally, the Terraferma was open to whichever of Venice's enemies, German, Spaniards, or Milanese, chose to exert pressure or relieve it when applied by Venice. Thus a Venetian force successfully defended Crema and then broke out to take Bergamo - which was rapidly retaken and Alviano's main army hunted back again to Padua. Similarly, much of the Polesine was reconquered and lost again. Only in Friuli, where a spring campaign first stopped a German army bound for Treviso and then counter-attacked to regain almost the whole of the region except Gorizia and Gradisca, was reoccupation lasting. That no German riposte followed the withdrawal of Venetian troops in the summer was due to the great Friulian landlords whose pro-Venetian sympathies called for a larger army of occupation than Maximilian could afford to have pinned down there. With the accession of Francis I, help from France, on the terms specified in the Treaty of Blois, was again at hand. The new French invasion of the Milanese, now with the active support of Venice's main army under Alviano, was successful; the Swiss protectors of Massimiliano were defeated at Marignano on 13-14 September. By this time the withdrawal of Spanish troops to aid Milan and massive desertions from Maximilian's underpaid garrisons had led to Venice's reacquisition of Vicenza. When Francis was in full occupation of Milan in October, Bergamo admitted a Venetian garrison and Venetian and French troops went into winter quarters in the Bresciano and manned blockading trenches around the more strongly defended city itself; Brescia rather than Verona, which the displaced Massimiliano had made his headquarters and which was reinforced by Spanish troops in Naples through the trapdoor that throughout these campaigns had provided access into the Terraferma: the zone between Mantua and Ferrara. Brescia surrendered in May 1516 and the Franco-Venetian force moved to besiege Verona in August, a siege conducted with little nerve by Venice, which knew the cost of destroying walls whose repair bills it would have to face after reoccupation. It was the diplomatists who did most of the fighting in 1516, Francis, by the Treaty of Noyen of 13 August, coming to terms with the heir of Ferdinand of Aragon (d. 23 January), Maximilian's grandson Charles of Burgundy. This agreement between the most active foreign contenders for 223

Part II: 150Q-1617 Italian territory gradually had a quieting effect on the anti-Venetian forces represented in Verona. Leo X was won over to France by an ecclesiastical settlement, the Concordat of Bologna of 18 August. Massimiliano accepted the Frenchy^Y accompli and relinquished his interest in the duchy of Milan. Maximilian, after a blustery gesture towards the relief of Verona in October, reconciled himself to signing the Treaty of Noyen, and on 17 January 1517 Venice reoccupied the city without a shot being fired. This completed the reconquest of the Terraferma, though Cremona remained henceforward in the hands of the rulers of Milan; Gradisca and Gorizia, as a concession to Maximilian, in those of successive heads of the house of Austria. From January 1517 to June 1521 Venice, like the rest of Italy (apart from Leo X's war against the state of the republic's future commander-in-chief Duke Francesco Maria della Rovere of Urbino), was at peace. The Treaty of Blois still held, binding France and Venice to give military aid to whichever's possessions were threatened by another power. In June 1519 Charles became Emperor in succession to Maximilian and capable of mobilizing an army to fight in Italy both from Spain and Naples and from Germany. In May 1521 Leo X, after much uncertainty as to which of the foreign presences in Italy, France and the Empire, he was to back, given the near inevitability of their falling out, concluded a secret treaty with Charles. Then began a new phase of activity for the republic's land forces, this time for the purpose of conserving, in association with allies, the regained Terraferma. In July a papal-Spanish army moved against Parma where it was held up by the French garrison, giving time to France to send reinforcements into the Milanese and Venice to mobilize and by September send an army to aid Lautrec, the French commander-in-chief, that was up to the strength set by the terms of Blois. All the same, with the active support of the inhabitants, Milan surrendered in November (though the French garrison held out in its citadel) and after a long period in which both armies sparred for position the French, supported by Venetian cavalry (the infantry remaining to guard the western Terraferma), were brought to battle at Bicocca on 27 April 1522. The Swiss infantry on whom Lautrec principally depended were terribly mauled by the arquebus fire of the Spaniards and the day ended with the withdrawal of the French from the Milanese. Though the retreat of its ally left Venice in an equivocal position, no attempt was made by Charles to revive Imperialist claims to Venetian territory, and from July 1522 the republic demobilized its army to a peacetime garrison strength. It was believed on all sides, however, that the French would return. And now, by a pact of 29 July 1523, Venice changed sides, allying with Charles (and, to protect the northern frontier and Friuli, with his brother, Archduke Ferdinand of Austria) and agreeing to provide an army to maintain the status 224

The wars quo in the Milanese were it to be challenged. Such an army had to be raised within two months of signature, when a new French force appeared. From that autumn until the defeat of the French at the battle of Pavia on 24 February 1525 (when Francis I himself was taken a prisoner to Spain) Venice's troops seldom left the Terraferma and were never engaged in any major action: while the Imperial alliance was deemed a necessity the government was determined to do as little as possible to be put at risk through it. However, though numbers were cut down in the months between the withdrawal of one French army in June 1524 and the reappearance of another under Francis in October, the republic kept to its treaty obligations and the period was edgy with the possibility of being committed to a major conflict. Even after Pavia demobilization was only partial. On 22 May 1526, by the Treaty of Cognac, Venice changed sides again.3 After three years of an Imperialist alliance, there were to be three with the republic in harness again with France and the papacy. Francis had returned to France in March, was absolved by Pope Clement VII from his oath to Charles to abstain from interfering in Italy, and the Treaty of Cognac bound him, the pope (with Florence) and Venice to restore the Duchy of Milan to its legitimate claimant, Francesco Sforza, and to bring such military pressure to bear on Naples, under its viceroy Lannoy, that Charles would be forced to agree to hold it not in his own right but as a fief of the Church. Venice built up its army fast to its highest numbers (16,225) since Agnadello, captured Lodi for the league in June, took part in an unsuccessful attack on Milan itself in July and with part of its forces invested the Imperialist-held Cremona from early August until 22 September, when the city surrendered. On the other hand, it failed to stop German reinforcements for the Imperialist army crossing the Terraferma and passing on southwards through the haven of Mantuan territory. In 1527, with the papal forces' failure that spring to make any impression on Naples, and with no fresh troops coming through France, Venice was responsible for virtually the whole of the league's army of nearly 29,000 men, and its own captain-general, the Duke of Urbino, was commander-inchief. From February onwards the duke with the main body of this army cautiously shadowed the Imperialist army that wandered, increasingly mutinous for lack of pay and beyond the control of its own commanders, For what follows: F. Bennato, 'La partecipazione militare di Venezia alia lega di Cognac', A V., ser. 5, lviii-lix (1956) 70-87; Judith Hook, 'The destruction of the new "Italia": Venice and the papacy in collision', Italian Studies, xxviii (1973) 10-30; V. Vitale, 'L'impresa di Puglia degli anni 1528-29', NAV., xiii-xiv (1907) 5-68, 120-92, 324-51; Guicciardini, Storia d'Italia. For individual military actions, Pieri, Rinascimento e la crisi militare, gives both the best short accounts and the fullest bibliographies. 225

Part II: 1509-1617 past Bologna, through Tuscany and towards Rome which, with a wholly unforeseen determination and success, it stormed on 6 May and subsequently so notoriously sacked. Until late in June the league army waited in Tuscany lest the Imperialists should try to return northwards; then, when they left Rome for Naples and the long-awaited French army crossed the Alps in July, the duke moved to join it in the Milanese, and after a number of inconclusive joint actions the Venetian troops went into winter quarters in November at Cassano, on the Adda between Bergamo and Lodi, due east of Milan. Meanwhile, taking advantage of the pope's helplessness, two of the Romagnol cities lost to Venice in 1509, Ravenna and Cervia, had offered themselves to the republic in late June and mid July and were sent garrisons in acknowledgement of these unviolent but provocative gains. The winter campaigning in the north was inconclusive partly because of the Imperialists' decision to concentrate on the defence of the capital rather than keep an army in thefield,and partly because a major part of the French army left in the winter to besiege the other Imperialist capital, Naples. With them had gone a detachment of Venetian troops. Initially this was with the intention of creating a diversion on the other side of the kingdom but increasingly it became that of permanently reoccupying that other group of possessions lost in 1509, the Apulian ports which, like the Romagnol towns, were initially happy to offer themselves back to their previous owners. But with the failure of the French siege of Naples in the summer of 1528, the Apulian ports had to be defended against Imperialist troops now freed for service elsewhere, and for the rest of the year, and throughout the next, Venice's troops conducted a war of small sieges and defences, amphibious raids and minor skirmishes, against an enemy never numerous or well paid or sufficiently trenchantly led to expel them. But the Apulian war was a minor affair compared with the number of troops Venice was forced to maintain in order to cooperate with the French in the Milanese (as at the defence of Lodi in the summer of 1528) while maintaining both afieldarmy and garrison forces for the defence of the Terraferma. The year 1529, indeed, the year in which Francis I recognized the hopelessness of his cause in Lombardy and contracted the separate Peace of Cambrai in August with Charles V, involved the republic in expending in military wages the second highest sum of the entire period. Only with its signature on 23 December of the general peace settlement of Bologna did Venice feel secure enough to demobilize a force which approached 30,000 men.4 By the terms of Bologna Venice gave up Cervia and Ravenna and the Apulian ports; from 1521, eight years of warfare conducted mainly in association with allies had left the republic with precisely the possessions it had regained by January 1517. But 4

See below, 473. 226

The wars the tightest corner in its history since the War of Chioggia had been successfully and - until 1797 - permanently turned. From this account what emerges with especial force is the unremitting nature of Venice's military commitment throughout the period. Between the build-up that began in January 1509 and the demobilization that took effect from January 1530 there were, out of 252 months, only 8 when the army was on stand-by strength and only 62 during which it was fully reduced to a peacetime level. Nor were the seasonal cut-backs in shortcontract troops so marked as in the past. The field army went into winter quarters, but nevertheless skirmishes and troop movements during sieges took little account of the weather. In the winter of 1521-2 Landsknechts came through the passes into the Bergamasco 'in heavy snow'; Frundsberg's first reinforcements for the Imperialist army crossed into the Terraferma in November 1526 'with snow up to their knees'.5 The battle of Pavia opened on a February dawn. After a century, it was these twenty years of military effort, financial expenditure and political reappraisal that at last really opened the patriciate's eyes to their reliance on and concern for the Terraferma. Thenceforward Venice can no longer be adequately termed 'A Maritime Republic'.6 Yet the maritime empire remained, and both sentiment and financial calculation backed the resolve to protect it. Both the next two wars were against the Turk. Naval wars, therefore: but since the Turk now had fleets large enough to transport armies, and had land lines of communication from Constantinople to Venice's Dalmatian-Albanian coast which led through subject regions able to provide reinforcements, the republic's land forces played as important a part as its navy. Troops were used to supplement the armed crews and the scapoli of galleys; more were shipped to supplement the garrisons of threatened bases; still more were transported to act asfieldand siege units da Mar. (ii) THE TURKISH WAR OF 1537-154O 7

The year 1536 opened with the news of a marriage of convenience between the Most Christian King Francis I and the sultan Suleiman (now much under the influence of his warrior minister Khair-ad-Din) and the obvious but unannounced preparations for a struggle over the succession to Milan after the death of Charles V's puppet, Francesco Sforza. Called upon by the 5 6 7

Sanuto, xxxii, 486; xliii, 218. Lane, Venice. See Romanin and Kretschmayr. But what follows is chiefly based on Senate regs.; Bernardo Navagero, ' Istoria delle tre guerre de Veneziani con Turchi. . .', BCV., ms. 3757; and the anonymous chronicle (and the synopsis of it, which differs in some details) in BMV., mss. It. vn, 785 (= 7292). 227

Part II: i$og—i6ij Emperor in March to raise the 6000 infantry promised at need under the terms of the treaty of 1529, Venice did so. The struggle was limited to Savoy and Piedmont, however, and the government seized the excuse of the coming of winter to dismiss all but 800, who were distributed among the garrisons of the Terraferma. More urgent in Venetian eyes was Francis's calling in the Turks to redress the balance between Valois and Habsburg. It rendered Venice's own treaty agreements with Constantinople not only vulnerable but meaningless, especially when in January 1537 Suleiman sent envoys to invite Venetian aid against the Empire. Correctly interpreting the government's calculated hesitation as a deliberate rebuff, he ordered a massive build-up of troops and munitions at Valona. In August 1537 the sultan, realizing that Francis was not supporting him by cutting at Italy in the north, turned against Corfu, investing it with his fleet of 350 vessels and with troops brought down from Valona and ferried across to the island. The attack failed, thanks to adequate fortifications, a previously reinforced and resolute garrison, an indecisive Turkish command and torrential rain that clogged the besiegers in their trenches. Before Venice even received the news of the siege the Turks sailed off to invest Napoli di Romania. Anticipating this alternative target, Venice had dispatched reinforcements and a message to the inhabitants and garrison urging them to fight valiantly for the Christian faith and the lion of St Mark 'in the cause of the devotion they have for us, who will not be ungrateful'.8 But the sluggish communications system da Mar brought men and message too late; the Turks had already begun an investment that was to last for nearly a year. Though no formal proclamation had been made, the Turk had forced Venice into war. While it was possible to raise troops on the scale of 1509-29, such numbers were useless without vessels to protect and transport them. Venice had, by September, 100 galleys at sea and 1 galleon, a further 50 galleys under construction and not enough transport. With every indication from Constantinople suggesting Turkish preparation for a fresh sailing in the following spring, naval allies were essential. Nothing came of efforts to get the Sophi to attack Suleiman from Persia9 and on 1 February 1538 the Senate met to dot the i's of the alliance that, after its signature on the 8th, was known as the Holy League. It was so called because of the participation of the pope, though his contribution to its expenses was only one-sixth of the whole. Venice was to produce two-sixths; the Emperor three-sixths. The force whose expenses were to be divided in this way was to comprise a combat force of 200 galleys (82 of them Venetian, 8 9

SS. reg. 58, 62V-63 (28 Sept. 1537). Dieci, Secreta, reg. 4, 81. 228

The wars leaving the republic's other galleys to patrol the Adriatic) and ioo transports, 30,000 Italian and Spanish infantry, 20,000 Landsknechts, 4500 cavalry and 'an adequate supply of artillery'. The dotting process was mainly concerned with unsuccessfully trying to demote Andrea Doria, the other parties' candidate, from the captain-generalcy. Meanwhile, and henceforward, with base reinforcements and amphibious actions in mind, recruitment continued: by the end of 1538 Venice had raised 21,225 'extraordinary' troops.10 Between the signing of the treaty in February and the battle of Prevesa in October, much was said in Venice about the allies' common purpose: to destroy the Turkish fleet on its arrival in central Mediterranean waters and to counter-raid on a scale that would discourage the Turks for years to come from meddling in Venetian, Italian or Spanish-African affairs. Yet the government's preparations seldom envisaged a context wider than that of self-protection. It was an attitude that had caused Venice to be accused of being a traitor to the Christian cause since Pius IPs abortive crusade of 1464. But it was not unnatural. The present pope, Paul III, was believed to be sincere, but his contribution was the smallest of the allies' and he was known to be financially hard-pressed. The Emperor's land conflict with France was not settled until the Truce of Nice in June, and Spain's maritime interests were, in any case, limited to the area west of the Gulf of Taranto and the Sicilian channel. Moreover, to a generation conditioned to believe that the present could learn from the past, one lesson was clear: contributions of men and ships specified in an offensive alliance had to be docked by the numbers that signatories would in any case have mobilized for self-defence; thus when the Imperial fleet under Andrea Doria did rendezvous with the Venetian and papal units in September, it was shorn of vessels and men left behind to guard the Spanish and African coasts. Among all parties, the league's policies were remarkable less for confessions of faith than for professions of poverty. And from the point of view of morale, the little for the common cause that was done was weakened in its possible effect by the repetition of excuses for not doing more. Unlike its allies, Venice was under pressure through the whole breadth of its possessions. Past experience suggested that the Habsburg-Valois truce was no guarantee against new disturbances in Lombardy. Moreover, Venice could not put out of mind the possibility of a move towards Friuli on the part of Turkish troops and their satellites in Slovenia and Croatia. The entire empire da Mar was on alert: the siege of Napoli di Romania continued; in late May the investment of Malvasia and an attack on Suda showed that the third zone11 was at risk until the alliedfleethad built up to a size to risk battle 10 11

See below, 479. See below, 430.

229

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with a force estimated at between 250 and 300fightingvessels. The expense of guarding that enormous coastline was not just to be measured by garrisons, but also by the steady stream of building supplies, artillery and munitions, arquebuses and other weapons to practically every fortified place west of Cyprus, though especially to Zara and Crete. Yet logistic decisions, whether regarding ships or troops, revealed a certain uncommittedness that had not been apparent during the recovery and subsequent protection of the Terraferma. This has some bearing on Venice's psychological veering from a predominantly maritime to an increasingly mainland sense of identity, but there are mundane explanations. One was Venice's traditional reluctance to anticipate a threat before it could be measured. In this year the movements of both the Turkish armies and fleet were particularly difficult to anticipate because the sultan, until late that summer, was committed on both the Balkan and Moldavian fronts at a time when a change of ministers in Constantinople left the Venetian bailo reliant on spies and gossip instead of the inside information Venice had become accustomed to. Another was the government's reluctance to impose a full wartime tax burden on subjects who were still recovering from a generation of war. Venice had recovered and maintained her Terraferma possessions after 1509 with the reputation of being less exploitative than its rivals; it was not a reputation to put at risk. Finally, though Venice could not match a full Turkish war fleet single-handed, cooperation with allies whose aims were not identical with the republic's clearly had a blunting effect on Venetian morale and turned caution into irresolution. On land, cash could still buy the manpower needed for defence; da Mar Venice was faced by the dilemma of being a sea power with insufficient power at sea. It was not until mid September 1538 that the papal and Imperial-Genoese galleys joined the Venetian battle fleet waiting at Corfu. The joint armada then sailed into the inconclusive engagement of Prevesa. That sea battle, fought on 27 September, was preceded by an amphibious attack on the Turkish-held forts commanding the entrance to the Gulf of Prevesa where the Turkish admiral Khair-ad-Din Barbarossa's fleet was lying. Galleyfleets,with their ravenous need for provisions, were at a serious disadvantage when maintaining a blockade, and the opposingfleetswere too nearly matched in numbers for the Christians to risk detaching a squadron for supply duties. The plan of either making the entrance safe for the allies to enter or of forcing Barbarossa to come out seemed to the Venetian and papal commanders all the more urgent in that both suspected that Doria, like his master Charles V, was more anxious to come to terms with the enemy than to fight him. In any case, troops were landed and the attack made. It failed. The forts were unexpectedly strong. Reinforcements 230

The wars poured ashore from the harboured Turkish galleys. The season was too late to assure afleet'sbeing able to hover near a force it had landed and the rocky coast did not permit the usual solution to this problem, beaching the galleys and letting the crews run ashore. When Barbarossa did come out it was at a moment of his own choosing which found the allies reluctantly obeying Doria's order to withdraw: by the 27th the fleet had been on station for over three weeks. Widely strung out and hampered by calms which forced the galleys to clot defensively about the troop carriers of the Imperial contingent, the allies could not form a battle line. On the other hand this wide and haphazard scatter of vessels robbed the Turks of a coherent target and when dusk closed on a series of piecemeal engagements neitherfleetwas much maimed. It was the storm the allies had feared that won the battle's aftermath. Swept north, the Turks lost an estimated 70 vessels against the shelterless Albanian coast while the allies lay safely at Corfu. And when the Turks withdrew, Doria led a successful attack on their outpost at Castelnovo. When it surrendered on 27 October, to Venice's acute chagrin he installed a Spanish garrison and refused to consider the republic's contention that as an outrider of Cattaro it should logically be left in Venetian hands. The state of war continued until the Venetian-Turkish peace treaty of 2 October 1540. The intervening two years were marked by a tense featurelessness. The sieges of Napoli and Malvasia lingered on in a manner suggesting that to both sides they had become habits rather than issues. Venetian planning acquired a jerky, irrational quality from the unreality of the diplomatic scene. All parties to the league had made a pretence at euphoria after the Turks' withdrawal from the Adriatic and the capture of Castelnovo. Venice broadcast12 its intention of raising more troops for the fleet, but simply as a gesture towards the negotiations that produced on 3 November 1538 an inflated version of the alliance.13 While not, perhaps, entirely cynical in intention, the revised league was little more than a writ served on the sultan to bid him avoid trespassing henceforward in Christian waters. All parties were bent on peace, and the ground beneath the new treaty was tunnelled with a secret diplomacy designed to bring this about. What delayed a settlement so long was the sophisticated spy network of the French, which, thanks to bribed members of the secretariat of the Venetian Senate and Council of Ten,14 was able to keep Constantinople informed of the concessions the republic was prepared to make, and the sultan's decision 12 13 14

Through its diplomatic envoys. E.g. SS. reg. 59, 92V (14 Oct.). In Predelli, vi, 234. BMV. ms. It. VII, 785 ( = 7292), 110-17V; Cessi, Storia della repubblica di Venezia, ii, 102-5. MC. Novus, 39V records distrust of the secretariat over the appointment of captains of horse and foot (7 Jan. 1539). 231

Part II: to increase the stakes by a show of force that retook Castelnovo after a siege lasting from 12 July to 7 August 1539. This sortie, the only new military event of any importance after the allies' capture of the same fortress, was diplomatically all the more effective in that it occurred in the middle of a truce which Venice had quietly negotiated to run between 22 April and 20 September. The breach of this agreement (which all representatives da Mar had been warned, however, to treat with caution) caused Venice to try to reanimate the league by announcing in July that it was preparing to fill its quota of 10,000 men. Neither ally responded. Nor did they when Venice made a similar declaration in December with the aim of encouraging the threat of an allied fleet for the spring of 1540. By then, however, military affairs were thoroughly subordinate to the diplomacy that produced the disappointing peace treaty with the sultan of 2 October 1540.15 What galled the republic was not so much the cession of Napoli and Malvasia and the Cycladean islands (except Tine), nor the new pinpoints in the Dalmatian limes where at Vrana and Nadino the Turks gained access to the sea, nor, indeed, was an annual tribute of 500 ducats for Zante and 8000 for Cyprus anything to resent, for it had been paid in the past; it was above all the size of thefinancialsettlement, 300,000 ducats, that stuck in Venetians' throats, a large sum with which to purchase a separate peace after the expense of three years of a war conducted only partially on lines of their own choosing. Yet the treaty defined terms of coexistence in the eastern Mediterranean that were to last, if precariously, for thirty years. The Turks, it is true, made it humiliatingly clear that the Adriatic was 'their' water in the same sense that Venice claimed it to be theirs. But Venice's right to continue sending merchant fleets to Alexandria, Beirut and Tripoli was acknowledged, as was the access, though under licence, to Constantinople, Galata, Pera and Gallipoli, and to Modone, Prevesa and Lepanto. Ships of both nations were to salute one another as friends at sea and pursue a common police action against corsairs. And in retrospect the war's lessons could be seen as having been learned cheaply enough in view of their importance: the essential loneliness of the empire da Mar and the unlikeliness of getting support from allies that would be effective east of the Sicilian channel - but, on the other hand, the impossibility of meeting a full Turkishfleetwithout support from other Christian powers; the vulnerability of Venetian Dalmatian territory to attacks from the interior which were supported from the sea - but, on the other hand again, the ability of well-fortified bases to sustain sieges and, as at Corfu, actually repulse them. Given Venice's distrust of yet dependence on allies, the nagging 15

Predelli, vi, 236-7. 232

The wars suspicions of diplomatic treachery and the lack of focus given to the war by the Turks' own uncertainty as to what use to make of a striking power that was as yet - even after the conquest of Rhodes in 1522 - disassociated from a positive Mediterranean strategy, the republic's military-naval conduct in these years is best seen in terms of an only partially deliberate stream of logistic consciousness. The conflict of 1537-40 was basically a war of nerves. It began with an act of petulance. It was sustained by a half-hearted belief that to participate was to postpone the even more costly shape of things to come. It was concluded not so much because the contestants were exhausted but because that vision of the future lacked conviction. It cost great sums of money. It claimed many lives (largely from disease caused by exposure and inadequate rations). It was recognized by all contestants, almost from the start, as a real crisis, but a sham war. (iii) THE WAR OF CYPRUS 157O-1573 1 6

From the point of view of military preparation, the Turkish War of 1570-3 started with the receipt of dispatches in late January 1570 from the bailo in Constantinople describing furious shipbuilding activity in the Bosphorus. Proveditors were elected and governors-general nominated for the key garrisons overseas and stand-by contracts were made operational. February passed without the course of events becoming clear - ' there is a threat of war', as a member of the College put it, 'but almost every year there is'17 though preparations for defence continued, if not quite on the scale described to the ambassadors in Rome for propaganda purposes by the Senate: 8000 fresh infantry sent da Mar, preparations for afleetof over 150 light galleys, 12 great galleys and 'a good number' of transports; all in all an effort involving 'the greatest cost that we have ever incurred' because, the ambassadors were to emphasize, the danger confronts not only us but Christendom as a whole.18 These preparations were sustained by news of mobilizations of ships and men in Constantinople, of raids from Zara to Budua by troops massing in the Turkish hinterlands of Dalmatia and Albania, of harassment of Venetian merchants that went beyond the normal give and take of reprisal, and of the propagation by the Turks of a mare nostrum concept of the eastern Mediterranean that prepared the government for the formal demand for Cyprus that was made at the end of March. This was turned down by a now thoroughly resolute Senate, which sent 16

17 18

See Romanin, s.a.; Paruta, Guerra di Cipro; G. A. Quarti, La guerra contro il Turco a Cipro e a Lepanto

(Venice, 1935); P. Molmenti, 'Sebastiano Veniero dopo la battaglia di Lepanto', NAV., n.s. xxx, 1 (1915) 5-146; Senate regs. and the invaluable Annali series which now begins. Collegio, Notatorio, reg. 39, 140 (7 Feb.). Annali, s.a., 48. 233

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dispatches to all the authorities da Mar saying that now that 'the peace has been broken by the Turks' and there was a state ' of open war', all must do their best to defend themselves and harm the enemy.19 Mobilization of the republic's fleet had begun in January. By 4 April contracts had been placed to supply it with a floating army of 11,800 men under Sforza Pallavicino. By June the main body of the fleet under Hieronimo Zane was at Corfu, still with no clear indication of the Turkish armada's destination. Meanwhile, two amphibious expeditions were mounted, chiefly to keep the troops active and fit, one against the Turkish fortresses at Soporto, on the Albanian coast, which successfully captured it, the other against the more northerly fortified village of Margarita, which failed. On 14 July the fleet was reinforced by a detachment of galleys from Crete which brought the news that 300 Turkish sail had been sighted off Rhodes, apparently bound for Cyprus. Ten days later Zane'sfleetleft for Cretan waters to rendezvous with those of the pope and Spain, the former's because Pius was determined to forge a crusading alliance, the latter's because Philip II had grudgingly come to agree that the Venetian limes was a valuable first line of defence for Spanish interest in the western and central Mediterranean. No alliance had been formally agreed (indeed, the pope was still hampering Venetian recruitment in the States of the Church) but all parties had tentatively accepted the need for common action under the overall command of Pius's nominee, the proSpanish Marc'Antonio Colonna. All the controlling governments were short of information. On 2 September, for instance, the Senate wrote to Zane complaining that they had had no news for two months. That was a week before the surrender of Nicosia on 9 September after a siege that had lasted over a month. Zane, meanwhile, reached Suda on 31 July, having sent ahead Sebastiano Venier (who had been ordered to leave Corfu, where he was proveditorgeneral, to take up the same position in Cyprus) with two of his fastest galleys to send back news of that island. As it happened, Zane received news from a Cypriot galley on 9 August of unopposed Turkish landings, though not that Nicosia was to be the first target. While his orders were to attack the Turkish fleet or divert it from Cyprus by a demonstration in force against some sensitive spot on the Turkish mainland, he could do neither, he wrote, until joined by Gian Andrea Doria, Philip's admiral, and Colonna; his troops were now down to 4000 and he was finding it impossible to get replacements in Crete. He was doing all he could, but 'one cannot move against the will of God '.20 Even after diverting Venier to join his second-incommand, Marco Querini, in raids for men among the islands of the 19 20

SM. reg. 39, 139. A n n a l i , s.a., 150V (14 A u g . ) .

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The wars archipelago their yield - only 330 men - was overtaken by fresh casualties. Matters hardly improved when the arrival on 4 September of the 12 papal and 49 Spanish galleys brought the combat fleet up to 126 light galleys, 12 great galleys and 20 navi and galleons. They, too, were short of men through sickness, and neither by exemptions from taxes and labour services, cancellations of debts and penal sentences nor threats and appeals to their better natures could the Cretans, from peasants to feudatories, be persuaded to produce men; the fleets' recruiters marched through villages and into castles emptied of their inhabitants. Try as they would, for reasons of pride, to conceal the unprepared state of their vessels from one another, each fleet commander knew that any proposal for an attack on the Turkish fleet in a council of war was made to score a political point with little risk that it would be acted upon. From Doria such urging was further discounted because, as Colonna had told Zane, he was convinced that his lines of communication would be too extended in Cypriot waters to risk an engagement there. The same conviction made him reject Sforza's proposal to draw the Turks from Cyprus by forcing the Dardanelles and attacking Constantinople. As a compromise, the fleet made a confused sweep around Rhodes which failed to produce any Turkish reaction but revealed how wretchedly unprepared the allies were to face a major action. It was while off Rhodes that news was received of the fall of Nicosia. Morale fell lower than ever. Zane had hoped to conceal the news but it spread: the Turkish fleet could now board its soldiers and choose its own time and place for combat. He referred bitterly to 'rebellious men who spoke of being led to the slaughter'. Doria was itching to get back to Otranto and Malta. Colonna, though more attentive to Venice's concern for Cyprus, deferred in the end to Doria, conscious of the smallness of his own contingent. Zane, who on 6 October put Venetian losses in oarsmen and troops from dysentery and an infectious disease associated with some form of rash ('petechie') at over 20,000, including a number of patrician volunteers, was, like other members of the Venetian command, shaken by the speed with which Nicosia had fallen. Throughout October opinion hardened that the fleets should withdraw. Doria went first, then Colonna, finally Zane, who reached Corfu on 19 November, leaving behind Querini to guard Crete; Venier, who had volunteered to take supplies to Famagosta - known from the middle of the month to be under siege; and Sforza, to see to the supplying of both units with troops. At Sforza's suggestion, all soldiers were disembarked before the Venetian fleet sailed so that he could call for volunteers, in the first place for Famagosta. All the captains refused, 'claiming that they had been engaged to serve in the fleet and not in Cyprus'.21 Each was then formally dismissed 21

Sforza Pallavicino's account in Archivio Proprio Pinelli, Ba. i, dated 27 Apr. 1571.

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Part II: and then asked again to volunteer. In this way some 1700 infantry were obtained to accompany Venier and 800 to remain in Crete, either with the guard of galleys or in garrison. The rest were paid off and stranded, though many, Sforza complained, managed to smuggle themselves on board the fleet and got back to Corfu. This done, Sforza left Suda for Corfu on 17 November. It was not until 16 January that the relief force sailed - without Venier; he was bedridden with a complaint affecting his leg. Describing its embarkation Filippo Bragadin, the Capitano of Candia, said that he had never before been so mortified as when reviewing the troops: cynical, purely profit-motivated captains and ill-equipped and inexperienced men. And his opposite number in Famagosta, who during all this time had been writing increasingly desperate appeals, could not disguise his disillusion when the 'Venier' force arrived, unchallenged by the Turkish guardships, on 25 January. The muster list stood at 1725 soldiers. In fact there were only 1319, and ' because the small number and the quality of captains and men are far from answering our needs we are left much deceived in our expectations'.22 It was against a sombre background - uncertainty as to the fate of Famagosta, the post-mortem investigation into the failure to relieve Nicosia, continued Turkish pressure along the whole Dalmatian coast, the constant need to send further reinforcements there and to guard against attacks on Friuli and the Lido itself - that at last a formal alliance was negotiated. The anti-Turkish Holy League between Venice, Spain and the papacy was signed on 20 May 1571 and publishedfivedays later.23 Negotiations had in fact begun as far back as July 1570, and their spasmodic and shifting course had been chiefly delayed by Venice, distrustful as ever and continuously hopeful of a separate and not too disadvantageous peace. The purpose of the league was aggressive. But almost to the eve of its signing the republic's military and naval preparations were concerned with the defence of the empire da Mar (including the relief of Famagosta) and the build-up to a strength designed not for attack but for independent negotiation with the sultan. Venice adhered to the league only just in time. In mid June a Turkish force of 72 galleys began a series of attacks on the north coast of Crete. These were unsuccessful or inconclusive; Retimo was briefly occupied and the territory of Suda sacked, but the fortifications of Canea were strong enough to hold off two assaults. The 38-40 galleys which had by then been readied in Candia after frantic efforts (the recruiting parties had in some cases been expelled by force) for a further relief of Famagosta had perforce to stand off 22 23

Annali, s.a., 460. Predelli, vi, 321-3.

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The wars and leave it to the authorities on land to deal with these incursions. The Turks then moved westwards to Zante and Cefalonia, landing troops whose incendiary and slaving forays effectively sterilized the islands' function of filling crews for Venetian galleys leaving Corfu for the open sea. These events were read by Venier, who had replaced the disgraced Zane in the naval command, as the prelude to a lunge deep into the Adriatic. Hisfleetof 6 galliasses and 65 light galleys was then at Corfu. As the republic's main objective was to relieve Famagosta in conjunction with her allies, he anticipated his orders and took 56 galleys and the galliasses to the league's rendezvous, Messina, rather than be trapped in the Adriatic, and sent the rest to join the contingent at Candia. He left Corfu without having time tofillhis troop quota, then reckoned at 100 to 120 men per galley and 150 per galliass. With Turkish concentrations in each of the Dalmatian bases' hinterlands, military governors were not in the mood to release men to make good the fleet's formidable sick-list. Four thousand fresh infantry had been assembled on the Lido to be transported to him in Messina. After his leaving Corfu, however, the Turkish fleet moved into the southern Adriatic and blocked their sailing. To the government's embarrassment, its contribution to the first fleet of the century dedicated to an all-out attack on the Infidel was grievously undermanned as a fighting force. Venier was told to aim at the reduced target of 100 men per vessel and to beg troops from the papal commander, Marc'Antonio Colonna, whose force arrived off Messina on 20 July, from Philip's lieutenant, and from the league's commander, Don John of Austria, who did not reach Messina with his fleet until mid August. While the allies' joint force of 206 light galleys, 6 galliasses and 20 supply vessels, built up at Messina, the Turkish fleet was free to test Venice's preparations along the Dalmatian coast. The heavy reinforcements of the spring had produced a stalemate on land. The Turkish troops could not risk thinning out their front to mass for an assault on any of Venice's more important bases without sea support on a scale the sultan was unwilling to risk so far from the Bosphorus; Venice could not afford to strip its garrisons to inflict a serious damage on Turkish concentrations or bring in its fleet unsupported by the allies. There was considerable raiding and counterraiding, especially in the area Cattaro-Castelnovo, where the Turks strove to build forts to block the strait and the Venetians to destroy them. Here and elsewhere the stalemate was compounded by the unfitness of the Turks' majority of horse to attack infantry protected by fortifications, and by the peril which faced Venetian infantry when they ventured too far into a countryside dominated by cavalry. By 13 August the government had heard that troops supported by detachments of the Turkish fleet had taken Dulcigno, Antivari, Lesina and Budua, ravaged Curzola and retaken 237

Part II: Soporto. Movement among the forces in the interior suggested the imminence of naval attacks on Cattaro and Zara, and possibly on Istria. Venier was told by the Senate to beg the allies to sail now that 'the enemy is penetrating the very vitals of our state . . . to the detriment and scandal of Christendom as a whole'.24 By the time his instructions reached Messina in mid September Venier and his allies were already at sea. News of the Turks' overrunning and sacking of the island of Corfu and their investment of the town had determined the direction of the league's offensive, though the Turks had by then found the fortifications once more too strong and had withdrawn still further southwards to Lepanto, where the allies sighted them at sunrise on 7 October. The opposingfleetsused similar tactics with vessels comparably designed and crewed; the only major discrepancy was the allies' possession of the Venetian galliasses, whose superior firepower helped to shake the otherwise parade-ground regularity of the oncoming Turkish lines of battle. It was, indeed, the last great confrontation offloatingarmies, rowed methodically into formation, firing artillery as the distance between them narrowed but relying in most cases on closing to board infantry for the coup de grace; contemporary descriptions dwell on the flashing helmets and armour and bristling weapons of the troops and their officers and say little of the men who worked them into action. Summing up the causes of the allies' victory, Paruta was to praise the strength and seaworthiness of their galleys, the design of the foredeck that allowed their guns a flatter trajectory than those of the Turks, the superiority of their artillery and the greater use made of pavisades of wooden shuttering to protect the soldiers until the moment came to board or repel boarders. But while relating the quality of the allies' troops to the performance of the galleys, he stressed their superiority as an army. More heavily armoured, they received fewer wounds. Their arquebuses were better killing weapons than the bows still used in great quantities by the Turks, nor did their performance fall off as the marksmen tired. Even after adding the firepower of the galliasses to the balance of advantage between thefleets,he concluded that 'truly of greater weight than any other factor was the quality and marked spirit of the soldiers' including Spaniards, Italians and ' Greeks' alike in this judgement - though he tempered it by attributing part of their resolution to the fact that, unlike the Turks, they had no friendly shore tofleeto.25 This was not the view of Filippo Bragadin, Proveditor-General 'di Colfo', who wrote to the doge on 18 November 1571 from Corfu urging that the galliasses should not be decommissioned. It was thanks to their firepower 'that it was clear from the 24 25

SS. reg. 77, 131 (11 Aug.) and 132 (13 Aug.). Paruta, 162.

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The wars start that the victory was to be ours'. What Venice needed in future was more gunners and fewer soldiers, and, indeed, a general lesson to be learned from the battle was that ships' crews, armed and armoured, fought more bravely and terrified the enemy more than could soldiers 'of the sort we get nowadays'.26 Given the lack of agreement among the allies, though attributing the victory to the more or less even distribution of soldiers throughout the joint fleet, Colonna took the longer view when he declared it a 'miracle' that it had held together long enough to come upon the enemy.27 Unknown to the combatants Famagosta, and with it the whole of Cyprus, had fallen on 5 August. Lepanto was not seen in Venice as a battle that would end the war. There was rejoicing, but it was accepted that the league's responsibilities did not end with the bloodied seas of 7 October. Though the galleys returned to base ahead of the winter storms, the diplomats started planning new capitulations - agreed in February 1572 for another and larger fleet to assemble at Corfu with the express intention of hunting the Turk in his own Levantine waters. In spite of this declaration of intent and Don John's expressed intention to follow up Lepanto at once with a drive to the east before he was recalled, suspicion of Philip IPs primary concern with the western Mediterranean, especially with the corsair base of Algiers, made Venice pursue a parallel diplomacy whose aim, as after Prevesa, was a peace settlement, not an intensification of the war. The papal contingent did not arrive - at Corfu - until July. Before that, though reinforcements had yet again been sent to the garrisons in Dalmatia and Crete, there had been only one military operation of any significance: an unsuccessful amphibious attack in May 1572 to clear the Turks from Novegrad and the other forts from which they pinned down the garrison in Cattaro and controlled the entrance to its gulf, a vital refuge and supply base for Venetian shipping. The dismal events of the late summer and autumn may be dealt with briefly. Reports that the Turkish fleet was attacking Crete led Colonna and Giacomo Foscarini, the new commander of the Venetian combatfleet,to sail off to the attack at the end of July before the Spanish galleys had arrived. After two confrontations at sea, which neither side wished to turn into a battle, the joint fleet returned to Corfu and then sailed again, this time in company with Don John, in September. The Turks, now drastically outnumbered, withdrew to Modon, landed their troops and entered the town, whence an amphibious operation failed to dislodge them. By early 26 27

Annali, s.a., 267V-268. On firepower, see M. Morin, 'La battiglia di Lepanto: il determinante apporto delPartiglieria veneziana', Diana Armi (Jan. 1975) 54-61. Capi di Guerra, Ba. 1, 5. 239

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October the allies were back at Corfu and split up for the winter after agreeing on an earlier and more massive push in the following year. As defined in the agreement reached in February 1573, this meant that Venice's contribution was to be raised from 113 to 130 galleys (with one great galley counting as two light ones) and 22,800 infantry, the whole to be ready by mid April. Even with the possibility of regaining Cyprus in mind, it was a prospect to make the Senate blanch and the Council of Ten intensify its search for a tolerable peace settlement. Yet none would be reached without a sword to draw attention to the olive branch, so preparation for the campaign it was hoped would not take place began as soon as the fleets dispersed. On 10 February the Senate told the ambassadors in Rome to point out that the republic had in being or under contract 31,400 men 'without [counting] those in Dalmatia'.28 On paper, indeed, the figure was more like 26,000. But the immodesty of the claim masked a determination to activate recent contracts only if it proved absolutely necessary. Indeed, the double policy of planning for war and negotiating for peace went on with all the more determination because, instead of July, mid April had been agreed as the month of rendezvous for the allied fleets and, once aboard and at sea, the wages due to troops and crews stretched into another incalculably long season of campaigning. The negotiations were kept secret not only from Philip II and the pope but from Venice's higher command. Foscarini was told in January of the government's determination to put 100 light galleys to sea; in February he was informed that the government was complying in full with the agreement reached that month with the allies. It was on that same day that the peace terms, agreed in Constantinople on 7 March and forwarded to the Heads of the Ten on the 13th by the bailo, were ratified in Venice. And on 3 April the Senate began the difficult task of notifying its allies that it was quitting the league. The ambassadors were told to stress thefinancialexhaustion of Venice and its subjects. We have always 'employed forces larger than those to which the clauses of the league obliged us', have' spent twice as much as the others because of the large garrisons we maintained in so many bases in Dalmatia and the Levant'. And we have had to see our subjects reduced to such extremity that 'like cattle, they ate the grass'. What else could we do, knowing that the Turk is preparing afleetof 400 sail and a most powerful army aimed ' at the heart of our state through the gateway of Friuli, undefended by any fortress'? And this when we have ' up to now spent on this war over twelve millions of gold - a fact that amazes even us as to how and whence we have been able to extract it'. The unfortunate ambassador who delivered this defence of the peace terms 28

Annali, s.a., 196. 240

The wars (chiefly, the Turks to retain Cyprus and any conquests on the Adriatic coast, while the Venetians were to return theirs) was hounded out of his audience with the pope under threat of excommunication. His colleague in Spain was treated less drastically, if no less humiliatingly. Philip II 'kept his eyes motionless upon me, and there was no alteration in his expression until he heard that the conditions of the peace had been accepted, when he made the slightest ironic movement of his mouth'.29 Tales of woe of this sort were trivial, however, compared to the saving involved in cutting down the army and thefleet.Unilateral withdrawal from the league was an offence in international law, but too much in accord with national practice to bring retribution, especially as both Spain and the new pope, Gregory XIII, had come to regret their own investment in an area of the Mediterranean from which Venice would reap the major benefit. The Senate demobilized troops awaiting shipment and cancelled all unfulfilled contracts, but prudently brought the Terraferma garrisons from Verona to the Milanese frontier up to 2130 men. It then began a more cautious demobilization da Mar where trade could at last recommence in the atmosphere of a peace dearly bought and still precarious. (iv) THE WAR OF GRADISCA

1615-161730

The War of Gradisca of 1615 to 1617, undeclared, inconclusive, costly and settled only a year after its official conclusion, has seldom been granted a status higher than that of an impatient footnote. Yet, apart from Venice's brief intervention in the affair of the Mantuan succession in 1630, it was the last war fought by the republic on land, and the scale of the mobilization and the period over which operations had to be sustained make it the natural if inglorious culmination of this account. For two years the republic had covertly been subsidizing Duke Carlo Emanuele of Savoy's campaign to control Monferrat, the region of Piedmont which he had claimed on behalf of his daughter when her husband, Duke Vicenzo Gonzaga of Mantua, died. Less covertly, Carlo Emanuele was receiving sufficient unofficial military support from the strongly anti-Spanish governor of Dauphine to have made the dowsing of this threat to the northern frontier of Spanish Milan unexpectedly difficult for that region's governor. Anticipating the possibility of a diversionary 29 30

I b i d . , s.a., 233-5V, 2 3 9 - 4 1 V , 252V. R o m a n i n , s.a.; F . Moisesso, Historia della ultima guerra del Friuli (Venice, 1623); P . Emiliani [ p s e u d o ] , Guerre d'Italia tra la seren" republica di Venetia e gli archiducali di casa d'Austria ( ' I n

PoistorP, n.d. but possibly 1618); S. Gigante, Venezia e gli uscocchi dal 1570 al 1620 (Fiume, 1904); Gunther E. Rothenberg, 'Venice and the Uskoks of Senj, 1537-1618', Journal of Modern History, xxxiii (1961) 148-56; but, again, mainly Senate regs. and Annali. 241

Part II: thrust eastwards into the Terraferma, the Senate in February 1615 charged the College to raise 3000 'foreign' Italian infantry and 500 corazze. The figure 3000 was by now routine, it having been found that though raised as 'extraordinary' troops a high proportion could be retained as replacements for deserters or the sick among the 'ordinary' garrison troops at home and abroad when the crisis of the moment faded. Also routine was a renewed inspection of the fortifications beyond the Mincio and along the frontier with Austria. Austrian intervention, in case of a move from Milan, was by now taken for granted; years of unsatisfactory bickering with the Archduke Ferdinand, ruler from Graz of Inner Austria (Carinthia, Carniola, Styria and Gorizia), over his protection of the Uscock pirates operating from Senj had revealed the extent of his pro-Spanish feelings and of his independence from the more pacific diplomatic stance of the emperor Mathias. Two regulations indicated the particular jumpiness of this year. To make sure that the governors of the most strategically important fortified towns (Bergamo, Brescia, Crema, Verona; Zara, Cattaro, Corfu, Candia, Canea and Rettimo) did not have their loyalty to Venice contaminated by loyalty to their own men, it had been resolved in 1590 that the companies they had raised themselves should be distributed to other garrison captains. To this list were now added Asola, Orzinovi, Peschiera, Legnago, Marano, Sibenico, the new fortress at Corfu, Asso, Cerigo, Tine, Grabusa, Suda and Spinalonga. It was also resolved that the governors' seconds-in-command in these places, the sergeant-majors, should have a salary increase to make them less susceptible to bribes and to encourage them to think of themselves as 'directly dependent on this republic'.31 The places chosen reflect Venice's fear not so much of the Turk, though uncertainty about the purpose of a Turkish fleet had led to the sending of reinforcements to Crete in the previous May, as of Austrian support for the Uscocks and of the Spanish fleet based on Naples. By the beginning of August the danger from Spain seemed to have passed and the Senate wrote to the Proveditor-General in Terraferma of 'the growing prospect of peace'.32 But on this occasion the dying away of a sense of danger from the west and south did not lead to the routine dismantlings and dismissals of the past. Emboldened by Spanish quietude, the muttered support of France and England, and the overall promise of peace proclaimed by the Treaty of Asti of 25 June which purported to settle the problem of Monferrat, Venice decided that this was the moment to challenge the Uscocks - even if it meant forcing the archduke to break the cover from behind which he had been supporting them (the Venetian charge) or, at 31 32

S T . reg. 85, 104-104.V (22 Aug.). S S . r e g . 1 0 5 , 152-152V (1 A u g . ) .

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The wars least, failing to obtain the co-operation of his own frontier guards (the Austrian defence). The decision was hardly an impulsive one. The Uscock question had preoccupied Venice now for three generations during which the growing population of Senj had come, from parish priest to town councillor and merchant, to rely for their livings on the outcome of piratical raids primarily against coastal but also against long-haul shipping in the northern Adriatic. With a reputation that attracted outlaws and adventurers from far beyond its own racial orbit, Senj had become the Sherwood Forest of the Mediterranean with Venice, the chief passer-by, its chosen victim. The republic had tried blockade, punitive raids, diplomatic protests to Graz to little purpose. Desperation had led to atrocities. In 1613 a successful counter-raid led to the display of 80 Uscock heads in the Piazza. In revenge a Venetian galley was captured, the head of its commander, Cristoforo Venier, was cut off and, for good folkloric measure, the Senate was led to believe that his heart was eaten and his blood, 'on account of a certain superstition of theirs and as witness to their indissoluble bond of brotherhood', was sprinkled on their bread.33 On 11 August the Senate decided to attack them by sea from their headquarters at Senj (Segna) to Fiume and by land to cut the Istrian routes along which they received help from the Austrian lands between Villaco and Trieste. The attack was to be co-ordinated between the Capitano 'in Colfo' and the Proveditor-General of Dalmatia and Albania; and the rectors of Raspo and Capo d'Istria and the islands of the Quarnerolo, Veglia, Cherso and Arbe, were to apprehend any rats escaping from the trap. The orders were passed only with a notable number of abstentions: 78:3:56.34 Given the uncompromising way in which the orders referred to the intolerable tergiversations of the Imperial court and referred to Senj and its support routes as 'archducal' this is not surprising. Ferdinand was believed to be more intent than had been his predecessor Charles on adding Marano and Capo d'Istria to the bases he already held (Gradisca and Gorizia) as a reminder that Venice's resumption a century ago of eastern Friuli was still an affront to Imperial history, and its claim that the Gulf of Trieste was part of a 'Venetian' Adriatic mere provocation. All the same, once embarked upon the policy of aggression the decisions that sustained it for the next two years were passed, with very few and always minor exceptions, by overwhelming majorities. By early September there had been a number of minor successes, particularly against the Uscock port of Novi, which the Venetian am33 34

Romanin, bk 15, 84. SS. reg. 105, 154-7. Votes cited in this form signify for: against: undecided. 243

Part II: bassadors in Germany, Spain, Naples, Rome and Florence were told to represent as undertaken merely' for the security, defence and comfort of our subjects'.35 A month later affairs in the west seemed so tranquil that the offensive in the east broadened. In November the 'extraordinary' infantry companies were transferred to Friuli and Istria, and rectors were empowered to draft militiamen if they judged the ordinary garrison companies to provide an insufficient guard. Troops waiting at Corfu for shipment to Crete were also sent to what, in spite of Venice's persistent disclaimers, was openly a theatre of war. By the end of the year Trieste had been blockaded by sea and attacked from the land, Gradisca isolated by a push across the Austrian territory up to the Isonzo which involved the capture of a number of villages and the town of Cormons, and a few bridgeheads were established on the other side of the river. With Gradisca isolated, orders were given to cut its northern supply route from Plez. Whether to advance still further to Gorizia was, after some hesitation, left to the discretion of the governor-general of Palma and the Corsican veteran of the wars of Flanders, Pompeo Giustinian, who was commanding the land forces. By now the Senate had placed orders for 9200 additional infantry and called up 2400 militiamen from the Terraferma to serve until they arrived. All these actions were justified to foreign courts as being the consequence of Austrian raids into Friulian and Istrian territory, to the archduke's open support of the Uscocks and to his refusal to negotiate a settlement of that problem. Thus began a long-drawn-out war of attrition and atrocity in which no major battle was fought, no important centre of population taken. Centred throughout on the area around the besieged, and frequently relieved, Gradisca, fighting flickered up into the mountains between Cadore and Pontebba, and each side pressed now on Istria to release the pressure on Friuli and now vice versa. Large forces were employed and large plans laid, but the story (which with good reason has received no narrative treatment since Moisesso's contemporary account, printed in 1623) is one of quarrels between commanders, exhaustion among proveditors, desertion and sickness among the troops, of skirmishes, small sieges and shows of strength that were not followed up, of individual acts of gallantry but no energetic prosecution of a major enterprise. It is not just heartlessness that finds the chief interest in the war to be administrative and logistic. Venice's failure to sustain the impetus of the winter of 1615 was due not only to weakness of purpose in the field but to pressure on other fronts. From March 1616, when secret information was received that Spain was planning surprise attacks on Brescia and Crema and other fortress towns, 35

Ibid., 170V-171 (4 Sept.).

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The wars these, together with Pontevico, Orzinovi and Asola, and Verona and Anfo, were henceforward kept on full alert - again using militiamen until professional troops arrived - and orders were given to complete the longneglected defences of Peschiera. While the proveditors-general in Friuli and Istria were calling for more men and complaining that with so large a component of militiamen in the army they could not pursue an attacking strategy, the Senate could only answer (in August) that reinforcements would have to wait 'because of threats and alarms in Lombardy'.36 These had followed the breach of the Treaty of Asti initiated by Carlo Emanuele and swiftly countered by a Spanish attack from Milan. From June 1616 Venice secretly supplied the duke with money (reckoned as a million ducats by the following June) to keep the Spanish troops fully occupied, but the old fears of a diversionary strike across the Adda remained easily stirred. In March of the following year, 1617, the threats were extended to another front, with persistent reports that the Viceroy of Naples, the Duke of Ossuna, was planning a naval attack on Dalmatia to stop the recruiting there on which Venice was having increasingly to depend. By June it was thought necessary to overhaul the fortifications of the Lido, from S. Andrea to Chioggia, to arm the inhabitants and post troops and militiamen there. Calling for French and English aid in that month, the ambassadors were told to explain that 'the republic is straining every nerve at sea, and our forces are prospering in Friuli in spite of Spanish help to the enemy. We continue to send money to Savoy and we have to defend our Lombard frontier. We can do no more, and we cannot oppose the Spaniards single-handed'.37 Also in June, fervently encouraging the proveditor-general with the fleet to be active in recruiting more Turkish subjects now that the sultan (also alarmed by Spanish naval preparations and heavily engaged in both Hungary and Persia) allowed it, the Senate referred to another factor that contributed to the fumbling in Friuli. Our frontiers, it wrote, are sealed. While our enemies' armies grow, ours dwindles.38 Fear of Habsburg reprisals, in fact, kept the routes to the northern frontiers closed to the passage of the Grison, Swiss and German troops for which Venice had contracts. To escape from this trap infantry were brought at great expense from Holland, and Venice exploited the military potential of its own subjects on the Terraferma and da Mar as it had never done before. But while such measures just about kept the army in Friuli able to maintain a bargaining position, they did not transform it, in command or morale, into a vigorous fighting force. 36 37 38

S S . r e g . 107, 59 (1 Aug.). Calendar of State Papers, Venetian, 1615-17 (London) 519. SS. reg. 109, 23iv (23 June).

245

Part II: i$og-i6i7 It was by observing this dilemma: the threats on other fronts coupled with the sealed land frontiers, that the English ambassador in Venice, Sir Henry Wotton, was moved to the following judgement. 'Touching the present affairs of these parts, the more I consider them, the more in truth I wonder to see this sober country grown at last wild, if not mad, with passion, and a Republic that both by their form of government, by the lasciviousness of their youth, by the wariness of their aged men, by their long custom of ease, and distaste of arms, and consequently by their ignorance in the management thereof, lastly by the impossibility, or at least great difficulty, of receiving help (the avenues being stopped) should, I say, by all these reasons abhor war, is notwithstanding, I know not how, engaged, by all appearance, in an endless quarrel or shameful conclusion. Wherein if the merit of the cause (being against a nest of thieves) do not procure help from heaven beyond the discourse of man, I know not what will become of them.'39 On 30 August the Ten passed to the Senate a report from a French captain on Ossuna's plan, in connivance with Austria and the Spanish ambassador in Venice, the Marquis of Bedmar, to land troops at Malamocco, transfer them to flat-bottomed boats and attack the Piazza and the Arsenal. This had been the stuff of spies' imaginings for a hundred years but the government was in a mood to take it seriously.40 Far worse was a report from the man who was then commander-in-chief in Friuli, Cosimo I's bastard son, Giovanni de' Medici. It did not contradict Wotton's lugubrious estimate of events. The troops are insubordinate and their insubordination goes unpunished, he wrote, 'and you know, Most Serene Prince, that rewards and punishments are the means by which great designs are accomplished'. For field operations we lack pioneers. We are short of wine, clothing and, as for supplies, we have picks and spades without handles. As for the cavalry, ' I am frightened by their quantity, but appalled by their quality.' The Dutch are 'ill dissatisfied and disobedient'. As for the oltramontani they are, of course, 'less resolute and more suspicious than we Italians; I do not know what use I shall be able to make of them'. In general, 'taking into account the poor spirit and less courage of our troops, the paucity and lack of experience of their captains', he saw little hope, certainly none of preventing yet more troops getting in to relieve Gradisca. What the army does show, he added, is a determination to do the barest minimum that will prevent dismissal and 'a universal desire to enrich itself; indeed, 'the abundance of 39 40

Life and Letters, ed. L . P . S m i t h ( L o n d o n , 2 vols., 1907) ii, 121 (14 J u l y 1617). B a c k g r o u n d in P . N e g r i , ' L a politica veneta c o n t r o gli Uscocchi in relazione alia congiura di 1 6 1 8 ' ,

NAV., n.s. xvii, 1 (1909) 370-84.

246

The wars money and the profuse liberality with which it is disbursed do more damage than the archducal troops'. And morale is worsened by the absence of the two proveditors-general and the paymaster (all were ill). I shall resign my post, he concluded, if - and the conditions read modestly after these denunciations - you do not settle quickly the new terms of service for the Dutch, and send iooo pioneers and between iooo and 2000 infantry, even if they have to be militiamen.41 With tocsins like this sounding from the field, with a resurgence of Uscock raids in the waters between Zara and Istria, and with information that a Spanishfleetwas advancing towards Spalato, the news that acceptable peace terms both between Savoy and Spain and between Venice and Austria had been arranged through French and papal intervention in Paris in early September was received with deep relief. As confirmed in Madrid on the 26th the treaty provided for the cessation of hostilities, the occupation of Senj by a German temporary military government and the appointment of two commissioners each by the republic and by Ferdinand to supervise the dispersal of the Uscocks and the burning of their vessels. When this was accomplished to the satisfaction of both sides prisoners would be exchanged and occupied territories restored. These negotiations took a year to complete. Backed though the treaty was by Spain, Venice felt confident enough only to order a partial demobilization. Even when, in June 1618, the last corsair vessel had been destroyed, the last prisoner and village exchanged, the war, in a sense, won, the expense of expunging a nest of thieves and discouraging their supporters was sobering, and the concept of armed neutrality, though recognized as more necessary than ever, had acquired an embittered and depressing quality. The Adriatic was still arguably mare nostrum, and that was really what the war had been about. But the contrast between an almost buoyant preparedness for war and the actual functioning of the war machine when accelerated for combat rather than crisis made a perturbing contribution to that phenomenon, located somewhere between morale and money, which has been dubbed 'the decline of Venice'. 41

V. Joppi (ed.), Lettere storiche sulla guerra del Friuli, 1616-1617 (Udine, 1882) 23-31.

247

10

Government: policy, control and administration The acuteness of the danger facing the republic in the years following Agnadello and the unprecedented series of campaigns that occupied the years before 1530 led to a method of running military affairs that, while drawing much from the past, established a pattern reused with only minor modification later in the century. In spite of the need to make urgent decisions doges were granted no emergency powers; they remained symbols of the accumulated experience and current purpose of the state. As such, though of the multitude of letters addressed to them they were allowed to open none unless in the presence of their councillors, a letter, or a phrase in a letter from them, was a potent source of encouragement. Writing from his direction of the siege of Marano in 1514, Girolamo Savorgnan referred to one of his captains, Bernardino da Parma, who had been wounded. 'And because he has borne himself worthily in this campaign I beg Your Serenity to be gracious enough to include in a letter to me a word or two of praise for him so that he will see that I have spoken well of him. And I will show this sentence to his companions, who will derive the greatest satisfaction from it.'1 It was as a symbol that Doge Leonardo Loredan was repeatedly urged, and on two occasions reluctantly agreed, to send his sons to share the perils of towns threatened by siege on the mainland, and that the proposal was made in 1527 that Doge Andrea Gritti himself, rather than a proveditor-general, should join the main body of the army 'because the King of France and the Sultan of Turkey go in person'.2 Within the ducal palace the doges' opinions were frequently and freely challenged in the College and Senate, and in the latter, when to resolve conflicting views they occasionally moved proposals not previously discussed in the College, the voting could be close. Gritti intervened in debates or ruled to postpone their outcome more frequently than his predecessors, G. Savorgnan, 'Lettere sulla guerra combattuta nel Friuli dal 1510 al 1528 scritte alia Signoria di Venezia', ed. V. Joppi, ASL, n.s. iii (1855) 22. Sanuto, xliv, 159.

248

Government: policy, control and administration partly because he was a stronger character, partly because a long series of important military proveditorships gave his opinions greater weight. But even against his forcefulness and experience the conventions binding a doge to the status of primus inter pares held. Yet the importance attributed to individual doges in funeral orations, the tendency of chroniclers to periodize in dogeships as though they were the reigns of sovereigns, the bleakness exuding from the phrase 'vacante ducatu' used when measures were passed between the death of one doge and the election of his successor: a sense of reality underlay all these conventions. Constantly watched and commented on, the temperature on the political fever chart was read by his colleagues in terms of the doge's deportment and demeanour. What he wore, his absences from council meetings, the state of his health, whether he spoke firmly or with hesitation: Sanuto recorded these details as part of the political life of Venice. News of a military setback was bad enough, but the impact was worsened when, during the discussion of its implications, a doge (Loredan) was so far shaken from the stoic decorum expected by the patrician collectivity as to leave his seat in order to urinate. How the Venetians conducted their wars is a process that can be analysed without more than a passing reference to a doge, but it cannot be understood without the assumption that their omnipresence, meeting by meeting, decision by decision, in the various council rooms of the palace in which they lived night and day, guarded, cosseted, unremittingly observed, was a factor affecting the tone if not the direction of affairs. Less qualification is necessary when describing the military role of the Council of Ten and its supplementary zonte. Save in the sphere of wartime diplomacy and - more important still in the eyes of contemporaries - wartime finance, the Council's military role was normally an extension of its constitutional brief: political security. It monopolized control over artillery and ammunition and the gunnery scuole because in the early days of expansion on the Terraferma guns could have been turned against the state. For similar reasons, it had acquired responsibility for the maintenance of certain key fortifications, especially those on the perimeter of the lagoon itself. But in wartime the distinction between police and military functions became blurred, for, in a sense, the whole process of holding down reoccupied territory from 1509 was a security operation, and in the name of public safety the Council became occasionally involved in matters of recruitment, the distribution of garrison troops and the granting of leave to commanding officers and proveditors while at the same time habitually controlling prisons and handling negotiations about the freeing or exchange of important prisoners of war, sorting out the information from spies and informers and chaffering (optimistically but usually fruitlessly) with applicant assassins and with 249

Part II: isog-1617 Rectors Proved itors Military governors Senior officers Some recruiting agents Spies

Security orders

Proveditors i 1 Execution of Artillery (until 1588) !

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Arsenal

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.

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Capitani (rectors) Proveditors Commissaries (supply) Castellans

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Figure 1. Military decision and execution: the structure of government. Note: For the extension of the interest and authority of the Council of Ten during the course of the fifteenth century, see pp. 163 seq.

offers to blow up strongholds occupied by the enemy.3 The Ten was also led into a military function through an extension of its other role: the preservation of secrets. The Senate was afforced by so many supplementary bodies that it contained about 200 potential sources of security leaks. The precautionary tradition had grown up, therefore, that while correspondence directed to the government had three postal addresses: the doge, the Heads of the Council of Ten and (infrequent before the middle of the century) the savi of the College, in all cases the secretariat intercepting them laid them before the Heads of the Ten. The Council, however, seldom used this advantage to circumvent the normal course of 3

The Heads of the Ten were ordered on 17 Oct. 1509 to investigate useful poisons and on 16 Feb. 1510a cook in Treviso was paid to poison unnamed individuals (Dieci, Misti, reg. 32, 156, 19iv). The three men who assassinated the traitorous Antonio Savorgnan in 1512 were granted 2000 ducats (reg. 35, 89-90V). On the plot to blow up the castello at Brescia, see reg. 32, 125V-126. 250

Government: policy, control and administration policy making based on the Senate. It might withhold the names of its informants rather than compromise their value, or suppress information during proceedings against suspected traitors; very rarely it delayed handing on crucial diplomatic or military correspondence until it had replied to it in a way that committed the Senate to a new shade of policy. Proposals to withhold or censor information before passing it to the College or Senate were more frequently defeated than passed — and this in spite of pleas from proveditors-general that military plans 'should not, for God's sake, be prattled about on the Piazza'.4 So though military crisis enhanced the power and increased the diplomatic and financial business of the Council of Ten, it seldom - in spite of the suspicions of contemporaries on the fringe of the constitutional power centres and the convictions of later historians - did much more than complicate the planning and control of military affairs through Senate orders by adding the security dimension. Almost invariably, members of the Ten had been senators. Their military decisions were usually made when afforced by the College as a whole or by the Senate-appointed savi. They attended Senate meetings themselves. The Council was not averse to wagging a schoolmasterly cane at its more numerous and often unruly fellow council. In November 1509, at a meeting in its most restricted form (seventeen members, including the doge and his six councillors), it passed a resolution calling upon the Senate to conduct its business with proper decorum; senators were to listen to dispatches 'without any muttering or whispering among themselves' and when anyone was speaking to a motion 'all the others are to sit still on their benches and in no circumstances stand up or wander about'.5 Later in the century there was to be a rivalry which led to a mulcting of some of the Ten's powers by the Senate (which took over the responsibility for artillery, for instance), but this tension cannot, save at piazza level, be read back into the predominantly complementary role the two bodies played between 1509 and 1530. The highly confidential moves that had led to the recapture of Padua in July 1509 were planned by the Ten and the College, but Sanuto, for all his prejudice against the pretensions of the Ten, acknowledged that this was done on the authority of the Senate. Again, after the wave of treacherous capitulations that followed the defeat at Agnadello, the Ten handled some of the negotiations for the engagement of new captains; it issued some of the crucial orders that led to the Po campaign in 1510; it ordered the Lieutenant of Friuli - that land of social tensions, baronial feuds and ties with Austria to destroy strongpoints in 1511 lest they provide footholds in the case of new invasion from the north. An example of negotiations which were on the 4

Andrea Gritti in appendix to Priuli, iv, 456. 251

5

Dieci, Misti, reg. 32, 160.

Part II: isog-1617 borderland between security and military action and thus concerned both occurred in January 1512. The Ten had for some time been in touch with Alvise Avogadro of Brescia, a member of one of the republic's most reliable military families. He had offered, with a group of supporters, to overcome the guard of one of the gates of the city (then occupied by the French) when, by prearranged signal, a large force from the Venetian army would enter and take the place by storm. Andrea Gritti, senior proveditor with the army, had, again in conditions of great secrecy, been kept informed. Now the decision had to be made whether to set the plot in motion, to estimate the risk to the depleted army and the possible consequences of the coup were it successful. After correspondence had been revealed to the Senate on the afternoon of the 10th, the Ten and its zonta entered. The names of all present were taken and individual oaths of secrecy recorded. The senators then debated a proposal put forward by a majority of the savi and a more cautious one moved by the doge until four hours after sunset, when the decision to go ahead was made that led to the retaking of Brescia on 5 February.6 Usually, however, mobilization, the setting of targets for recruitment, the employment of captains of companies and general officers, the urging forward of individual campaigns and the planning of overall strategy were the business of the Senate as, save in circumstances of exceptional urgency or secrecy, were the setting of diplomatic goals and the passing or amending of draft correspondence with ambassadors. On 2 March 1509, on news of the likelihood of war in the south, the Senate gave orders for defending the Venetian ports in Apulia. Before the open declaration of war in Lombardy the Senate, on 4 April, ordered the army to behave as though on a war footing. The crucial debate before Agnadello as to whether the army was to seek and destroy French units beyond the Adda or adopt a defensive stance on the frontier, took place in the Senate, as did that concerning the disposition of the troops awaiting papal attack in Romagna. Within hours of receiving the news of Agnadello, it was the Senate that, speaking in tones of undoubted authority as the government's own voice, told the rectors of Brescia to proclaim their gratitude to its subjects who had served well and wrote to Pitigliano affirming their continued confidence in him, to Proveditor-General Andrea Gritti saying that hard as the news was, it was the will of Fortune and 'we are undismayed and are intent on doing everything possible to protect our interests', to the Venetian cardinals in Rome saying that Divine Providence had been pleased to decree the loss of the republic's artillery and the scattering of its infantry, but at least the 6

What is said above about the Ten is taken from the registers of its deliberations and (from 1524, when the series begins) from Capi, Dieci, Lettere, Provveditori in Terraferma. 252

Government: policy, control and administration heavy cavalry seemed safe; and which, still in the same sitting, ordered the election of two more proveditors-general to rally what was left of the army, cheer the morale of the Terraferma and serve in camp or garrison as events suggested. And, vain as they turned out to be, the orders continued in the following days: get the remains of the army into Verona even if its citizens resist; keep the Adige open for supplies; put garrisons into Peschiera and Valeggio. It was the Senate which then overrode the army commanders and proveditors-general and insisted on Mestre as the army's base, and which in the following months insisted on the major strategic decision not to divide the army even at the cost of alienating those cities that called for military aid; it was the Senate that increasingly left decisions to men on the spot and thus introduced a new flexibility into military operations.7 Indeed, all the essential outlines of Venetian military policy and practice from 1509 to the Apulian campaign of 1527-8 and to the wars that followed later in the Cinquecento can be grasped from the Senate records alone. Those outlines, all the same, need the shading provided by an appreciation of the Ten's security-and-secrecy role, of the smallness (in comparison with the patriciate as a whole) of the group that rotated through the key councils and the extent to which they knew one another's careers and personalities and, finally, of the position occupied by the College and particularly the savi. The College met daily and, when all its members were present, was 39 strong. It had no power to legislate or to take any executive action that was not specifically delegated to it by the Ten or the Senate. Yet its role in the formation of policy and the management of military affairs was one of crucial importance. The first aspect arose from its responsibility for drawing up the agenda of Senate meetings, formulating specific proposals for debate after listening to the day's crop of letters and to the Council of Ten's latest decisions as reported by its Heads. Though when affairs of especial delicacy were concerned they might first be interviewed privately by the Heads of the Ten, it was normally to the College that returning public representatives and military leaders made their preliminary reports. It was in the College that drawings and models of new fortifications were discussed before being recommended to the Senate. With the great 1505 wall map of Italy to consult in the antechamber; with models to facilitate the understanding of dispatches describing siege operations; with the records of troop numbers and movements: when the College called in heads of departments like the proveditor of artillery and the patrons of the Arsenal to discuss plans with army commanders and former proveditors-general, Venice could be said to possess something like a modern War Council. The executive aspect of the College's role arose at the conclusion of the 7

SS. regs. 41 and 42, passim.

253

Part II: Senate meetings it had programmed. When the Senate agreed, for instance, to raise a certain number of troops, it was left to the College to engage captains, negotiate with the agents of condottieri, fix pay and the numbers in each company and see that the troops arrived at their destination. The responsibility deputed to them could be large: iooo light cavalry, 2000 menat-arms and 7000 infantry on 18 May 1509,6000 infantry in June 1521,8000 in October 1524, in each case without further reference to the Senate.8 Occasionally - as in May 1509 - a senator expressed impatience with the need to depute the raising of reinforcements to the College when it would have been quicker to do this through proveditors in the field, and resentment could be felt when the College answered letters before referring them to the Senate or, very rarely, decided not to implement Senate instructions before referring back to that body, but proposals relating to military affairs formulated by the College were seldom challenged and were commonly passed in the Senate by impressively large majorities. It was the savi who comprised the working nucleus of the College, and supported by secretaries with bulging files of precedents and recent correspondence they frequently prepared Senate business while sitting on their own. By tradition, those ai ordeni were younger than the others and were primarily concerned with naval and overseas commercial matters. But in wartime the emphasis on youth was dropped. Though they could still be asked to leave when the College was discussing matters of particular gravity, and it was they who were sent on mainly ceremonial or precautionary errands like escorting a new general officer to the army or accompanying an army pay-roll, with naval predominating over commercial affairs and with the emphasis on amphibious operations among the Lombard river systems at the beginning of the period and along the Apulian coast at its close, the position of savio ai ordeni was too important to be seen as an observation post whence youths of good family could learn about the machinery of government; it was filled, as was that of savio of the Council and of the Terraferma, by older men, and increasingly from members of the Senate itself. The savi of the Terraferma, as responsible for all matters relating to war on land, were senators, most of whom had held positions of responsibility as ambassadors, capitani of major cities, proveditors or Heads of the Ten. Like the other savi they served for six months but, after the normal six-month 'quarantine' period, they were more frequently re-elected; they might, moreover, be kept in the College after the end of their term of office, though without voting rights. As the engagers of troops on behalf of the College, one of them (the senior for the time being) was often sent into the field to be SS. reg. 41, 180; reg. 48, 194; Sanuto, xxxvii, 47.

254

Government: policy, control and administration present when troops were mustered and paid and decisions made as to the cashiering of the delinquent or unfit, and to deal with civilian complaints about the depredations of troops. The savi of the Council, though chiefly concerned with the drafting of diplomatic correspondence, commonly associated themselves with military proposals put up by the savi of the Terraferma and one or two of them could be sent out to mollify an offended commander or add additional weight to a council of war in the field. From February 1509, to help the College keep abreast of'matters of such number and importance that occur in this time of emergency every day and hour',9 a zonta of three additional savi of the Council was to be elected for three months, and the device was repeated at moments of special crisis until 1529. Similarly, while in peacetime the savi of the Terraferma balloted among themselves each three months to choose one who, as savio cassier, would have the oversight of the income due to the state, it was first proposed in April 1509 that' as the savi of the Terraferma do not have time, because it is necessary that they attend the College assiduously to look after matters that occur hour by hour in our territories',10 a cassier should be elected from the Senate for three months for this purpose; and then, on the same day, the decision was made to appoint in addition two proveditors of war finance (sopra i denari di la guerra) at six-month intervals to make sure that the bolting crop of new taxes was safely harvested and applied to war expenditure.11 The failure of this system of moving the chief responsibility for military accounting away from the College and into the office of the camerlenghi de commun was recognized on 26 May 1528 when the Senate acknowledged that both the accounts of cash due to the army and of payments earmarked for military expenditure from Venice itself and from local earnere had for many years been in such arrears and confusion that no balance could be struck. Noting that 'this responsibility expressly belongs to our savi of the Terraferma', it was decreed that in future records of all payments made to troops at home and abroad and of all accounts against which these were debited were to be overseen in the first instance by a savio of the Terraferma who was to be known as the savio alia scrittura. After he, helped by a bookkeeper appointed to assist him, had entered them in a journal from which a monthly balance could be extracted, they were to be returned to the proveditors sopra le camere who were responsible for recording payments to and income from Venetian territories as a whole. The savio alia scrittura was 9 10

11

ST. reg. 16, 80. Ibid., 97. Andrea da Mosto, Archivio di Stato, says (i, 117) that this position had lapsed and was restored only in 1526, but it is mentioned in 1523, 1524 and 1525: Sanuto, xxxiv, 95, 285; xxxvii, 341; xl, 16. Sanuto, viii, 64-5; ST. reg. 17, 7 (4 Apr. 1510). 255

Part II: to be chosen by ballot in the College, would serve for two months and during this period would be released from the normal rotating responsibility to prepare College business. Refusal to accept this office would lead to forfeiture of his place as savio.12 While neither the hoped-for orderliness of accounting, let alone the striking of accurate military balances ever materialized, henceforward, and until the end of the War of Gradisca, war expenditure was scrutinized and reported on by a savio alia scritturaP The military role of the Great Council, which had a membership of about 2500, can be dismissed summarily. The volume of business it conducted scarcely varied between years of war and peace. Always an electoral rather than a policy-making body, it had no hand in the selection of patricians for the extra positions required in wartime, the proveditors and paymasters with the army, who were chosen by the Senate, as were all the savi. Senators tended to bend the electoral laws when appointing castellans and rectors in the interest of speed and of obtaining the candidates they thought most trustworthy, and from time to time the Great Council effectively protested against this oligarchical tendency,14 but erosions of function of this sort were partly compensated for by the state's desperate need for ready money which up to 1517 and again after 1521 opened places in the Senate and its zonta in return for cash to younger, less influential or less-experienced men than could normally have hoped for this honour. This in turn led to a decrease in the overall political 'weight' of the Senate at a time when the Ten was both growing in size through its zonte and increasingly distrustful of the Senate's ability to keep state secrets. A parallel phenomenon was an enhanced concentration of power in the hands of a restricted number of senior patricians. The appointment of older men as savi ai ordeni contributed to this. So did the frequency with which the savi attended meetings of the Ten, the use of the Ten's zonta to provide a niche for a retiring member of the Council before he was re-eligible for election, the possibility of simultaneously being of the zonta and in the College, the occasional appointment of a zonta to the College. However, the changed relationship between Senate and Ten, and the difficulty 'new' men found in penetrating the circulatory system comprising Ten, Signoria (the doge, his six councillors and the three heads of the Quarantia Criminal) and College are of more interest to the student of Venetian families and the constitution than to the historian of war. The planning and execution of campaigns were not held up by interbody resentments. Old men may have been more cautious than their juniors, 12 13 14

ST. reg. 25, 34V-36V. The bulky records of this office are as yet (with unimportant exceptions) unarranged, and are not available for consultation. For examples from 1510 and 1529, ST. reg. 17, 35V-36 and Sanuto, 1, 92.

256

Government: policy, control and administration but both seniority and caution had long been characteristic of Venice's conduct of affairs and were hardly inappropriate at a time when the behaviour of armies, let alone the outcome of battles, was so difficult to calculate. No change occurred in the War of 1537-40 in the balance of decision making between Ten and Senate, and only one procedural innovation was made with an eye to rationalizing procedures in the College. The special responsibility of each of the five savi ai ordeni was defined: one was to be chiefly responsible 'al'armar', that is for the equipment and crewing of galleys as they were prepared for service; one for Arsenal affairs; one for the Adriatic bases; one for those in the third and fourth zones; one for the provisioning of the fleet, and especially for the supply of its staple diet, ship's biscuit.15 But if the running of the war proceeded on the familiar lines it was with a novel tetchiness. Renewed enjoyment of and profit from the Terraferma had produced a strong body of opinion that the empire da Mar was not worth defending through a costly war. Co-operation with the allies of the Holy League was complicated by a fairly general distrust of them as well as by the existence of widely shared pro-French inclinations. The leaking of state secrets through secretaries of the Ten and Senate to the sultan via French agents, though not confirmed until inquisitorial investigations in 1542,16 led to a series of unexplained breakdowns in negotiations that in turn produced a mood of mutual suspicion between the two bodies. Finally, there were long pauses between bouts of military and naval activity, cold-war strains, as it were, that surfaced in a number of guises. During the previous wars, and in 1537-8, the right of the savi ai ordini to introduce proposals relating to expenditure on the empire da Mar had been established. In March 1539, at the start of a campaigning season directed entirely to that empire, the right was challenged before being passed by an unimpressive majority (110:54:0).I7 Later in the same month the College was convicted by the Senate in an acclaimed vote of censure (119:9:3) of being irresponsible and careless in its choice of captains: henceforward they were to appoint only men who on reliable evidence had commanded at least 100 infantry in wartime or had acted as lieutenants to colonels.18 In May the College confessed that it had not yet raised the 1000 troops for Dalmatia-Albania which the Senate had ordered on 12 March. On 6 June, in a seldom-precedented move, the Council of Ten cancelled a Senate order of 31 May for the discharge from Dalmatia of three companies 15 16 17 18

Collegio, Notatorio, reg. 23, i n (11 Oct. 1537). See above, 231 n. 14. SM. reg. 25, 12V (11 Mar.). Ibid., 23V-24 (29 Mar.).

257

Part II: isog-1617 of Italian light cavalry.19 It is indeed a tribute to the effectiveness of the procedures and responsibilities worked out during the previous century that they were not challenged more radically in conducting a conflict so unpopular and so lacking in moments of pride and success. The only new government agency set up to handle military affairs on land in the generation of peace that followed was the magistracy of the two proveditors of fortifications, set up by the Senate in 1542.20 In 1545 a collegio sopra la militia da mar was established.21 This followed the decision to have a fleet of 100 light galleys in a state of permanent readiness. It comprised representatives of all existing bodies concerned with the Arsenal proveditors of the Arsenal, of artillery, of manning and equipping {provveditori aTarmar) and of provisioning (provveditori sopra i biscotti) - as

well as sixteen patricians who had commanded war galleys and four new proveditors each with special responsibility for the overall condition of 25 galleys. But it contained no one responsible for the professional infantry shipped to reinforce the marines in time of war. The College remained the organ of state responsible, under Senate control, for hiring, firing and allocating troops to garrisons, to police duties and to the fleet. And within the College the savi of the Terraferma remained the effective managers of military affairs on the mainland, though they were normally careful to associate their colleagues del consiglio with them when presenting the Senate with controversial or potentially costly issues. Among the savi of the Terraferma election determined an order of responsibility. The one who secured the most votes was co-ordinator of the republic's finances as a whole; next came the savio alia scrittura; after him came the savio responsible for the militia, and it was usually he who was also deputed to attend general musters of cavalry. While normally content to leave the day-to-day administration of military affairs in the College's hands, the Senate did at times resent its constant personal contact with captains and condottieri and their agents. Such a moment came in 1552, when the College was negotiating for a successor to the Duke of Urbino as governor-general, and negotiating, it was thought, too freely. We, the Senate declared, license negotiations and confirm them; the College was acting 'against the authority and dignity of this council, which is the directing body of the state {principal capo del governo del Stato)\22 Another came in 1557, when the Senate reaffirmed the College's 19 20

21 22

Dieci, C o m u n e , reg. 13, 25V (6 June). J. R. Hale, ' T h e first fifty years of a Venetian magistracy: the Provveditori alle Fortezze', in Renaissance: Studies in Honor of Hans Baron, ed. A. Molho and J. A. Tedeschi (Florence, 1971) 501-29. SM. reg. 28, 61-2V. SS. reg. 68, 71V-72 (20 Oct.).

258

Government: policy, control and administration powerlessness to make appointments without specific licence.23 Since an earlier refusal in 1536 of the Council of Ten to trust the Senate with plans for the defences of the lagoon, relations between the two bodies had improved, the Council continuing to manage the works, but no longer in secret, and intervening in garrison affairs only when matters of security were involved, and when feuds among the units guarding a city appeared to imperil it.24 The Council's role acquires a particular interest in the War of 1570-3 when, if only in 1572 and in one theatre of the war, it directly managed prolonged military operations for the first and last time in the Cinquecento. Up to then all troop contracts were as usual negotiated, with Senate assent, by the College, and military strategy remained firmly in senatorial hands. The Ten continued, in conjunction with the College, to concern itself with the defences of the lagoon, and with its familiar security role: investigating public representatives charged with cowardice, treachery or peculation at the expense of troops or thefisc,25investigating (at the Senate's suggestion) the causes of the loss of Cyprus,26 instructing galley commanders after Lepanto to see that all important Turkish prisoners, army officers, naval captains, bosuns and master craftsmen were 'killed in whatever secret and discreet manner you see fit to use'.27 Once again, the Ten conducted diplomatic negotiations it judged too delicate to share with the Senate. This body was, however, informed about them when ignorance might confuse its own day-to-day running of military affairs. Thus, early in 1571, the Lieutenant of Friuli wrote urgently to beg reinforcements because of rumours that Turkish troops were assembling for an invasion of the Patria. The Ten were then negotiating with the Archduke Charles of Austria to block the eastern passes with troops of his own but informed the Senate, which was thus able to cite the negotiation in its reply.28 The most important negotiations of all, however, were those which, in the teeth of Venice's protestations of loyalty to its allies, were pursued while thefleetssailed and clashed inconclusively with the Turkish armada in the autumn of 1572, dispersed to base in the winter and planned a third and even larger mobilization for the coming spring,29 and which brought about the separate peace of March 1573, ratified by a Senate which had been kept 23 24 25

26 27

28 29

S S . reg. 70, 64 and 66v. E.g. D i e d , C o m u n e , reg. 13, 126 (28 F e b . 1540 - ref. Brescia). E.g. ibid., reg. 29,190V-191 (11 D e c . 1570), Dieci, Criminal, reg. 1570,91 (15 Dec.) and S T . reg. 48, 126V-127 (9 A u g . 1571). S S . reg. 7 8 , 2 1 ; Dieci, Secreta, reg. 9, 196V (4 D e c . 1571). Quoted by P. Molmenti, 'Sebastiano Veniero', 33-4. For further evidence of Venice's awareness of the Turks' resilience, Annali, 1571, 270 (22 Nov.). ST. reg. 48,74V (24 Jan.); SS. reg. 77,73V-74 (13 Mar.); Dieci, Secreta, reg. 9,132V-136 (7-12 Feb.). Commemoriali, 23, 193-4V.

259

Part II: i$og-i6i7 in ignorance of its terms and timing if not altogether of its drift. Though the Senate continued to direct the fleet and the prosecution of the war in the third zone, activity in the second (chiefly the ousting of the Turks from the forts they had built in the territory of Cattaro, and safeguarding its access to the sea) was taken over by the Ten. Each body used the College as its executive arm and the savi were not ordered to 'reserve' information in this context when they moved across to take their seats in the Senate, if they judged it necessary to reveal it there. The situation in Dalmatia came to justify the Ten's intervention: slack proveditors, dubiously trustworthy castellans, peccant captains, the need to foster paramilitary activities, the organizing of fifth columns in Turkish garrison towns, negotiations with volunteer captains of chameleon-like political (and doctrinal) loyalties. Areas where military activity was closely connected with the status and affected by the loyalty of Venetian subjects traditionally came within the Ten's competence. It was, all the same, wholly unusual - even with the blurring of security/military functions on the Terraferma after Agnadello in mind - for that council to take so dominant a role in the supervision of military operations as to separate what happened in one theatre, Dalmatia-Albania, from the concurrent flow of hostilities in another, the Ionian and Cretan seas. The Ten's supervision, moreover, included the planning, from December 1571, of the largest military operation carried out in the following year, the amphibious attack on Castelnovo in May-June with 5000 infantry commanded by Sciarra Martinengo and with transport and naval support under Sebastiano Venier: twelve great and ten light galleys. While an operation of this size could not be kept secret once troops started assembling at Chioggia and on the Lido and preparations were put under way in the Arsenal, the strategy of the attack, the contracting for soldiers and the dispatches arranging co-operation with the authorities in Dalmatia and the officers of the naval patrols in the Adriatic - all these were handled by the College. This was by then a thoroughly homogeneous body, the Senate having shortened in 1570 the period during which the savi of the Council and the Terraferma were ineligible for re-election to three months ' so that in this crucially important time of war the College can benefit as fully as possible from men of experience in affairs of state'.30 The College worked with the Ten through its Heads, and, necessarily, with the doge and his councillors; not a small group, all told, but a more compact one than the republic had used for an operation of this sort hitherto. When the Senate, at an advanced stage in its planning, was informed, there was no criticism, but the attack's failure may help to explain why so much directing power was never sought by the Ten again. 30

ST. reg. 48, 58V (24 Nov.). 260

Government: policy, control and administration After the war, policy-making and administrative links between the government and its standing armed forces remained unchanged save in one important respect. Reflecting widespread criticism of the power and competence of the Council of Ten, that body on n October 1588 handed over its responsibility for all matters relating to artillery to the Senate, ' doubts having arisen as to whether the election of the provveditor sopra le artiglierie should be made by this council, as it had been up to the present';31 the voting was twelve to three in favour of the transfer. On 29 October the Senate spelled out the consequences.32 A motion to transfer the powers of the proveditor to the proveditors of fortresses was not passed. Instead the Senate resolved to elect one of its own members to serve for a year. Appointments of salaried gunners, which had been made by the proveditor and the Heads of the Ten who had immediately retired from that office, were to be made by the proveditor and by the proveditors of the Arsenal (who were also appointed by the Senate). Contracts for purchases of saltpetre and other supplies were to be dealt with by the proveditor in conjunction with the College and subject to confirmation by the Senate. Appointments to posts in munition stores and armouries were to be made by the College, the proveditor, however, being present and entitled to vote. This legislation was confirmed by the Great Council on the following day.33 In November 1589, ' having seen from experience how important and burdensome are the duties of the proveditor of artillery',34 the Senate decided that henceforward there would be three and to this, too, the Great Council assented.35 From 1602 they were helped by the expert advice and frequent inspections and reports of Ferrante de' Rossi, appointed general of artillery in that year in succession to Leonardo Rossetti of Verona and reappointed in 1610.36 Control over the fortifications in the lagoon had already passed gradually to the Senate, and the Ten was left only with the maintenance of its own armoury and the supervision of the arquebus and other competitions which had, because of the crowds they drew, a public-security aspect. To bring responsibility for fortresses, the Arsenal and artillery together was clearly a useful rationalization. It also brought the Senate prestige, as the proveditorship was a highly honoured one, sought after, indeed, by procurators and ex-ambassadors. Every detail of running an army and conducting a war was now in the hands of the Senate. On 11 August 1615 the Senate led the republic into a war designed to check Uscock piracy once and for all.37 2

Died, Comune, reg. 40, 19. ST. reg. 58, 142-142V. Surianus, 28. ST. reg. 50, IOOV-IOIV (21 Nov.).

16

Surianus, 2iv. SS. reg. 95, i8v and 97V (20 June 1602 and 17 Feb. 1603); reg. 100, 133-133V (18 June 1610). See above, 241. 261

Part II: 1509-1617 The Council of Ten had become a shadow of its former self. It coordinated the information from spies engaged by proveditors and employed spies and informers of its own. It checked the reliability of captains and feudatories and kept proveditors informed as to any treason thought to be hatching. But it no longer invoked security as a reason for supervising self-defence preparations along the politically sensitive frontiers of the Terraferma: the arming of subjects on an unprecedentedly liberal scale was entrusted entirely to the Senate. It was the Ten, as formerly, that decided to lift sentences of banishment, thus inviting back men whose violence could be put to productive use in the army.38 But the applications for safe-conduct were handled through the Senate, who appointed first seven, then fourteen patricians39 to sift and decide on them. The Council still edited the information it passed to the College or, more frequently, imposed oaths of secrecy (with the assent of the doge) on its members if the matter were too sensitive or too alarming to be noised indiscriminately abroad.40 But information with a possible military bearing was never withheld for long. Thus on 30 August the Ten passed to the Senate a report from a French captain on the Duke of Ossuna's plan, in connivance with Austria and the Spanish ambassador in Venice, the Marquis of Bedmar, to land troops at Malamocco, transfer them to flat-bottomed boats and attack the Piazza and the Arsenal.41 Such unconfirmed and alarmist material would not, during the wars of the previous century, have been passed on before its validity had been confirmed or disproved. Nor, during the War of Gradisca, did the Ten conduct any 'secret' diplomacy of any significance. And with loss of its control over artillery and the less formal desuetude of its control over the fortifications of the lagoon, the Council's role in the conduct of strictly military affairs was insignificant. The Senate repeatedly reminded proveditors that, as the men on the spot, 'theirs' was the responsibility for deciding how the campaign was to be fought. On the other hand the Senate controlled the liaison between fleet units and the army, had a clearer view of the interaction between events in Friuli and Istria, raised and supplied the armies, balanced the needs of the Terraferma towns and frontiers against the demands for reinforcements on the Gradisca front. A copious flood of information reached it through the College: dispatches from proveditors often enclosing the written opinions produced by capi di guerra and careful drawings of fortresses to be taken or newly occupied,42 letters from minor public representatives and individual

[0

Died, Secreta, reg. 15, 129V-130 (30 Nov. 1615). ST. reg. 85, 290-290V (20 Feb. 1616); reg. 86, 46V (24 Apr. 1616). On 11 Jan. 1617 (G. Cozzi, II doge Nicolo Contarini (Venice-Rome, 1958) 154). Calendar of State Papers, Venetian, 1615—ij, 590. E.g. in Prow. Gen. in Terraferma, Ba. 52 (29 Apr. 1616). 262

Government: policy, control and administration captains.43 The richness of this information, coupled with control of overall strategy - helped by the non-voting presence of ex-proveditors44 - led to a uniquely formidable volume of orders being transmitted by a body which had never before met so frequently nor transacted so much business. The supplying magistracies - fortresses, artillery, Arsenal, biave (grain supply) were also more closely controlled than in previous wars, as were the executive actions of the College. Indeed, the most wasteful and militarily sluggish of Venice's wars was directed by an administration which had never been so effectively centralized. The most important points of contact between the government and its armies continued to be the men who, elected by the Senate, staffed a system which provided a public representative for every place of strategic concern and a civilian shadow to every command: proveditors-general corresponding to captain- and governor-general, proveditors of stradiots and light cavalry to their professional chiefs, the proveditor of artillery to the captain of artillery, capitani to the governatori of garrisons, patrician paymaster (pagador) to the collateral-general. It was roundly condemned by nonVenetians (Machiavelli being particularly astringent)45 as imposing a counter-productive interference with the freedom of action of professional soldiers. Yet an overwhelming reliance on mercenary troops did call for a measure of constant political and financial control. Furthermore, though it was modified and elaborated in the generation after Agnadello, the system already had the vitality of instinct, as a rapid glance at the events of 1509 will show.46 In January, bearing in mind the running out of the precarious truce of the previous summer with Maximilian, Alviano drew attention to the poorly defended passes leading down from Germany towards Feltre, Cadore and Cividale di Belluno and into Friuli. Two proveditors were elected to inspect them and see to their fortification. In February a proveditor was sent to Cremona to see to defence preparations on the western frontier, and in March, while the army was being built up from its winter nucleus, Andrea Gritti and Zorzi Corner were elected proveditors-general in Lombardy to liaise with the commanders of infantry and men-at-arms, and Giustinian Morosini was appointed proveditor of light cavalry. Early in April Zuan Diedo was sent as proveditor with the army in Romagna, and a few days later a proveditor was dispatched to Pizzighettone, which was seen as an 43 44 45 46

E.g. the long series from Teodoro Trivulzio in Capi di Guerra, B a . s-v. E.g. that of the former Proveditor-General in Dalmatia Lorenzo Venier (ST. reg. 85, 242; 14 Jan. 1616). Discorsi, bk 2, c. 33. H e also condemned the similar practice of Florence. W h a t follows is taken from S T . reg. 16; S S . reg. 4 1 ; Collegio, Commissioni Secrete, 1500-13; and Sanuto, vii and viii. 263

Part II: early objective in any thrust from France. His instructions give a fair example of the duties of all proveditors appointed to individual towns. He was to take over from the rector (the podesta: there was no capitano at Pizzighettone) in all matters relating to troops, munitions and military information. Supervision of the fortifications had already been deputed to a local military expert, Alvise Avogadro, and henceforward he was to be responsible to the proveditor. Any military news was to be sent in triplicate to Venice, the proveditors-general and the patrician team — rectors and proveditor - in Cremona. By 14 May further proveditors had been sent to Bergamo, Crema, Valeggio and Peschiera, and to Rimini. News of Agnadello led to the election of proveditors-general for Brescia, Verona, Vicenza and Padua. By this time, adding the names of men who had remained en poste since the previous year, Venice had 37 proveditors spaced across the Terraferma from Cremona to Fiume, and in Romagna from Russi to Rimini. By the time the army had fallen back to Mestre in early June, 16 of them were prisoners of the occupying forces. For the rest of the year the system reflected every relaxation of enemy pressure and every initiative taken by Venice. The immediate hinterland was secured by proveditors at Mestre, Grado and Motta. Venetian control in Friuli was signalled by the election of a proveditor-general, proveditors for Cividale and Butistagno and a proveditor of stradiots in Istria, and proveditors were sent to Legnago, Monselice, Feltre and Vicenza as soon as their reoccupation seemed reasonably secure. Padua, once retaken, was governed by three proveditors-general, each on duty for successive eighthour watches, and the Proveditor-General in Treviso was supplemented by a proveditor with special responsibility for arming and training peasant volunteers from the Trevisano. During the licensed pillaging of the Polesine, four proveditors were based on Stra to control shipping on the Brenta and prevent damage to Venetian subjects and property, and the captain of thefleetin the Po had a proveditor-general to assist in amphibious operations against the Ferrarese. The emotional as well as the strategic significance of the move against Vicenza in November was symbolized by the presence with the army of no fewer than five proveditors-general, three to return to Padua and one to Treviso, and one to remain in Vicenza. The term' proveditor' was not restricted to temporary appointments or a state of emergency. Proveditors, appointed one after another in peace and war alike, were responsible for the city's grain supply and supervised the making and allocation of artillery. The Arsenal was run by proveditors in association with 'patrons'. The men appointed to survey frontiers and report on boundary disputes were called proveditors. Before the setting up of the proveditors of fortifications as a standing magistracy in 1542, new defences were administered by ad hoc proveditors who were responsible for 264

Government: policy, control and administration seeing that plans and models were followed accurately, for recruiting a work force, obtaining wood, tools and other supplies from the Arsenal, keeping the accounts and, as necessary, razing houses outside the walls that would interfere with a clear field of fire. The functions of the military proveditors sent to single sites varied according to their place and size. In frontier forts like Anfo, where the population was minute and the only Venetian representative was a castellan, the proveditor's duty was to recruit spies and organize an information service, to enlist a local militia and to stiffen the morale - a function common to all proveditors - of the garrison. In towns like Vicenza, where there were already a capitano, a podesta, a chamberlain and a castellan, his job was partly to relieve them of the extra administrative work caused by the billeting and feeding of troops and refugees from the countryside and the strengthening of fortifications, partly to act as the government's spokesman in any parley with an enemy force. He also took over responsibility for internal security from the podesta and became the organizer of the information service connecting his immediate territory with the government and the army proveditors. While the other representatives returned to Venice as their normal terms of office ran out, he remained until matters were judged stable enough for his recall. He was, in effect, the acting governor-general of the town and its hinterland and at times (though only in Apulia) was given the title governatore, a word with almost exclusively military connotations. On occasion supernumerary proveditors were elected, as when in 1510 four patricians, each with 50 infantry, were sent to help the proveditor of Legnago prepare to resist the siege its strategic position invited. All five proveditors, the government piously hoped, would work in complete harmony to administer and defend the town.47 Enhanced political authority, morale-raising, an information network: these objectives could not be achieved through the towns alone if the whole area subject to Venetian control were to be placed on an effective war footing. So between the static, single-site proveditors and those who moved about with the armies, there were proveditors of zones, zones that were either actual theatres of war, like the Polesine in 1510,48 or were in need of reorganization when armies had, after recent occupation, moved away from them, like the Bresciano in 1512 and 1524.49 In 1513 a Proveditor of the Adige was appointed to supervise the area across which the army was falling back towards Padua and Treviso.50 In 1526 a Proveditor 'this side of the 47

48 49 50

Collegio, Commissioni Secrete, 1 5 0 0 - 1 3 , 9 8 V - 9 9 . Both t h e T e n and the Senate emphasized to rectors their s u b o r d i n a t i o n in military matters to proveditors: e.g. Dieci, Misti, reg. 32, 100 (12 M a y 1509) and S S . reg. 4 3 , 152 (11 N o v . 1510). S S . reg. 4 3 , 29V-30. S S . reg. 4 5 , i 2 v ; reg. 50, 6 1 . S a n u t o , xvi, 350.

265

Part II: isog-1617 Mincio' was to prepare against the descent of the German army which, in the following year, was to put Rome to the sack.51 Of the grades of proveditor deputed to accompany the republic's army, those attached to the Italian light cavalry and the stradiots played the most straightforward military role. The light cavalry's role in raiding, cutting communications and assisting local militia forces in the taking of isolated enemy positions meant that they were on the move for months at a time without a specific headquarters. Their proveditors perforce spent their days in the saddle and fought on more or less equal terms with the men in their charge. Control of the light cavalry and stradiots was on occasion vested in a single proveditor. But because the stradiots did not combine readily with other cavalry, it was more usual to have one proveditor for the Italians and another for the stradiots. And because the professionals paid as captains of all the stradiots found it difficult to exact obedience from captains of individual companies, the proveditor of stradiots was often in practice the effective commander himself; in 1515 the company officers actually petitioned to serve under a proveditor rather than under the captain of stradiots, the imperious veteran Mercurio Bua.52 The highest grade was that of Proveditor-General in Terraferma. His post - frequently with a colleague of equal status - was with the main body of the army, in daily contact with Venice's senior officers and an essential voice in any council of war. When the army was split, or a substantial portion of it was in action far from headquarters, a subordinate grade, that of proveditor in the field, was invoked, so that both the proveditors-general and the government could be kept in touch with the fortunes of the smaller body. Elections were made to a third grade, that of executive proveditor, or under-proveditor, when the proveditors-general found it necessary to depute part of their work locally. The proposal to elect two ' provveditori executori nel exercito' in 1510 said that it was put forward because the duties of the proveditors-general were 'so many and so laborious, keeping them in a continuous state of movement and agitation both in body and mind'.53 A glance at what these duties were will show that this was in no sense an exaggeration. Quite apart from their military role, indeed, they were expected to discharge functions that in Venice would have been divided among a wide range of councils and magistrates. They had to detect traitors among Venetian subjects and have them sent to the Council of Ten for interrogation. They had to trace and execute deserters. When the army freed SS. reg. 24, 126V. Sanuto, xx, 49-54. ST. reg. 17, 14V. 266

Government: policy, control and administration previously occupied territory it was their job to see that the process of resettlement (problems arising from expropriations, war damage, food shortages and the like) was carried out in a way satisfying both to the local inhabitants and to the republic. Acting again for the Council of Ten, they were to use secret agents in an attempt to bribe the commanders of towns occupied by the enemy, as in the case of Verona in 1510 or of Brindisi in 1528. On behalf of the Senate they could be seconded to allied armies to keep them up to the mark. Thus hardly had Julius II successfully forced through the winter siege of Mirandola in January 1511 than ProveditorGeneral Capello was sent to remind him (of all people) that 'in rebus bellicis it is imperatively necessary to use speed and not grant the enemy a breathing space'.54 In later campaigns, when Venetian armies were co-operating as a minority with the French, this ambassadorial role was recognized in a revised title: proveditor-general and orator.55 And among the flood of correspondence reaching the proveditors-general were copies of orders sent to their colleagues in other theatres of war, instructions to oratori with allies, translations of intercepted letters that might be relevant and, every now and then, copies of the 'newsletter' dispatches sent to ambassadors containing summaries of recent events — summaries which relied heavily on the reports of the proveditors-general themselves. The number of letters arriving at headquarters, marked, in ascending order of confidentiality, 'legatus solus', 'solus, solus' or 'solus, solus, solus', emphasized the political responsibility of men whose expressions of opinions in war councils had to reflect Venice's relationship with its subject territories, with its allies of the moment and with any plans to promote a major shift on the diplomatic front. As crucial as their political responsibilities, and more onerous, were the proveditor-generals' administrative duties. Their job of assuring that the army had enough to eat involved them in administrative procedures of great complexity if the use of compulsory purchase powers, price fixing and transport requisition orders were not to alienate populations which had already learned how to exchange one master for another. The job of assuring that the troops got their pay was even more urgent, 'money' as a Senate preamble banally put it in 1512, 'being the most important thing in time of war, because without that one is without troops'.56 Proveditors-general learned the other side to their arguments as senators in favour of playing for time before sending payments due to the army: the cost of endless bickering, desertion and, very occasionally, downright mutiny. In 1524 Piero da Ca' Pesaro refused to take up his appointment as proveditor-general unless he 54 55 56

SS. reg. 43, 174. E.g. Vitale, 'L'impresa di Puglia', 333-4. ST. reg. 18, 52V.

267

Part II: could bring enough money to make him acceptable to the army.57 Their energies might also be absorbed by efforts to heal the quarrels between the republic's captains. Squabbles arising from billeting or claims to prisoners could lead to defiant non-co-operation at the highest levels of the command. ' Do your utmost to keep all our captains in concord and amity, making every attempt to urge them to work harmoniously together.'58 This plea to the proveditors-general in 1519 was to be repeated year after year. Their duties were, indeed, wide and grave enough to make these posts among the most honorific - and dreaded - of those available to senior patricians. The sort of previous experience expected of proveditors is shown in nomination lists. Among the eight nominees in 1512 for a proveditorgeneral in the field were three men who had already served in that capacity and, unusually, a former proveditor of thefleet;the others had been a Head of the Ten, a savio of the Terraferma, a savio of the Council (two). Out of fifteen names put forward for the same position later in that year,fivehad been proveditors-general and one a Proveditor in Feltre; another had held the important captaincy of Padua. It was thus unusual for senior proveditorships to go to men younger than 60, and many were in their 70s, a few in their 80s. The length of service was seldom spelled out. Two years was not an uncommon term, and repeated reappointment to the same or a similar post meant that a man's family and business life could be interrupted for long periods. Andrea Gritti's success in the field had led to seven years' almost constant employment as proveditor and proveditor-general before his capture by the French at Brescia in 1512. Venetian patricians were often mocked for their awkwardness on horseback (unrealistically, given the size of their mainland estates) but, riding with his personal servants, his secretary, a notary or book-keeper from the Chancery, his two couriers and his personal guard of from twelve to twenty-five halberdiers under an infantry captain, the proveditor-general was in no sense a comicfigure,and the armour in his baggage was meant to be worn. There were many who refused office. The excuses offered included: I have gout and, in any case, I always bring bad fortune; my brother is already serving in a similar capacity (Proveditor-General in Lombardy) and that is against the law; I have already been elected to an embassy in Rome; I have a pain in my back, and it is not a post for which I am at all suited; I have chronic nosebleed and no experience in arms; I am a man of peace, not of war; I have no military competence and get headaches whenever I stay in the sun; the tongue is my weapon, not the sword; I am a member of the Ten; I 57 58

Sanuto, xxxv, 431. SS. reg. 42, 119 and 135V.

268

Government: policy, control and administration am 75 years old. They were numerous enough to provoke another tightening of the refusal regulations with the renewed darkening of the political scene in 1526. 'The exigencies of the present situation are such that those to be elected as proveditor or under any other title thought by the Senate to be for the advantage and security of our army should go to serve the state at once and without delay'; and there followed a resume of existing legislation. Election to military posts could not be refused on the grounds of the current occupation of any other office whatsoever; the rules forbidding more than one member of a family to occupy similar posts were suspended; only one day was allowed before making a decision; if it were to refuse, the penalty was immediate dismissal from any office already held and exile 'de la del Quarner' for six months. Any appeal on grounds of age or infirmity had to be supported by a five-sixths majority in the Senate.59 There were also charges of cowardice or dereliction of duty brought against some who accepted office. On the whole, however, the positive side of the evidence predominates. When a Vicentine spokesman congratulated Gritti on his election as doge he referred to the way in which, from total ignorance of military affairs, ' he had in a short time become more expert than anyone else'. Remarks of this sort were not mere flattery. In 1510, when the captain-general was ill and his deputy, Lucio Malvezzi, was of dubious popularity, Gritti was instructed to take the high command into his own hands if he judged it appropriate.60 During the search for a new governor-general that followed, Gritti was twice proposed as more suitable (in part, it is true, for political reasons) than any professional candidate.61 In October 1521 he led the advance guard while the governor-general, Teodoro Trivulzio, brought up the rear.62 In 1513, attempting to rally the men around him, Proveditor-General Andrea Loredan seized a banner from a light cavalryman but almost at once received two wounds and was taken prisoner. After the battle, two Spaniards asked who he was. Given the answer 'one of the Venetian proveditors', they replied, 'have at him, then' and struck him dead; it was remarked in Venice when the body, with its wounds upon it, was brought from Vicenza, that it did not stink and that he had died 'as a true patrician'.63 Again, Alviano praised ProveditorGeneral Contarini for behaving more like a professional captain than a government agent at Marignano.64 In spite of the accusations levelled at Cristoforo Moro, he was praised on his death at the age of 75 in 1518 as 59 60 6J 62 63 64

Sanuto, xliv, 143-50. SS. reg. 42, 119. Sanuto, x, 170, 222, 336-7. Ibid., xxxii, 25. Ibid., xvii, 178, 181. Ibid., xxi, 102.

269

Part II: 1509—1617 having been 'accepted by soldiers as one of themselves'.65 And ProveditorGeneral Pesaro, who on one occasion killed insubordinate soldiers with his own hand, was praised by the Duke of Urbino for the way in which he stood the army to arms on an alert during the duke's absence.66 Such examples, which could be multiplied, were characteristic of the patriciate and its mentality as a class. It was a reaction against the knowledge that the ideal of public service was constantly menaced by instances of cowardice and self-protectiveness. Especially onerous and dangerous office was the price to be paid from time to time for an enduring monopoly of political power and an increasing dependence on the profits it could bring. From 1509 to 1529 there was a succession of men whose actions showed that in all but title they could be identified with the military leaders whose hardships and dangers they were instructed to share. But then there was, of course, more than a touch of the politician and businessman about the leaders themselves.67 Other traditional patrician offices served to support the administration of the armed forces in wartime and to provide an experience which kept the government continually informed of the state of military affairs in its domains. By the end of June 1509, Sanuto calculated that the enemy was in occupation of territories that had offered posts to 127 patricians as rectors, treasurers and castellans. Towns of any importance (of the size, say, of Vicenza) had two rectors, a podesta and a capitano; smaller ones like Rovigo or Feltre had one, combining the judicial and police functions of the podesta with the military and financial duties of the capitano, who was responsible for troops quartered in his city and its neighbourhood, professional or militia, and was much in the company of officers and their men. But it is artificial to make too much of a distinction between the military role of the capitano and the civil one of the podesta. Both were in charge of the rector's guard of infantry under its professional commander. Both commonly attended musters and directed the building of new fortifications (in conjunction with a proveditor, if there was one). Correspondence relating to troop movements or orders received from army proveditors was frequently signed by the rectors jointly. The prestige attached to rectorships naturally differed greatly according to the size of the town; to be Podesta of Piove di Sacco or Caravaggio was not an office greatly sought after, while among the seventeen nominations for Capitano of Padua in 1512 were six former Heads of the Ten and a former proveditor-general. But all involved some necessary 66 Ibid., xxv, 238. Ibid., xliii, 443; xxxvi, 259-60. For further information about military proveditors in this period see Hale,' Renaissance armies and political control', 11—31.

270

Government: policy, control and administration contact with military affairs, and when a town was in a war theatre this contact could become intensive; in 1512 the Duke of Urbino virtually adopted Paolo Nani, Capitano of Bergamo, keeping him with the army in the field and asking his advice until he was forced into behaving like a proveditor-general while still only receiving the stipend due to a rector.68 The usual spell of duty for rectors was sixteen months on the Terraferma, two or three years da Mar, depending on the distance of the post, so there was a constant flow of ex-rectors with at least local military knowledge into the pool of potential nominees to the key councils. Treasurers had direct contact with troops only on pay day but as the social equals of their colleagues were no doubt privy to their consultations about military affairs. Castellans were responsible for the munitions, artillery and garrisons of the chief fortified points in a town. Normally there was one, in the castle or keep, but in Padua there were two, one in the castle, the other in the defence complex covering the main gate (La Saracinesca), and in Verona there were four: in the citadel, the old castle, at San Felice and at San Piero. Many of these posts were sinecures, given in peacetime by the Great Council to poor patricians (more rarely to retired professional soldiers) for long periods, sometimes - when the place was not considered of much importance (Marostica, for instance) - for the rest of their lives. From 1509, however, appointments to reconquered towns in the Terraferma or da Mar were increasingly made by the Senate and given to reasonably qualified men. With the coming of more peaceful days in 1520 the Quarantia Criminale voted to pass elections back to the Great Council,69 but the Council of Ten vetoed the proposal. All the same, castellanships never escaped from their 'welfare' connotations, partly because though the salaries were raised for positions temporarily of great strategic importance (20 and 30 ducats for Monselice and La Scala at the end of 1509), many were so low - 5 ducats a month was not uncommon — that only very young or very poor patricians would accept them. In spite of their title, therefore, castellans had little to contribute to the military expertise of the body of senior patricians. It was far otherwise with men returning from other posts. All sea experience, for instance, was relevant to supervising a war on land. Every galley and round ship, even those bound on merchant voyages, was equipped as afightingvessel and no patrician merchant, apprentice nobile di galea or commander could return unfamiliar with artillery, arms, weapons and (for each had its complement of marines) soldiers. Captains-general and proveditors of the fleet were expected to be able to report on the state of the fortifications and garrisons of the ports in which they victualled or 68 69

Sanuto, xxxi, 325. Ibid., xxix, 34. 271

Part II: replenished their benches with oarsmen. Combat tactics at sea, lacking the possibility of the broadside and therefore the notion of stand-off bombardment, bore a recognizable resemblance to tactics on land. It was rare, however, for a patrician who had held a high sea command to be given an important military post on land. He was more likely to be reappointed to the sea or put in command of operations on the Po or on Lake Garda. All the same, taking all these types of appointment into account, perhaps an actual majority of the patricians who at any moment staffed the chief councils had once lived, even if only for a few months, in an atmosphere of cannon, arquebus and potential danger. The administration of the Terraferma through short-term patrician appointments was paralleled in the empire da Mar. Thus, in addition to service at sea, administrative experience fed into the patrician body an awareness of the strategic extent and military organization of the maritime empire. In wartime this experience was drawn on directly: in 1511 Sebastiano Giustinian was sent to provide for the defence of Istria because ' he has an intimate knowledge of that province ',70 and at intervals from 1509 to 1528 former Proveditors-General of Dalmatia were sent back on recruiting drives for light cavalry. The cadre's sense of political space and an eye for terrain that made for informed strategic thinking were refreshed at intervals by the tours of inspection carried out by pairs of patrician syndics on the Terraferma as a whole and through large segments of the empire da Mar, tours which involved detailed reports on defences, garrisons and militias. And the effect of what amounted to a statistical and geographical training within Venice's own dominions can be seen in the dispatches and reports of ambassadors to foreign countries, with their descriptions of communications, frontiers and neighbour states, fortified places and military organization. Such accounts varied, of course, in quality: some ambassadors did little more than parrot the descriptions of their predecessors.71 But at the worst they helped to keep discussions of international affairs, of allies and enemies and their resources 'placed' on a roughly accurate mental map, reinforcing the map already present in the mind's eye of men whose success in international commerce depended on an awareness of time and space. Patricians were also employed as army paymasters. Some were appointed for a specific mission to pay contingents known to be particularly recalcitrant were they not paid with due ceremony and on time, notably Swiss and German pikemen. Most were sent to the field for long, though 70 71

S S . reg. 40, 6 3 v. D . Queller, ' T h e development of ambassadorial relazioni\ in Hale, Renaissance Venice. F o r a particularly fine example of the Venetian 'strategic eye', see the report on Tuscany made by Marco Foscarini in 1527 in Alberi, Relazioni degli ambasciatori veneti, ser. 2, i, 12 seq. 272

Government: policy, control and administration seldom specified, periods, and were paid a monthly salary - that is, expenses plus incentive - which varied between 30 and 60 ducats a month, depending on the size of the corps to which they were deputed. Their responsibility for seeing that the state's money was husbanded or disbursed according to the availability of funds and the mood of the troops to whom they were due required tact and the ability to get on with the serving captains. Taking into account, then, the constant feeding into the political machine of those returning from spells of duty involving at least some military contacts in normal times, plus the number of those with more specific military duties in the war years and those who at all times were returning from serving at sea, the Venetian directing class cannot be imagined as unprepared to deal with either the immediate or the broader aspects of war. And from the opening stages of a campaign, theflowof those returning from military proveditorships and rectorships in zones affected by the campaigns steadily increased, as did the flow of information derived from their dispatches and reports. Information about the enemy and, indeed, as a precautionary measure, about allied troops, was derived also from spies and informers.72 Proveditors-general were expected to organize their own contacts within enemy-occupied territory and to hire spies, but the Council of Ten's own service was productive enough to lead to the appointment of two patricians in July 1509 to do a preliminary sifting and co-ordination of their reports.73 As with long-service soldiers, the dependants of spies who were caught were given pensions or minor bureaucratic posts, and the system produced a loyalty that caused certain spies to risk their necks time after time on journeys through enemy lines into France, Switzerland and Germany. In 1526 a spy disguised as a Spaniard killed a Spanish courier in his sleep and sent the dispatches to Venice.74 Indeed, a courier's life was hardly less imperilled than a spy's, but here again Venice secured loyal service, and it is not unjust that one of them, Zuan Gobbo, repeatedly sent to the Romagna, to the army in Lombardy and to France and Germany between 1510 and 1515, should have a name subsequently associated with Venice by Shakespeare.75 On their return, Gobbo and his colleagues reported any military information they had acquired to the College. A final element in shaping the ruling group's familiarity with military affairs were viva-voce reports from and discussions with captains passing through Venice or calling there after a successful action to be congratulated by the doge. 72

73 74 75

Esploratori (though spia was also used) and persone degne di fede respectively. Names were rarely committed to writing, though cf. Dieci, Misti, reg. 33, 119V and 125V; reg. 34, 31 v and 74V; Sanuto, xxxvii, 604. Sanuto, viii, 484. Ibid., xlii, 5 3 . E . g . S T . r e g . 17, 13V; S S . reg. 4 3 , 137; S a n u t o , xx, 3 9 3 ; xxi, 131.

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Part II: isog-1617 Among the directing castes of Europe the merchant patriciate of Venice was thus probably uniquely well informed about the personalities, technicalities and wider issues confronting a government at war. The system of military administration here outlined for the period 1509-30 remained virtually unchanged for the rest of the century. In the Turkish wars, while a proveditor-general was appointed to supervise troop movements and skeleton defence forces in the Terraferma, the majority of appointments were naturally made to posts overseas. In 1570-3 there were proveditors-general for Dalmatia as a whole as well as for Cattaro and Corfu, for Crete and for Cyprus (where, as one died and his successor, Sebastiano Venier, could not reach the island, the defence of the island had to be conducted by the Lieutenant of Cyprus and the rectors of Nicosia and Famagosta). In Dalmatia there was also a proveditor-general of cavalry. Proveditors were based in such strategic ports as Zara and Canea to supervise both local defence and the manning and supplying of fleets. There was, occasionally, some advocacy of change. For instance, Alvise Gritti in 1542 had suggested that in peacetime the organization shared among professionals, collaterals and rectors should be pulled together by a 'provveditore di soldati\ elected each two years. But both in the Senate and en poste as rectors, patricians, in peace as in war, showed themselves consistently conservative: constantly reiterating the need not to evolve but to refurbish the military institutions that already existed. And even the desire for reform in this conservative sense contained a note of hesitation. The Venetian posture in the Terraferma was one of command, yet in manner it relied heavily on persuasion. For reasons of policy as well as of cash, Venice came to the brink of war after war with its military structure still virtually unreformed. During years of peace civilian administration of the army was left largely in the hands of rectors. Relying on periodical surveys of the Terraferma and the empire da Mar by commanders-in-chief and syndics, proveditors-general were appointed only infrequently. In the winter of 1600-1, when troop movements in the Milanese appeared to herald a Spanish attack, letters from rectors became suddenly doleful about the real state of their troops and drew belated attention to defects in fortifications. This negligence, the Senate declared, was due to twelve years having passed without the appointment of a Proveditor-General in Terraferma, and Leonardo Donato was elected to stimulate reform and repair while proveditors were rushed to the border cities of Brescia and Crema. Another proveditor-general, Benetto Moro, was appointed in 1606 to coordinate the elaborate defence programme which accompanied the 'Sarpi crisis' of that and the following year, again with subordinate proveditors to assist him. However, throughout the peace years a conscientious stream of inform274

Government: policy, control and administration ation about garrisons and fortifications arrived in Venice from rectors. There were numerous complaints that they were extravagant or careless with public money or that they accepted honours in their own, rather than the republic's name, but there were none about the performance of their duty to report on troops, attend their exercises and paydays and settle quarrels between them and civilians. There was a tolerable harmony, too, in the sharing with local authorities of jurisdiction over the galiot and arquebus militias and the scolari of the gunnery scuole, all of whom came under rectorial control only when called up for training periods or active service; it is not improbable that the local loyalties contracted through the rectorial system did much to damp down resentment felt in the Terraferma at having to support the burden of fortifications, a standing army and the militias. The rectors had the advantage of having a buffer between them and the source of the chief grievance among rural administrations, the expense and frequent overbearingness of the cavalry: the continuing institution of the collateral-general and his subordinates. These men were anomalies; not really part of the army but not quite civil servants, at ease with the men (though not all vice-collaterals had been soldiers) but answerable to local camere and, ultimately, to the Senate. The most notable of Cinquecento collaterals-general was the Vicentine noble and soldier Francesco da Porto. He was appointed in 1532 from a strong field of applicants including members of other traditionally military families of the Terraferma, De la Torre, Colalto, Di Pii, Pompei, Brandolini. Other candidates (all professional soldiers) came from Brescia, Verona (two) and Padua (two), and two, Arborsani and Obizi, were nonpatricians from Venice itself. One candidate was from the famous Cypriot military family of Podacataro. Only one was not a Venetian subject, Carlo Malatesta, and only one had already served as a vice-collateral.76 It must have been in the Senate's mind that the Da Porto clan had not always been conspicuous for loyalty, and were worth binding to the state; Sanuto recorded with satisfaction the arrival of Francesco with members of his family and other Vicentines to thank the doge for the appointment 'and pledge his endeavours and his life to this most excellent state'.77 The post carried a salary of 480 ducats a year in peace and 720 in war, with tasse for the maintenance of eight horses and a house in Verona, though Francesco dealt with much of the position's routine business from his home at Thiene, north of Vicenza, an impressive combination of farm, castle and villa. Landowner, clan member, ex-soldier, indeed, cavaliere, Francesco da Porto (backed by a secretary who kept his books) proved a more than adequate expression of 76 77

Sanuto, lvi, 274-5 ( 2 4 May 1532). Ibid., lvi, 277 (25 May 1532).

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Part II: what Venice wanted: someone respected by the professional command and acceptable to his peers in the Terraferma, and who could be worked hard and confidently by the government. Though his chief responsibility was to keep detailed records of the men-at-arms, deal with their complaints and petitions, and put all new regulations concerning them into effect,78 he was also expected to attend general musters of the militia and, at his discretion, infantry garrison pay days. In 1550 his function was defined as including a complete oversight of the republic's military preparedness, and the collateral-generalship was ranked immediately after the governorgeneralship.79 Forced by ill health to petition for an assistant in 1554,80 he died in the same year. To compare the administration of the War of Gradisca with that of the campaigns that followed Agnadello is to see almost in the lineaments of caricature the persistence of old methods in the hands of old men. The only significant change was the unprecedented use of patrician commissaries to oversee the provisioning and supply of an army concentrated, for the first time in Venetian experience, in one unfertile area for years at a time. The decision to use Palma as a base camp and supply centre to support any hostilities that might occur on the border towards the Isonzo coincided, in September 1615, with the death in office of its proveditor, Zuan Sagredo. His successor, Francesco Erizzo, was appointed as proveditor-general, with the full legal (including capital punishment) powers of a proveditor-general in campoy and authority (with the consent of the Lieutenant of Friuli) to levy militiamen and summon any supplies and pioneers the fortress might require.81 In November the proveditor appointed for Marano was asked to pass on any evidence of hostile developments in Istria.82 In December proveditors were appointed for Cadore and Monfalcone, and Pietro Barbarigo was elected Proveditor-General in Terraferma with special responsibility for Friuli.83 Immediately under him in authority was to be Andrea Paruta, appointed commissioner of provisions and paymaster with the army (commissario sopra i viveri della soldatesca et pagador in campo) in

January 1616. Paruta was empowered to call for transport and supplies from the Terraferma as a whole, and was to keep strict accounts of all goods and monies received and disbursed and strike regular balances 'so that all I am grateful to Conte Gian Giacomo di Thiene for letting me see the four volumes of records relating to his collateral-generalship. ST. reg. 35, 182 (26 Jan.). Archivio Thiene, vol. 'A', writing 'in questa mia senile e ultima etta' on 12 Oct., 507-8. ST. reg. 85, 123V (18 Sept.), 128V (26 Sept.), 130V-131 (27 Sept.). SM. reg. 73, 128-128V (28 Nov.). SS. reg. 105, 233-4 (10 Dec), 242-3V (18 Dec). 276

Government: policy, control and administration proceeds with suitable methodicalness \ 84 Also under Barbarigo was Camillo Trevisan, proveditor of Albanian and Croat horse.85 As proveditor-general and the commissioner became progressively swamped with work while the army built up, the Senate rejected in May86 a proposal to appoint two proveditors in campo to assist Barbarigo. Instead, it was decided, against all precedent, to elect a proveditor-general of the armed forces in the Terraferma and Istria (provveditore generate delle armi in terraferma et Istria) assisted by one proveditor in campo?1 In Istria at this time there were already both a proveditor (a roving commission) and a proveditor-general, Antonio Barbaro, who had just been elected to replace Marco Loredan, fallen sick after holding the office since the previous December.88 So many switches of troops were being made between the two provinces that it was thought necessary to have two new men with a complete oversight of operations from Cadore to Segna. Giovan Battista Foscarini was elected proveditor in campo?9 For the new office of proveditor-general of the armed forces Antonio Priuli was proposed. He had, until December of the previous year, been ProveditorGeneral in Terraferma in succession to Antonio Lando. He was old and in uncertain health. But for a position of such exceptional authority tradition demanded a man so loaded with experience and authority that the chances that he would be both old and frail were very strong. Though he begged to be excused, and produced medical certificates to show why he should be, his colleagues nevertheless elected him and he, like so many senior ambassadors, naval commanders and proved it or s-general in the past, resigned himself to an honour which had about it a strong whiff of the death sentence.90 Later in that month, Barbarigo's request to resign on grounds of health was refused,91 and so was Paruta's, though a patrician paymaster, Giulio Contarini, was appointed to share some of his burden.92 Later in the summer Paruta actually collapsed and was succeeded by Marc'Antonio Michiel, whose responsibility, however, was now restricted to food supplies, the paymastership of the army being entirely trusted to Contarini.93 Barbarigo also had to be replaced, but his successor, Francesco 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93

ST. reg. 85, 217V-218 (29 Dec); SS. reg. 105, 260 (30 Dec), 274-5V (9 Jan. 1616). ST. reg. 85, 248V (20 Jan. 1616), 266 (3 Feb.). SS. reg. 106, 192V-193 (6 May). I b i d . , 193V (6 M a y ) . SM. reg. 74, 34V (6 May), 43 (17 May). S S . r e g . 106, 213-16V (14 M a y ) . ST. reg. 86, 54V-55 (7 May). Ibid., 63 (17 May). Ibid., 74-74V (26 May), 93-93V (18 June). Ibid. (9 Aug.).

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Part II: Erizzo, was appointed only at the level of proveditor in campo.94 Priuli as early as June had complained to the doge that' I find the multiplicity of my responsibilities here [at Mariano] in camp, and the daily correspondence with all the rectors of Friuli and Istria and the Terraferma so overwhelming that I must have more secretarial help'. 95 A few days later he had retired for medical attention and rest to Palma. Foscarini, on whom his responsibilities now fell, wrote to say that he only hoped that he could manage 'with the grace of the Divine Majesty' to continue serving his country. 96 Priuli's health remained so bad that the two proveditors in campo\ usefulness was cut down because they had to stay together to impress the military commanders in councils of war (there being no effective proveditorgeneral), but it was not until January 1617 that he was allowed to return to Venice.97 This was because another elder statesman who had recently been Proveditor-General in Terraferma, Antonio Lando, had been elected in November to take his place but had refused, citing 'thirty years in which I supported the weight of the most important and expensive offices'.98 In the following January, however, he was finally persuaded to go;99 meanwhile Contarini, as the more senior of the proveditors in campo, was appointed his deputy and senior public representative with the army. But Lando's health was bad from the start. In June he wrote pathetically,' I am failing under the burden of the labours and worry of this post . . . I have spent nearly the whole winter in bed, though by the especial grace of God I have been able to exert mind and body when emergencies called for i t . . . but I know that the end of my usefulness is near.' 100 His health finally gave out in August and in September he was succeeded by Pietro Barbarigo (who had already been retired on health grounds from the proveditor-generalship) after his refusal had been twice rejected. His predecessors had had their fate sweetened by a donation of 3000 ducats. It was proposed that Barbarigo should have 4000, a proposal turned down after no fewer than seven votes.101 Under the leadership of Doge Giovanni Bembo, who was 72 when elected in 1615, the old principles of gerontocracy allied to unmercenary public service remained intact. Apart from the appointment of proveditors for Cividale and the frontier zone around Pontebba to assist the Lieutenant of Friuli in guarding the northern frontiers, and, in the higher reaches, replacements for the normal 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101

SS. reg. 107, 68-72V (9 Aug.). Capi, Died, Lettere, Rettori, B a . 299, 20 June 1616. Ibid., 297 bis, 23 June 1616. SS. reg. 108, 26V and 32 (13 Nov. 1616). ST. reg. 86, 242 (16 Nov.). SS. reg. 108, 188-90 (21 Jan. 1617). Prow. Gen. in Terraferma, B a . 56, 28 June 1617. SS. reg. 109, 326 (7 Aug.); reg. n o , 7 seq. (5 Sept.); ST. reg. 87, 141 (11 Aug.), 146V (31 Aug.).

278

Government: policy, control and administration reason (thus Nicolo Contarini replaced Foscarini, who was having difficulty in passing urine, as proveditor in campo)*02 the structure of civilian control remained unchanged since the suppressing of the office of proveditorgeneral with special responsibility for Friuli: decisions lying with the proveditor-general of the armed forces and the two proveditors in campo. Nor were changes made at any time in Istria, though the succession to the proveditor-generaliship there has a familiar ring. When Antonio Barbaro, who had replaced the sick Marco Loredan, was relieved on grounds of his own indisposition, he was succeeded by Matthio Michiel. He died in office.103 His successor, Giacomo Zane, was elected proveditor-general of the fleet before he left for Istria104 and in his place, in August 1617, the Senate reappointed Antonio Barbaro!105 The same emphasis on age and experience at the expense of energy was shown in the appointment of Zuan Giacomo Zane as Proveditor-General in Dalmatia and Albania in succession to Venier, who had retired owing to ill health in December 1615.106 Zane had already held that office before being transferred as ProveditorGeneral in Crete and his argument, less than a year later, when he was grudgingly allowed to be replaced in that post, had been that his health was suffering from five years of unrelieved service abroad. His replacement, Giust'Antonio Belagno, was appointed direct from his current office as proveditor in the fleet.107 On the Terraferma outside Friuli, proveditors were appointed for Lake Garda, for the northern frontier of the Veronese, Vicentino and Bassanese, for Peschiera, Crema, Asola and Orzinovi, each with a company of 50 light horse to enhance his authority. Priuli's successor as Proveditor-General in Terraferma was Geronimo Corner, who had previously held the important offices of Podesta of Brescia and commissary-general (commissario general sopra i viveri delta soldatesca). He was appointed not at general rank, however, though he had the powers over both soldiers and civilians of a proveditor-general, but (in March 1616) as proveditor beyond the Mincio, responsible for the preparedness of fortresses and troops and, later, for the organization of the self-defence programme.108 He was permitted to resign in March 1617, on the production of a formidable list of the duties he had 02

03 04 05 06 07

ST. reg. 86, 184 (10 Sept. 1616); SS. reg. 108, 62V-63V (25 Nov. 1616), 116 (17 Dec), 135-6 (30 Dec). SM. reg. 75, 23V (28 Mar. 1617). SS. reg. 109, 165 (3 June 1617). Ibid., 3 4 3 v - 3 4 7 v (21 Aug.). S S . reg. 105, 217 (27 N o v . 1615), 310V (5 F e b . 1616). S M . r e g . 7 4 , 134V (1 O c t . 1616). S S . r e g . 105, 88V-90 (14 A p r . 1605); r e g . 106, 51V-52V (11 M a r . 1616), 52V (12 M a r . ) , 95V-97V (24 Mar.).

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Part II: conscientiously and exhaustingly carried out,109 but this permission was almost instantly rescinded. When his state of uncertainty was at last resolved, in July, he was to find that instead of being retired, his responsibilities had been doubled; he was appointed Proveditor-General in Terraferma on both sides of the Mincio, with a dignity second only to that of the proveditor-general of the armed forces.110 The employment of professional troops who arrived without arms, plus the lavish provision of equipment to the militia and self-defence forces, placed a heavy strain on the republic's resources. Armourers were sent to Friuli to keep a pool of usable weapons in being, and a repair service started in the Arsenal, but repeated complaints suggest that the weapons of dead soldiers were seldom recovered to be used again. It was to stop this waste and control the issue of arms, that a commissioner of military supplies (commissario in campo sopra le munitioni di guerra) was elected for Friuli in

August 1617.111 As commonly in the wars of this period, it was easier, however, to produce weapons than to get them to the men who needed them. The same was true of the grain, rice, beans, oil, vinegar, salt fish and cheese112 that were needed in the increasingly denuded area of combat. As in the case of military weapons the export of essential foodstuffs was forbidden,113 but the problem of smuggling - indulged in by frontier territories who were nevertheless prepared to defend themselves against their illicit clients - was trivial compared to that of transport. In theory the problem was simple. In emergencies, all the territories of the Terraferma could be called upon to provide carts, drivers and oxen or horses at their own expense.114 But almost nothing frustrated rectors so much as trying to get this traditional obligation honoured. Exhort as they would the stubborn peasants that this was something their ancestors had done gladly, the results were dilatory and inadequate. All the same, it was not until March 1617 that the government recognized the inevitable and hired private contractors.115 Central magistracies in Venice were responsible for receiving demands for supplies, obtaining consent for them via the College from the Senate, and administering their procurement from the relevant local authorities. Thus the proveditors of artillery were responsible for guns, powder and ball, those of biave for grain for bread, those of the Arsenal for building supplies, 09

ST. reg. 86, 6-7 (3 Mar. 1617). ST. reg. 87, 112 (1 July 1617). Ibid., 131-2 (3 Aug.). List in Prow. Gen. in Terraferma, Ba. 239, 20 Jan. 1616. ST. reg. 85, 219 (29 Dec. 1615); SM. reg. 74, 44V (20 May 1616). Printed proclamation of Pietro Barbarigo dated Udine, 5 Jan. 1616. E.g. ST. reg. 86, 53V-54V (6 May 1616); SS. reg. 107, 193V (8 Oct. 1616). SS. reg. 109, 1-2 (1 Mar.). 280

Government: policy, control and administration entrenching tools and the like. By some quirk, the savio alia scrittura of the moment, as well as processing all military contracts, was also responsible for supplying the army with palliasses and blankets. These offices were kept so busy that from December 1615 the two 'executors of the decisions of the Senate' were put in charge of getting supplies, once raised, sent to the front. Within a month, however, 'because of the quantity and diversity of foodstuffs, military equipment, clothing and sums of money and other things that are sent by land and sea', three more executors were appointed together with additional secretarial and accounting staff and a frigate to help organize the dispatch of supply vessels.116 All the supply services, though organized through the College and Senate and headed by patricians, relied - now, as in previous wars - on members of the bureaucracy to service them. Secretaries of the Ten, thanks to the language qualifications demanded of them, were heavily engaged by the College in recruiting expeditions north of the Alps. But then the higher secretariat of both the Ten and Senate had always been so generously staffed as to permit secondment for recruiting and diplomatic errands (indeed, on occasion, long-term diplomatic postings) without maiming the research, copying andfilingservices which enabled patricians (and later historians) to keep abreast of precedent and current business. Where the bureaucracy was weakest was in the recruitment of men who were numerate as well as literate. In peacetime, and - just - in times of crisis and mobilizations, the staffs of such crucially important magistracies as those controlling the Arsenal and the supply of grain could cope. In wartime they were overstretched, their inventories, and especially their book-keeping, falling into progressive disarray. The civilian control of Venetian armies, though most readily told in terms of the governing patrician class, cannot omit this more anonymous element, and in no aspect of military organization was the shortage of trained men more apparent than in the most important of all back-up services: financial accounting and its processing of cash raised through taxation into the pouches of individual soldiers. Proveditors and commissaries could be produced at the punch of an electoral button. The skills of book-keeping and accounting could not. While supplies of arms and food were slow to arrive and insufficient when they did, it was the irregular supply of a third commodity, money, that contributed more to the low morale and exceptionally high desertion rate that characterized the War of Gradisca. Proveditors as well as captains complained. The Senate counter-claimed that enough was being sent but that it was being wasted. The extent of fraud and peculation of course gave 116

S T . reg. 85, 213-213V (28 Dec. 1615), 227V-228V (2 Jan. 1616).

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colour to this. As was easy in such a mongrel army, every time-honoured abuse was used. Captains 'borrowed' men from others to make up their numbers in exchange for a small tip. Able-bodied shirkers hired substitutes to collect their pay for them. There were always, as a result of practices like these, large discrepancies between the records of men paid and those actually present and capable offighting.Typical was the Senate's reference in November 1616 to 'our armed forces, so many fewer when called to fight than they are when they are paid'.117 The real blow fell when at the end of 1616 Giovanni de' Medici found that of 'about 7797' (actually 7737) infantry paid in November, only about 2700 were present in the camp at Mariano. 'This leaves us greatly astonished', the proveditor-general of the army was told; no figures can be entirely trustworthy, but how do you account for 'a discrepancy on this scale?'118 It was in the wake of this discovery that Michiel Foscarini was sent as inquisitor in campo to commence proceedings against 'nobles and other representatives of ours and against army officers' suspected of fraud.119 But in August 1617 things were no better. The orders flowed: men must not be allowed to answer the roll first in one company then another; names, surnames and physical descriptions must be checked, man by man; no captain might pretend that it was the custom in his country to present merely a total and expect it to be honoured; every offender should be hanged and those who informed on them rewarded. The solutions, the Senate told the proveditor of the armed forces in a mood of unreality born from desperation, were to pay only at a general muster of the whole army or to pay everyone at his post on the same day.120 The first solution was impractical on strategic grounds (it would have left most of Friuli defenceless), the second because the paymaster's staff was not big enough. Thus Giulio Contarini's summary of the men and their wages in camp at Mariano in October 1616 looks tidy enough, but in a covering letter he pointed out that because of the shortage of trained book-keepers there was no way 'to cut a path through the confusion which becomes continually worse; it would be wise to send a really experienced accountant like Colini . . . to organize the accounts in a manner that would deliver them from the darkness into which they have fallen'.121 Francesco Colini was sent, but not until September 1617.122 Additional evidence of the extent to which a contributing factor in making the war an expensive stalemate was the shortage of men trained to keep the republic's 117 118 119 120 121 122

SS. reg. 108, 23 (11 Nov.). Ibid., 140 (4 Jan. 1617). Ibid., 209-1 iv (28 Jan. 1617). ST. reg. 87, i 3 7 v (7 Aug. 1617). Prow. Gen. in Terraferma, B a . 55, 1 Nov. enclosing accounts of 30 Oct. 1616. ST. reg. 87, 169V-170 (11 Sept.). 282

Government: policy, control and administration accounts in order was given by Foscarini. In March 1617 he described the illness and subsequent recovery of his accountant, Giacomo Caldoni, with the concern normally reserved for a mistress, and then complained that their work was hampered by lack of a copy of the book-keeping guidelines laid down in the Senate order of 26 May 1528! And by the time that arrives, he added bitterly, I shall have been here for months 'to the utter destruction of my health'. In May he begged for two more accountants, and it was not until the end of June that he announced the completion of a financial survey hampered at every turn by the absence of official stationery, the rapid turnover of public representatives due to age or illness and the shortage of professional assistants.123 Colini, rasonato ducale, was sorely needed in Venice to monitor a system now two centuries old which drew money through the capillaries of village clusters to the venous system of town camere and thence to the main arteries, the magistracies of the mint, the camerey the communal chamberlains (camerlenghi di commuri), naval

equipment {armamento) and many others, and thence, after an intricate juggling with what was earmarked for other things, to what was at present the heart, the army. In spite of the crisp appearance of the general balances of income and expenditure that were occasionally produced they were in any case seldom more than roughly accurate in peacetime; in wartime they were pious guesses. As with troops, an army offigurestravelled at the pace of its slowest officials and accumulated their errors - along with a formidable baggage of exemptions, special privileges and mutual trade-offs. All these complications were reflected in Venice, where cassa borrowed from cassa, had its sources of income from direct taxation changed, got clogged by litigation. While the military proveditors and paymasters begged for men who could keep their accounts in order, the government could ill spare the few men capable of sorting out its own. There was nothing naive about Venetian accounting methods. Allowance must be made for the ability of contemporaries to have the general feel of a fiscal situation which in retrospect appears hopelessly confused. But after centuries of doing without a military budget there was a failure of imagination in the demand of the Senate - as late as June 1617 - for quarterly income and expenditure accounts,124 and there was, cripplingly, a lack of manpower to service nervus belli and make such a budget possible. As a result, it was not that money was not disbursed for the army (though there were occasions when they were given food and wine instead of cash),125 but it flowed intermittently; now grudgingly, now in a rush that encouraged inadequate checking on the part of the few men available to receive and distribute it. 123 p r o v v Gen. in Terraferma, B a . 243, esp. 12 Mar., 23 Apr., 13 May, 30 June 1617. 124 ST. reg. 87, 106 (27 June 1617). And cf. ibid., 169-169V (11 Sept. 1617). 125 E.g. ST. reg. 85, 282V (17 Feb. 1616).

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The higher command 'We have a fine army, but it needs a leader'; a supreme commander 'is as necessary to an army as a soul is to the body V These reflections of 1510 were to be drastically reinterpreted as the century wore on. At that date, however, tradition had also established that armies should be directed, albeit under political supervision, by professional soldiers and that the supreme command should be divided between a captain-general, associated with the numerically superior infantry, and a governor-general, identified with the cavalry. The relationship between the two was not always defined in their contracts, though when it was it was made clear that the governor-general should accept orders from the captain-general. All the same, problems raised by the definition of these commands led Venice to maintain both a captain- and a governor-general very rarely: only in 1509-10, 1513-15 and 1529-30. The events of 1510 show some of the difficulties involved in giving the army a soul. Venice's captain-general, Pitigliano, as a member of a family that was firmly anti-German and had provided Venice with captains for a hundred years (and was to do so for another) was made an honorary patrician on 25 February 1509 by being elected to the Great Council - 'he and his sons and legitimate descendants'.2 But the outcome of Agnadello was not such as to increase the government's confidence, nor was his by now advanced age, and four days after the battle the proveditors-general, referring to the indiscipline and confusion that reigned in the army, referred to him as 'worthless'.3 In May secret negotiations began with Prospero Colonna for an appointment which, whatever its title ('lieutenant-general of men-at-arms', 'lieutenant or captain of the Venetian army'), would effectively whittle down Pitigliano's authority.4 Colonna was convinced that Venice's fortunes were too low to permit a recovery and refused, but not before news of the approach had been picked up by Pitigliano's agents in Venice and leaked widely among his associates, who took it as a vote of no 1 2 3 4

SS. reg. 43, 77V. Sanuto, vii, 702. Ibid., viii, 294. SS. reg. 41, 189V; Priuli, iv, 86-7.

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The higher command confidence in themselves. Their reactions, added to the breakdown in July of another bout of negotiations, this time with Rostaino Cantelmi, Count of Popolo, to fill Alviano's place as governor-general,5 led the government in August to extend Pitigliano's contract.6 His death in January 1510 was not, then, without its advantages. But it meant that both supreme commands were vacant. Pitigliano's deputy, Dionysio di Naldo, captain of infantry, did not carry enough weight to be promoted to either position. Another attempt to engage Cantelmi had foundered7 and there began two sets of parallel but tortuous negotiations. The prime candidate for the captain-generalship had for months been languishing (though not uncomfortably, apart from the bedbugs) in the Council of Ten's least obnoxious prison, the Toresella. As early as March 1509 Venice had tried to woo Gian Francesco Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, from the alliance of Cambrai by offering him what was then the highest military command available, 'lieutenant-general of our state'. In return, Venice would take his own state under its protection and 'save him from the vile and most certain servitude which is threatened at this moment to every Italian ruler'.8 The marquis had refused, and fought against Venice until he was captured in the Polesine in August. It was in April 1510, with Pitigliano dead and the campaigning season about to start again in earnest, that negotiations were reopened. Andrea Gritti wrote from the army that 'no one will take orders from anybody else' and that the marquis would be an ideal leader if his political loyalty could be assured by his handing over his wife, sons and fortresses in pledge to Venice.9 Oscillating between the College and Senate, debate threw up alternative names and the proveditors-general were written to for their opinion. Meanwhile the marquis was visited in prison by deputations from the College and by the doge. His response was favourable. He could not answer for his wife, who he thought was committedly pro-French, but for himself he would be happy to entrust his state to Venice, join the army and cut the French to pieces, make a Sicilian Vespers of them. Doubts having been expressed about all the other candidates, by a fairly close vote on 12 May (101:73:4) it was decided to appoint him.10 But it was only at this point that the choice of a head of state began to reveal its full complication. The marquis was also gonfalonier of the Church. Through his wife he had close 5 6 7 8 9 10

SS. reg. 42, 21-2 and 28; Priuli, iv, 144. SS. reg. 42, 41. Ibid., 56-56V. He had insisted on a contract for life and the restoration of or compensation for any lands of his lost in war. Dieci, Misti, reg. 32, 83 and 84V. Sanuto, x, 165. Ibid., 304-5; SS. reg. 43, 30V.

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personal connections with Ferrara, against which Julius II, loudly calling for Venetian help, declared war. While trying to judge the strength of his commitment, the government even made secret approaches, which were rejected, to the Duke of Termini11 as a possible alternative. The marquis was not formally freed from prison until July; his contract as 'captaingeneral of all forces both horse and foot' was not drafted in its final form until the end of September.12 By October suspicion of his loyalty was stronger than ever. 'We have noticed a pronounced irresolution in the marquis's behaviour', the Senate reported to their orators in Rome, and the proveditors were told to urge him into action.13 In November, when it became known that he had come to an understanding with the French for the protection of his own domains, the government glumly allowed his contract to peter out. Meanwhile - against a common background of intense military and diplomatic activity sustained by the proveditors-general - a search for a successor as governor-general to Alviano (taken prisoner at Agnadello) had been going on; we are assured from all sides, as the Senate wrote to the proveditors-general, 'that if the army had a leader who would foster its interests and honour this would undoubtedly bring victory and immortal honour to you and the whole of our forces'.14 Throughout the spring and summer of 1510 at meeting after meeting names were put forward, voted on irresolutely, withdrawn, discussed with a vigour, at times an acrimony, that led to one adjournment after another - an avogador standing in the entrance to the Senate chamber to exact oaths of secrecy as the members filed out.15 Proceedings were given a sense of urgency by the belief that even were the Marquis of Mantua to befirmlycontracted as captain-general he should not be entrusted with the sole command, and a mood of bitterness because each of the nominees had a backer among ex-proveditors who had known him in the field. Matters were not improved by the College's holding back information, thus enabling its members to sneer at the wrong-headedness of senators, nor by the Senate's clapping a 500-ducat fine on any member of the College who was not prepared to name his own candidate. The nominees were Marc'Antonio Colonna, Janus di Campofregoso, Lucio Malvezzi, Jannes and Prospero Colonna, Zuan Paolo Baglione, Bernardino Fortebraccio and Renzo da Ceri of Anguillara, who had been appointed captain of infantry on 5 August on the death of Dionysio di Naldo.16 Sanuto, x, 621. SS. reg. 43, 130 seq. Ibid., 146V-147. SS. reg. 43, 42. Sanuto, x, 524. SS. reg. 43, 88.

286

The higher command At the end of June the proveditors-general with the army in Padua were asked to canvass the opinion of their senior officers. Fourteen voted, the majority for Malvezzi.17 As he had been previously voted down in the Senate, the proveditors were asked to try again, this time contacting captains who were in the service away from the main body of the army. It was not until 23 July that the decision was reached (and then only on the fourth vote) to offer Malvezzi the restrictingly precise title of governor-general of menat-arms.18 Even so, the decision was not a happy one. Though not an independent ruler like Gonzaga, Malvezzi had property in Bologna and fiefs in the Kingdom of Naples which made him subject to pressure from the papacy and Spain; only a week before, the Council of Ten, which had been conducting security checks on the candidates, had written to the proveditors-general warning them 'to keep all their wits and senses about them' while they kept an eye on Malvezzi's deportment 'so that we here can sleep in peace'.19 By the end of the year, then, Venice had lost a turncoat captain-general and acquired a governor-general who was not only politically suspect but was also visibly succumbing to syphilis. Secret negotiations to override his authority by appointing a governor-general with full powers over both cavalry and infantry were helped in July 1511 by Malvezzi's decision not to take up his contract for a further year on account of his health. Accordingly, from that August Zuan Paolo Baglione was made governor-general20 and, apart from a period in 1512 when he was with difficulty prevented from leaving the army in thefield('which would bring ruin to our forces, engaged as they are at present')21 to settle urgent family affairs in Perugia, his native city, matters went reasonably smoothly until his capture at the battle of Vicenza in October 1513. By this time Venice had had once more, though only forfivemonths, two commanders-in-chief. As a by-product of the alliance with France signed at Blois on 23 March 1513, Alviano was released and recontracted in May, this time as captain-general of foot and horse.22 The return to Venice of this by now almost legendary warrior for the solemn bestowal of the baton and standard of his office produced a surge of optimism. Referring to his Caesarian birth he proclaimed, 'As I was never born, so I shall never die' and he reassured the College by saying that the business of a commander 17 18 19 20 21 22

Sanuto, x, 679-81. SS. reg. 43, 78. Contract of 2 Aug. in Commemoriali, 19, 148V-149. Dieci, Misti, reg. 33, 48V. SS. reg. 44, 42V. New contract, 25 Jan. 1513 (Predelli, vi, 123). Sanuto, xv, 329, 398-400. Predelli, vi, 131. Two years fermo, two rispetto; 325 men-at-arms and 200 mounted crossbowmen; 50,000 ducats per annum.

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was never to join battle unless forced to or with a great superiority of forces.23 Nor, after the doleful events that followed the defeat at Novara and the withdrawal of the army to Padua and Treviso (under Baglione), was there any slackening of confidence in him. This was justified by his recapture of Friuli in the following spring. During the summer of 1515 his letters to the doge from the field, alternating between furious complaints at delays in sending pay and patient and detailed explanations of his strategic moves, expressed a confidence and an independence that were to recur only once more in the relationship between commander and government.24 At Marignano in September Proveditor-General Contarini described him as fighting more bravely than Caesar. But a month later he died. In his funeral oration Andrea Navagero attributed his victories to a valour and singlemindedness that recalled the military devotion of the ancients, and his defeats to the corruption and pusillanimity of his men.25 The Venetian army became once more a mosaic of minor commands bound together by the authority of the proveditors and the organizing assistance of the maestro di campo, Corso di Piacenza.26 Alviano's loss was felt all the more because the officer who normally stood third in the chain of command, the captain of infantry, was still the muchvalued but insubordinate Renzo da Ceri. In 1512 a secret clause had been inserted in his contract absolving him from obedience to Baglione.27 His subsequent antagonism to Alviano became a notorious thorn in the proveditors' flesh. He was among those nominated for the governorgeneralship in January 151428 in succession to Baglione (who had emerged from captivity only to transfer himself to papal service), and in Senate debates about the succession to Alviano his candidacy received some support, but there was general relief when the decision was reached to leave the captain-generalship in suspension and appoint Teodoro Trivulzio as governor-general.29 In spite offlickersof doubt lest the pro-French interests of Trivulzio's family make him less than totally committed to the republic's concerns, the command remained stabilized on these lines until 1523. The problems encountered by Venice since Agnadello reflect the difficulty, at a time when Italian military clans were divided in their allegiance or already engaged by allies, of engaging commanders-in-chief 23 24 25

Sanuto, xvi, 252, 240. Ibid., xx, July and Aug. passim. L. J. Libby, 'Venetian history and political thought after 1509', Studies in the Renaissance, xx (1973) 9-10.

26 27 28 29

Capi di Guerra, Ba. s-v, 2 Feb. 1516 from G. G. Trivulzio. D i e d , Misti, reg. 3 5 , 72V. S S . reg. 4 6 , 41 v; Predelli, vi, 134. S a n u t o , xxi, 4 1 3 - 1 5 , 422; Predelli, vi, 136.

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The higher command with sufficient military experience and political prestige to impress veteran captains, many of whom were territorial magnates in their own right, and with enough loyalty to Venice to put the republic's concerns before their own. They also reinforce the importance and the burden of the office of proveditor-general. Finally, they do much to explain Venice's repeated reengagement, from 1523 until his death in 1538, of a commander-in-chief who became a symbol of sluggishness and hyper-caution, Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino, pede plumbeo.30 The treaty of June 1523 among Venice, the Emperor and the Archduke of Austria for the defence of the Milanese against the French forced the republic to take fresh account of Teodoro Trivulzio's possessions in and around Milan and his family's long association with France. His resignation was procured by mutual agreement, and Venice's decision was shown to be correct when he did not wait till the expiry of the six-month non-combatant period always specified in major contracts before appearing with the French army operating against his former employer.31 Approaches to the Duke of Urbino had begun in June. His contract as governor-general (a status he accepted under protest) was to serve against any ruler except the pope, of whose forces he was a former commander, and was dated 7 September; he was promoted to captain-general on 22 June 1524.32 As a tribute to the leader of the papal army he had been made a hereditary member of the patriciate in 1512 by an unusually large majority of the Great Council: no5:i3:5. 33 He had been considered as a possible successor to Alviano in 1515.34 Since then he had gained the reputation of a man with an unusually wide grasp of military affairs, strong loyalty and a shrinking from risk based on a determination to conserve his employer's manpower if it were at all possible. As a head of state he was capable of dealing with the socially weighty leaders of the allied armies with which Venice was now enmeshed. His avoidance of combat unless absolutely unavoidable, 'because the outcome of battle is always uncertain',35 suited Venice's determination not to lose control of the territories it had regained. Choleric and given to savage outbursts of personal violence, there was no danger of his colleagues interpreting his caution as the result of timidity. With a state vulnerable to political pressure and exposed to military action in Romagna, it is not surprising that he was regarded at times with suspicion. Accepting from the start his need to visit his own territories, the government had Sanuto, xxxv, 127. SS. reg. 50, 29V; Sanuto, xxxiv, 361-2, 398, 446, 453-4. Commemoriali, 20, 181; SS. reg. 50, 78-9. Sanuto, xiv, 81-3. Ibid., xxi, 422. As was the Duke of Ferrara. Ibid., xliii, 677.

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Part II: presented him with an especially built fast cutter in which to ply at need between Venice and Pesaro. In 1527 he was allowed to detach his personal infantry command of 2000 men to guard Urbino while the republic both as favour and, still more, as precaution insisted that his wife and oldest son should come to Venice for 'protection'.36 A frisson of alarm was registered when he overstayed his leave early in 1529, though he justified it by pointing out that' I have domains a good deal larger than the Count of Pitigliano or Signor Bartolomeo (Alviano) had'37 - the only two of his predecessors he deigned to compare himself with. Yet the steady renewal of his contract recognized his chief service to the republic: protecting it from the full military consequences of its diplomatic alignments. Repeatedly he refused to commit the forces Venice had pledged to an alliance in a joint action. The excuses varied: the time was not ripe, the enemy forces had been underestimated, it was necessary to wait for more cavalry or more heavy infantry. His foot-dragging as the Imperial army scorched its way across Tuscany en route to sack Rome in 1527 was largely responsible for the obloquy levelled against him by contemporary historians, Florentines almost to a man. His own explanation was that 'we will do all we can to protect the territories of the Florentines and the pope, but always with the preservation of the Venetian state in mind, which depends on the intactness of our army'.38 No further change in the supreme command occurred until the darkening of the politico-military scene after the sack. In September Janus Maria di Campofregoso was appointed governor in Lombardy only,39 a rank increased, after his repeated urging, to the full governor-generalship in March 1529.40 The captaincy of infantry, which had lapsed since its tenure by Renzo da Ceri, wasfilledin May 1520 by Iacometo da Novello,41 in 1526 by Malatesta Baglione42 and in 1528 by the Count of Caiazzo.43 In return for their services, commanders-in-chief gained the prestige of serving in posts with an international reputation, the republic's promise of protection for their lands and dynasties, and the opportunity to extend patronage to kinsmen and dependants. The cash rewards were not impressive. Alviano's contract of June 1508 required him to provide 200 men-at-arms and 100 horse crossbowmen or other light cavalry, a joint 36

39

Ibid., xlv, 44. Died, Secreta, reg. 2, 17 (a reference I owe to Robert Finley). Sanuto, xlix, 359. Ibid., xliv, 536. SS. reg. 52 (9 Sept.). Commemoriali, 21, 79V seq. SS. reg. 48, 120V. SS. reg. 51, 40V. Sanuto, xlix, 274. There are incomplete lists of commanders-in-chief in BMV. mss. It. VII, 1213 ( = 8656) 111 and Archivio Proprio Pinelli, Ba. 2, no. 24. 290

The higher command annual wage bill of 24,000 ducats. His salary — in a contract for two years fermo and one di rispetto - was 30,000 ducats a year, 'que omnes pecuniae intelligant tarn pro stipendio quam pro honoribus, preheminentiis et dignitatibus gubernatoris', leaving 6000 for the bonus fund, his own entourage and,finally,any net profit. When re-engaged in 1513 with a much larger force he was left with only 5000 — if, as was probably never the case — he passed on the full 100 ducats due to a heavy and the 40 to a light cavalryman.44 Lucio Malvezzi's contract as governor-general of August 151 o named a salary of 23,000 ducats a year, which, after paying the wages of 150 men-at-arms and 50 horse crossbowmen, would have left him with 6000. The draft contract for the Marquis of Mantua in that September named 54,000 ducats; after paying 350 men-at-arms, 100 light cavalry and 200 infantry, he would have been left with 10,200. Zuan Paolo Baglione, governor-general from July 1511, with 200 men-at-arms and 50 light cavalry, was given 3000 for his own use {pro eius plato); as with Alviano the contract was for two years fermo and one di rispetto. In January 1512, having negotiated for 25 more men-at-arms and 50 more light cavalry, he asked for his own provisione to be raised to 6000 ducats; the Senate thought this too much, and compromised at 4ooo45 At the end of the period, Campofregoso's contract would have left him, after paying a force of 200 men-at-arms and 100 horse crossbowmen, also with 4000 ducats. Another source of professional and personal satisfaction to commandersin-chief was that the number and variety of forces named in their contracts as condottieri amounted to something very much like private armies. Within the conventions set by the government, it was they who settled questions of booty and ransom involving their own men, they who were judges of all crimes, civil and criminal, committed by their men amongst themselves that did not come into the category of'outrageous', meaning political, crimes such as treachery, forgery, arson and offences against (influential) civilians. The long-standing convention whereby commanders-in-chief actually handled the cash due to the troops in their personal command was, it is true, modified when the Duke of Urbino's contract as captain-general of all horse and foot was drawn up in June 1524. His men were paid by him, but, thanks to his 'urbanita', they were to be entered on the collaterals' muster and pay lists, a provision which inhibited his ability to short-change the government by keeping 'lances' under strength. In acknowledgement of this, he was left a considerably larger sum for the bonus fund, his entourage and profit: no less than 19,000 ducats after paying 200 men-at-arms (now getting 80 instead of 100 ducats) and 100 horse crossbowmen out of an overall annual 44 45

Commemoriali, 19, 119-20; Predelli, vi, 131. Predelli, vi, 123. 291

Part II: salary of 35,000 ducats. The contract also envisaged his being told to maintain at need 325 men-at-arms and 200 horse crossbowmen; at 50,000 ducats he would, in this case, be left with 16,000 after paying their base wage.46 It would be a mistake to see the relationship between the Venetians and their captains simply in terms of merchants negotiating impersonal contracts with aliens paid to risk their lives for them. Alongside the financial and political issues which caused a continual sense of involvement in the forces of war, there was a feeling of national pride in the conduct of'our men', 'our army'. Despite its cosmopolitan nature the army was looked on as a direct expression of Venetian government. Though enfeoffment47 and honorary membership of the Great Council had become rare, many commands were held by men so familiar from long service that the exploits of their units were discussed in terms similar to those later employed in northern Europe with reference to famous regiments in national armies. But the names and characters of new men, and the size of their commands: these too came to be talked about with partisanship. Beside the cash bond, and coexisting with much suspicion and recrimination, there was an emotional bond between the republic and its fighting men. New commanders-in-chief were greeted in Venice at the Rialto by the doge and rowed down the Grand Canal to the Piazzetta. On routine visits they were entertained in the palaces of the patricians with whom they worked. Commanders repaid hospitality from houses they rented or, on occasion, were given in Venice. These were normally occupied by the agents or secretaries whom all captains holding sizeable commands maintained in the city to protect their financial interests and to intervene on their behalf in the College - to scotch unfavourable rumours or explain unpopular decisions. Usually lawyers, some were ex-soldiers and one, the Duke of Urbino's Giangiacomo Leonardi, was a distinguished military theorist, the author of a widely cited treatise on fortification. The ceremony in the basilica of handing over the silver baton and painted standard of St Mark, symbols of a captain- or governor-general's authority, was made as impressive and public as possible. With respect to the final ceremony associated with commanders, Venice was less generous. The government paid for state funerals (save for those who, like Malvezzi, died under a cloud of distrust) and contributed small sums to tombs for Pitigliano, Leonardo da Prato, ex-governor of light cavalry, and Dionysio di Naldo in SS. Giovanni e 46 47

S S . r e g . 50, 78V-79. Alviano's investment with Pordenone in recognition of his 'virtues, loyalty, valour, extreme faithfulness and outstanding deeds' protected Venice's interests in the military and labour services of his vassals. Commemoriali 19, 120V. So did later gifts to others.

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The higher command Paolo, stressing the roles they had played in the siege of Padua (that touchstone of loyalty) and the 'fidelity' with which they had served.48 The state paid for Alviano's obsequies, and marked the day by closing all the shops as a sign of public mourning,49 but his monument in S. Stefano was not put up by the Senate until 1623. Though contracts with condottieri and infantry captains were usually made through intermediaries - agents or Venetian public representatives the College kept records of previous service, and had the opportunity to meet them in person when they came to Venice to pick up troops, to be briefed, to complain about being misrepresented by proveditors or to seek congratulations and rewards from the doge. This familiarity, shared through the Heads of the Ten with that council and through the savi with the Senate, was regularly supplemented by dispatches from proveditors and letters from commanders-in-chief distributing praise or blame after a particular action. Letters from minor captains addressed to the Ten are particularly rich in protestations of loyalty, denunciations of the poor conduct of colleagues and accounts of inter-unit feuds and squabbles.50 The degree to which files and formal meetings could engender a strong sense of commitment to individuals was shown in 1513 when the returning Proveditor-General Capello bitterly complained that 'there is not a condottiere in the army who does not have a protector in the College'.51 It would be ingenuous to suggest that there was a widespread return of this sense of commitment among the subordinate captains Venice engaged in wartime. Some were engaged for reasons most unlikely to engender a sense of loyalty: to prevent them from joining the enemy, to foment discord in their native cities, to have ' a representative of the house of Sforza'52 as a purely political move, or 'a famous military leader'53 as a matter of mere kudos. Yet the record of outright treachery or actual desertion is so remarkably thin as to explain (apart from his being a Venetian subject) the thunderous sense of outrage that greeted the Veronese Paolo Luzasco's crossing to the enemy in 1528. His assassin or captor was to receive 2000 gold ducats plus a pension of 500 ducats for life; in addition he could ask for the pardon of any two outlaws, however horrific their crimes had been; were Died, Misti, reg. 35, 70V. Also: Luigi da Porto, Lettere storiche, ed. B. Bressan (Florence, 1857), 169; Sanuto, ix, 496, 499, 502, xii, 114, xv, 90, xix, 331; SS. reg. 44, 7V and 21. Sanuto, xxi, 275-6. Capi, Dieci, Lettere di Genti d'Armi, 307 and 308. This correspondence reflects the very small role played by the Ten in the conduct of strictly military affairs. Sanuto, xvi, 25. For another example, Sanuto, xxiv, m - 1 3 (24 Mar. 1517). SS. reg. 41, 175-175V (bastard sons of Galeazzo), 11 and 14 May, 1509. Ibid., 144 (Fracasso da Sanseverino), 17 Feb. 1509.

293

Part II: he a soldier, he would be given a command of foot or horse, according to the nature of his own profession.54 And it explains the sense of freedom with which soldiers wrote to the government offering advice on military or even political55 matters, or justifying their conduct, as when Baldassare Scipione defended himself in 1513 from rumours that he was a drunkard, a fop and a homosexual.56 Mercenaries were, and not only in Italy, used to supervision by civilian representatives of their employers and to their intervention in strategic decisions in the field. With few exceptions, moreover, the background of military knowledge and the temperament of proveditors made their presence with the army, as we have seen, not only tolerable but welcome. With many military colleagues coming themselves from areas liable to be threatened by shifts in the paths of campaigns and changes in alliances, commanders-in-chief had, in any case, to take political factors into account. Thus the initiative in councils of war was normally accepted as lying with the proveditors, and their authority was only very exceptionally in doubt save when money for pay was not forthcoming and indiscipline threatened to make a campaign unworkable. The government distrusted the soldier's ability to see a military situation in the round, that is, to include a vision of damage to Venetian life and property and the risk of alienating Venetian subjects. It was the proveditors' ungrateful task constantly to blunt, blur or postpone the logical use of violence. The composition of councils of war was not specified, nor were rules of precedence established. The proveditors-general invited public representatives whose spheres of authority would be concerned; the captain- or governor-general invited the senior officers he most relied on or thought it would be tactless to exclude. During the campaign against Marano in 1514, for instance, a council called to decide whether the moment had come to take the port by storm comprised the directing officer, Girolamo Savorgnan, the proveditor-general, a representative from the Proveditor-General of Friuli's staff, the Captain of the Gulf and a number of patricians from the fleet and 4 all' the infantry captains.57 Before deciding to withdraw the army to Padua in June 1510, the proveditors-general asked for opinions in writing from eleven condottieri and infantry captains58 whose opinions were all forwarded to Venice to justify the orders the proveditors had given. Later that 54 55 56 57 58

Sanuto, xlvii, 495-6. Ibid., xiv, 589 (Alviano). Ibid., xv, 485. Savorgnan, iii, 26. Sanuto, x, 655-6.

294

The higher command year, in September, the Senate left the decision whether to assault Verona to the two proveditors-general and Renzo da Ceri and Malvezzi.59 The position to be taken up by the army in the days before Agnadello had been the subject of heated debate among Pitigliano and Alviano and the proveditors. Alviano's wish to cross the Adda and strike at Lodi was so much at variance with the captain-general's preference for remaining on the Venetian side of the river that opinions in writing were called for from individual captains.60 In their light, it was agreed on the 30th to cross. The army accordingly moved from Ponte Vico. On 4 May it reached Mozzanica. By now Pitigliano's fear that the French army would slip past them into the inadequately defended Terraferma was shared by all except Alviano. At a council held that day in the captain-general's quarters, attended by the proveditors, the Terraferma condottiere Alvise Avogadro and 'a few' captains, Alviano, roundly out-voted, said on his return from storming out of the meeting, 'Magnificent proveditors, if you want to order me not to cross though having sofinean army, then put it in writing, otherwise cross I will.'61 In this case the quarrel was with his fellow commander-in-chief rather than with the proveditors, who next day put the blame entirely on his shoulders.62 And shortly after his re-engagement in May 1513, he said handsomely to the proveditor-general, Domenico Contarini (whom he had known in 1509 when Capitano of Verona), 'I will do nothing without your knowledge and I am glad to have you with me as proveditor.'63 Yet in October it was his command alone that sent the army into the disastrous rout outside Vicenza, and the proveditors' reports were loud in censure of' a commander who will listen to nobody', 'who consults no one'.64 Alviano laid the blame on cowardly units who had not supported him. A year later, Contarini reported that when Alviano suggested flooding part of the Padovano to incommode the enemy and he had answered that so drastic an action required consultation with the government, the captain-general declared: 'I shall do it, then I shall let them know.'65 Normally relations were smooth, with commanders-in-chief writing to proveditors with the matter-of-fact expectation that they could bring up detached units, choose river crossings and build bridges as competently as fellow officers, and trusting men who commonly deferred to their own 59 60 61 62 63 64 65

SS. reg. 43, 118. Sanuto, viii, 153-4, 172-3. Ibid., 172-3. Ibid., 258. Ibid., xvi, 273. Ibid., xvii, 153. Ibid., xviii, 133.

295

Part II: tactical knowledge. Do not worry, Andrea Gritti wrote to the doge in August, 1509, 'I shall put no plans in execution save with the care, consideration and manner that conduces to the security of your affairs, so I will in no way omit to communicate, consult and discuss with the captain [-general] and with condottieri and [infantry] captains.'66 If Alviano's awkwardness made him exceptional among commanders, Zuan Vitturi proved an exception to the rule that proveditors-general were able to get on well with their professional opposite numbers. On 24 May 1527, after attending a council of war, he wrote a letter to the Duke of Urbino which openly gibed at his plan to hover near Rome in order to rescue the pope. Venice, he wrote, was not prepared to risk an army on such an enterprise. When a copy of this letter was read in Venice 'everyone was stupefied'. Letters were rushed off from the Senate to the effect that Vitturi had acted ultra vires and that the government did wish every effort - short of positively endangering the army - to be made to release the pope. Two proposals on successive days were even made to replace Vitturi as 'of unsound mind'.67 Vitturi, whose acknowledged energy and grasp of soldierly affairs made him almost a career military proveditor, had already caused some degree of scandal during the siege of Marano by openly taking sides with Girolamo Savorgnan against Zuan Paolo Manfroni,68 and his next assignment, as Proveditor-General in Apulia in 1528-9, produced a bitter quarrel with the commanding officer there, Camillo Orsini,69 that contributed to his being summoned to trial in 1530, and to his flight and its sequel: a highly prestigious and purely military career with Ferdinand I of Austria. Senior officers could not, in practice, be brought to book for failures in the field; this was in part the reason why their selection was such an agitating business. Even senatorial reprimands were rare.70 And it was the proveditors who were expected to produce concord and efficiency in thefield71and, accordingly, it was they who were the scapegoats in case of defeat. From Zorzi Corner, whose career was blighted by his absence from Agnadello (though he was suffering agonies from the stone and had been unable to urinate for three days)72 and the remaining proveditors who wereflaileda fortnight later for letting the retreat continue,73 to the prosecution of Angelo Trevisan for losing much of the river fleet on the Po later in 1509, case after 66 67 68

19

2

Priuli, iv, 456. Sanuto, xlv, 201-2, 211, 213, 225. Daniele Barbaro, Storia

veneziana,

ed. T . G a r , AS I., ser. 1, vii, 2 (1843-4)

I0

4^-

Vitale, 'L'impresa di Puglia', 178; Sanuto, Hi, 48-56. Orsini was 'gubernator'. For an example, SS. reg. 44, 85V, to Renzo da Ceri (13 Dec. 1511). Ibid., 86-86v, to Gritti, same day. Sanuto, viii, 226. SS. reg. 41, 194V-195.

296

The higher command case lent alacrity to the willingness with which the middle-aged or elderly descendants of fishermen rode, almost to the manner born, across the battlefields of the Italian mainland alongside their professional colleagues. On 5 May 1532 the Duke of Urbino came to Venice to celebrate the confirmation of the rispetto years of his contract as captain-general.74 Feasted at the Rialto, he was then conveyed in a bucintoro crammed with his employers in gold and crimson damask and black and purple velvet to his lodgings at S. Giorgio Maggiore. Five days later he treated the College to a lengthy address on the current military situation,75 especially with respect to the Turks, who were uppermost in everyone's mind. Their preparations, he said, showed that they would be on the move this year, but it would be a strike against Austria to make good the wound their honour had received when rebuffed at Vienna in 1529. And it would not succeed: the terrain was better suited to infantry, and the Turks relied chiefly on their cavalry. Nor should the Turks be looked on as invincible demigods; they had failed at Vienna, and though they had taken Rhodes in 1522 the siege had taken far longer than with so great an army, led by the sultan himself, it should have done. And they had not yet been tested against a Christian army in the open field. The duke claimed that he would fear nothing from them if he were in command of 10,000 Italians, 10,000 Spaniards and a body of Landsknechts. And in answer to queries about the merits of the national contingents open to Venice to employ, he disposed of any notion that military self-sufficiency might be possible: no more than 10,000 decent infantry could be raised in Italy as a whole. The Spaniards, particularly adept at skirmishing, were comparable with the Italians, but both needed support from Landsknechts: partly because of their greater stature, partly because they gripped the pike nearer the head than did the Italians or Spaniards and thus struck home the harder. The Swiss were valorous and fearless when the date of the battle they were engaged in could be known, but they degenerated when faced by delays. Returning to the Turks, the duke then presented his audience with a careful analysis of Suleiman's defeat of the Mamelukes in 1517. In the unnatural clarity of the description of the battle, aided, it seems, by a diagram (. . . per lafigura scritta), and the comforting nature of the lesson to be learned from it, there was an uncanny anticipation of the staff-college lecture of the future. From Pompey's defeat by Caesar to Pescara's of Francis I, he concluded, two basic conclusions could be drawn. The first was that contingencies apart (which God alone could anticipate) victory 74

75

Sanuto, lv, 569. His contract was renewed from 2 July 1534 for three years fermo and two di rispetto at 50,000 ducats p.a. with 300 men-at-arms and 200 light cavalry. Commemoriali, 21, 138-41. Sanuto, lvi, 171-6. Printed (in revised form) in his posthumous Discorsi militari (Ferrara, 1583).

297

Part II: would go to the commander and officers who had better information about the enemy's numbers and methods than the enemy had of theirs, and who had the better knowledge of the terrain over which they were to fight. The second was that precipitancy in a commander was a fault (he cited Alviano at Agnadello); victory went to him who moved with a well-stocked mind and 'with leaden feet' — and he instanced Prospero Colonna and his own father. No discourse could have been better calculated to please a body of cautious well-informed civilians whose presses were in the process of acquiring a European leadership in the production of books on the art of war.76 Nor, with the need in mind to canalize the energies of the Terraferma aristocracies, would they have been less pleased with another point made by the duke. In spite of the ever growing importance of infantry and firearms (witness the defeat of the Mamelukes) the man-at-arms and the light cavalryman still had an important role to play; to deny this would be to maim an army, which, like a perfect human body, required the orders of the head to be executed by all its limbs. That summer revealed another facet of the transitional character of Venice's commander-in-chief. If in May the duke was the classically minded analyst of the pitched battle, the keeping-abreast enthusiast for infantry, firepower and the latest methods of fortification, the advocate of the studious pause before making a decision, in June he shone in an older and equally congenial element. In that month he held a muster of his own command of men-at-arms and light cavalry stationed west of the Mincio at Ghedi, in the plain south of Brescia. Routine as such an occasion was, even sordid, as its object was to check equipment and horses before handing over a quarter's pay, word had been spread and the occasion was one to appeal to Froissart rather than to Polybius or Machiavelli. As the 470 lances went through their paces at the command of the duke's silver baton (he was splendidly armed on a superb bay charger) they were watched by an audience of over 400 horsemen. Many, including some patrician clerics, had come from Venice, more from the castles and estates of the Bresciano, yet others - the Marchese del Guasto, Luigi Gonzaga and the dispossessed Malatesta signore of Rimini among them - were foreigners drawn to a sight that telescoped nostalgia for the days before 1509 into the present rumble of hoofs and flutter of standards.77 It may not have been what war was like any more but, even if sponsored by a republic, the occasion represented what war could still stand for. The duke was also consulted that year over the republic's fortification 76 77

J . R. Hale, ' P r i n t i n g and the military culture of Renaissance Venice', Medievalia et Humanistica, (1977) 2 1 - 6 2 , and in Storia delta cultura veneta (Neri Pozza, Vicenza) iii, pt 2, 245-88. Sanuto, lvi, 476-82.

298

viii

The higher command plans, especially with regard to Vicenza, the S. Niccolo entrance through the Lido, Verona and Legnago. When asked how urgent were the works under consideration at the last two in May, his reply was less suited to the College's sense of the possible.78 He accused them of dawdling, of planning from day to day, bit by bit, a gate here, a bastion there, compromising any overall plan by the appointment of short-term proveditors each of whom altered the direction of the work. The secret, he said, referring to the plans for his own city of Pesaro, was to agree a plan as a whole and to carry it out as a whole. It was typical of the duke to be as resolute when dealing with bricks and mortar as he was tentative when dealing with an enemy in thefield.But Venice was historically conditioned as well as financially constrained to be tentative about both, and in this respect his advice glided by unnoticed, work continuing at a leaden pace. The duke's fermo ran out in March 1537, on the eve of the Turkish War, and two years' rispetto was confirmed because of'an outstandingly valorous practice of the discipline of war joined to the highest prudence and an immaculate loyalty to us {verso ilstato nostro)\79 By now the duke, at times almost daily with the College, had gained an ascendency in the patriciate's strategic planning that was unprecedented and would never be repeated. In June he was asked to produce his own cavalry, and those of his son Guidobaldo, as part of a general muster - a practice, as the Senate recollected with a somewhat apologetic air, which had been neglected since the pageant at Ghedi in 1532. And it was to facilitate his access to the Ducal Palace that 10,000 ducats were voted by the Senate on 15 September to buy him a house at Sta Fosca ('near the Rio di Noale').80 When serious preparations began for raising 10,000 infantry, half by the duke and half by his son Guidobaldo, for a war fleet in July, his offer to go himself in command of this 'enterprise against the Infidel, without any care for the interests of his own state' was accepted with acclamation.81 But his health was failing. Command in the fleet was entrusted to Valerio and on the Dalmatian mainland to Camillo Orsini. While the duke continued to be consulted, the war was effectively planned and conducted by the Senate and College. And so it was after his death in October 1538. The decision not to appoint a co-ordinating commander-in-chief but to work directly from government to local commanders via proveditors had a political reason: Venice's distrust of its allies of the Holy League and its intention to defuse and localize the war as much as possible. But it was also due to the difficulty 78 79 80

81

F. M. della Rovere, Discorsi militari (Ferrara, 1583) 3. SS. reg. 58, I-IV. Ibid., 57V-58; Predelli, vi, 230. Archivio Proprio Pinelli, B a . 2, no. 24 (1 Dec. 1537), adds that it was 'quella di Giovanni Lippomani'. SM. reg. 24, 48 seq.; SS. reg. 58, 57V-58.

299

Part II: isog-1617 of envisaging anyone who could take the duke's place. Though Guidobaldo had been recontracted in 1539 with an increased personal command, from 50 men-at-arms and 50 light cavalry to 100 of each, plus 10 infantry captains,82 he was offered no higher rank and after the war there was even some hesitation about renewing the contracts of the men who, under the direction of the Senate, had played the most conspicuous part in it. Valerio Orsini's service in Dalmatia and thefleetwas rewarded by an increase in his stipend to 2400 ducats in peace or war, but he was warned that the eight infantry captains the government paid him to retain in case he was called on to produce his quota of 2000 men were to be as subject to cuts as were those hired directly by the Senate. Camillo Orsini was re-engaged at 4000 ducats with 100 men-at-arms (including many of the now leaderless men of the late duke), 100 light cavalry and 10 infantry captains, but after two hung votes the contract went through by an unenthusiastic margin: 153:58:16.83 It is true that his promotion to general rank was subsequently discussed, but in spite of his twenty years of service, he was a representative of clan rather than political loyalty. His cause was not advanced by a letter Valerio wrote to the government in 1542: 'if the Signoria were to give the command to any other condottiere than to Camillo, to whom as a member of my house and my elder I willingly defer . . . at that moment I would consider myself free to dispose of myself in whatever manner I please without incurring the remotest slur on my honour'.84 It was not until 1546 that the Senate, noting that the condition of the permanent army had been steadily worsening in the absence of a commander-in-chief, appointed Giudobaldo not captain- but governorgeneral, and handed over his banner and baton of command after a gorgeous ceremony in St Mark's. The contract, for three years fermo and two di rispetto, followed the traditional formula.85 His personal stipend was 5000 ducats, with 15,000 for the payment of 100 men-at-arms and 100 light cavalry in peace and 25,000 in war, when he was to engage another 200 light cavalry. He could hire and dismiss his own men, but had to report changes to the civil authorities; nor were his men exempt from the ordinary regulations governing musters and pay days. He was only to leave Venetian soil with the government's licence, and his men's leave was restricted to two periods of twenty days. His legal authority over his troops was absolute except in the case of 'atrocious crimes', which would be judged by rectors, as would cases arising between 82 83 84 85

SS. reg. 60, 4 (23 Mar.). SS. reg. 61, 39V and 77V-78 (23 Sept. 1540 and 11 June 1541). Capi, Died, Lettere di Condottieri, Ba. 307, 11 July. SS. reg. 65, 4-4V and 20V-22 (12 Mar. and 17 June 1546). Also in Capi di Guerra, Ba. 2 under Delia Rovere.

300

The higher command troops and civilians. He was not to employ, or in any way favour, rebels or outlaws, and if any were taken in action they, like territorial lords or their sons or nephews, were to be handed over to the government. When ordered, he was to attack anyone regardless of his status, except the pope, and on the termination of his contract neither he nor his men were to fight against Venice until six months had elapsed. It was the familiar formula of the private army subjected to state control. The snag lay in the penultimate clause. Not only were Venice's relations with the papacy bad, but if Paul Ill's nepotistic ambitions were to continue, they were likely to become worse, and Urbino was so situated as to be vulnerable to papal pressure. It was a factor - overruled by the usefulness of Urbino as a source of men (the 'thousands and thousands of experienced soldiers' the duke's agents constantly harped on) - that had delayed his appointment as governor, and which led the Senate in 1550 to turn down his application to be promoted captain-general.86 When, under papal and Imperial pressure, he resigned his commission in 1553 to become captaingeneral of the Church, Venice's impatience was mingled with relief. The problem of replacing him was, all the same, a difficult one. An avid student of his father's unpublished military discourses, his ready identification with the government's military policy, especially with its emphasis on fortification, had made him popular and trusted as a balanced military adviser and administrator: qualities Venice had come to value more than combat experience or flair. The key to all military planning, he wrote in a memorandum to the doge in 1551,87 isfinance.And money must be spent in peacetime: on fortifications, stocks of ammunition and food, contracts which will yield the men you need in war. What is more, in peace you have to protect your state 'from brigandage and unexpected disturbances'. But if you spend too much in peace there will not be enough left for war; a balance must be struck. And what is peace? No prince can rely on it. You are not at war, true, but are you secure? Its threat is so near that you cannot but feel its heat. You are better prepared than most princes because you have not only your own state, but mine. And though you need to secure some Swiss and Germans to stiffen your infantry, Italians are in the main best for you if well led, 'because they will consider that they are fighting in their own cause'. Your 500 men-at-arms, with couched lance and mace, are sound supporters of infantry and, dismounted, useful in siege or defence. You need more of them in wartime, though it must be admitted that the shortage of fine horses, and Naples' refusal to export them, makes this difficult. Moreover, the pay is so poor that the men find it hard to support themselves far from 86 87

Archivio Proprio Pinelli, no. 27, n.p. Capi di Guerra, Ba. 4, from Verona, 12 Oct. 301

Part II: 150Q-1617 their own homes. You also need more light cavalry, so useful in war to scout and raid, as the use made of them by Julius Caesar proves, or to take arquebusiers riding pillion, and in peace 'they keep a state secure from any (internal) danger'. As both sorts of cavalry are hard to come by in wartime they should be built up in peacetime, to numbers he would leave to the discretion of the government. It was advice like this, moderate, lucid and learned, that made him so acceptable to the government. And where could a successor be found whose territories guaranteed so rich a pool of recruits, or who understood so well the police role of a peacetime army? Valerio Orsini had now resigned. Camillo let it be known, through his agent Scipio Porcellaga, that he would like the job, but his lands were small and even more open to papal blackmail. While the government stalled there were proposals to work through general officers of individual units infantry, light cavalry, men-at-arms, artillery - without appointing a commander-in-chief, leaving the supreme command once more in the hands of the Senate. It was not until 1556 that negotiations began in earnest with a man hitherto passed over because of his scant territorial standing. This was Sforza Pallavicino, Marquis of Cortemaggiore in Emilia, a professional soldier since the age of sixteen and a veteran of Imperial campaigns in Piedmont, Germany and Hungary. The rank proposed was only that of captain-general of the infantry. Even that took two years to settle, with Sforza's agent, Annibal Lioni, playing his master's uncertainty about Venice's policy, 'so very different in military matters from that of other states ',88 against the Senate's increasing determination to employ him. It was a precise definition of his authority that Sforza was after, and it was an issue that Venice, when drawing up his draft contracts, had consistently avoided. It was not that he resented political control - that was inevitable; but in a republic, Lioni complained for him, it came from so many directions: Council of Ten, Senate, College, rectors, proveditors, collaterals. How far was he free to deal as he thought best with the infantry of the permanent garrison force? With the additional troops raised, crisis by crisis? With new captains? With the militia, who seemed sofirmlyunder the thumb of the savi of the Terraferma and the local authorities?89 Once employed, Sforza lost no time in agitating for the supreme command, supported - a familiar phenomenon - by patricians who had become enthralled by the prospect of fostering 'their' man: in this case it was Girolamo Grimani and Andrea Badoer. And in the enhanced sense of isolation that an international peace among contestants brings to professed neutrals, Sforza gained from the Peace of Cateau-Cambresis a contract as 88 89

Materie Miste Notabili, Ba. 8, 22 June 1558. SS. reg. 70, 128-^9 (24 Nov. 1557).

302

The higher command governor-general on 14 December 1559, closely modelled on that of Guidobaldo della Rovere,90 save that he was to reside in Venetian territory in a house leased for him in Padua. He accepted it, but, characteristically, it did not satisfy him. What exactly was his authority over garrison governors who had been appointed by the Senate? Why could not he, rather than the rectors, determine the passwords issued to city guards? The problems of definition became all the more acute when the Senate in 1562 appointed Giordano Orsini to the vacant post of captain-general of infantry. After a year of cautious recrimination the Senate found itself forced to issue a code defining the command structure of its forces. Unprecedented, it is worth paraphrasing at some length.91 Legislating for a time when there might again be both a captain- and a governor-general, it firmly placed the latter under the former and both above the general officers (captains-general) of infantry, light cavalry and artillery. When both captain- and governor-general were together the latter's authority was restricted to his particular charge, the men-at-arms, but when he was alone he acted as the captain-general's representative with authority over all arms, though all his orders had to be reported to the captain-general for confirmation. Either could give orders to the men of their subordinate general officers, if the other were absent, copies of these orders being, however, referred to them. Subordinate general officers could hire and dismiss captains who were not engaged directly by the Senate. The Senate undertook to send copies of government decisions to the relevant heads of staff: about men-at-arms to the governor-general, about the militia and infantry to the captain-general of infantry, about light cavalry and artillery to their representative generals. Copies of all orders were to go, besides, to the captain- and governor-general so that they had a complete overview of governmental orders. On the other hand, no military officer of whatever rank, nor any rector or other representative, was to make any change in regulations without the Senate's assent. The code left loopholes which Sforza and Orsini, by now acrimoniously at odds with one another, were quick to point out in letters and during interviews (separately) with the College. Orsini refuted Sforza's claim to discharge his own men, Sforza replying that he had the power to get rid of anyone unsuited to the government's service. Orsini complained that at musters Sforza issued commands directly to the infantry instead of having them relayed through him. Neither was happy about his lack of control over appointments made by the Senate.92 90

91 92

S S . r e g . 7 1 , 128V-129V.

ST. reg. 44, 195-6 (28 Dec. 1563). E.g. Materie Miste Notabili, B a 7, 125 seq. 303

Part II: 1509-161 j The issue about engaging and discharging captains was treated warmly because it affected the system of military - which ran parallel to that of political - patronage. Who gave orders to whom was an issue which emerged more clearly, in terms of prestige, on the parade ground than in battle. In general, the war years, during which proveditors acted as buffers between the professionals and when pay and survival were more important than matters of precedence, raised fewer problems in the command structure than did the years of peace when the army was left more to its own devices. But there was, besides, a deep temperamental difference between the ambitious Orsini, who never sensed the pulse rate of a republic, and Sforza. He was too ambitious and prickly about his 'rights', but he also contained a strong dash of the genuine military reformer and wanted scope to make use of it.93 In Sforza, indeed, Venice had an alerter, less tradition-bound version of Francesco Maria della Rovere, and only his political insubstantiality stopped his promotion to captain-general. When his contract was renewed in 1566 it was still as governor-general.94 His stipend was increased to 7000 ducats. New clauses were introduced promising him compensation for any lands or fiefs he lost in Venetian service, and undertaking to keep him informed of all decisions relating to the army and of the implications for his authority of the arrival of proveditors-general and syndics. But another new clause read:' in the event that we should employ any person under any title to take over all or part of the aforesaid governor's authority over the land army he is free to cancel this contract, though bound not to come against us in arms for a further six months'. With no other candidate in sight, and by now secure of his standing in the patriciate's eyes, Sforza let this one go unchallenged. Sforza's dominating role in peacetime, constantly on the move inspecting garrisons, scuole and militias and advising on fortifications both on the Terraferma and da Mar, frequently called to Venice for discussions with the doge and College, was notably different, as it turned out, from the part he played in the War of 1570-3. Initially he was placed in command of the 11,800-strong floating army that was packed into the fleet in the summer of 1570. He was accorded a full headquarters staff: 48 lanze spezzate, a camp marshal, two sergeant-majors, a paymaster, a provost-marshal with four subordinates, a commissary general, a drum major, a farrier, two surgeons, two physicians and two apothecaries.95 His was the largest single contingent: 3000 infantry; he had 93 94 95

Many of his reports are in the collection Materie Miste Notabili (see their Indice); correspondence in Capi, Dieci, Lettere di Condottieri, Ba. 308. S S . reg. 74, 87V-89V (12 Oct.). SS. reg. 76, 66v (21 Mar.). The medical staff was to be chosen by 'il prior del collegio delli fisici di questa citta'.

304

The higher command offered to secure the raising of 5000, but a sceptical College had cut that figure down and reserved the right to choose captains for it. Its trust in his administrative forethought, however, led on his advice to the calling up of 1500 pioneers96 with a view to makingfieldfortifications or siegeworks if the army were landed, together with 10,000 large baskets, including zerli, the large back panniers of the Veneto, so that crews could help with earthshifting. His request for 200 masons, 50 bricklayers, 25 carpenters, 30 sawyers and 12 smiths was also accepted. In a fleet containing such an unprecedented number of troops it was anticipated that problems of command might arise, problems, too, of temperament and socio-cultural background due to the prolonged and enforced coexistence between the entirely Venetian leadership of the galleys and the non-Venetian leadership of the army. The importance of the military in the fleet had emerged very clearly from the discussions about the naval captain-general Girolamo Zane's commission. The first draft simply said that before any major action was undertaken Zane should consult Sforza, the two fleet proveditors and the commander of the great galleys or, in his absence, the Capitano 'in Colfo'. And this followed the normal procedure for such commissions; they set out the command structure without spelling out the procedure to be adopted if there were a division of opinion between the military and naval (that is, civilian) leadership. This first draft was amended twice to allow for differences of opinion, particular attention being paid to those that might arise between Zane and Sforza, symbols, as it were, of the princeling-condottiere and the patrician-naval styles of life and thought upon whose co-operation Venice's fortunes now depended.97 The final draft provided that in case of a disagreement between them the decision should go to whichever was supported by two out of the proveditors and the commander of the great galleys (or, in the absence of one of these, the Capitano 'in Colfo'). The failure of an amphibious attack on the Turkish fortress at Castelnovo, urged in July by Sforza as a means of stimulating the army's morale while waiting for orders at Corfu, led to some straining of the relations between him and his naval colleagues. In September, when the agonizing decision was taken not to endanger the fleet by attempting to relieve Nicosia even though its fall would thereby be inevitable, Sebastiano Venier reminded Sforza that when early in the year the College had been assured by members of the senior military command that Nicosia was untakable, he, Venier, had demurred. Addressed to the man whose Divided: Friuli (216), Polesine (50), Padovano (200), Trevisano (21), Vicentino (183), Bellunese (25), Feltrino (33), Bassanese (12), Veronese (183), Colognese (25), Bresciano (336), Bergamasco (166), Cremasco (50) (ST. reg. 48, 5v; 13 Apr.). SS. reg. 76, 78-80(15 Apr.). 305

Part II: isog-1617 sponsorship of Giulio Savorgnan's designs for Nicosia had persuaded the government to adopt them, this was provocative and is a reminder that, under strain, in some members of the patriciate a distrust of the alien military professional could still emerge. The decision to withdraw for the winter until more troops could be raised to replace the startling losses caused by disease98 and desertion (leaving only Venier behind in Crete to try and get a relief force to Famagosta) was, however, accepted by a council representing all the allied forces. As reports filtered through to Venice that with Nicosia lost Famagosta was being left in isolation, a chorus of recrimination began. On 4 January 1571, recording that 'from diverse sources we have come to realize the very grave errors, defects and disorders that have occurred in the fleet, much to the disadvantage of our state', the Senate set up a commission of three special Inquisitori sopra le cose delF Armata to conduct a post mortem and

report where the blame lay. They were to have full powers to investigate 'the evil practices, poor management, failings, mistakes and crimes committed by any military or naval authority of ours, sparing nobody'.99 This decision was confirmed by the Great Council, which voted 1229:37:68 in its favour. Because the commission had to wait for evidence from men (even corporals were questioned) who were stationed overseas, its proceedings dragged on throughout the year. These disgraced Zane, who had begged to be relieved of his command because of ill health and had been replaced on 10 December100 by the distant and apparently heroic Venier. And they smeared, if not enduringly damaged, the reputation of Sforza, who, after doing his best to organize Venier's makeshift relief force for Famagosta, had returned to Corfu in November. In April 1571, ill in Zara, where he had been sent in January to advise on the fortifications, though never formally charged with neglect of duty, he was all too aware of the dossier of complaints against him swelling in the inquisitors' hands101 and discharged himself on 27 April of a copious apologia.102 It had little effect. While no move was made to deprive him of his rank as governor-general, his function was, all the same, reduced to little more than that of a part-time consultant on fortifications. On 22 May the title of 'governor of all our infantry in the fleet' was given to the military 98 99 100 101 102

In August so many of Sforza's men had been invalided home that a temporary hospital sheltered by canvas awnings had been set up near SS. Giovanni e Paolo (Collegio, Notatorio, reg. 38,207; 24 Aug.). SM. reg. 39, 269-269V. His commission was not formulated until 3 Feb. 1571 (SS. reg. 77, 58V). E.g. Dieci, Secreta, reg. 9, 164 (30 June). I t was w r i t t e n o n his r e t u r n to Venice. T h e version in C a p i di G u e r r a , B a . ' p ' a p p e n d s a copy of a letter from Querini to his brother-in-law which Sforza cites as representative of the slanders circulating in the capital: it accuses him of being responsible for turning a 'gloriosa impresa' into a 'vergognosa fuga'.

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The higher command governor of Corfu, Paolo Orsini. His commission clearly stated that he was subordinate to Venier, who, with Zane disgraced, was now naval captaingeneral.103 Apart from six captains and fifteen lanze spezzate, Orsini had none of the elaborate staff that had been accorded to Sforza, and though he was to be consulted by the command, he was to have no vote in councils of war;104 this year the floating army was put firmly under naval control. And on land, in Dalmatia, routine troop management was left in the hands of Giulio Savorgnan, and the only large-scale attack - another assault on Castelnovo in the summer of 1572 (also a failure) - was entrusted to the exoutlaw Sciarra Martinengo, military governor of Cattaro. Once again Venice managed the major part of a war without an effective commander-inchief. A dogged decorum had marked the government's restriction of Sforza's functions - given a warning timbre by their being defined by the Ten rather than the Senate105 - to the Dalmatian mainland until the end of the war. By the time the Council of Ten named him in March 1573 as a possible commander once more of the fleet's soldiery he had been officially cleared, and in April he put forward a contingency plan for the defence of Friuli and Dalmatia from Turkish land attacks, commenting aggrievedly that while the doge would be receiving advice from others' more intelligent than I ' ' no one is better informed as to the actual state of affairs'.106 All the same, his application for a renewal of contract in December 1573 as governor-general was passed only with 101 votes in favour as against 55 against and 20 abstentions. The contract, moreover, confirmed the Senate's right to appoint someone over his head, leaving him free, if this occurred, to resign.107 And between 1575 and 1578 the College did consider such a person, the new Duke of Urbino, Francesco Maria II della Rovere, though no agreement could be reached about terms.108 In 1581 Sforza's contract was renewed for another seven years, with the same clause relating to the possibility of the government's making a senior appointment. The voting was, again, unenthusiastic: 132:43:35;109 but up to his death in February 1585 there is no doubt that he retained the confidence of patricians directly concerned with military organization both on the Terraferma and da Mar. His more expensive suggestions (for instance that the standing army should be increased to allow for afieldforce capable of harassing an invasion force SM. reg. 40, 46 and 49 (22 and 26 May). SS. reg. 77, 90 (22 May). Died, Secreta, reg. 10, 45-45V (24 July 1572). SS. reg. 78, n6v (3 Jan.), 187-188V (28 Feb.); Capi, Died, Lettere di Condottieri, Ba. 308, n.p.; Died, Secreta, reg. 10, 104-104V (7 Mar.). SS. reg. 79, 79 (19 Dec. 1573), 90-iv (6 Feb. 1574). Terms are also in Commemoriali, 24, 65-7. Alberi, Relazioni, ser. 2, ii, 322, Matteo Zane; correspondence in Capi di Guerra, Ba. 2. SS. reg. 82, 146V-148. 307

Part II: isog-1617 into withdrawal) were simply filed,110 but his reports on frequent inspections of Venice's whole forces at home and abroad kept the government in reasonable touch with the state of its armed forces and testified to his professional concern that Venice's troops should be no less efficient than those of other states. Among the candidates to replace him was Paolo Giordano Orsini. Then aged 46, he had fought first with the French and then with the Spanish - at Lepanto and with Don John of Austria at the siege of Tunis in 1573. In Spanish service, his agents pointed out, he had held a command of 17,000 infantry with 'a personal guard of 300 arquebusiers, all gentlemen . . . dressed in velvet with silver and gold'. More recently, as governor-general of the papal armies, he had inspected fortifications throughout the States of the Church. Personally he 'is of high spirit, sound judgement and bold in all military affairs . . . extremely energetic, he remains in the saddle from morning until evening while hunting, many times walks on foot for two or three miles [sic], is very powerful in single combats, fighting at the barriers with pike and sword in a manner equalled by few'. What is more, he could raise 3000 infantry and 300 cavalry from his own estates and though on a retainer of 6000 ducats from Spain feels free to resign this if he were to serve Venice.111 Perhaps because of his claim to the highest of all ranks, captain-general, which Venice had now withheld for so long, he was passed over for his almost exact contemporary, Giovanbattista del Monte, a descendant of the condottieri marquises of Monte S. Maria in Umbria. Like Orsini, he had also served in France and with Spain in North Africa. In 1565 he had taken part in the siege of Malta and for sixteen years had fought as a free-lance with the Spanish army in Flanders. In spite of this experience he came cheap, at 4000 ducats as his personal salary, and was prepared by December 1586 to accept the title not of governor-general but simply of captaingeneral of infantry.112 As he, too, was formally in Spanish employ, he had to send an agent to obtain Philip IPs consent, taking up duties early in 1587 which he pursued, with a vigour equal to Sforza's, contract by contract until his death in 1614 — still with the title of captain-general of infantry.113 In 1537-40 and 1570-3 Venice had learned that wars could be fought, or at least not altogether unsuccessfully endured, without a supreme military commander. In 1615, entering a war of its own choosing, and one to be fought on land (though with naval support), it resolved to exploit the lessons 110 111 112 113

Capi, Dieci, Lettere di Condottieri, Ba. 308, n.p., 1579, 'scrittura . . . difesa della terraferma'. Misc. Cod. 1, Storia Veneta, Ba. 142, no. 17. SS. reg. 85, 178V-179. His salary was advanced to 7000 ducats in 1603 (SS. reg. 95, 170-170V).

308

The higher command of Senate and College direction and proveditor execution as never before. Military commanders there had to be: but no supremo. For some years before his death Del Monte had been ill. As his possible successor, Duke Cosimo I of Tuscany's bastard son, Giovanni de' Medici,114 had been engaged without specific rank since 1610 on a retainer of 5000 ducats a year.115 But though required to live in Venetian territory he had spent nearly all the intervening years in Tuscany, partly in the pursuit of a series of love affairs, partly as adviser on fortifications to the grand dukes Ferdinand and Cosimo II; the chief occupation of his secretary in Venice, Cosimo Baroncelli, was to explain away these absences. These, and the fact that for all his previous experience as a soldier in Hungary, Flanders and France he had no territories of his own whence he could extract troops, led the Senate to turn down in July 1615 the request he made, when renegotiating his contract at the expiry of the five years" fermo, to be made captain-general of infantry.116 In spite of interviews with the College, at the conclusion of one of which it was noted that' he left with expressions of great humility, bowing so low that his right knee touched the floor',117 a new contract was not negotiated until January 1616.118 It was for a further five years plus two di rispettoy at 6000 ducats a year and with the responsibility of raising 2000 'foreign' Italian infantry of which 1000 were called for almost at once. But again no rank was specified. It was only in the following November that the Senate, at last convinced of the need for a more formal military command structure, ordered him - still with no specific rank - to take command of the army in Friuli under the proveditor-general of the armed forces and the proveditor in campo.119 This appointment was at once greeted with a request from Luigi d'Este, holder of one of the republic's major stand-by contracts, to withdraw from Venetian service. In 1613 its terms (6000 ducats a year and a liability to produce 3000 infantry ' from his own lands') had specified that he would not have to obey the orders of other military leaders but only those of public representatives, that is, proveditors.120 Attempts to get him to withdraw his resignation began with references to Giovanni's age and experience and appeals to Luigi's noble sense of responsibility to the public good and ended, in July 1617, with a donation of 3000 ducats and the title' governor-general of menat-arms, cuirassiers and all other Italian cavalry' for the duration. In 114

115 116 117 118 119 120

G. S. Picenardi, 'Don Giovanni de' Medici, governatore dell'esercito veneto nel Friuli (1565-1612)', NAV., ser. i, xiii (1907) pt 1, 104-42, pt 2, 94-136. SS. reg. 100, 107 (24 Sept.). SS. reg. 105, I39-I39V (14 July). Esposizioni Principi, reg. 27, 39V-40 (18 July 1615). SS. reg. 105, 275V-276 (9 Jan.). SS. reg. 108, 22V (11 Nov.). SS. reg. 102, 180-180V (22 Feb.).

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councils of war he was to rank immediately after Giovanni de' Medici.121 This promotion was not accompanied by any redefinition of the rank of Francesco Martinengo, whose appointment in April 1616 as captain-general of light cavalry had also specified that he would accept orders only from public representatives,122 and it merely confirmed Ferdinando Scotto as lieutenant of light cavalry without defining his immediate commander. The early stages of the campaign had been directed from November 1615 by the Genoese Pompeo Giustinian. A cultivated veteran of the War of 1570-3 and of Flanders,123 where he had lost a forearm whose artificial replacement gave him the nickname 'iron arm' (braccio di ferro), senior representative of a family who had raised Ligurian and Corsican troops for Venice throughout the century and employed by the republic as governorgeneral in Crete from April 1614,124 he was named 'superintendent-general of all infantry and cavalry'.125 The title implied no more than the overall direction of a strategy determined by public representatives, at that time by the Lieutenant of Friuli and the Proveditor-General of Palma, and as the army filled up with captains and colonels bringing men loyal primarily to themselves, Giustinian's executive authority was progressively diluted. In March 1616, for instance, the decision to call off the siege of Gradisca for the time being was based on advice from him and seven other officers.126 And while individual infantry captains and condottieri were expected by the Senate to obey his command, it was made clear that this was because ' he is the executor of our orders'.127 In May, in order to placate his growing resentment, the Senate offered him the rank of maestro di camp0 generate. If, he replied, this rank actually carried the authority it does among other princes, I would accept it. But as you intend it as a device 'to remove such authority and rank as I possessed at the beginning of this campaign' I must respectfully beg leave to return to my home.128 Shortly afterwards he was killed in action.129 The command structure was, indeed, coming to look increasingly like a mosaic and less like a hierarchy. Horatio Baglione was given the command (though only as superintendent) of infantry who did not arrive under commands of their own.130 Antonio Savorgnan commanded the militia units 121

SS. reg. 109, 278V (17 July). SS. reg. 106, 171-171V (24 Apr.). Pompeo Giustinian, De/Ie guerre di Fiandra libri VI (Antwerp, 1609). 124 SS. reg. 104, 13-13V (12 Apr.). 125 ST. reg. 85, 171 (28 Nov. 1615). 126 p r o v v Gen. in Terraferma, B a. 52, 28 Mar. 1616. 127 SS. reg. 105, 243-4V (18 Dec. 1615). 128 Capi di Guerra, B a . 3 (5 May 1616). 129 Romanin, vii, bk 15, 109. 130 SS. reg. 105, 290-1 (22 Jan. 1616). 122

123

310

The higher command from Friuli.131 The gunners - even when used as musketeers - were under the command of the general of artillery, Ferrante de' Rossi, who took orders only from public representatives.132 It was to rationalize this structure that Giovanni de' Medici had been promoted, but such authority as was in practice accorded him was at once reduced on the arrival with his Dutch reinforcements of John Ernest of Nassau, who refused to accept it. Here we have a large body of well-trained and fit men, the Senate complained in April 1617, who have come thousands of miles at great risk and vast cost and now stand idle 'solely on account of trivial points of honour'.133 Bickering continued until July, when John Ernest threatened to resign, ostensibly because his troops were getting insufficient medical attention.134 Thereafter the two men coexisted largely by keeping out of one another's way. The major complaints of those who wanted a more vigorous prosecution of the war, especially a massed encirclement of and assault on Gradisca - that troops were kept in scattered garrisons over too long a front, and that too much time was spent in idleness135 - arose at least in part from rivalries and uncertainties within the military command. No such uncertainty attended the structure of civilian command. From the appointment of a proveditor-general of the armed forces it was he who was the unchallenged 'capo superiore et principale' over all theatres of war with' the command', as Priuli's commission had it,' in the hands of your sole jurisdiction'. War councils were to comprise him, the two proveditors in campo and the proveditor of Croat and Albanian horse, together with (in May 1616) the following senior officers: Luigi d'Este, Giustinian, Martinengo and De' Rossi and others Priuli might choose to invite. The decisions arising from them, however, were to be made by Priuli and the proveditors in campo only, with at least one of the latter supporting Priuli's viewpoint.136 It was not until Don Giovanni was appointed commander-in-chief that a military leader was granted precedence in councils of war over even simple proveditors. In January 1617 the order of rank was spelled out as: proveditor-general of the armed forces (Lando), Don Giovanni, the two proveditors in campo, the proveditor of horse, the commissary and paymaster (according to their ages), such captains as Lando wished to attend. The final decision, however, still lay with Lando and his two senior associates and, as formerly, the Senate repeated to Lando what it had said to

6

ST. reg. 85, 231 (7 Jan. 1616). SS. reg. 106, 171V-172 (26 Apr. 1616). SS. reg. 109, 97-97V (20 Apr.). Ibid., 305-305V (28 July). E.g. Cozzi, Contarini, 163-4. SS. reg. 106, 193-5V (6 May 1616), 213-16V (14 May).

Part II: 150Q-1617 Priuli: 'the command in the field is in your sole jurisdiction'.137 The military, in fact, advised and executed but it did not decide. It was not a role that came easily to commanders who had not abided by it previously, not to John Ernest, nor to Giovanni de' Medici. By August relations between civilians and senior officers were almost as bad as those between the latter. You must, Lando was told, prevent decisions being taken in the council of war itself. That is solely for you and your colleagues. But afterwards you must make much of the qualities and experience Don Giovanni brings to bear on their execution, being careful to remain as far as you can in his presence when he is passing his orders to other senior officers lest your intention become altered. The exercise of your authority requires much tact. But if you do not exert it' and the present instability, irresolution and weakness of purpose continues, we can see the increase of difficulties and dangers that will lead to the complete break-up of the army'.138 For while the lack of a military leader of unchallenged loyalty, skill and personal following (such as Venice had never had since Francesco Maria della Rovere) led to the civilian field command being given an unprecedented power, that power, being unprecedented (though modelled on naval practice), was sapped by a similarly unprecedented degree of senatorial supervision. From the early Cinquecento, the conduct of war had been progressively pulled back into the ruling group within the patriciate as a whole. And if, like previous wars, that of Gradisca petered out rather than ending in a formal victory, at least it realized the aim that group had set itself. 137 138

SS. reg. 108, 188-90 (21 Jan.). SS. reg. 109, 136-136V (3 Aug.).

312

12

Manpower

(i) FOREIGNERS

Among the many myths of Venice was that of a commercial governing class active at sea but passive, to the point of craven pacificity, on land. The Terraferma had been won by the hired help of mercenaries whose success, as Machiavelli put it, constituted a miracle; the Venetians' subsequent defeat at Agnadello was the result, he claimed, of 'their miserable baseness of spirit, caused by a wretched military system'.1 The allies of Cambrai put it about in 1509 that 'the Venetians would have to return to their original jobs as fishermen, for they were not worthy to rule a state and an empire',2 a gibe echoed in the contemptuous tirade Henry VIII addressed to the Venetian ambassador in 1516: 'Vos estis piscatores.'3 The view was fostered by the Venetians themselves. The bitterness of defeat led Girolamo Priuli to reflect that the Venetians had become better at thinking than acting; emasculated by peace and prosperity they had left the defence of the fatherland to foreigners who had no concern beyond their pay.4 In the flush of victory, with the Terraferma regained in 1517, a party of patricians bragged to the Turks' ambassador (who had compared their military system unfavourably with his own) that 'in the recent cruel war, in which all the monarchs of the world were ranged against us, not one man in this city was killed; all was done with money and at the cost of foreign soldiers' lives'.5 This connivance in projecting a pacific image was later confirmed by the most influential of all contributions to the mature Myth of Venice, Gasparo Contarini's De magistratibus et republic a Venetorum.6 Had Venetian patricians wished to

qualify for army commands (as opposed to naval ones), he pointed out, their prolonged absence from the capital would have led to a division of experience and interest that could have led to faction, even civil war. Dependence on foreign mercenaries was thus the carefully calculated price 1 2 3 4 5 6

His opinions are discussed in Cervelli, Machiavelli, esp. 68-80, 334-5. Priuli, iv, 424. Sanuto, xxii, 163. Priuli, iv, 24. Sanuto, xxv, 72-3. Written 1523-31; published (Venice) in 1543.

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Part II: isog-1617 of political stability. And this view, in support of their stance as peaceful neutrals, was repeated by other Venetians throughout the Cinquecento; the patrician was not militaristic: responsive to his Christian duty to repel the Turk at sea he was nonetheless basically a statesman, a merchant and a patron of Church and learning. When Venice's self-generated image came to be reflected in the work of foreign commentators, they too stressed the pacific nature of the patriciate and their fastidious reliance on mercenaries. This was the view of the Frenchman Bodin7 and the Piedmontese Botero,8 and was expressed by Contarini's English translator Lewes Lewkenor in his question 'what is there that can carrie a greater disproportion with common rules of experience, than that unweaponed men in gownes should with such happiness of successe give direction and law to many mightie and warlike armies? '9 The view has, like other aspects of the Myth, a core of truth. We have seen that as military proveditors in the field, patricians were (in the main) personally brave, and had a remarkable knack of co-operating harmoniously with professional soldiers. As a class, the knowledge they brought to the direction of campaigns was not inferior to that shown by other governments. All the same, in spite of its precocious establishment of a standing army in the fifteenth century10 and of a 20,000-strong militia from the early sixteenth, Venice did depend on mercenaries to constitute by far the greater part of its forces in time of crisis or actual war. But who, how many, and how reliable were they? What part did their availability play not only in war, but in the planning of foreign policy and - through Venice's attitude to the military potential of its own subjects - in the relationship between capital and empire? The defeat at Agnadello and the subsequent flight of some 15,000 of the republic's troops led to an initial challenging of the whole military system of the republic. The permanent core of the army, the patrician diarist Girolamo Priuli sourly noted in June, comprised men who had been drawing their pay and doing very little to earn it for twenty, forty, even eighty years, 'flattered, honoured and rewarded - only to scatter like children or women when put to the test'. As for the rest, 'it should be borne in mind that strangers and foreigners are not so loyal and determined in defending the cities and territories of others as are those who have their own children, wives, country and careers at stake'.11 But this reaction was purely temporary. The successful recovery of the Terraferma by 1517 was a clear 7 8 9 10 11

Six Books of the Commonwealth, tr. M. J. Tooley (Oxford, 1955) 171. Relatione della republica venetiana (Venice, 1605) 48V, 85-6V, 93-93v. Sig. A3. Mallett, 'Venice and its condottieri', and above, 28 seq. Priuli, iv, 54, 42.

3H

Manpower argument against change, and in the intervening years only one debate in the College raised a note of doubt. This was in June 1515, when the wisdom was questioned of trusting ' an army composed of so many nations' against the French, 'who all speak a common tongue'.12 Two predominantly peaceful generations in a land fertile and not overpopulated meant that Venice could not reckon on a poor and restless population eager to take long-term risks for pay - apart, that is, from the frontier valleys in the north and in Friuli. When mobilizing in January 1509, the Senate had recorded that' suitable and experienced foot soldiers' would have to be raised by 'foreign' Italian captains from their own lands 'as we have come to know very clearly that we cannot find men fit for our needs in our own towns and territories in Lombardy \ 13 Such a captain was Dionysio di Naldo, 'a man of great valour', wrote Luigi da Porto, 'though of humble birth, and favoured by the Venetians because of the large number of infantry he and his brother Cardino could bring from Romagna'.14 The argument became all the stronger with much of the Terraferma under foreign occupation. Moreover, the multi-generational military families of the Veneto, Avogadro, Collalto, Martinengo and the like, were cavalrymen. For the infantry, especially for companies of any size, recruiting power and military experience had to be sought elsewhere. Among 'foreign' Italians with professional experience and the ability to bring at least a nucleus of tenants and other fellow countrymen with them, Venetian service attracted captains of infantry from Piedmont to Calabria, from Alessandria and Pavia through Bologna, Siena and Perugia to Naples, from Genoa through Parma across to Faenza and Pesaro. Some were Tuscans, from Prato, Pisa, Pistoia and Cortona, but the greatest number came from the traditional recruiting grounds used by all the Italian major powers, the Marche, Romagna and Umbria. Venice also drew captains and men increasingly as the wars wore on from Corsica, building up among these 'gallant men', as Venice's commander-in-chief the Duke of Urbino described them in 1525,15 father-to-son loyalties as in Dalmatia and Albania. With regard to the Swiss, the most famous of European foot soldiers, Venice was in competition with, and at times blocked by, the cantons' treaty obligations, particularly to France and the papacy. It was not until 1512 that the republic was able to engage more than the odd free-lance company of some 300 men. In that year agents from the twelve confederate cantons and the 'leagues' loosely associated with them brought shopping lists to Venice, 12 13 14 15

Sanuto, xx, 241. SS. reg. 41, 131V. Letterc storiche, 41-2; see also 177. Sanuto, xl, 109.

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varying from Bern's capacity to deliver 20,000 men to the 1000 available from Zug and Basel. It is not clear how many were bought, though the bill, 66,899 ducats, was heavy.16 The next bulk hiring came in 1526 and 1527, when Venice was responsible for paying half of the League of Cognac's 13,000 Swiss. Left to its own initiative, the republic employed fewer thereafter: 700 in 1528, 1930 in 1529.17 The hiring arrangements, thanks to Venetian chancery secretaries in Switzerland and the cantonal agents in Venice, were straightforward. Tactical command was eased by the interpreters who accompanied the troops (paid by Venice at the stiff rate of 20 ducats per pay). Bravery and discipline in action were not questioned. It was the insistence on payment before results, impatience with the Italian method of varying the number of days in each 'month' and insistence on an exaggerated number of dead pays18 that tempered Venetian enthusiasm and made the republic prefer Cisalpine troops. All the same, a connection was established from 1521 with Graubiinden (Grisons) that was to remain a Venetian special relationship north of the Alps for the next hundred years. Graubiinden was not part of the Swiss Confederation and its troops could be hired even when the Confederation was bound by treaty. In 1527 there were 1700 with the Venetian army.19 It is true that they were no less insistent on the notion that a month's pay should be handed over every thirty days than the other Swiss, and were the cause on one occasion, in 1528, of a bloody affray between Grison officers and the Duke of Urbino's staff when pay was not forthcoming,20 but the Grison connection was to rival the Corsican in providing Venice with a steady and conveniently situated source of manpower outside its own dominations. German Landsknechts were also employed at intervals from 1509, always on a non-political basis and somewhat casually, as when an individual captain offered his services, or when, as in 1526, a band of 1000 turned up in Lombardy having sold their equipment, even to their famous pikes, and were delighted to be re-armed and engaged by Venice.21 Their numbers seldom rose above 1000. On a similar basis, regardless of the political stance of the moment, Venice employed wandering companies of French and Spanish troops who had been turned off or had deserted from their own armies or had simply come in search of an occupation. Their quantity could vary from a few individuals to really sizeable contingents: some 6000 16 17 18

19 20 21

Ibid., xiv, 46, 528-9; xv, 444. Ibid., xlvii, 333; 1, 522-3. Ibid., xlii, 523,423. Wages calculated for but not allocated to actual soldiers were known as dead pays; the intention was to create a bonus fund to allocate to outstanding men. Too often it was simply pocketed by the contractor or captain. Ibid., xlv, 240-4. Ibid., xlix, 36-42. Ibid., xlii, 285.

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Manpower French 'adventurers' (venturieri) and 1849 Spaniards in 1517; odd colleagues, but hired as much to keep them out of other armies or from living off the Terraferma as to make up numbers.22 Nor does the Noah's Ark quality (a phrase applied by Sanuto to the enemy army besieging Padua in 1509) stop here. Apart from restless individuals who turned up from as far afield as Flanders, Venice recruited light cavalry captains and men from the buffer areas between its own territories and those directly controlled by the Turks in Dalmatia, employing the Vaivod Cosul Starbach and Count Giovanni of Corbavia, from the hinterlands of Sibenico and Zara,23 and Bot Andreas and the son of Count Bernardino de Frangipani whose chaotic dominions stretched east and north of Segna.24 More important were contracts with successive Sanjaks of Bosnia for supplies of the Croatian light horsemen (Crovati) who were used regularly to supplement the companies of stradiots.25 The attempt to attract 1000 horsemen from Hungary in 1509 seems to have failed, though individuals turned up as volunteers, but detachments from Bohemia arrived - to be praised, in contrast to Italians, as 'valiant men who are content with black bread' - in sufficient numbers for Venice to be charged by the papacy with employing heretics.26 A graver charge was the employment of actual Infidels. Recruitment in Bosnia and Croatia involved traffic with a doctrinal no man's land, a zone where conformity to the faiths either of Christianity or of Mohammedanism was often shallow or uncertain. When captains, however scimitared and turbaned, arrived with the assurance that they and their men were Christians, or converts to Christianity, they were given the benefit of the doubt. It was a different matter when Venice decided to negotiate directly with the sultan. Faced in 1509 by the full implications of the enormous losses to her army caused by capture, desertion and the occupation of the Terraferma, Venice was desperate enough 'to try poison as the last remedy', as Priuli put it, and there were inconclusive discussions in the College and Senate on sounding out the sultan's advisers as to the possibility of hiring Turkish cavalry - a force of 15-20,000 was being mentioned in July.27 As usual, secrecy was imposed, but by August the possibility of a military alliance with the Turks was being discussed publicly, and favourably - even more so when in October, with Venice once more filled with refugees from Ibid., xxiii, 463-4; SS. reg. 44, 31 (16 June 1511). Commemoriali, 20,24 Aug. 1512,2O3v-2i4and 24 Feb. 1513; SS. reg. 48,7 and 1 i2v; reg. 50 (19 Jan. 1524)SS. reg. 41, 139 (30 Jan. 1509). Ibid., 182 (18 May 1509); ST. reg. 18, 56V (22 Jan. 1513). SS. reg. 41, 145 (22 Feb. 1509). Sanuto, viii, 284, 509, 512, 548, 555; Priuli, iv, 187-8.

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the mainland and the city itself feeling isolated from the possibility of relief, debate was intensified, and Priuli summarized the issues underlying it. The Turks were the only source of aid on the scale needed. But once introduced, how were they to be got rid of? Then there was the question of conscience: if the Turks got out of control, as they very well could with their enormous resources, how, with Rome taken and Christianity overwhelmed, would the Venetian face God after death? With the break-up of the Cambrai League still at least a possibility, would not the calling in of the Turk, and the complete destruction of Venice's image as the main defender of Christianity, be as though a man were to cut off his penis to spite his wife?28 In spite of this sobering reflection, it was decided to press negotiations with Constantinople. They continued into the following year,29 becoming little more than a reverberation of the shocking vision of isolation that followed Agnadello. What did happen was that Venice employed small bands of the sultan's Balkan subjects who came as volunteers30 or were enlisted by agents of men like the Count of Corbavia, and whose reception showed what might have happened had Venice imported large numbers through a formal agreement with Constantinople. They were ostracized by their colleagues in camp, accused of every crime from theft to homosexual assault and the conversion of small boys prior to smuggling them out of Venice.31 Prisoners believed to be 'Turks' (though the word was used of residents in lands vaguely known to be under Turkish rule as well as for adherents of the Moslem faith) were killed without being allowed recourse to ransom. Not surprisingly, the ioo-odd 'Turks' serving in 1510 gradually melted away. Such were the expedients whereby Venice supplemented the number of its permanent infantry force on the mainland (about 2000) together with the long-term contracts whereby they could be inflated on a reliable basis (by about a further 6000) with other non-Venetian Italian troops. Between 1509 and the peace settlement at Bologna in 1529 there were only three years (1518-20) in which the republic's commitment to raise troops either for the recovery of its Terraferma or to fulfil treaty obligations to its allies did not mean obtaining a force in excess of 8000. Quite apart from the cost, the administrative effort involved in raising the balance, and the waste, confusion and command problems endemic to Noah's Ark armies helped to steady Venice on the course the republic was to adopt for the rest of its independent existence: the sacrifice of the aspiration to control ports south of the Po and in Apulia; the adoption of a neutralist posture; a more 28 29 30 31

Priuli, iv, 397-8. Sanuto, x, 355. E.g. Dieci, Misti, reg. 35, 64V (28 July 1512). Da Porto, 297; Sanuto, xi, 561. The subject is discussed in P. Preto, Venezia e i Turchi.

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Manpower pertinacious diplomacy which could seed the storm clouds of war before they burst over Venetian territory. The Turkish War of 1537-40 threw little new light on the problems of recruitment. Deeply suspicious of its allies and reluctant to impose a full wartime tax burden on subjects still recovering from demands that had ended less than ten years before, Venice rilled the military quotas it owed to the Holy League grudgingly and incompletely. Altogether some 24,225 new Italian troops, nearly all infantry, were contracted for.32 Though the numbers who actually turned up were, as always, below contractual strength, the pool of recruits was adequate. The only major problem encountered concerned a force of 5000 Landsknechts. They were called for by the league. Moreover, when Venice negotiated for them in April 1538 with Duke Ludwig of Bavaria, they were needed to counter a Turkish threat to Friuli. The contract required their presence in the Terraferma early in May. By the end of that month, when they were still at their recruitment centre, Augsburg, the threat to Friuli seemed to have faded. Venice now wanted to switch them to the fleet. They refused to serve at sea and took their time to consider whether they would even consent to be transported, with arms folded, in order to serve in Dalmatia. Early in June, as Venice determined to dismiss them, the Landsknechts marched towards Friuli, resolved to serve where they had been hired to serve, whether there was an enemy there or not, unless they were given three pays. The Senate hastily called up cavalry units from Padua and Castelfranco and an infantry force that had been raised to serve with the Landsknechts - to stop them at Chiusa. And there, after some chaffering, they settled for one and a half pays and went home.33 Recruiting in Italy had been favoured by three factors, all of which were weakened during the generation that followed the Peace of 1540. The Spanish alliance had meant that troops could be sought not, it is true, in Milan and Naples, where Spain's own recruiters operated, but in the areas within Spanish influence, Tuscany and Liguria. This facility became uncertain with the peace. So did the possibility of recruiting in the States of the Church, especially as papal-Venetian relations worsened. Finally, as long as Francesco Maria della Rovere was Venice's captain-general, one of the richest sources of troops of all, the lands of Urbino, had been at the republic's disposal. On his death in 1538, however, this situation — though prolonged by his successor Guidobaldo II until the end of the war changed. Though Guidobaldo's secretary, as we have seen, emphasized his ability to provide 'thousands of experienced soldiers',34 Venice 32 33 34

SS. and SM. regs. passim; and Bernardo Navagero (above, 227 n. 7). SS. reg. 59, 25 seq.; Collegio, Notatorio, reg. 23, 131; Predelli, vi, 233. Above, 301.

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Part II: feared his vulnerability to Pope Paul Ill's territorial ambitions and postponed until 1546 his promotion to command rank. In 1553 he resigned in order to protect himself by entering papal service and he accepted a Spanish pension. With this record, Venice rejected his renewed advances in 1564.35 The arguments for his engagement he put forward were not, however, a distortion of Venice's position. Both he and his subjects, he explained, would prefer Venetian to Spanish-Austrian service.36 Indeed, at this very minute, prayers were being offered up in all the churches of his duchy that his approaches would be welcomed by the Signoria. That duchy could produce 10,000 infantry, 'the best, most disciplined and obedient that exist in Italy today'. And they could be moved quickly to Venice by sea. Look around, he told Marin Cavalli, who interviewed him in Venice, and where else will you recruit so many troops of this quality? In case of war with the house of Austria its subjects would be forbidden to serve you, including those who as individuals do so now. The pope's subjects obey him, and he does what he is told to by Spain. You have good principal officers but they are men of little importance and a trivial following. What men Sforza Pallavicino could raise would be blocked by their overlord the Duke of Parma, who is in the Spanish camp. Giordano Orsini could only smuggle a few men from his estates in the Marche, if they were prepared to defy the pope. Beyond the Alps? The Swiss mutiny if they are not paid every thirty days and 'it is common knowledge, based on experience, that they sell their employers and their fortresses for cash'. Besides, they are only effective in an open battle that happens to suit their methods. The Grisons - you know how untrustworthy they are. So be advised (he went on), do not force Urbino to close the ring: Mantua, Ferrara, Parma, Florence, Milan and the whole Austrian length of your northern frontier. Keep open the way south! Two years previously, in a eulogy of the Venetians, an eloquent Brescian declared that' no princes or cavalierly however distinguished, scorn to serve them; indeed, they often compete with one another for positions under them'.37 But like the content of most eulogies, this generalized from the past. Though no mobilization to meet a crisis had fully tested its military resources, the patriciate was aware that the general Italian peace settlement of Cateau-Cambresis of 1559 and the shadow of the raised wing of Spanish power over the peninsula as a whole had created a mood of wary control over the market in troops. 35

36 37

Venice did offer a junior command to his son; this was rejected on the grounds of the divided loyalties that might ensue. Collegio, Esposizioni Principi, reg. i, 101-2. Ibid., 97-8. Discorso del magnifico signore Ugoni gentilhuomo Bresciano della dignitd et eccelenza della gran citta di Venetia (Venice, 1562) 13.

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Manpower In 1567, reporting on his term of office as Podesta in Brescia, Francesco Tagliapietra pointed out that 'in the city there are many valorous young men and honourable cavalierly many of whom have served in wars under other princes. They are all most eager to serve Your Serenity and might be more appropriate to this state than foreigners, because in serving their own prince they protect their own goods, liberty, their dear children and their lives. I believe that this would be of the greatest advantage'.38 Venice's condottieri were, in fact, still predominantly subjects of the Terraferma. Of the cavalry captains employed in this period thirteen were Venetian subjects (Avogadro, Brandolini, Capodilista, Capra, Collalto, Martinengo, Pompeo, Porcellaga, Porcia, Da Porto, Sanbonifacio, Savorgnan, Soardi) and seven were from other parts of central and northern Italy (Baglione, Malatesta, Manfroni, Orsini, Pallavicino, Pepoli, Scotto). To judge from names that include place names, their men were divided in about the same proportion. On the other hand, fewer captains of light cavalry and very few infantry captains with contracts of any significance were Venetian subjects. There were two main reasons for this. The more important was the employment in peacetime of captains who could raise additional numbers, possibly very large numbers, at a time of crisis or war. This did not apply to the men-at-arms, where numbers did not vary between peace and war. It applied slightly more to the light cavalry. It applied overwhelmingly to the infantry; the Veneto was not a good source of supply for troops; it was on the whole settled and prosperous enough to make soldiering unattractive. The government, moreover, required a large reserve of manpower for militia, naval and pioneer service. The second reason was that the infantry in peacetime were there as much to guard artillery and munitions and help preserve law and order as to dissuade a formally composed army from invading, and Venice believed that the best policemen were men free from domestic ties. (There was, however, no rule against natives serving in the permanent infantry and many did, though they formed only a small proportion of the whole.) A third may be added. Venice could not afford to be flexible in its contracts because of the tradition whereby loyalty was encouraged by allowing sons and nephews to succeed to the commands of captains, of whatever origins, who had given good service. Though in September 1559 the Senate had to forbid the granting of expectancies to commands unless passed by a majority of the whole College and of threequarters of the Senate,39 along with the granting of pensions to aged servicemen or their families this was part of a calculated but unreviewed

1

C. Pasero (ed.), Relazioni di rettori veneti a Brescia durante il secolo XVI

ST. reg. 47, 42-42V.

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(Toscolano, 1939) 102.

Part II: policy to keep the lines of communication open to recruiting centres outside the Terraferma. By the end of the fifties, however, doubts were felt about the recruiting capacity of the standing force's colonels and captains, and early in 1560 negotiations began to ensure the service, when an emergency justified it, of a regiment of Grisons and another of Swiss from other cantons. By June contracts had been exchanged with Colonel Hercule de Salis (or Salice)40 for the former and with Cavalier Melchior Lusi of Unterwalden for the latter. These were the contracts scorned by the Duke of Urbino. Lusi's granted him 1200 ducats a year and it was his responsibility to ensure that twelve Swiss captains were always ready to raise troops when Venice called for them: 3600 in twelve companies (insegne) of 300.41 These were stand-by contracts, fairly long-term, four years fermo plus two di rispetto, and cheap at the price - which included the scepticism of others besides the Duke of Urbino. Returning from a tour of inspection as Proveditor-General in Terraferma in 1568, Alvise Mocenigo warned the government of the importance of cherishing and training the militia, 'because of the very great difficulty, almost the impossibility of raising infantry in Italy - and, perhaps, out of Italy'.42 The only significant contingents enlisted outside Italy for garrison duty were, in fact, the by now familiar Corsicans. The non-Venetian Italian rankers were those who at any time drifted across frontiers in search of something securer or more interesting than their homes could provide. Their slovenliness and indiscipline were a matter of steady complaint. But these were blinked at. None of the warning signs that in a time of crisis infantry would be hard to find was heeded. No attempt was made to enlist Venetian rural subjects. The republic's posture in the Terraferma was one of command, yet in manner it relied heavily on persuasion. The pool of military talent in the cities was large and potentially valuable. But while Venice wanted men who would be tigers in war it wanted subjects who would be law-abiding lambs in peace. The next wartime test of recruiting came with the Turkish War of 1570-3. Within a month of the government's declaration in March 1570 that a state of war (rather than yet another threat of it) existed, 46 offers to raise between 1000 and 5000 men and 65 to produce between 300 and 500 had been received. Together with individuals volunteering to serve and bring smaller groups, these offers promised (on paper) an army of around 109,000 40 41

42

Predelli, vi, 297. S S . reg. 72, 8 v - g (27 Apr.), 58 (17 J u n e ) . Sources relating to Grisons and Swiss negotiations are calendared in V. Ceresole, La Republique de Venise et les Suisses (Venice, 1864). Misc. Cod., ser. 1, Storia Veneta, 123, i n .

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Manpower men, nearly all infantry. All those seeking contracts were Italians, a minority from the Terraferma, the great majority men who already held, or had held or whose families had held Venetian contracts.43 But after a preliminary sorting out by the College only offers amounting to 11,800 men were thought reliable enough to confirm in order to hurry an armed force into the fleet in April.44 Indeed, though other bids were made and sought during the war the total of new troops raised was only some 62,000 men.45 Apart from Venice's borrowing 2-3,000 Spaniards from Don John of Austria to make up numbers in the fleet that sailed to Lepanto, Corsicans and Savoyards composed the only significant non-Italian element. All Italian contracts were for men 'from outside our own domains', though the government also welcomed individual volunteers from among its own subjects, and stimulated them by offering tax exemptions, the suspension of legal proceedings in which they might be involved, and the suspension (with the probability, if not the promise, of pardon) of sentences of banishment even for grave crimes. Once more, as in 1537-40, thanks to alliance with Spain and the papacy in a war recognized by the Italian states as one to be supported on ideological if not self-interested grounds, recruiters could cast their nets widely. Troops were raised in Liguria and Tuscany, the Mantovano and Ferrarese, Romagna and the Marche and (with grudging Spanish consent) in the Kingdom of Naples and Sicily. The problem was not so much one of numbers but of quality, though these were connected: new troops had constantly to be raised to replace absentees, deserters and those whose inexperience contributed to appalling losses at sea or in the hard conditions of garrison life in Dalmatia. There were ceaseless complaints of companies arriving under strength and consisting of 'abject and useless' men led by captains 'who cannot be trusted to undertake any enterprise'.46 Service in the fleet and overseas was known to involve high casualties, even if these were chiefly from disease. The Turk was still a foe especially fearful: not so much in battle but for a prisoner. Venice raised its rates of pay with this in mind. But the chief contract-holders, however professional, gallant and trustworthy, were forced to employ company captains who were interested only in making a profit and avoiding risk. It is enough to recall the infantry captains in the fleet in the winter of 1570-1 who were asked to volunteer to help break the 43

44 45 46

S T . reg. 48 passim; Collegio, Notatorio, reg. 38 passim; Annali, s.a., 61-4; BCV., ms. Gradenigo 187, 93-93VS M . reg. 39, 149V (4 Apr.). Senate regs. passim. E.g. S M . reg. 40, 6iv and SS. reg. 77, 8iv. 323

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Turkish siege of Famagosta and who all refused 'claiming that they had been engaged to serve in the fleet and not in Cyprus'.47 As for the men, the widely experienced commander Giulio Savorgnan summed up in 1572 his impression of them by asking why Italians enlisted. 'To escape' - he answered himself - ' from being craftsmen, working in a shop; to avoid a criminal sentence; to see new things; to pursue honour (but these last are very few). The rest join in the hope of having enough to live on and a bit over for shoes and some other trifle to make life supportable.'48 He might have added that the eloquence of the recruiters' drums in the previous two years had been aided by the desperation caused by disastrous harvests; some 80% of those who joined up in 1571 had to be completely equipped by the government. If the political lesson of the war was that allies were not to be trusted, logistically it was that even when most of Italy was open to the recruiter the troops garnered were expensive, inexperienced and unreliable. Of course there were exceptions; individuals of experience and courage, whole units which, at least at sea (on galleys whence there was no retreat), showed discipline and daring. But 'foreign' Italy, despite the large numbers of men promised and the smaller, though not unimpressive, number actually recruited, was not a dependable source. Neither was the real foreigner. As Melchior Lusi had been on a stand-by contract since 1560 which was renewed in 1565 and 1571 it may seem strange that the government had not turned to him before and did not ask now for a larger number of troops. The contract of 1571 obliged Lusi to provide up to 6500 men, but on unusually precise conditions.49 Once mustered they were guaranteed three pays, even if dismissed almost at once. Also, 'if they are engaged in battle and, with divine aid, obtain a victory' they were to have an extra pay. If forced to entrench themselves they were to be paid more after two days' digging. In thefield,they were always to be provided with cavalry cover and a protective artillery train. They could be required to go to garrisons overseas but could not be ordered to fight at sea, nor to take part in the conduct of sieges. These conditions made them more or less useless in a naval and amphibious war. When Lusi wrote to congratulate the doge on the victory of Lepanto and offer his services the Senate replied with a polite refusal.50 The engagement of some of his troops in February 1573 merely reflects the government's desperate shortage of oarsmen. After exhausting all other sources, the Senate approached Lusi for 1200 but he would only agree on condition that 47 48

49 50

Above, 235. E . Salaris (ed.), Relazione di Giulio Savorgnan (Venice, 1909). S S . reg. 77, 101-3 (7 J u n e 1571). S S . reg. 78, 58V-59.

a" Osoppo capitano delle milizie venete sulla difesa di Zara

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Manpower he supplied as many troops. Forced to accept, the Senate resignedly allocated them to garrisons in the Terraferma, where they were all the idler because, not speaking Italian, they could not be put on sentinel duty.51 The War of 1570-3, then, reinforced Venice's determination to remain neutral on the basis of a renewed programme of refortification, a larger permanent army (by land and sea) of, in intention, at least, 9-10,000 troops backed by a further 10,000 on stand-by contracts, and a native militia taken more seriously than ever as a breach-filler until the contract troops could be brought in. Never before was foreign policy so closely to reflect the logistical imperative. Though Venice was not involved in another war until 1615, the intervening years were distracted by crises. In 1583 the doge noted that the pope would not allow recruiting in his states. Neither would the Grand Duke of Tuscany. The Duke of Urbino (Guidobaldo II) had been forced to accept a Spanish stipend. 'Thus if an emergency presented itself, we could not be certain of raising a significant number of troops.' And he concluded that on these grounds alone 'it would be wise to stay on terms of amity with all the princes of Christendom . . . and to let this be known to the Turks, so that respecting the Spaniards they will also respect us, and ars deluditur arte\52 In that year, of some 7000 permanent infantry the great majority, 4500, were in garrison overseas to man fortifications and absorb the first shock of any new attack from the Turks.53 This imbalance made the practicality of the contracts designed to raise 10,000 'extraordinary' infantry for the defence of the Terraferma all the more important. And these became less and less trustworthy. Asking for one in 1573 Count Camillo di Correggio had enclosed a testimonial saying that 'the count can be looked on as an absolute ruler, that is, as one having no obligation to recognize the authority of any prince . . . As cavaliere and count he can raise speedily and without reference to any prince, from one to two thousand troops, with supporting cavalary, from among his own people.'54 Twenty years later even Del Monte, when asked about the availability of a force of 3000 infantry, was extremely cautious: ' I will write to various friends of mine who on other occasions have aided me . . . and, if the vigorous prohibitions that obtain, especially in the States of the Church, can be circumvented, one can hope for a measure of success.'55 Yet another scare, in 1599, led to the republic's most bizarre and extravagant attempt to secure an extraordinary force: a 51 52

53 54 55

Ibid., 175V-177, 185-185V, 189V-190; Died, Secreta, reg. 10, ioov; ST. reg. 49, 120 seq. 'Ricordi del doge Nicolo da Ponte per il buon governo della patria in pace ed in guerra', ed. N. Barozzi, Raccolta veneta . . . , i (Venice, 1866) 13-15. Besta, Bilanci, 326-32. Capi di Guerra, B a . A-D, 20 June. Ibid., B a . M, 8 July 1592.

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contract with the Count of Vaudemont, son of Duke Charles IV of Lorraine, to have the title 'general of transalpine troops' and to be prepared to dispatch, six weeks after receiving an advance for their pay, no fewer than 26,000 men: 10,000 French, 4-6000 Swiss, 4-6000 German, and 4000 cavalary (of unspecified origin).56 Together with existing contracts for 6000 Grisons and Lusi's 6500 Swiss, and a further 600 French (through a contract with Francesco Martinengo), Venice was for a few months entitled to call on 30,000 oltramontani. This dramatic attempt to compensate for the shortage of Italians was short-lived: so heavy a commitment did not sit well with Charles' Italian policy and though Vaudemont received his patentes as general, the contract lapsed. It was, however, in 1606, when Venice anticipated that its challenge to papal authority - expressed by the republic's spokesman on religious affairs Paolo Sarpi - would lead to invasion by the Spanish satellites that surrounded the Terraferma, that the most drastic reappraisal of the republic's recruiting pool took place. The notion that 10,000 Italian foreign infantry could be raised through stand-by contracts was treated sceptically. Only 4000 were called for, and they arrived in companies that were under strength and padded with makeweights. In one company the Proveditor-General in Terraferma found 57 Veronese and 12 other Venetian subjects as well as 17 oltramontani 'who don't understand the Italian language'. In another, though its captain, lieutenant, sergeant, two corporals and 24 men were from Modena, others were the usual mixed bag of vagrant labour: men from Graubiinden, France, Germany and the Tyrol, from Milan, Tuscany, the Papal States and Naples, Ferrara, Mantua and Bologna. In addition, 50 out of the strength of 148 came from the Terraferma.57 The moral was clear: the proveditor was sent the unprecedented instruction to investigate the means of raising 6000 native infantry, under captains who were also Venetian subjects, as long as they were not already enrolled in the Terraferma reserves as militiamen, galley crew or gunners.58 That was in September. In November a war council attended by military chiefs of staff came (on balance) to the same conclusion: that the notional stand-by force of'foreign' Italians would have to include men raised from Venice's own domains. Even this measure would leave Venice reliant on oltramontani. The old, dubiously reliable sources of men were repeatedly cited. Grisons and other Swiss; Germans who were not direct subjects of the Habsburgs; French volunteers; subjects of the Duke of Lorraine. In addition, it was suggested for the first time that the crew of the 56 57

58

SS. reg. 92, 171-171V (28 Oct.), 183V-185V (20 Nov.). P r o w . Gen. in Terraferma, B a . 45 (Benetto Moro), 2 June; ASP., Milizie busta 26 (1) - a reference I owe to Peter January. P r o w . Gen. in Terraferma, B a . 45, 27 July, 1 Aug., 29 Sept. And cf. SS. reg. 97, 91V-92, 98.

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Manpower military Noah's Ark should include troops from England and Holland.59 The suggestion gained force from a disillusioned dispatch sent to the doge by the proveditor-general, Benetto Moro, in the following spring. Commenting on a new offer by Martinengo to raise 4000 infantry in France, he noted that 'though this idea of bringing Frenchmen to these borders carries the important consequence that their presence will accelerate the Spanish mobilization, nonetheless the greed of the Grisons, the sluggishness and irresolution of those of Lorraine, and the absence of anything but words as to the enlistment of the Swiss . . . all show me that so as not to be left only with these miserable Italians, it is essential to stiffen them with steadier and more warlike men if we can, no matter from what ultramontane country they come'.60 The crisis of 1606-7 was resolved by diplomacy, without recourse to arms. The republic's painful, wasteful and inadequate mobilization might seem to have underlined, this time finally, not only the wisdom but the necessity of remaining neutral. All the same, there was to be a last rebuttal of the logic of manpower, the War of Gradisca.61 The seriousness of the difficulty emerged at once. Under the 1589 treaty for a supply of up to 6000 troops when called for from the Grisons League, such troops could not be asked to fight at sea, nor' be ordered to assault walls or fortresses', nor to attack Austrian territory.62 Ignoring the treaty, therefore, Venice tried to recruit individual captains on a free-lance basis. Not only was the yield small - only some 750 men managed to trickle through - but they were so mutinous in camp and at the same time so reluctant to fight in the field that attempts to obtain more were suspended in April 1616.63 As for the Swiss, the problem of getting through the sealed border was such that one captain said that the only practicable route was via Savoy to Nice, by sea to Ostia, overland to Ancona and thence by sea to Venice.64 Recruiting efforts (handled, as among the Grisons, by secretaries of the Council of Ten) nevertheless continued; by the end of the war in 1617 some 2500 Grisons and Swiss had been obtained at the expense, apart from their pay, of some 100,000 ducats in subventions, advances for conduct money and equipment, bribes (including gold medals) and the entertainment of their agents.65 59 60 61 62 63

64 65

Prow. Gen. in Terraferma, B a . 45, 6 Nov. Copy in BCV., Ms. Gradenigo 187, 304-19. Prow. Gen. in Terraferma, B a . 46, 27 Mar. 1607. See Wotton's remarks above, 246. For terms, SS. reg. 87, 67V and 69 (9 June 1589), 123V (26 Oct.); reg. 95, 168V-169 (23 Sept. 1603). SS. reg. 106, 217-18; cf. ibid., 177V-178; reg. 107, 203 (15 Oct. 1616). A few more companies were, however, engaged in 1617. Esposizioni Principi, reg. 27, 92-92V (12 Apr. 1616). Ibid., 140 seq. (13 Oct. 1616 seq.); ST. reg. 86, 268 (13 Dec. 1616); SS. reg. 107, 209V-210 (19 Oct. 1616).

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Part II: 150Q-1617 The problem of the sealed frontier operated still more strongly against the engagement of German troops, though approaches either direct or via the ambassador at The Hague led to the acceptance of contracts for 4100 men and a prolonged but inconclusive negotiation with Duke Francis Julius of Saxony for a further 1800. There is no evidence that any of these men turned up. The government also did its best to hire French troops, signing contracts for 8550 (only 600 of whom turned up) and negotiating for a further 3000.66 It was a bizarre situation. Between 1615 and 1617, Venice contracted for 17,100 oltramontane troops. The minimum subvention per man payable to captains on signature was 3 ducats; a total of 51,300. To take account of douceurs, conduct money (8 ducats a head in the case of French infantry) and other expenses, this sum should be at least tripled. Venice is unlikely to have paid much less than a quarter of a million ducats for contracts which yielded the unsatisfactory service of about 3000 men. Almost as soon as the difficulty in getting in oltramontani by land was appreciated, the College began to negotiate for troops from Holland. The cost was high (12 ducats a head for the sea passage) but at least they arrived: by May 1617 - a year from the commencement of negotiations - 3000 were in camp in Friuli, only 950 short of the number contracted for.67 This force, commanded by Count John Ernest of Nassau, included 600 English troops under his second-in-command, Sir John Vere. Attempts by the Venetian ambassador in London to hire more had failed, partly because of King James' uncertain relish for Venice's anti-Habsburg war, partly because the demands of potential entrepreneurs were so high; Richard Preston, Lord Dingwall (in fact a Scot), arrived in Venice in June 1616, for instance, announcing that he would serve only were he given a contract for 6000 men.68 Even before the arrival of the Dutch and English troops problems of command were complicated by the mongrel nature of the army. A typical draft sent to Friuli in November 1616 comprised 251 Corsicans, 54 Germans, 168 Grisons, 290 Swiss and 31 unspecified oltramontani. Another, sent in January 1617, comprised 300 Grisons, 140 Swiss, 300 'Greeks' (probably Turkish subjects), 600 French and 150 'foreign' Italians.69 Faced by the sealed frontier problem (both before and after its partial circumvention by the bringing in of the Dutch by sea) Venice exploited its own subjects to an unprecedented degree. The older devices were reused: 66

67

68

69

Details (9 Feb.-6 Sept. 1616) in SS. reg. 105, 319V-321; reg. 106, 106, 119-20V, 191 v, 196-7V and 234-234.V; ST. reg. 86, 24, 140V, 146-146V, 158V and 165V. Prow. Gen. in Terraferma, B a . 56, 30 May. For negotiations: ST. filza 28 May 1616; Capi di Guerra, B a . s-v (Seghers); SM. reg. 75, 540-55. Calendar of State Papers, Venetian, 1615-1617, 193, 197, 260. He was compensated for Venice's refusal with a gold chain worth 2000 ducats. Prow. Gen. in Terraferma, B a . 55; SS. reg. 108, 148V.

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Manpower the free issuing of arms to local communities who requested them, the suspension of sentences passed on outlaws, the call-up of militiamen for garrison service, the enlistment in the Balkans of Venetian and (now with the active agreement of the sultan) Turkish subjects. The exploratory project of 1606 for a Terraferma 'extraordinary' force of 6000 infantry was now ordered to be implemented. Militiamen and members of the volunteer gunnery scuole in Terraferma cities were conscripted on a larger scale for actual combat than ever before: there were, indeed, moments when members of these bodies constituted no less than a third of the total field force. All the same — leaving aside a small minority who had had military experience outside Italy and served as volunteers — the Venetian subject was better suited by temperament and training for defence or support than for attack. And this was an offensive war. So the republic had, perforce, to put faith again in its contract reserve of' foreign' Italians, even if long years of peace in the peninsula meant that their calibre would be as poor as their economic and social backgrounds. The contract numbers between the preparation for hostilities in September 1615 and their petering out in stalemate (pending a final diplomatic settlement) in September 1617 is known: 13,300. Something is known of the origins of the entrepreneurs (for the day of the contractor who served with his own men was passing) who raised them: about half were Venetian subjects, the rest came from Piedmont, from Crema and Modena, Genoa, Ferrara, the Marches, Bologna and Siena.70 And much is implied about their quality by the waiving of the requirement that serving captains should be men of attested experience and competence while raising of their fee per head for recruits contracted;71 and about their quantity by the withholding of pay unless companies turned up with at least half their contracted strength72 - and by the falling-ofF of contracts accepted after the spring of 1616 - the very moment when the supply of oltramontani was recognized as being insufficient. This was not due (outside Spanish Milan and Naples) to the effect of prohibitions against recruiting but to the fact that both for entrepreneurs and recruits war had become an unfamiliar and an unattractive way of alleviating poverty. The records do not show how many 'foreign' Italians actually served, but the largest figure quoted as being in camp (in April 1616) was 4348,73 well under half the number contracted for by then. Venice's success in obtaining Austria's agreement to treat the raiders of Senj as outlaws rather than unacknowledged allies was due less to the 70 71 72 73

SS. and ST. regs. passim. ST. reg. 85, 181 (4 Dec. 1615), 236V (9 Jan. 1616), 267V (5 Feb.). S T . reg. 87, 9-9V (3 M a r . 1617), 31V-32 (21 M a r . ) , 145V-146 (19 Aug.). Prow. Gen. in Terraferma, Ba. 52 (Pietro Barbarigo).

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Part II: achievements of the republic's army than to the reluctance of other powers to become involved. The unsuccessful involvement in the war of the Mantuan succession in 1629—30 was only undertaken in conjunction with the promise of support from Venice's ally, France, and cannot be seen as yet another defiance of a lesson that had taken so long to learn: that along with other factors the republic's foreign policy had to take account of its limited access to recruits. (ii) VENETIANS

As a class, it was the patricians who organized wars and raised armies: should they not therefore fight in them? In the bitterness of defeat both Sanuto and Priuli harped on the cowardice of their class.74 But Gasparo Contarini's assumption that there were actual laws prohibiting patricians from accepting military commands of any importance75 was based if not on fact at least on common sense; a group which never mustered more than 2500 adult males was too small to add military to its naval, mercantile and political and administrative responsibilities. All the same, if patricians wished to stiffen the morale of their subjects should they not be seen to risk their lives with them, and not just as proveditors? The question nagged because it tapped a vein of conscious political magic which in other countries, compressed into the person of a king, could cure diseases. The Byzantine dignity (in theory) of Venetian electoral procedures, the symbolic connotations of styles and fabrics of costume, of appearing shaven or (in times of personal or national crisis) bearded, the elaborate protocol that stage-managed processions and the reception of embassies: all these had infected a whole class with the belief that at least its elder members shared something of this aura. If the absence of senior patricians from Agnadello, it was held, had contributed to defeat, the presence of the doge's sons at the defence of Padua in September 1509 had been a factor leading to a repulse of the Imperial siege force.76 There was, in addition, some abortive talk in 1509 that henceforward a certain proportion of the younger patriciate should be trained as soldiers.77 When Alviano came to Venice in 1513 a number offered to serve with him as men-at-arms. He accepted only three, and then with the condition that he would let them serve in the field only when he had come to judge their suitability.78 Two years later, Piero Tron put to the College the following 74 75 76 77 78

E.g. Priuli, iv, 24. De magistratibus et Republica Venetorum, Sanuto, ix, 165; Priuli, iv, 469-70. Priuli, iv, 298. Sanuto, xvi, 275.

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179—82.

Manpower proposition: that ioo patricians between the ages of twenty and forty should be elected as men-at-arms to serve under the captain-general's authority and receive 10 ducats per pay. It received no support, but was subsequently discussed on a number of occasions with Alviano, who, while polite, was guarded; he thought that the age limits should be lowered and the proposed number reduced, and that the College should think only in terms of cavalrymen 'alia Borgognona', one fully armed man with an attendant riding a spare horse.79 Taking these points into account, Tron put his motion formally to the Senate on 7 May 1515.80 Its preamble stressed the need to be as militarily efficient by land as by sea. The expense of armies was great, yet 'the soldiers are mercenaries and foreigners, a great part of whom serve in a manner well known to everyone'. Let us then follow the example shown 'by innumerable records concerning ancient republics and other great states' who have cultivated the military virtues. He proposed the election of 50 patricians between the ages of eighteen and thirty to be light cavalrymen with two horses each. So that they would be content to persevere in their new careers when hostilities came to an end, they would be given 10 ducats per pay in peace as well as war and would not be expected to take any government office nor attend meetings of the Great Council. This proposal to create a professional military cadre within the patriciate found no support among the other savi, one of whom protested that 'our ancestors never wanted us to play a military role or to make gentlemen into men-at-arms', and it was resolved to postpone a decision. Tron, this time supported by three others, put his motion again on 27 September, a fortnight after the defeat of the Swiss by the French at Marignano. The military art, he said, is both natural to the nobly born and an example to others. The nobility of other countries have always brought up their sons to arms and the outcome of the recent battle shows that we should follow their example. To begin with, then, let us create a body of only 25 - on the conditions set out in the previous motion. Again, by 131 votes to 75 with no abstentions, it was resolved that the decision should be postponed; sine die, as it turned out,81 though the idea was resurrected informally by Alvise Gritti in 1542.82 Indeed, the episode is chiefly interesting for the light it throws on an element within the younger and poorer patriciate that yearned for an income that would be associated with the military cachet enjoyed by other aristocracies. At least 23 patricians did, in fact, take up arms as a profession on their own initiative. While some were cavalrymen, most served on foot, usually with small commands, though three of them, Marco Gradenigo, Piero 79 80 81 82

I b i d . , xx, 116, 146, 149, 1 5 1 . Ibid., 185-8. Ibid., xxi, 147-9. Disc orso di Alvigi Gritti sopra la sicurezza . . . di Vinetia, ed. S. Ricci (Venice, 1842) 26 seq.

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Part II: 150Q-1617 Sagredo and Hieronimo Diedo, led companies of 150 each,83 and one, Fantino Zen, became a captain of militia in Friuli.84 They were awarded pensions or promotions for brave or faithful service on the same terms and with the same commendatory phrases as were other professional soldiers. When Alessandro Marcello, captain of an infantry company of 300, was shot while scaling the walls of Cremona in 1526, his brothers were awarded 80 ducats a year for the support of themselves and the rest of his family. Zuan Tiepolo was compensated for the loss of an eye with a contract for 300 'foreign' infantry 'to encourage him and others to continue to serve us honestly and trustily \ 85 The evidence of pensions suggests that poverty was a prime motive in adopting a military career. Zen was a bastard as, perhaps, were others. Distinguished as were many of their names, none came from the politically weighty branches of their families, and none re-entered the mainstream of their caste's functions in the city. Yet no disapproval of their eccentric choice of a career was expressed. Their letters from the field were given weight in the College. They resumed their voting rights in the Great Council when on leave. For a few patricians - also from impoverished families - it was election to military office that led to an enduring taste for military life. Alvise Bembo stayed on with the army when his term as proveditor in campo ran out, and his subsequent first-hand experience led to his being appointed proveditor of light cavalry. Andrea Ciuran took up his duties as proveditor of stradiots with such zest that though retaining the title and function from 1510 to his death in Apulia in 1529, his behaviour was indistinguishable from that of any other serving officer, apart, perhaps, from his positive relish for danger whether on horseback, on foot or on the scaling ladder.86 His role was recognized by the unusual title 'proveditor and captain of stradiots'. A comparable career, spanning the defence of Padua in 1509 and the Apulian campaign of 1528-9, was that of Giovanni di Marcantonio Contarini, whose combination of expertise and daring both in land operations and the naval service in which he was more constantly engaged earned him the nickname 'Cazzadiavoli'.87 Between the voluntary military career and the refusal to institutionalize it on the lines suggested by Tron came the employment of patricians on a paramilitary, short-term basis to bolster morale at the key sites in threatened Sanuto, xxviii, 590 and xxiv, 39 (Gradenigo); xlvii, 261 (Sagredo and Diedo). P. M. Giraldi, 'The Zen family (1500-1550): patrician office holders in Renaissance Venice' (unpub. Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1975) 123. Sanuto, xliii, 176-6; ibid., 471 and 1, 535-6. His letters compare favourably with the ardour of Luigi da Porto's. E.g. Sanuto, x, 68-9; xiii, 13, 248-50; xliv, 257-8 (describing 'belle scaramuze'). M. Brunetti, 'II capitano "Cazzadiavoli"', AV., ser. 5, lvi-lvii (1955) 12-54. 332

Manpower cities, at the gates and in the central squares where the rectors' palaces were situated. The idea was first mooted in June 1509, when the Council of Ten resolved that a patrician should be elected to guard each gate at Treviso. They would have 10 ducats a month for themselves and their servants, and each was to command a corporal and 25 soldiers.88 The recapture of Padua led to moves to extend the idea to that city.89 Indeed, within days of a spirited appeal by the doge in the Great Council on 4 September, 186 patricians had arrived in Padua,90 some with horses, some without, most bringing with them from one tofivesoldiers, a few with ten to twenty, one with thirty - over 700 men in all. And the numbers grew until, well before the time Maximilian's siege was lifted on 3 October, the number of patrician volunteers in Padua was estimated at around 300. The experiment was attended by minor setbacks. Many families had sold or lost their weapons and armour generations ago. Priuli ruefully admitted that his own household of 25 could muster only four swords and ten rusty lances, and there were petulant scenes when some of the volunteers refused the rough-and-ready equipment from the Arsenal as unsuited to gentlemen of blood, and forced a reluctant Council of Ten to release some of the precious and historic arms and armour conserved in the Council's private armoury. Some of the wilder young volunteers treated the journey up the Brenta as a looting expedition and subsequently disobeyed orders in a way that, had the proveditors not intervened on behalf of their own class, would have led the captain-general to execute them.91 But on the whole the scheme was voted successful. If the 300 had not proved themselves as soldiers, they had an invigorating effect on the defenders' morale in their role of voluntary hostages. A sluggish response to the call for volunteers in 1510, however, showed that the appeal of patriotism was not in itself a sufficient incentive. The names of the 1509 defenders of Padua were entered on an honour roll by the Chancery: all subsequent names, it was promised, would similarly be enrolled and read out at the next meeting of the Great Council. Moreover, the fact that a patrician had served at Padua or Treviso was to be inserted on the lists of nominees for offices in the expectation that this would give him the edge over less public-spirited men. Finally, it was resolved in July 1510 that volunteers should have their debts to thefiscsuspended for six months so that they could qualify for election to all offices.92 The government would 88 89

90

91 92

Died, Misti, reg. 32, n 6 v (18 June). What follows until the end of the section on patrician gate-guard is almost all taken from Sanuto, passim, and Priuli, iv (including the appendix of dispatches from Andrea Gritti). I cite only the most important references. Names in Sanuto, ix, 145-8, 204-11. They should perhaps be treated with some caution, given the advantage to families to have members of their clans associated with this service. Priuli, iv, 158; Sanuto, ix, 378. M C , Deda, 52V-53.

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Part II: pay the wages of any troops taken. It soon became clear, however, that certainty of obtaining office was for some more important than the payment of expenses. So in August 1511 volunteers who chose to pay for themselves and for five soldiers for two months were promised office first in the Quarantia Civil and then in the Quarantia Criminale93 (both terms of office were for eight months, and the fee was \ ducat per sitting), though only one man was allowed to qualify for these terms from any one branch of a family. These incentives proving insufficient, the College had recourse to nomination, a challenge set the individual to prove his willingness to serve the state. Gate-guard thus became an office, which like others could be refused: among the excuses given being ill health, poverty, a captive brother whose ransom negotiations required the nominee's presence in the city. Nomination did not involve compulsion; it was merely a fairly effective form of blackmail within a government where everything was written down, a caste within which nothing was forgotten. In September and October 1513, the true nadir of Venetian fortunes in these wars, the moral pressure on the patriciate, particularly on its senior members, was stepped up through appeal after appeal by the doge.94 Those who could not, because of their age, health or office, themselves serve, were now urged to send brothers, sons or nephews as substitutes, or to make a cash contribution towards the wages of troops. All offers of substitute as well as personal service were to be entered on the honour roll and read out at the next meetings of both the Great Council and the Senate, and service in either form was to be entered against the names of those competing in elections. The doge's sons were among the first to set the example, Alvise going to Padua with 30 men, Bernardo to Treviso with 34. On 6 November a completed list of those who had offered to serve, or had been asked to serve, was read out in the Great Council.95 It contained the responses from 374 patricians. Of these, 146 were serving in person or through substitute members of their families, 157 had contributed money, 71 had failed to respond with either men or money. Among them the 146 had taken well over 1000 troops, some of them professionals, the others, probably the majority, tenants and servants or volunteers from the city's crafts and scuole. The reading out and recording of names to give encouragement or cause embarrassment (the same was done with patricians who were in arrears with 93

94

95

Ibid., 70. Voting was far from unanimous: 956:356:3. Names in Sanuto, xii, 415-19 (Treviso), 438-40 (Padua), 570-1 (both). Sanuto himself was moved by such an appeal and returned on 2 Dec. 1513 after serving at Padua for 35 days with five men and a horse at his own expense. He lost no time in reporting this to the College (Sanuto, xvii, 245-6, 352). Ibid., xvii, 283; the list itself: 284-302. For the distribution of patricians among the strategic strongpoints of Padua, ibid., xvii, 276-81 (1 Nov.), 399-402 (15 Dec).

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Manpower their taxes) became a standard practice. In 1514 it was decided that anyone who gave 15 ducats (one month's pay for five men) should have the fact endorsed against his name on election lists,96 and those returning from service obtained letters certifying their presence in Padua or Treviso from the rectors, and handed these in to the College as additional evidence of public-spirited behaviour. When patrician gate-guards were revived in the crisis of 1527-8, and extended to Verona, Brescia, Crema and Ravenna, even though expenses were covered and pay tripled to 30 ducats a month, there were no offers. All traces of voluntarism were dropped. The 68 men who served were all nominated subject to heavy fines for refusal.97 The steep falling-off in readiness to serve after the initial shock of the Cambrai war should not be seen in terms of a failure of individual courage. This continued to be shown in the normal course of their duties by military proveditors, rectors in the war zone and naval commanders. However, with the recovery of the Terraferma (and patrician possessions there) and a revived faith in the mercenary system and in the loyalty of subjects, the need for personal service faded into the urgent fascination of everyday political life. Nor did the mood of readiness recur until 1570-1. On the outbreak of the War of 1537-40 there was one voice, that of the savio ai ordini Giovanni Dona, which proposed that Doge Andrea Gritti should command the fleet and the army it contained in person 'out of the greatness of his soul and his compassion for his country'.98 Gate-guard duty was revived. Ten patricians were elected for Zara,fivefor Sebenico and two for Cattaro, but thefinefor refusal had been placed as high as 500 ducats.99 It remained as high in 1570 when the Council of Ten, noting that 'it being of great importance that in wartime the command of the gates of our fortresses be in the hands of persons we can trust with a quiet mind as entirely loyal', called for the election of six patricians for Zara and four each for Sebenico, Trau, Spalato and Cattaro.100 But only in the response to the call for patrician volunteers to serve as soldiers in the fleet101 was there perhaps an echo of the mood of 96 97 98

99 100 101

Ibid., xviii, 239 (1 June). SS. reg. 53, 14-14V. SS. reg. 58, 113-15. Navagero's narrative ('Istoria delle tre guerre', 123-58) shows the Duke of Urbino's influence on the negotiations. SM. reg. 24, 116V-117. They were recalled on 26 Sept. 1538 (ibid., 145). Dieci, Comune, reg. 29, 157V (24 July). The casualty figures for Venice's soldati (1,333 dead, 1,087 wounded) given in Archivio Proprio Pinelli, B a . 1-2, 13V do not distinguish between other troops and patrician volunteers. The captaingeneral of the sea reported on their indiscipline on 11 June 1570 (Annali, 1569-70, 144); casualties among them from disease were referred to on 14 Aug. and 6 Oct. (ibid., 150V, 279). But only the last refers clearly to patricians of standing. The ambassador to Spain claimed on 17 Apr. 1573 that 400 patricians had served in the fleets in 1570-2 (ibid., 1572-3, 251). Enlistment was encouraged by the suspension of any lawsuits pending against them (Collegio, Notatorio, reg. 38, 200V, 223-224).

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Part II: 1509, and their response, if not their performance, was all the more impressive because of the unprecedented number of patricians already serving as naval commanders. No patricians were called for military service other than as proveditors in the War of Gradisca. And it was also in contrast to these later wars that the government in 1509-29 placed a heavy reliance on the service of other sections of the Venetian community. In spite of temporary blockages of trade routes, shortages of commodities and ever rising taxation, there is little indication that hard times forced citizens to adopt soldiering as a career. The 'cittadin veneto' who was killed while storming Cremona in 1527 was, to judge from the compensation offered his father, a professional soldier on whose earnings his family relied.102 But army lists cite few Venetians and none in command of cavalry units or of any infantry companies more than 25 strong. In July 1509 gate and guard duty, however, was begun for citizens as well as patricians, and on similar terms. Two 'most faithful citizens' were sent to guard the castles of Corfu, with 10 ducats a month and each taking 25 soldiers — themselves natives of Venice — at 3 ducats a month. As soon as Padua was recovered six citizens were elected by the College to guard the gates and the Saracinesca outworks with 30 soldiers each; like patrician volunteers, they were licensed to borrow weapons from the Council of Ten's armoury.103 The subsequent appeals for patrician volunteers for Padua and Treviso included citizens on equal terms. They were to get the same pay and take the same number of soldiers; they too were to have their debts suspended for six months and, by having their service officially recorded, gain precedence when competing for posts in the bureaucracy.104 Nor did enrolment on the honour list remain a distinction only for 'citizens' in the technical sense of commercially privileged long-term residents. In October 1513a recruitment proclamation read out in the Piazza of S. Marco and on the steps of the Rial to declared that volunteers for Padua and Treviso, 'citadini e populi', would have their names and service recorded for glorious memory in future generations.105 Every distinction had in any case been broken down in the proclamations of November 1509 and August 1510 calling on all Venetians to join thefleetin the Po to put the territories of the Duke of Ferrara to the sack and to keep whatever loot they could obtain.106 And subsequent proclamations, drawn up either by the College or by individual patricians who were trying to fill 102 103

104 105 106

ST. reg. 34, 213-213V. Dieci, Misti, reg. 32, 112-112V (7 June); SS. reg. 16, 117V (19 July); Dieci, Misti, reg. 32, 124 (10 July), 141 (4 Sept.) M C , Deda, 52V (16 July 1510); Sanuto, xvi, 493 (13 July 1513). Sanuto, xvii, 117. Ibid., ix, 331; xi, 177-8.

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Manpower their quotas, suggest that the 1509 emphasis on 'fidelity' was withdrawn as quantity became the chief criterion; on muster lists the heading 'cittadini' changed to 'populani' and an increasing number of names suggest recent or merely temporary residence in Venice.107 It cropped up again, however, when individual citizens were entrusted with posts of some importance, as when Lodovico Malombra, 'our most faithful citizen', was put in command of the militia of the Trevisano in 1528.108 At intervals between 1509 and 1513 the guilds and scuole were drawn on, but sparingly; they were the source of the precious reserve of manpower for the river and seafleets.On occasion the whole crews of merchant galleys that had just arrived, or were ready to leave, were impressed for service in Padua and Treviso: 1200 men from the Beirut and Alexandria galleys were rushed to Padua in August 1509, for example.109 But this only worked when the crews were already boarded and under the control of their officers. The device of making service in Padua a precondition for enlistment on merchant galleys (normally popular because of the freight- and customsfree merchandise space allowed each crew member) was tried in 1513 but broke down because so few men came forward at the rate offered: 1 ducat for twelve days' service - calculated from the infantrymen's 3 ducats for a 'month' of 36 days.110 The two classes of men to whom the government turned most readily, because their jobs anchored them firmly to the city's fortunes, were seamen (marinari), A.B.S and mates, that is, and the skippers of the small craft that plied around the city and on the lagoon; and the craftsmen — carpenters, caulkers and oar-wrights for the most part — who were full-time workers in the Arsenal. Seamen were not only encouraged to volunteer as individuals but were given commands, usually of ten, but sometimes of twenty and more, men, and were deputed to duty at the gates of Padua and Treviso. A few took no salary and paid the expenses of their men, craftsmen or fellow seamen, but not after 1511; repeated summonses had, as for patricians, rubbed the enchantment from conspicuous patriotism, and because ' they are men who live on their wages' unit leaders were paid 5 ducats a month.111 In March of that year the College proposed a new experiment, passed by both the Senate and the Great Council. Seamen who provided their own arms and were prepared to serve gratis for six months would be put at the top of the application lists for the rent-free housing maintained for charitable purposes by procuracies, scuole and hospitals. Those who served alone 07 08 09

E.g. ibid., xvii, 293 (Cristoforo Zenoese, Zuan Bachi di Candia, Zorzi fradello de Laura griega). Ibid., xlvii, 539. Priuli, iv, 214-15. Sanuto, xvi, 580-1. SS. reg. 44, 45V (4 Aug.). 337

Part II: would qualify for a single-storey house, those who took (and paid for) a companion, for double-storeyed ones. And if they were killed in action, the right, though for ten years instead of for life, would pass to their next of kin.112 Whether there were any takers for this scheme is unrecorded. Probably not; the sense of acute danger faded from this year, and so do references to the military employment of seamen. References to the use of Arsenal workers on the other hand continue until 1525 and 1526, when 200 and 100 respectively were sent to Padua to meet the threat from the Spanish troops marauding through the Polesine.113 They had played an important part in the surprise recapture of Padua in July 1509, and 200 were sent to that city's gates in September. One hundred went to Padua in 1510, 45 in 1513,300 m 1514; 100 were at least proposed for Treviso in 1515; 100 went to the gates of Padua in 1516. Their pay was a ducat for ten days' service, though in 1516 it was specified that they should get what they normally received in the Arsenal.114 Citizens and seamen enrolled on a purely voluntary basis. Arsenalotti also volunteered, though it was the responsibility of the patrons of the Arsenal to see that government quotas were met. Something nearer formal conscription was attempted in July 1509, in response to urgent calls from the proveditors in Padua and Treviso. Lists were made, sestriere by sestriere by two elected patricians and' populani' for each, of able-bodied men who were then ordered to collect arms and prepare themselves for call-up. A selected 2000 were mustered in the Piazza on the 29th. They were given a ducat each and dismissed for the time being to their homes.115 In August some 1800 were ordered to Padua for ten days. In June of the following year 600 were sent, again for ten days at a ducat each. In neither case is it clear how many actually left, let alone arrived. In 1509 Priuli stressed their lack of military experience, their fearfulness, above all their reluctance to leave their habitual livelihoods even for so short a period. In September 1511 the lists were revised and the heads (deputati) of sestrieri told to select 1200 from whom men would be chosen for Padua. There is no record of their going there. In 1513, when there was a last mobilization, they were again held in readiness but not sent.116 Apart from the reasons given by Priuli, the government's irresolute implementation of this scheme is understandable. 112

Sanuto, xviii, I O - I I . Ibid., xxxviii, 231-2; xliii, 221. Ibid., xxii, 342. Though the great majority of the Brescian contingent, both N.C.O.S and men, were raised in the western Terraferma, there was a group of 22 Spaniards, a few recruits from Germany and the Tyrol, a Frenchman, a Greek (from Napoli di Romania) and a few from Mantua, Tuscany, Romagna and Naples (Brescia, Archivio Storico del Comune, Ba. 227, a reference I owe to Peter January). 115 Priuli, iv, 170, 443; Sanuto, viii, 567-8. lie Priuli's opinions: iv, 214, 219; mobilizations: Sanuto, x, 650, xii, 492, xiii, 19, xvii, 174 and 179.

113 114

338

Manpower Thanks to the selective control of immigration, craft unemployment in Venice and the lagoon islands was usually low, and fishing, market gardening and small-boat building kept the coastal communities from having to send their young men off to be soldiers. Venice's local, and perennial, problem was not a restless and roaming proletariat but a shortage of manpower for its fleets. It was, moreover, the very confidence of having established over centuries a uniquely harmonious relationship with the mass of the city's population that made the patriciate hesitate, even with the knife at its throat, to emphasize the discordant note of compulsion. In contrast, war by war, Venice came with decreasing caution to rely on the military service of its mainland subjects. From 1509 to 1529 it fought to regain control of a Terraferma which was still to some extent an unknown quantity. It was not so much that more than a few, in all probability, shared Priuli's opinion that the whole enterprise ashore had been an ill-judged perversion of Venice's true destiny to keep the seaways, trade diligently, govern equably and get richer and richer, or that the costs of fortifications and companies of men-at-arms were greater than the profits from the territories they guarded.117 It was, in spite of generations of public servants who had surveyed its frontiers, governed its cities, scooped up its taxes and bought slices of its farmland, rather the fact that neither the loyalty of its inhabitants nor the number of men it would contribute to the war effort could be more than guessed at. Historically, the Terraferma was a patchwork of conquests and bargains, held together across plains, around lakes and among mountain ranges by the stitchwork of the Venetian administrative system. In 1509 all this was ripped. In retrospect, however, the Cambrai crisis and its aftermath can be seen as a prerequisite for the anomalously independent survival of the Venetian state until the late eighteenth century. Old resentments and animosities could flare and had time to die back to enduringly containable levels. A grudging sense of common advantage emerged which bleached the territorial patchwork to a drabber but more consistent colour. The government's initial reaction was, perforce, to slacken the reins. On 25 May 1509 the Senate offered peasants in the Veronese exemption in perpetuity from the mill tax {dazio della macina) to encourage them to release food stocks to the army. Coming quickly to terms with the reality of defeat, Venice let it be known in June that her subject territories were free to acknowledge what authority they chose. From July followed promises to rural communities of additional exemptions from taxation forfiveyears and the cancellation of state debts,118 and free medical care for those who were 117 118

Priuli, iv, 52-3. Cervelli, Machiavelli, 378.

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Part II:

i$og-i6ij

wounded while fighting for the republic.119 Tax concessions to food producers were renewed in 1512. In the towns on occasion a bullying note was struck, as when the Lieutenant of Friuli threatened the first man to speak of surrender at Udine with death.120 But on the whole the government relied on fair words. The citizens of Vicenza and Verona, both in Imperial hands, were told that it was fully understood that their temporary alienation from Venice was caused more by fear than disloyalty and that all would be forgiven if they would change sides again. In April 1510, however, when horsemen with the Venetian army rode up close against the walls of Verona calling on the citizens to surrender, they were answered: 'And then be hanged, like those of Padua?' The Council of Ten wrote plaintively to the proveditors-general: 'You must point out that when we hanged four Paduans it was for the enormity of their rebellion.' It was a quite exceptional case. Let the Veronese know that all past offences will be forgotten when they return to 'their ancient devotion to our state'.121 It was, indeed, difficult to know where the loyalties of the Terraferma towns did lie. The citizens of Serravalle, while parleying with Venetian forces at one gate, let in Imperial forces at another. When their spokesmen turned up in Venice, however, they claimed that' San Marco had never been absent from their hearts'; and 'the doge welcomed and spoke kindly to them'.122 But it was also unclear to the Terraferma what support it would get from Venice. Debate after debate in the Senate stressed the importance of keeping the army intact and able in the last resort to guard Venice itself, rather than detaching parts of it as garrisons for cities asking for protection. Well before the pitiless sack of Brescia by the French in 1512, the progress of French and German armies had been associated with lurid tales of atrocities. Fear of suffering the fate of Peschiera after its capture by the French in May 1509 had influenced Verona's fall from grace. From that year onwards, Venice strove to convince its ex-subjects that the republic's armies could be guaranteed to liberate and not to terrorize. The proveditors with the army seeking to regain Vicenza in November 1509 were warned that there must be no looting or sacking,' for the outcome of this enterprise will be the model and example for others \ 123 In 1522 Gritti was told to refuse French requests to billet troops in Venetian towns. On the whole the republic's forces behaved reasonably well during the process of reoccupation. On the other hand, reoccupation could impose its own penalties, such as the modernizing of fortifications; the orders given during Alviano's pre-Cambrai tour of 19 20 21 22 23

ST. reg. 17, 65. Sanuto, viii, 446-7. Died, Misti, reg. 33, 16. Sanuto, viii, 503. SS. reg. 42, 78v. 340

Manpower inspection on the Terraferma had led to cries of rage at the cost and destructiveness of his plans for strengthening defences, and they had not even been implemented. Reoccupied Padua provided a dire example of the tearing down of suburbs outside the walls to provide a clearfieldoffire,and of secular and Church property inside them to provide speedy communication from one threatened point to another. And there was the bill (though usually shared in thirds with Venice and the surrounding communities) to pay.124 Reconquest had to await the piecemeal outcome of debate within cities as to where their true advantage lay, and reoccupation was handled gingerly. Pressure on citizens to form home guards to help defend their city gates and walls once they had returned to Venetian control was applied with hesitance at first. But by the autumn of 1526, when German troops were massing for their descent into Lombardy, citizens from Cremona to Treviso and Padua were armed freely and confidently - 1800 in Vicenza alone.125 The artillery companies established in 1506 in Padua and Brescia and early in 1509 in Udine had been at first invited to get started again after reoccupation with some tentativeness, and only from 1518 were they kept firmly on their toes by the rectors. Similarly, Terraferma subjects who volunteered for professional service in the ranks were engaged initially without enthusiasm. They tended to take their first pay and then desert, wrote Gritti in August 1509, having just hanged three Vicentines for this offence; it would be better to look for an equivalent number of troops to Bologna and other places in the Romagna. But again, there came to be a change of heart. Gritti himself, proveditorgeneral once more in 1521, wrote this time that it was well worth engaging Venetian subjects, and he deplored the general belief that the Signoria preferred to hire 'foreigners'. Volunteer captains of infahtry or condottieri of cavalry were, on the other hand, engaged readily from the start. The Paduan Alexandro Bagolin was given a command in August 1509 of a small army, 300 horse and 500 foot, because he wanted to recapture property and land he owned around Citadella and because he thought he could get 4000 of the peasantry there to support him. In the same month Hieronimo Pompeo of Verona was given a larger contract because he had served' without respect either for his own fortunes or for those of his brothers living in Verona'. In the next year the Brescian Pietro da Longhena was given a cavalry command, as was - among others - the Vicentine Bernardin da Sesso, 'who has left Vicenza together with his nephews and other relations'.126 The regaining of the Terraferma, and the end of the fear of reprisals against 124 125 126

Da Porto, Lettere, 33-4, n o ; Priuli, iv, 277-8; Sanuto, ix, 236. Died, Misti, reg. 32,118 (21 June 1509); Pieri, II Rinascimento, 473; Sanuto, xliii, 160 (4 Nov. 1526). Sanuto, ix, 6; SS. reg. 42, 38V; reg. 43, 149V-150 and 55.

341

Part II: Venetian subjects, led to offers of service in even greater numbers. There were also those who took service with the enemy. But it was perhaps no disadvantage in the long run that the wars gave an outlet for many who had chafed under Venice's comparatively orderly rule and were ill at ease simply reading chivalrous literature and plotting duels in the comfort of the protovillas and less fortress-like palaces that reflected two generations of peace.127 Bands of'young gentlemen'128 had ridden out from the west Lombard cities - 60 from Brescia - to join the army before Agnadello, and the mood in which they and others who served when Venice had regained their homelands can be glimpsed from the correspondence of the young Vicentine aristocrat Luigi da Porto. His family was typical of those which had at first welcomed Imperial occupation as a jab to Venetian arrogance. Disillusion with their new masters soon set in, however, and from November 1509 Luigi, with a command of 50 light horse (doubled in the following year), served first in the Veronese, then in Friuli. At first he complained about his transfer, 'because it means leaving the splendid sort of warfare we have in the Veronese, where I can play my part in actions of real importance, and going instead to a theatre where there are few troops, most of them in garrison and thus, I fear, given up to greed, idleness and self-indulgence, the mortal enemies of the martial spirit'.129 But he was soon relishing the 'marvellous skirmishes' that were a chief feature of guerilla warfare in Friuli and subscribing heartily to the dictum, echoed by Castiglione, that the small-scale voluntary action allowed a gentleman's real gallantry to be recognized, whereas it was liable to be overlooked when righting under orders in a large mass. This was the spirit that was commemorated when the doge knighted a Cremonese cavalry captain for his part in a combat between eleven Spaniards a'nd eleven Italians which he had organized during a lull in the formal fighting in Lombardy.130 And an appreciation of this spirit, as well as evidence of the extent to which its exponents put it at the disposal of others, is reflected in a proclamation of 1528: no Venetian subject was to serve princes other than those who formed the Holy League, and those who did, as well as those already so serving, and who did not return within ten days, were to forfeit all they owned and, if caught, be hanged. Published throughout the Terraferma, the decree also proclaimed the fact that the days of wheedling and suing for support were passing.131 In addition to ardent volunteers like Da Porto, Venice could reckon on 127 128 129 130 131

Ventura, Nobilita e popolo, 340-1, 339-40. Dieci, Misti, reg. 32, 96, with reference to Crema. Da Porto, 176. Sanuto, xvii, 22. Ibid., xlvi, 629. It was to be published in Padua, Vicenza, Verona, Brescia, Bergamo, Crema, Treviso, Feltre, Belluno, Udine, Rovigo and Salo (ST. reg. 25, 22).

342

Manpower the continued service of the families which had staffed the republic's standing army over generations. Some, like the Vicentine Giovan Paolo Manfroni, were now given commands of real importance: he was governor of the whole force of men-at-arms in 1514. Others, like the condottiere Marc'Antonio Martinengo of Brescia, were and remained on easy and familiar terms with the patriciate; in 1521 he was made a member of the literary society of the Ortolani and sponsored the performance of a new play by Ruzante in Ca' Pesaro.132 The most prominent, and most controversial, of these families was that of the Savorgnan of Friuli who controlled estates so vast, so riddled with feudal exemptions from direct governmental control and so matted with inter-clan relationships and rivalries as to make of much of the 'Patria' of Friuli a semiindependent buffer state against Austrian and Turk rather than a true extension of the Terraferma. His control over an extensive peasantry led Venice to entrust Antonio Savorgnan with their military organization and leadership on the outbreak of war in 1509. By July rumours spread against his loyalty by rival clans, notably the Delia Torre, led to anxious exchanges of letters between the Lieutenant of Friuli and the Council of Ten. The Council's opinion was that he was too useful to dismiss on mere suspicion, especially at a time when few professional troops could be spared from Lombardy. And, indeed, in October he was granted Castelnuovo in fief after retaking it from the Germans 'with no aid save from his local peasants'.133 Thereafter, however, his putting his local above his Venetian interests became so flagrant that in 1511 he joined the German side; his property was confiscated and a price was put on his head and in 1512 it was duly paid to the men who assassinated him as he was leaving a service in Villach cathedral. Antonio's career had been further complicated by quarrels with his own relatives, notably with Girolamo Savorgnan. Girolamo never forfeited Venice's trust, though when in addition to his honorary status as a Venetian patrician his military service in the early Friulian campaigns led to his being elected to the Senate, and to his actual attendance during debates on confidential crises, there was an outcry against this breach of precedent and he was hurriedly appointed collateral-general as a respectable pretext to get him out of the city.134 Tired of what was primarily an administrative appointment, he relinquished it and returned to Friuli after a few months. Concern for his own tenants and property was, as always with the' feudal' commanders, a distraction from the military job in hand. When conducting 132 133

134

Martinengo: Sanuto, xxix, 536; ST. reg. 24, 103V. F. Savini,' Antonio Savorgnan', Memorie storiche forogiuliesi (1931) 274. For fief: Dieci, Misti, reg. 332, i55v. Ventura, 172.

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Part II: the siege of Marano in 1514, his letters to the doge harp increasingly on German depredations to his crops and his peasants. Yet his enthusiasm for the progress of the siege remained paramount and he broke out into complaint about a delay in sending him supplies with a half-humorous reference to Venice's preference for foreign commanders: 'it is true that I was not born in the Kingdom of Naples or the lands of Rome, but I nonetheless hope that though simply a humble Friulian I can do honourable service to Your Serenity'. And the enthusiasm that made the less intrigant members of his family so useful to Venice stamps his reception of the decision to raise the siege. 'So we are to draw vilely off from this action without assaulting the enemy? All our labours, all this expense to be thrown to the wind? Oh, the shame for myself- if notfopothers! It devours me to think of it.'135 An incentive for territorial magnates to serve Venice was the enlargement by legal title of their domains and the ability to enlarge their clientage by granting favours. Thus Girolamo, in addition to getting Castelnuovo and Palazzuolo after Antonio's disgrace, received the castle of Belgrado (and the title and jurisdiction of count in perpetuity) and the shifting of a toll point for German goods en route to Venice from Gemona to Osoppo - a right he subsequently commuted for 400 ducats a year from the camera of Udine. He also obtained the confirmation of the life pensions and minor castellanships he had on his own authority granted to relations and followers. These favours and others (the gastaldia of Fragagna in fief for his associate Teodoro da Borgo, for instance) were asked for in a high tone. 'I am Girolamo Savorgnan. My family has always been of service to Your Serenity, and as friends rather than nobles, as nobles rather than as subjects.' And at times with a hint of blackmail: 'the Patria [of Friuli] most ardently desires the promotion of the House of Savorgnan, and would far rather see its fortunes fostered by your Serenity than by the Germans'. In one of his last letters before his death in 1529 he was asking for cannon from the Arsenal 'because it is as though they are due to me'.136 The balance of feudal self-interest in the Terraferma was expected (as, on the whole it did) to work to Venice's advantage. A similar calculation led to a remarkably steady confidence in the armed co-operation of the Terraferma's peasantry as a whole. As opposed to urban communities, they could expect nothing from new masters save the pillage and depression of status normally associated with conquest. It was they who suffered most from the atrocities perpetrated by the invading armies, they whose hands were cut off and eyes gouged out, whose daughters were forced to join the 135 136

Savorgnan, 'Lettere', iii, 16, 27. Ibid., iii, 26-7; iv, 42.

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Manpower army's train of prostitutes, who were slaughtered simply out of blood lust (for no ransom was to be expected), as were the thousand-odd suffocated by bonfires lit at the entrances to the grottos in Monte Berico, outside Vicenza, where they had crept for refuge.137 In November 1509 Machiavelli was in Verona, headquarters of the Imperial army, as Florence's observer of the military situation. He reported that the savage behaviour of the French and German troops was forcing the peasants into a defiant loyalty to, a preparedness to die for, the republic: 'these monarchs cannot possibly hold down those territories as long as the peasantry remains there'.138 There was, indeed, much evidence of their goodwill; reports on troop movements, information as to the whereabouts of caches of old cannon balls that could make all the difference to the success of a siege. In August 1509 information from four peasants led to the capture of the Marquis of Mantua in his field billet, unguarded and in his shirt, an action rewarded generously and with the maximum publicity: 100 ducats a year and a 100-ducat dowry for a sister to the one who played the leading role, 48 ducats a year for the others, freedom from every ' angaria reale et personale' for all of them and their families and heirs in perpetuity, and permission to carry defensive arms even in Venice itself.139 On the other hand, reoccupation by Venice meant no lightening of burdens. Horses, oxen and carts were subject to requisition according to the army's need for transport. The government tried to cut this to a minimum, restricting it to the service of the artillery. Individual soldiers were ordered to carry only what they needed for active service ' in the laudable and sound manner of old' rather than turn subjects into rebels by stealing their property and carting it away.140 And in spite of regulations concerning the reimbursement of the cost of billeting troops, that tried to protect ' the peasants who have shown such devotion and steadyfidelityto our state 'I41 as a measure of 1517 put it, the family into whose yard clattered a detachment of men-at-arms were not in a position to present a bill; it could be months before the claim could creep from local podestaria or vicariato to the regional camera, back for confirmation and thence, all too frequently, to Venice for appeal.142 The potential loyalty of the peasantry to Venice was not a sentimental one. As with the territorial magnates it depended on the outcome of a Da Porto, 203. Cervelli, 346-7. SS. reg. 42, 39 (14 Aug.). ST. reg. 18, 29V (5 Aug. 1512). On requisitioning: ibid., reg. 16, 98V-99 (16 Apr. 1509); Sanuto, xx, 559 (23 Aug. 1515). ST. reg. 20, 22. Printed in Besta, Bilanci, 194-6. For a list of labour services (or commutations) due from a rural community as enforced contributions to military activity, see Ferrari, 'Com'era amministrato un comune del Veronese', 276.

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Part II: 150Q-1617 balance of interests: degrees of protection versus degrees of exploitation. For reasons that will probably in part remain always inscrutable, it turned out that there was a bond of common interest between the Venetian patriciate and the rural patriarchate - those hamlet elders, massari and sindici, who persuaded their neighbours to pay, work and fight. And it was the support of the rural masses, organized, as we shall see, into a militia supporting the professional army, that was the greatest contribution made by the Terraferma to Venice's rebirth as a major power in Italy. Thereafter, the republic had no cause to doubt the support it would receive in wartime from Terraferma communities or individuals, though a residual notion that Venice was but primus inter pares persisted — had, indeed, been intensified by the re-wooing ceremonies of the post-1509 period. The relationship between ruler and ruled can be summed up in terms of the response to the Turkish challenge of 1570. It was not until 25 March that the Senate acknowledged a state of 'open war',143 but the inevitability of conflict had infected the Terraferma with a mild case of war fever by the middle of the month. On 18 March the municipal government of Padua promised to arm three galleys and to send 100 'gentlemen' and as many common soldiers to the army at their own and the city's expense. On the same day Verona, which in January had made itself unpopular by pleading exemption from one of the taxes imposed on the Terraferma with the need for mobilization in mind, offered to pay for 500 infantry for six months a year for as long as hostilities continued. Other offers followed: pay for 1000 Terraferma infantry for six months from Brescia, 400 for six months from Treviso, unspecified amounts of' horse or foot or money' from Vicenza. On 30 March came an offer of 10,000 ducats from Bergamo which, though pleading poverty (and 1509 had, indeed, been a year of dearth), declared its determination to help the Signoria 'in this most unjust war provoked on land and sea by the great Ottoman Emperor of the Turks, the cruellest enemy and persecutor of our Christian religion'.144 There were also offers of aid from groups, such as the caste Hani of Friuli and the College of Notaries in Treviso. Altogether offers from communities totalled over 100,000 ducats plus the pay for 2200 infantry. It is true that Bergamo asked for and received permission to raise local taxes in order to recoup itself, but then the Christian religion really signified, save to a few enthusiasts, the empire da Mar, whose administrative and defence systems were already subsidized by the Terraferma. Verona's offer of men was not realized until May - when its contingent marched under the 143 144

SM. reg. 39, 139. ST. reg. 48, 9v.

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Manpower banner not of St Mark but of'Verona fidelis'.145 Padua's men turned up in June. The government accepted all offers from volunteers who would pay for themselves (from families like the Brescian Gambara and Porcellaga) as long as the numbers they offered to bring with them were small. Some scepticism was felt when more than 30 were offered; larger offers were seen as possible poaching on the strengths of the militia or as bids to pre-empt the College's choice of mercenary captains and were turned down with expressions of gratitude.146 In this way 54 offers of personal service were accepted for a total of 30 cavalry and 830 infantry. Purely individual volunteers were not only welcomed but stimulated by the offer of tax exemptions and the suspension of legal proceedings in which they might be involved. Still more successful was the suspension (as from I 5°9)/ 47 °f sentences of banishment even for grave crimes. Sciarra Martinengo, who had been fighting for years in Flanders and France, was tempted back by such an offer148 and his subsequent appointment as Governor-General of Albania broadcast the republic's good faith to its not inconsiderable band of militant exiles. But with the Terraferma garrisons reduced in numbers and stripped of their more experienced captains, and with most of the men-at-arms posted to Friuli, the government was too cautious to go beyond the encouragement of individuals and add the goad of compulsory military service to the ever weightier yoke of taxation it was forced to impose. Similar support followed the outbreak of the War of Gradisca. In January 1616 alone Bergamo offered to raise and pay 50 cuirassiers for the duration; Brescia, 1000 infantry with a preliminary list of four gentlemen who would serve in commands; Vicenza, 400 infantry; Verona, 500; Este, 50; Padua, 100 cuirassiers; Montagnana, 60 infantry; Cividale di Belluno, 2000 ducats a year while 'the present disturbances' lasted; Castelfranco, 30 arquebusiers; and Treviso, 1000 ducats a year. Among the volunteers there were conspicuous examples of gallantry, such as that of Daniel Antonini of Udine, disciple of Galileo and author of Lettere scientifiche, who fought so bravely as a cavalry captain that when he was killed in action his family was given 300 ducats for a monument to 145

146 147

148

A. Avena, 'Memorie veronesi della guerra di Cipro e della battaglia di Lepanto', NAV., n.s. xxiv, i (1912) 99. These offers are recorded in ST. reg. 48 and Collegio, Notatorio, reg. 38. Priuli, iv, 452; Sanuto, xxxi, 308-9. Banishment: SS. reg. 41, I6IV (19 Apr.). Also SM. reg. 20, I 6 - I 6 V (7 June 1522). Dieci, Comune, reg. 29, 224-224V (21 Feb. 1571). He was not allowed to re-enter Brescia, where his crime had been committed. The suspension of sentences to banishment had also been applied in the 1537-40 War; e.g. ibid., reg. 13, 3 (4 Mar. 1539).

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Part II: commemorate him.149 But such careers were exceptional. Those who volunteered to form or join infantry or cavalry companies numbered 2-3000150 and there is no indication that most of them behaved either better or worse than men from other states. Once more the offer to suspend sentences of banishment brought home some enduringly valuable and loyal servants, such men as Francesco Tensini of Crema; banished for life for raping (or at least sleeping with) a nun, he weathered the war and became the republic's leading military engineer.151 But out of the perhaps 1000 who returned there is far more evidence of recidivism than of value to a state at war; 582 had already deserted from Friuli by July 1616.152 More sober interest attaches in any case to the remarkable extent to which the government, as we shall see, was able to count on local communities being willing to accept inconvenience and danger in the interest of self-defence, their preparedness to make sacrifices to preserve the political status quo.153 Venice's trust in its subjects did not extend to the peacetime permanent infantry army in garrison or quarters. How far the permanent infantry force in the Terraferma came to comprise Venetian subjects is difficult to determine. Local men were, of course, used as substitutes, but the impression is that the great majority both of captains and men originally enrolled were still Italians from outside the Veneto. In 1585 the c. 200 men who had deserted within eighteen months from the garrison of Brescia were said by its capitano to be 'mainly foreign' - i.e. non-Venetian.154 In 1593 the garrison of Bergamo (like Brescia a key frontier city) was described as 'chiefly foreign and of the worst the world could supply, incapable and criminal'.155 In an exceptional move to improve the garrison of the castello of Brescia in 1600 the Senate ordered that both captains and men should be Venetian subjects; but in 1602 Nicolo Contarini, repeating the usual complaints about foreign garrison troops, recommended their replacement not by subjects of the Terraferma but by men imported from Dalmatia and Albania.156 Indeed, the policy of not setting dog to watch dog which was observed in the switching of garrison troops as well as captains from one place to another (and thus led to endless complications in the case of Terraferma subjects) encouraged the employment of non-Venetian Italians just as it determined the use of men from the empire overseas to act as police on the mainland. There was also the problem (acknowledged by the Senate V. Joppi (ed.), Lettere storiche sulla guerra del Friuli, 1616-1617 (Udine, 1882) 9-13.

ST. regs. 85 and 86 passim. SS. reg. 105, 248 and 249 (21 Dec), 223V-224 (2 Dec), 251-251V (26 Dec). Ibid., 213V (26 Nov.). See below, 364 seq. Pasero, Relazioni, 183. Romanin, Storia document at a, vi, 473.

ST. reg. 70, 118 (7 Nov.); Cozzi, Contarini, 84.

348

Manpower in 1599) of what to do with troops when they retired or when they were discharged; much better that they should take their indigence and their violence to be solved by another government. Nor among the captains does there appear to be a change of emphasis. They remained a mixed bag, mainly Italian, though including some Corsicans and Swiss; the records are very incomplete, but towards the end of the Cinquecento perhaps an estimate of 20% of Venetian subjects among captains and 15% among infantrymen, corporals and sergeants would not be misleading; in 1610 the College was authorized to engage up to four more 'native subjects of ours' for garrison commands.157 For the men, the wage structure and lack of prospects in the infantry bred discontent, and this was the last infection Venice wanted in its own subjects. Nor was the demand to enlist strong; in other occupations real wages appear to have kept up with inflation, and the faltering industrial output in the face of foreign competition in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries was compensated for by migration or the doubling-up of occupations. The army, as elsewhere in Europe, remained an occupation of the last resort, and the non-Venetian origins of the names on Venice's muster lists reflected worse cases of economic malaise than its own. With the numbers of men-at-arms static, infantry commands hard to come by and, in any case, lacking in peacetime the prestige attached to cavalry service, the republic was faced with the problem of what to do with the more restlessly ambitious males of its Terraferma, men doubtless useful in war, but a challenge to law and order in normal times. Frequently the problem solved itself. Typical was the case of the young Count Pompillo Collalto. After fighting in Dalmatia under Camillo Orsini in 1538-9, he served in Germany, Flanders and France c and other provinces, to consider and learn the things that could improve him as a soldier and a captain and although he was constantly offered the most honourable posts by various princes he did not accept them, waiting always to be employed by his own signori\15S This is the sort of career referred to by Tagliapietra. Similarly, while Giulio Savorgnan remained in Venetian service from the late 1520s fighting through the wars of 1537-40 and 1570-3 and designing fortifications in peacetime - until his death in 1595, his younger brothers Mario and Ascanio made their names in French and German service.159 Two attempts, however, were made to direct the surplus energies of those who stayed at home. One was the setting up in 1593 of a volunteer dragoon 157 158 159

SS. reg. 100, 133 (29 June). Girolamo Ruscelli, Le imprese illustri . . . (Venice, 1580) 313. E. Salaris, Unafamiglia di militari italiani deisecoli XVIe XVII: i Savorgnani (Rome, 1913) passim. See SS. reg. 64, 93 (13 Feb. 1546) for praise of Giulio's bravery and loyalty in aparte renewing his contract. For Tagliapietra, above, 321.

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militia open to recruits of sufficient means to provide their own mounts and not to require pay.160 By the following year 1300 had been enrolled, including members from such notable families as the Martinengo. But the volunteers made so poor a showing at musters that the Senate, accepting the fact that the organization had been exploited by signori who used it as a cover for maintaining mounted bravi and as an excuse for carrying an arquebus at all times, decided in 1596 to disband them all and declare the experiment closed.161 Instead, it sponsored academies in Padua, Verona, Treviso and Udine where horsemanship and its companion cult, fencing, could be canalized and where, together with a little of the mathematics useful for brigading troops and planning fortifications and siegeworks, young bloods could let off steam while at the same time preparing themselves for army service when it was required of them.162 (iii) THE MILITIA

Both the age and the armament of the men to be enrolled in the militia of 1508 had been left to the discretion of local authorities, though the organization within companies was defined: a contestabile for every 100, 1 corporal for every 25 men; no pay save a tassa for a horse for the contestabile was offered in peacetime. The only incentive to join was exemption from the labour services that could dislocate the peasant's life, pioneer and carting work on canals, river courses and fortifications. And pay in wartime service was to be considerably lower than that of professional troops encountering similar risks.163 It is a remarkable tribute to Lactantio da Bergamo, Citolo da Perugia and the other captains chosen by the College that on being called up in April 1509 to join the army massing at Pontevico, 9000 militiamen arrived there from the following regions: Bergamasco Veronese Bresciano Trevisano Vicentino Padovano Friuli 160

161

162

163

1500 1200 1200 1200 900 1500 1500

Capi di Guerra, Ba. A-D, 28 June. Only officers received a salary; men were remitted the expense of attending musters. SS. reg. 90, 151 (11 Jan.). Cf. Capi di Guerra, Ba. 4 (6 Jan. 1596), adverse report from Capitano of Padua Zaccaria Contarini. J. R. Hale, 'Military academies on the Venetian Terraferma in the early seventeenth century', Studi veneziani, xv (1973) 273-95. ST. reg. 15, 161 v. Four ducats for the contestabile, 3 for the corporal, 2 for the men.

350

Manpower And the enthusiastic support of the militia by the captain-general, Alviano, must account for reports that they sported his red and white colours.164 By early May, however, the number of deserters was causing alarm; all rectors were told to warn the subordinate local authorities to send them back 'without an hour's delay' on pain of having their ears and noses cut off and their possessions confiscated.165 Accounts of militiamen's conduct at Agnadello on 14 May differ widely: some fled, others ranged so far in the van that they were killed by their own artillery; Lactantio, pioneer of the Veronese nucleus of 1507, was warm in his praise.166 All the same, in the confusion that followed the army's retreat and during the snakes-andladders campaigns of the next months, references to the trained militia became few; much of it was in enemy or occupied territory and stayed there to guard its members' own interests, the rest can only dimly be glimpsed beneath population shifts and amid local call-ups based on the pre-existing right of the Venetian authorities to impose military service. Thus early in August 1509 the Proveditor of Treviso claimed that 10-12,000 peasants had been raised from the surrounding countryside.167 Later in the month 6000 peasants were reported among the defenders of Padua, welcomed as supplementing the work force for the fortifications and issued with arms confiscated by the rectors from the less trustworthy citizens. Andrea Gritti, indeed, repeatedly urged the government to send him bows and arrows ('their natural weapon') in large quantities for defence purposes and also for peasants operating as guerillas; after all, he pointed out, the German infantry wore no armour on their backs. During September peasants who had fled to Venice were rounded up by the sestriere authorities, issued with arms and with breastplates hastily hammered out in the Arsenal, and posted in the Mestrino.168 Thereafter, by legal hook or crook, or in response to requests for arms for self-defence, the civil and military authorities used peasants as essential supplements to the regular forces. In spite of much pious talk of'their goodwill towards the Venetian state', their being 'true men of S. Marco', it was realized that full control over them was impossible, that they would desert if their crops needed attention or to prevent reprisals if the enemy occupied their territory, that they were friendly brigands rather than a reliable reserve, let alone a potential shock force. But they were useful as baggage guards, scouts and moppers-up of stragglers or as temporary reinforcements of depleted 164

Numbers from Sanuto, viii, 152-2. Colours in Cervelli, Machiavelli, 149-50. ST. reg. 16, 108-108V. 166 £ ) a p o r t O 5 Lettere storiche, 5 5 - 6 ; Cervelli, 343; Pieri, Rinascimento e la crisi militare, 167 Sanuto, ix, 11 (2 Aug.); Collegio, Commissioni Secrete, 1500-1513, 92. 168 priii j 165

351

466, 602.

Part II: garrisons. And they were trusted to see where, in the long run, their true advantage lay. The government had from the start of the war condemned ill treatment of the rural population by its armies. The point was even seized by the command, harassed as they were by troops frustrated by the late arrival of their pay; newly appointed as captain-general in 1513, Alviano promised the doge and College in 1513 that 'I will see that the army does not ruin your subjects and the miserable peasants.'169 Bands of rural guerillas, or reinforcements to garrisons or armies, were raised on an ad hoc basis; little attempt was made to keep them in being once an emergency had passed. Nonetheless, this piecemeal experience made the eventual return to the notion of a large trained militia in 1528 inevitable. Meanwhile, there were gestures in this direction: an attempt in 1510 to raise a 'militia of S. Marco' {ordinanza marchesca) in Friuli,170 which probably foundered because it was in competition with the semi-feudal one (said to number about 6000 in that year)171 organized by the Savorgnan clan and its dependants, and the raising of a force by Alviano in 1514 from the Padovano and Trevisano which, still in being in the following year, was declared by the proveditor-general with the army to be ' a fine sight, all dressed in the red and white livery of the captain-general'.172 After the recovery of the Terraferma the first general militia reorganization, however, gave priority to the fleet. News of Turkish preparations in 1520 led the Senate to order an enlistment throughout the Terraferma of 10,000 men capable of bearing arms as a reserve for the galleys. Passed by only four votes, the measure lapsed.173 Two years later a unanimous vote ordered the creation of a 6000-strong sea militia (ordinanza da mar).174 The inducements to serve, given the unpopularity of galley service, were now stronger: exemption for life from personal taxation as well as labour services, permission to carry arms in peacetime, freedom during service and for six months afterwards from prosecution for debt, the normal monthly wage (12 lire for the first four months, 9 thereafter) and rations of a galiot when at sea. Each man on joining was to be given a schioppo and trained in its use, which, the Senate observed, 'will be of great benefit to us in time of need both at sea and on land'. The administrative reaction to the order was slack, and such response as there was was poor in the first year and then dried up altogether. The government explained this as being due to the unfortunate experience of the Sanuto, xvi, 248-9. ST. reg. 17, 4-5 (12 Mar.). No numbers specified. Da Porto, 188. Sanuto, xviii, 219-22, 276; xx, 305. Ibid., xxviii, 559. SM. reg. 20, 7-8V (18 Mar.).

352

Manpower first men sent to sea. They had been mixed at the benches 'with Dalmatians who had treated them badly'; wintering abroad,' many died and the rest had undergone much suffering', and word of these conditions had discouraged others from coming forward.175 But more important causes were the reluctance of men to leave homes menaced by one war scare after another, and the preference of Venetian representatives for reconstructing the Terraferma militia. In 1525 an ex-proveditor of the army recommended a fresh enrolment of 12,000 men, 4000 to be trained to use pikes; 4000, 'arquebuses, not large but like those used by the Spaniards'; and 4000, schioppetti.176 In 1526 the rector of Capo d'Istria reported that men were refusing to serve because the labour exemptions promised in 1508 had lapsed. The Senate authorized him to offer these and, when acceding to a proposal in 1527 from the Lieutenant of Friuli to enrol 3000 men, agreed that they should be released from labour services and allowed to carry arms in peacetime and would be trained by captains appointed by the College.177 In February 1528 the government at last took the initiative, decreeing the election of a proveditor-general to look into the whole question of militia organization in Venice's border territories,178 and in April, after some hung votes, the Senate ordered that an arquebus militia of 20,000 should be raised throughout the Terraferma. In addition to the 3000 recently enrolled in Friuli and a body of about 1000 in the Bresciano which also acted as a spur to government action, the allotments were to be: Padua, 3000; Treviso, 3000; Vicenza, 3000; Verona, 3000; Bergamo, 2000; Crema, Feltre and Belluno, 500 each; Rovigo and the Polesine, 600.179 Taking into account some supplementary legislation of the following year,180 the reactivated permanent militia (le ordinanze de li archibusieri) was organized on the following lines. It did not involve formal conscription. Local authorities were to reach targets passed on to them by the rectors of the regional capital, not taking heads of households, men living on their own or men already enrolled in the sea militia. Selection and enrolment were to be supervised by panels comprising a professional militia captain, a vicecollateral and a representative of the local authority, and the men's names J. R. Hale, 'Men and weapons: the fighting potential of sixteenth century Venetian galleys', in War and Society, ed. B. Bond and I. Roy (London, 1975) 9 seq.; SM. reg. 23, 39V-40 (29 Sept. 1534) explaining failure of the 1522 scheme. A. Angelucci, // tiro a segno in Italia dal XII al XVI secolo (Turin, 1863) li-lii (15 Oct.). SM. reg. 21, 19V (20 July); ST. reg. 24, 190-190V (28 June). Sanuto, xlvi, 608 (19 Feb.). Hung votes: ST. reg. 25, 13 (30 Mar.). Order to College to work out scheme: ibid., 20 (18 Apr.). Orders to rectors: ibid., 23-23V (28 Apr.). The number 20,000 is mentioned only by Sanuto, xlvii, 307 (28 Apr.) and it is from this that, lacking other evidence, I put the Bresciano figure at c. 1000, bringing the total to 20,100. ST. reg. 25, 181V-182.

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and personal characteristics were to be noted in a book, from which they could subsequently be removed only with the consent of the rectors of the regional capital. No age limit was prescribed (it was probably the 18-40 years of the galley militia). Recruits could wear arms throughout Venetian territory, were exempt from labour services (faction personal) only, and were promised that they would be called on 'only for the defence of our cities and territories and not for service at sea'. Each 500—800 men were to be commanded by an experienced resident captain who on the first Sunday of each month was to check their competence with the arquebus and train them in the use of the pike. There were four compulsory target practices a year with prizes amounting to 10 ducats for each. That the revived militia should continue to be trained to use guns reflected wartime experience: they encouraged recruits who might have been put off by the connotations of cold steel, and they were the weapon best suited to amateurs, whether engaged in guerilla warfare in countryside well known to them or manning the walls of fortified places under professional supervision. And though (if we include the galley militia) one in fifteen rural households was to contain a firearm, in theory they were harmless without the ammunition carefully guarded in Venice and the armouries of the regional capitals. Even here, given the availability of gunpowder for hunting, and the evidence of its use in crimes of violence, the government was calculatedly accepting a risk to public order. The enthusiasm of rectors led them to overshoot the target: by 1537 there were 24,000 men enrolled. To Venice's commander-in-chief, the Duke of Urbino, faced with a sea war against the Turks, this was a misuse of manpower. He saw the arquebus militiamen as unfitted for combat; their role was to supplement the garrison and field forces of the standing army until hired professionals arrived and 'to punish the insolence of subjects and certain neighbouring signorotti who sometimes take advantage of troubled times to plot against the dignity of the state'. In any case, they were too poorly trained to be sent overseas.181 Accordingly, the militia was to be reduced to 15,000. From the 9000 men discharged and the 6000 already enrolled in the galley militia, 12,000 of the fittest were to compose an enlarged galley militia, sufficient, it was hoped (vainly, as it turned out), for the manning of 66 vessels.182 In spite of the arquebus militia's passive role in the war of 1537-40, the government's faith in it remained high. Moreover, since the reduction in numbers of 1537, the population of the Terraferma had notably increased.183 This was due, suggested the land reclamation enthusiast Alvise 181 182 183

Discorsi, quoted by Celli, 'Le ordinanze militari', 498-9. SM. reg. 24, 53-4; SS. reg. 29, 187-187V (18 Sept.). A 1561 estimate put it at 1,900,000-plus: BMV., ms. It. VII, 1187 ( = 8971) n.p., quoting ex-sindico Alessandro Mocenigo.

354

Manpower Corner, to a reduction in the number of plague epidemics and to 'the new way of making war' which involved less bloodshed than the old.184 Drawing attention to the increase in 1560, the Senate ordered that from August the militia was to be increased to 20,000 men enrolled as shown in the accompanying table.185

Territory Friuli Belluno Feltre Treviso Bassano Polesine Padua Vicenza Cologna Verona Brescia Bergamo Crema Total

No. of captains

Old nos.

New nos.

5

1875

2500

1 1

312 312

500 500

4

187s

2400

1

187

1

376 1875 1875 376 1875

4 4 1

500 600

2400 2400 500

3

2500 1250

2400 3000 1800

1

312

500

35

15,000

20,000

4

5

In the following year the galley militia was increased from 8000 (a compromise between the 12,000 called for in 1537 and the 6000 actually found to be enrolled in 1545) to io,ooo.186 At a time, therefore, when the number of adult malesfitfor active service on the Terraferma was reckoned at around 200,000, one in every seven belonged to an organization which allowed him to carry arms. This was the chief inducement to serve, even stronger, the Senate had implied in 1552, than exemption from other personal services; rectors were punishing militia members for carrying weapons, but they must not put notions about local law and order above the government's need to have willing men 'to put into cities for their safety and defence'.187 The privilege was, however, carefully circumscribed. Arms could not be worn to church or on feast days, nor within towns; pikes and arquebuses could only be carried when actually on duty - when assembling for musters and training, for example. Men were trusted to keep their weapons (but not the body armour issued to selected members of a 184 185 186 187

Quoted by Brian Pullan, Rich and Poor in Renaissance Venice (Oxford, 1971) 290. ST. reg. 42, 151V (20 June). SM. reg. 35, 69-69V. ST. reg. 38, 74V-75 (26 Feb.).

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company) at home and not in central armouries; gunpowder, however, was still issued only at training periods and was carefully rationed. The government's interest was seconded by its higher command. At the recently engaged Sforza Pallavicino's urging, piecemeal regulations were consolidated in a militia code in 1558;188 this was revised in 1564 on the advice of the captain-general of infantry, Giordano Orsini.189 Under these codes the age of enrolment was lowered to 17-24 and the period of service to eight years. Exemption was granted to heads of families, men living and earning alone, servants living with a family, non-Venetians by birth and men already enrolled in the galley militia. Each sub-company of 100 was to be trained on five Sundays a year by its capo di cento and capi di squadra (the old contestabile and corporals), and formed part of a full company of 5-600 under a captain, each with a full-time sergeant and drummer. These in turn were answerable to five colonels (governors of garrisons, for whom this was an extra duty) in charge of the districts of Friuli, Feltre, Padua, Verona and Brescia; twice a year they had to exercise the full force within their jurisdiction. In supreme military command was the captain-general of infantry, under the political guidance and check of the savio of the Terraferma deputed to this charge for his term of duty; both men had to attend annual general musters and manoeuvres of all the companies from Verona westwards (at Monte Chiari, near Brescia) and Vicenza eastwards (at Barcon, near Treviso). In each zone they were assisted by a sergeantmajor from the captain-general's staff, whose function was to goad into some sort of order men despondently described by Orsini as being ' for the most part ignorant and thick-headed'.190 The reasons for his disappointment are fairly simple to identify. Though still referred to as the arquebus militia, and though all its members were encouraged to enter for regional marksmanship competitions now held twice a year, the ratio of arquebus to pole-arms for each 100 men had been cut (to 30:70 in 1548),191 and the pike was neither a handy weapon to carry around for everyday protection and prestige nor easy to learn to use in the tight formations prescribed for its practitioners. Anyone could load and blaze off an arquebus after a fashion, but the pike was not a suitable weapon for the 'thick-headed'. Again, the army militia had still not been granted the exemption from personal taxation offered to their naval equivalent. Another snag concerned incentives. In some areas, as in the Bresciano, peasants and local craftsmen carried weapons so habitually and universally that local authorities had had to blink at this illegality, and it did 188 189 190 191

ST. reg. 41, ST. reg. 45, ASI., ser. i, ST. reg. 35,

142-8V (10 Dec). 24V-26V (24 May). app. 21-2, vol. vi (1848) 199-218. 179 bis (26 July); cf. Materie Miste Notabili, 8 (15 May).

356

Manpower not appear as a privilege. Again, there were areas in which, by custom, fines and commutations for labour services had been paid on behalf of individuals from the profits derived from communal lands: this removed another incentive to join the militia.192 More generally there was the problem of the system's administrative complexity. The authorities of the rural communes (degani, consoli, massari) were not always men of proven literacy, yet their responsibility was to produce lists of militiamen in their areas, annotated with ages (and not every peasant knew his age), surnames (still rare in the country) and physical descriptions. These were used by vice-collaterals as the basis for their own regional register, copies of which had to be forwarded to the captain-general of infantry and the collateral-general. Militia regions which had no vicecollateral attached to them - Bassano, Feltre-Belluno, Cologna - were meant to be covered by those nearest to them, respectively Vicenza, Treviso and Verona. Taking into account deaths, sickness and emigration as well as illiteracy and negligence, it is not surprising that militia records were in a state of such permanent disarray that training periods were largely devoted to checking them. A final reason for the contrast between the neatness of the codes and the confusion of the product wasfinancial.Responsibility was divided between central and rural government. The former paid the salaries of colonels and captains and paid for the gunpowder used in training. The latter paid for the leather gorget and steel helmet every man needed, the half-armours worn by file-leaders of pikemen (10% in 1548, 15% in 1559, 20% from 1564)193 and weapons. They paid - this was the real bone of contention - a cost-of-living allowance for every day a man spent attending a training period outside his own district; it was this issue that had persuaded the Senate in 1549 to cut these occasions from ten to five a year - 194 at considerable cost to the militia's efficiency. They also had to provide a house for each captain that was large enough for the storage of his company's half-armours (and to pay him extra for having them kept in good condition) as well as finding accommodation for sergeants and drummers. All this required additional book-keeping and was grudged and avoided all the more because the salaries of the militia's permanent establishment though paid 'by the government' came from the camere of the regional headquarters - to which both rural communes and citizens contributed through taxes and tolls. Finally, there were constant complaints about the quality of the militia captains. At an average of 80 ducats a year they received something like one-half the income 192 193 194

E.g. BMV., ms. It. VII, 1187 (= 8971) n.p. (1562: citing ex-Capitano of Brescia Sebastian Venier). ST. reg. 35, 179 bis (26 July); Materie Miste Notabili, 8 (15 May); ST. reg. 45, 24V (24 May). ST. reg. 36, 164-5 (13 Nov.). 357

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of an 'ordinary' captain in the garrison force. Orsini pointed out that their duties involved considerable travel and the training of companies far larger than those of professional infantry, so that they ought to be paid at least as much to compensate for their 'expenses and fatigue'. He estimated that another 5000 ducats a year would provide the militia with officers of the calibre it required, but the Senate, in this respect, was not prepared to act on his advice. The result was that the militia was good in parts and not good in the same part for long at a time, depending on the energy and quality of the local officials and captains. Describing a general muster in the Bresciano, Bergamasco and Cremasco in 1546 the Podesta of Brescia said: 'it is a grievous financial burden to the territories without any utility, for the men turn up so uninstructed that there is just a few hours of general uproar . . . it's essential that the captains prepare them first man by man,filebyfile,and company by company . . . but they visit their men only on the rarest occasions'. Twenty years later, however, in 1566, the militia of the Bresciano was reported on enthusiastically: ' Fine men and well trained by their present chief, Hieronimo Martinengo, who shows the greatest diligence and musters them frequently'. But the rector also noted that these musters involved, 'an unwelcome burden to the men and expense to the communes'.195 The moral of these and comparable reports was clear: good officers and energetic local authorities196 could mitigate the ill effects of hoping to have a useful militia on the cheap. But the numbers called up scare by scare into garrison (or to help police such festivities as the annual fair at Crema)197 were small, and the long years of peace were more productive of regulations than of enlightened expenditure and improved preparedness. As in 1537-40, the government during the greater overseas war of 1570-3 did not include the militia in its combat calculations. In 1570 there was a call for 900 men, in 1571 for 2500, but it was made clear that these were directed only at volunteers and that their repatriation from garrison duty in Dalmatia would be effected as soon as sufficient professional soldiers arrived.198 In sharp contrast to the full call-up of the galley militia, this most cautious of uses made of the arquebus militia in years during which Venice raised 27,800 and 13,800 new troops respectively calls for explanation. Though nothing had been said in regulations since 1528 about militiamen 195

196

197

198

Pasero, 63, 95. Cf. Relazioni dei rettori veneti in terraferma, iii, Treviso (Milan, 1975) 17-18 and 53 (from good to bad). I.e. unlike the Capitano of Padua who said in his relazione that he was unable to report on militia numbers 'because to make them come to the city would inconvenience and cost them too much, as it would me to go through the territorio' (Relazioni dei rettori, iv, Padua (Milan, 1975) 15-16 (1547)). ST. reg. 43, 3V (12 Sept. 1560).

S T . reg. 47, 155V (28 Jan. 1570); S M . reg. 39, 252V (2 Dec. 1570), 302 (19 Feb. 1571); SS. reg. 77, 67 (11 Feb.); ibid., 132 (13 Aug.).

358

Manpower being excused overseas service there was a general assumption that this provision, rooted in medieval practice, still obtained. A further reason, however, was the ever declining standard of a militia whose officers, being readily available, had to be sent overseas in the early stages of mobilization. The galley militiaman's task, though arduous, was simple; he was disciplined instantly by the oar and his bench. The scarcely trained, or untrained, arquebus militiaman was liable to be simply a nuisance. And in the third place, Venice was never so sure of its neighbour states that it could afford to strip the Terraferma of every means of self-defence. But in spite of its near uselessness during the war, given one of that war's chief lessons, the increasing difficulty of raising professional troops to supplement the standing army, the militia came to be valued more than ever as the vital make-weight between the permanent army and its short-contract mercenary reinforcements. 'You do not wish, I believe', Sforza Pallavicino told the doge in 1579, 'to rely any more in time of need on Spanish and French infantry. But, as we know, the forbidding of enlistment of the princes of Italy makes the supply from the peninsula very uncertain. So your sole resource rests with your own subjects, the men of the militia.'199 Ambassadors and other envoys were expected to report on other countries' militias in case there was anything to learn from them.200 It was with doubts about the number and quality of'foreign' troops available in an emergency in mind that the military proveditor-general Alvise Grimani in 1589 suggested doubling the militia enrolment.201 This, thanks to the continuing efforts of patrician representatives and the military command, then stood at some 23-24,000, at least on paper.202 Such an increase, he suggested, was amply justified by a continuing increase in population. Though the government made no move to increase the official enrolment figure from 20,000, rectors had become so concerned by the discrepancy between paper and actual numbers that recruitment had been put on an increasingly ad hoc basis. As early as 1556 the ex-Capitano of Vicenza had recommended the creation of a reserve of 1000 men in the Vicentino. They would attend only company musters, so that local communities would not have to pay their expenses at regional musters; nor would they be exempt from local taxation. From 1565 names of possible reservists were enrolled in the Bergamasco, but it was only from the early 1570s that the practice of enlisting a militia 'di rispetto' alongside those raised 'per ordinari' began to spread more widely. Other rectors referred to the men of the reserve as 199

Dieci, Lettere di Condottieri, Ba. 308 (27 Nov.). E . g . A n d r e a G u s s o n i o n t h e T u s c a n militia in Alberi, Relazioni degli ambasciatori, ser. 2, ii, 364. 201 p r O w . Gen. in Terraferma, Ba. 43, n.p. 202 Ibid. For 1589 a total of 21,320 excluding Istria. The Istrian enrolment was put at 2400 in 1580 (BMV., ms. It. VII, 1187 ( = 8971) n.p. 200

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'soldati novi' as opposed to the 'soldati vecchi' of the body of 20,000.203 Grimani himself saw to the enrolment of 436 militiamen 'di rispetto' in the Cremasco and as many as 3725 in the Bergamasco, thus more than doubling the numbers in this zone, and after judging the drills they undertook with 'ordinary' members of the militia a success, he advised the doge to grant them similar privileges.204 The reserve militia does not seem to have been formally constituted by government order. The men provided their own arms, but the numbers enrolled, and the privileges extended, were left to the initiative of rectors and proveditors. 'I enrolled 1700', the ex-Capitano of Padua reported in that same year, and his successor claimed to have brought the number up to 3600.205 Taking the ordinarii and the di rispetto together (again on paper), Grimani achieved a total of 37,3oo;206 his proposal to double the militia enrolment was, then, an attempt to clarify the regulations that would henceforward apply both to the official trained militia and its reserve. In the militia regulations207 first printed in 1593, a stout compilation of 31 pages, produced at the prompting of the captain-general of infantry, Giovanbattista del Monte, no distinction was made between militiamen and reservists. What is more, the whole question of numbers was kept vague, as an issue best determined by rectors and the military staff on a regional basis. These regulations were in any case not designed to make changes, but to correct abuses, above all to prevent the employment of unqualified captains and untrainable, or potentially vagabond, recruits. The command and company structure in essentials remained unchanged. Certain practices, which had been introduced locally, were now officially confirmed. Recruits had to be between 18 and 34 years old, and their period of service was to be fourteen years. All changes of residence were to be notified; this was to keep the muster lists accurate and enable other authorities to be warned of the arrival of a likely recruit. Most important was the long-postponed ratification of the custom whereby recruiting had been encouraged by exempting militiamen not only from labour services but from the personal tax, or estimo, that was due from every adult male inhabitant of the Terraferma unless he was specifically exempted. By now the phrase'arquebus militia' had been dropped and ordinanze, or 203

Relazioni dei rettori, vii, Vicenza ( M i l a n , 1976) 40; xii, Bergamo ( M i l a n , 1978) 77; xi, Brescia ( M i l a n , 1978) 140 (references I owe t o P e t e r J a n u a r y ) ; ii, Belluno, Feltre ( M i l a n , 1974) 27; iii, Treviso, 112; i, Udine ( M i l a n , 1973) 103. 204 p r O v v . G e n . in T e r r a f e r m a , B a . 4 3 , 2 Sept. 1589 seq. F i g u r e s in B M V . , m s . I t . v n , 1187 ( = 8971) suggest that by 1590 he may have enrolled as many as 13,330 men 'di rispetto' in the Terraferma. 205 Relazioni dei rettori, iv, Padua, 9 3 , 9 5 . 206 BMV., ms. It. vn, 1187 ( = 8971), n.p. 207 Ordinationi et regole . . . in materia di ordinanza (Venice).

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Manpower militia companies, used by itself. And this corresponded with the continuing decline in the use of that weapon. All militiamen had to have swords; none was to possess the outlawed pistol or dagger, 'which are not soldiers' weapons'. On Del Monte's advice each ioo men were to comprise 50 arquebusiers, 40 pikemen and 10 musketeers, the two last groups to wear armour as well as helmets, the first to have at least a jerkin of reinforced leather. In 1594 the proportion was changed to 40 arquebusiers, 40 pikemen and 20 musketeers.208 This was in keeping with European practice but unpopular, because the expense of weapons and armour, and the higher allowance paid to musketeers and pikemen on muster days, fell on the communities. For the chief reason why numbers were not specified in the 1593 regulations was the government's desire to keep the central costs of the militia as low as in the past. The only nod of recognition to the militia's inflation through the di rispetto convention had been the addition to the command paid by Venice of two colonels;209 no new captaincies were now mentioned, and the annual cost to government of the militia officers' salaries was 11-12,000 ducats. It was a bargain price to pay for a police and military force on such a scale. The cost to local communities, on the other hand, taking account of the travel expenses payable to militiamen going to musters outside their own districts, and amortizing the capital expenditure on arms and armour over their effective life period, was something like 36,000 ducats a year.210 Spread throughout the whole Terraferma this is not, perhaps, an impressive sum. But the villages and hamlets which paid were composed of rural craftsmen and peasants. They lost, moreover, the personal tax from which militiamen were exempt and which was designed, at least in part, to meet the expenses of local government. In 1581 a Senate order that the Riviera di Salo should produce 600 instead of 250 men met with a storm of indignation; the region could not, it claimed, bear the extra expense. And in the following year the Senate reduced the number to 400. In 1601, after similar representations, it cancelled an order that Cividale in Friuli should increase its quota from 140 to 200.211 The number of exemptions from attendance at musters during years of dearth, or following militia reinforcement of garrisons during the frequent political scares of this period, point in the same direction. The militia was not only as large as local communities would bear but neither its 208 209 210

211

ST. reg. 63, 192 (16 Feb.). ST. reg. 52, 224-6, giving names (28 Nov. 1579). Based on the figures given in F. Rossi,' Le armature da munizione e l'organizzazione delle cernide nel bresciano', ASL., ser. 9, viii (1979) 169-86. ST. reg. 53, 183 (2 Dec. 1581); reg. 54, 27V (5 June 1582); reg. 71, 68 (17 Aug. 1601).

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equipment nor the level of training could be expected to be up to the standard envisaged by regulations. At the end of a year 2I2 all men should have been taught to handle their weapons smartly, the arquebusiers to have fired, running and crouching, at targets set at 40 paces, the musketeers at twice that range. Pikemen should have practised skirmishing together, arquebusiers advancing and retiring while exchanging places in order to reload. All should have become familiar with the words of command and drum signals for changing formation from front to rear, left to right and vice versa, and to have practised running for 150 paces without breaking ranks. All this in their full equipment, though, revealingly, the 1593 regulations still had to repeat the prohibition about their turning up helmetless and wearing the peasant's straw hat. Accounts of these training periods vary, as indeed the skill and persuasiveness of captains varied and the ability and willingness of the men to learn. In a report of 1609, f° r instance, Del Monte expressed the frustration of a true reformer whose ideas were always blocked by pleas of financial stringency. In particular he focused on the militia sergeants. The regulations of 1593 had allowed them, after five years' service, and after passing the examination, to qualify as captains. Not one had applied. The pay did not, as had been hoped, attract the ambitious, the would-be professional, but only the hangers-on of the powerful, their bravi.213 Over a long period the evidence relating to such a numerous body of men must contain many divergent judgements on the militia's efficiency. If many captains were corrupt and lazy, others were reported on by rectors in tones of high praise214 even if only one, the scholar-soldier Valerio Chieregato of Vicenza, acquired some fame as a zealous if pedantic reformer who used his knowledge of classical military formations to turn ' a mere inventory of men and weapons' into a model army of 6600 men (the militias of Friuli, the Trevisano and the Feltrino); and this, he claimed, 'without all the shouts, curses, threats and blows and other untoward excesses that are customarily used today'.215 A later account, however, claimed that even 'another Mars' could not bring order to the grudging ragamuffins of Friuli;216 and this was before the added burden of cash contributions and labour services for Palma had led to peasant emigration that left villages empty and land uncultivated.217 A report on the Trevisano complained of the politically useful 212

213 214 215

216 217

This account draws on orders of 1583 that remained in force though were not detailed in the 1593 regulations (ST. filza 5 Nov.). Capi di Guerra, B a . M, 21 July. E.g. Senato, Dispacci Rettori, Padova, 11 Oct. 1609. O n Chieregato, J . R. Hale, ' A n d r e a Palladio, Polybius a n d C a e s a r ' , Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, xl (1977), 2 4 5 - 6 . Relazioni dei rettori, v, Cividale del Friuli, Marano (Milan, 1976), 103 (1585). Ibid., 122 (1601).

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Manpower but militarily infuriating pacificity of its inhabitants, and one on the Feltrino dwelt on the problems of enforcing service on peasants so litigious that they would spend 12 ducats in contesting a doctor's bill of 6 soldi.21* All the same, though indifference, recalcitrance and local misery all took their toll, none of the general reports on the militia by the higher command described it as unworkable or failed to praise certain units. Militiamen were used freely to buttress garrisons during the Sarpi crisis of 1606-7, but it was only during the War of Gradisca of 1615-17, when Venice had unprecedented difficulty in obtaining troops from elsewhere in Italy, let alone - save from Holland - from across the Alps, that the militia, for the first time since Agnadello, was tested in offensive action. Early in 1615 it had been decided, on the advice of Antonio Lando, then Proveditor-General in Terraferma, to select 12,000 of the best militiamen and re-enrol them in four divisions, each under a 'colonel major', two on either side of the Mincio, thus dividing the militia into a first- and secondline reserve.219 In November 2400 of the men selected by Lando as 'stoutest, most competent and freest from domestic responsibilities' were sent to Friuli and Istria. In theory they were to be armed with muskets, pikes and arquebuses in thirds. They were to be given a half pay from local camere to enable them to get to Venice for transfer to the field, when they would come on the government's pay-roll; local communities were reassured that this half pay exempted them from any demand from the men for food and lodging as they passed on their way.220 Officers' and N.c.O.s' pay was to be brought up to active service rates. Brigading was, to start with, in groups of 1200, that is four companies of 300 each with a captain, ensign and sergeant, heads of hundreds and corporals,221 but this tidiness broke down as detachments became scattered among the entrenched lines and corps headquarters in Friuli and Istria. The militias of Friuli and Istria were held for local defence, and the drain on the Terraferma was kept reasonably light because of the vulnerability of its frontiers and the need to have good men ready to reinforce garrisons. In this latter capacity they were used increasingly as professional troops were called to Friuli. In all, to keep active numbers steady at about 2000 some 5600 'select' militiamen were called from the width of the Terraferma from the Bresciano to the Padovano.222 These numbers were kept up only with increasing difficulty and decreasing practical effect. In May 1616 the Capitano of Padua reported that the first batch of 1200 men from the Padovano had been sent off to Friuli and 218 219 220 221 222

I b i d . , iii, Treviso, 1 2 1 - 2 (1607) a n d ii, Belluno, Feltre, 259 (1578). S S . r e g . 104, 217V (13 F e b . ) . ST. reg. 85, 172-172V (30 Nov.). I b i d . , 170 (27 N o v . ) , 173 (30 N o v . ) , 184.V (7 D e c ) , 260V (26 J a n . 1616). ST. regs. passim.

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Part II: 150Q—1617 Istria without much trouble. But the recent dispatch of a second 1200 had been plagued by the men's reluctance to serve, 'partly because they were less free than the first from domestic ties and interests, partly because they saw many returning sick and [knew] that the war, through disease and in other ways, had consumed a large proportion of them; indeed, I can assure Your Serenity that from the lists of those who came back from camp I saw that more than a third were missing'.223 Later in the year the ex-Capitano of Verona made similar points. The news of 500 deaths did not encourage service, and the character of countrymen was such that to leave behind 'wives, children and the little comforts that their own hearths provide' sapped their morale, 'being like farmyard dogs, fearless of death in the yard, fleeing at the least alarm outside it'.224 It would be best, he concluded, to strip more professionals from the Terraferma garrisons and use militiamen to take their places. With such reports in mind (and the need for peasant plots to be tilled and harvested to supply the food on which the army in ravaged Friuli relied) the government at last accepted that the best policy was to replace them with fresh drafts every two or three months.225 On one occasion the rectors of Treviso had been told to assure a draft of 1000 men that they would be away 'only for the space of a very few days',226 but this and similar declarations, because of the administrative strain of getting men away and back for short periods, were recognized as subterfuge; units from the Veronese, indeed, served forfifteenmonths in Istria at a stretch,227 and the repeated command that no militiamen should leave his post until his relief had arrived was countered, with mounting frequency, by desertion. The militia system cannot, however, be judged simply by its performance in the field. It represented a military force, a poor one; but, more important, it represented, and over a century had nourished, a state of mind: a belief that the government could trust its subjects-in-arms. In December 1615 rectors in the archducal border areas - Salo, Verona, Vicenza, Cividale di Belluno, Feltre, Bassano - were told to encourage all males who were not already enrolled in the militia or the galley reserve to organize themselves, under capi of their own choosing, into local defence units; these men were to be loaned muskets, arquebuses and helmets.228 In March 1616 the Capitano of Vicenza was congratulated for having enrolled 4600 men in this way, complete with heads of hundreds and with drills supervised by militia sergeants.229 The size of this enrolment was perhaps 223 224 225 226 227 228 229

Relazioni dei rettori, iv, Padua, 165. Ibid., ix, Verona (Milan, 1977) 225-6. S T . reg. 8 6 , 309V (18 J a n . 1617). S S . r e g . 107, 105V (23 A u g . 1616). ST. reg. 87, H3V-I44 (18 Aug. 1617). S T . reg. 85, 196V-197 (18 D e c ) . S T . reg. 86, 17 (16 Mar.).

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Manpower unusual, but throughout 1616 there was a steady stream of requests from sub-Alpine and Friulian communities, some of them very small, for weapons and ammunition with which to defend themselves at home or as they worked in the fields, and for all the possibility of local violence which this might be thought to encourage, these requests were invariably gratified. August 1616 was a month of real fear for the Terraferma, mulcted as it was of professional troops and 'select' militiamen, and with Spanish intervention feared from the Milanese, especially after their capture of Carlo Emanuele's strategic capital, Vercelli, in July. On that frontier, too, the proveditor beyond the Mincio was now told to organize a self-defence force 'among those whose properties are towards the frontier'. He was to check carefully the trustworthiness of the captains and governors who had been left in charge of garrisons; were there any doubt about their loyalty he was to ask for volunteers to replace them 'from the gentlemen of the cities of Brescia, Bergamo and Crema'. He was to review and, as far as he could, weed out the dead wood from the militia and gunnery corps. But he was also to 'enrol in all those towns and territories [i.e. west of the Mincio] men suited to bear arms with an eye to emergencies that might arise, dividing them under capi\ Moreover he was, in co-operation with rectors and on the lines of the mobilization of 1605-6, to produce the names of 5-6000 men who could be induced to join up as professional, if short-term, infantrymen, as long as none of them was already enrolled as a militiaman, oarsman or gunner. And he was to prepare for this 'without arousing confusion or alarm' but to show his confidence that subjects would co-operate in responding to 'the paternal care and consideration in which we hold them'. To whoever seemed willing he was to give arms, and to this effect he was sent 100,000 ducats.230 This determination to raise a reserve over and above the 'select' militia and its reserve (which included the militia di rispetto), capable of holding frontiers, enlarging garrisons and serving in thefield,was extended, though possibly less vigorously, to the area east of the Mincio. In September some 1900 men from Treviso itself and its territory, enrolled as 'capable of bearing arms', were sent to Friuli. The proveditor-general there was, however, warned that they represented 'the scrapings' and that he should retain them for the minimum possible period.231 All the same, the pressure on the authorities in Treviso and elsewhere from Verona to Udine to enrol everyone between the ages of 18 and 50 who was not sick or totally responsible for his family was kept up, and with thefleetand army as well as self-defence in mind.232 In July 1617, with peace talks already in progress 230 231 232

SS. reg. 107, 61-2V (3 Aug.), 74 ( I 0 Aug.); ST. reg. 86, 148V-149 (3 Aug.). S S . r e g . 107, 172V (28 Sept.). S T . reg. 8 6 , 234-234.V (9 N o v . ) ; S S . reg. 109, 240 (24 J u n e 1517).

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but abundantly distrusted, recruiting parties were ordered to beat the drum in every town of the Terraferma, proclaiming the government's search for still more volunteers.233 In Venice itself the heads of sestrieri were to select men to serve as soldiers with the fleet, and given authority to compel service (after a short preliminary training) where adequate excuses could not be given.234 And the government's determination to depend in the last resource on its own subjects was deepened by the consideration ' of the advantage to be gained by their forming a counter-weight to the foreign elements in our army'; the problem of controlling that mongrel army was, indeed, gravely complicated by its increasing unfamiliarity with the Italian tongue. All these Terraferma reserves, conscript or voluntary, were, as it turned out, used only in bits and pieces, but they constituted the most impressive vote of confidence Venice had ever accorded to or received from the loyalty of its subjects as a whole. 233 234

S S . reg. 109, 256V-257 a n d 276 (17 July). S u c h as being the head of a household or having an occupation that would suffer from an absence of four months (the term proposed) (ST. reg. 87, 114-15; 5 July 1617).

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13

Cavalry, infantry, artillery The prestige arm throughout the century, and the most resistant to change, remained the heavy cavalry, the uomini d'arme. And this was in spite of the decline in their numbers, especially after the campaigns of 1509-17, and also in spite of the realization that between 1530 and 1573 the chief likelihood of combat was amphibious warfare against the Turks, in which they could play no useful part, and that thereafter, when land war against the Spaniards or Austrians seemed more likelyy heavy cavalry was universally recognized to have long outlived its usefulness. Until 1519 they were organized in' lances' each comprising three fighting men, the man-at-arms proper, riding in full plate armour ('in arme bianche' or' in biancho' or' in albo') on a barded horse, the others more lightly armed with lance or crossbow and riding unbarded horses. In each 'lance' there was a fourth horse, of inferior quality, ridden by the man-at-arms' servant and carrying baggage.1 A company of 50 men-at-arms thus contained 150 righting men and 200 horses, the combatants and their horses being the only ones counted for pay purposes. In practice, 'lances' were seldom up to strength and in 1519 the number was cut; henceforward they were to comprise the man-at-arms riding his war charger (capo di lanza or caval grosso), one squire or saccomano armed as a light cavalryman but on a horse {primo piatto or corsier) capable of acting as the man-at-arms' reserve, and a servant on a ronzin, terzo or bagaglione; two fighting men, that is, and three horses, 'as was the custom before the war'.2 Even then only the wealthier men-at-arms could afford the full unit. It was not until the 1590s, however, that it was officially acknowledged that they would provide only two mounts and that the primo piatto would be ridden by an attendant who was not necessarily a professional fighting man.3 While the man-at-arms had to support his servant from his pay (80 ducats a year from 1514,4 rising to 120 in the 1560s), the saccomano was paid his 40 1 2 3

4

SS. reg. 41, 158 (13 Apr. 1509). Sanuto, xxvii, 432-5 (Senate, 30 June). [Printed] Regolatione et privilegi delle gente d'arme per deliberatione dell'Eccellentissimo Senato. 1592. A di 8 Apr He. [Venice.] Sanuto, xxvii, 14-16 (Senate, 1 Mar.).

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ducats direct, an arrangement reflecting the tactical separateness of the light cavalry. Organizationally, however, tradition and the satisfaction to the man-at-arms of being responsible for a miniature unit of his own led to the preservation of the old administrative framework. Thus though a man-atarms was paid quarterly, twice a year he had to present his 'lance' as a whole for inspection. This conservatism, this sense of living in a different military world from other righting men, was also fostered by the continuity with which companies were kept together. During the campaigns of 1509—29 there were years when the number of men-at-arms (lances) rose above 1000; more generally numbers ranged from about 900 down to 600 and it was at this latter level that they remained more or less steady throughout the rest of the century, grouped in small companies under sixteen to seventeen condottieri.5 Though these were always engaged on short-term (one to three years) but renewable contracts, it was understood by government and men that the connection would last during infirmity or even until death, and that if there were not then a son or brother to take it over, a company would be kept together under a new commander. More expressive still of Venetian conservatism was their mere existence as a separate and - in comparison with others - cosseted arm. In the largely like-to-like tactics of the 1509—29 campaigns, the man-atarms rarely encountered massed pikes, could ride with some imperturbability through light cavalry. He was vulnerable in charges against his equals and to the cannon balls that might prelude a major engagement or pound a reserved position, but, though armour was not as yet regularly proofed, the bullets that claimed the vast majority of casualties in battle or siege (to judge from citation references and pension awards) seldom pierced his carapace, though they could bring down his horse. Yet to be invincible was not necessarily to be useful, and from 1509 contracts for new condottieri habitually required that they should raise half or an equal number of light cavalry (in addition to the saccomani of the 'lance'). They played no role in the war of 1537-40 (though senior condottieri were detached to serve as military governors and captains of light cavalry, even of infantry, as others were to do in 1570-3), and thereafter, from a purely tactical point of view, the arm was an anachronism. No mobilization involved raising any extra numbers. 'I know that there are many in this republic', wrote Aventin Fracastoro, himself an experienced captain of horses, in a pleading letter to a senator, 'who would replace the heavy with light cavalry.' This is because 'this state is now pursuing a defensive policy . . . and is relying for its protection upon fortifications'. But men-at-arms 5

Lists in BMV., mss. It. VII, 1213 ( = 8656); ST. reg. 41, 148-148V; reg. 46, 169-71; Archivio Proprio Pinelli, Ba. 1-2, no. 5.

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Cavalry, infantry, artillery are the noblest part of an army, and their condottieri 'are commonly men of sober and mature judgement and, as such, give their counsel in matters of war to the commanding officer'. The present peace cannot, after all, be reckoned on; we shall need that counsel, that solid presence on the battlefield and - but his arguments soon ran out with the reflection that horses could always be eaten during a tight blockade. More persuasive was his pointing out that were Venice to disband its men-at-arms it would lose many who scorned the idea of being transferred to light cavalry commands, and the government would, moreover, miss the opportunity 'to give satisfaction to many of its nobles, vassals and subject citizens'.6 The government had, in fact, already accepted the fact that the retention of heavy cavalry was primarily an exercise in maintaining good relations with powerful Terraferma families and a diversion of their chivalrous pretensions into a form of public service. The success of other forms of heavy cavalry in Europe, Reiters or cuirassiers, had raised the question - that is, patricians returning from diplomatic service abroad raised it - whether the men-at-arms and their lances were useful enough to be retained. They were required by a regulation of 1573 to learn the use of the heavy cavalry pistol - used in the north from the 1540s — and to have two of them (as part of the equipment carried by the primo piatto, however, and not holstered on their own mounts).7 Little notice appears to have been taken of this hint that change might be desirable. In a memorandum of 1577 Scipio Costanzo wrote that the corps attracts men of rank who would not find sufficient dignity attached to serving in light cavalry units. We have come to rely heavily on fortifications, but to stop the armies coming to besiege them and gain time for the defenders we need 'this mass of steel, this fortress of armour'. Besides, he concluded ' innovations have always been pernicious, or at least hazardous, and have therefore been instinctively abhorred by this state'.8 In the following year a proposal (poorly sponsored) to abolish the corps was turned down by the Senate. The decision to set up in 1593 a volunteer dragoon militia9 stemmed in part from dissatisfaction with the tactical irrelevance of the men-at-arms. In 1598, two years after this scheme had been judged a failure and wound up, the College faced the problem more directly. The savio alia scrittura was charged to put four questions to the captains-general of light cavalry and infantry, the newly appointed Francesco Martinengo and Del Monte: 6 7 8

9

He was given a command of 51 light cavalry in 1551. ST. reg. 38, 3V. ST. reg. 49, 170 (19 Oct.). Delia necessitd di conservare la cavalieria di grave armatura nello esercito veneziano: ricordo di Scipio Costanzo alia Signoria di Venezia (Venice, 1868) 11, 19. See above, 349-50.

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Part II: should the men-at-arms be left as they are, or should they give up the lance and adopt the overall arquebus-proof armour (the heavy cuirass) used in France and Savoy? If so, should all or only part of them do this? Should horses have bullet-proof head armour? More generally, if the men-at-arms are to be seriously reformed, what changes would you suggest in their main and subsidiary weapon?10 Martinengo was for change (not surprisingly, considering the arm he represented). The combination of lance and armour part of which has to be arquebus-proof means, he wrote, that the weight of the man-at-arms and his horse is such that the lance thrust has little impetus: nor is there a horse that will not flinch or rear aside when arquebuses fire at them just before they are within lance range. As for weapons, it is frequently necessary to change rapidly from one to another and it is easier to fire and drop a pistol and to draw a sword than disengage a lance and then search for one. No, give up the lance. Most terrain is against its use in any case. This applies both to heavy and light cavalry. Pistol and sword are the weapons to employ, but do not try to lighten armour: all the pieces that face the enemy should be arquebusproof. The old instinct for weight is right. The heavily armoured swordwearing pistoleer is the breaker of lines and the steadier of armies, whether he fights on horseback or dismounted. The heavy cavalry, moreover, attracts 'more men of good background and thus of nobler spirit' than does the infantry. As for the other points: a few lightly armed lancers may be combined with the rest; horse armour should be light, to keep the animal nimble; as to other weapons, let individuals choose whether to supplement the pistol with sword or dagger. Del Monte was more for compromise. Let only half the men-at-arms be changed to heavy-armoured pistoleers. The man-at-arms is not a thing of the past; the Spaniards in Milan retain him in spite of the example of France. The lance is still the better weapon for offence. So make the change but keep both types of soldier within the existing organization and under the same condottieri. Few horses are killed by being shot in the head, so they don't need proofed head guards. Beside lance and pistol, let men choose between sword and dagger for themselves. When the College passed on these opinions, the Senate called for a canvass of opinion among the condottieri themselves.11 Representative of their opinion is a joint memorandum submitted to the Capitano of Padua explaining 'why men-at-arms should not be transformed into cuirassiers, as certain senators who have been in France have proposed'12 - a hit 10 11 12

Replies in SS. filza 10 Mar. SS. reg. 92, 13 (7 May). A. de Pellegrini, Gente a" arme della repubblica di Venezia . . . i condottieri Portia e Brugner

(Udine, 1915) doc. 26. 370

Cavalry, infantry, artillery particularly at Pietro Duodo, the ex-ambassador whose praise of the French cuirassiers that year13 had probably done much to start the College's investigation. Its upshot was that matters should remain as they were, though individuals might seriously consider actually obeying the regulation about pistols being available on the primo piatto. In another memorandum submitted independently by Di Porcia recurs the argument that 'the companies are commanded by men from the noblest, most outstanding and loyal families' who would not be content to serve in other than the dignified and traditional way.14 But if no changes were made, neither was much care shown to keep up numbers. At the start of the War of Gradisca there were 481 of them, divided into 15 companies.15 Three of the condottieri who led them were not Venetian subjects, Cesare Pepoli of Bologna and Ferdinando and Alberto Scotto of Piacenza. The rest came from Friuli (Fulvio di Porcia), Verona (Girolamo Pompeo, Giorgio Allegri), Padua (Pio Capodilista, Lodovico San Bonifacio), Vicenza (Gabriele Porto, Manfredi Porto, Pompeo Capra), Brescia (Sanson Porcellaga, Federigo Martinengo) and Valdemarino (Paolo Brandolini). Ninety per cent of the men were natives of the Terraferma.16 Another round of discussions about their usefulness had been called for in January 1615 and, as in the past, the conservatives won and their armament remained unchanged.17 Bands began to be drafted to Friuli in November 1615 with orders to fill up the places of primi piatti with men actually capable of fighting; when this was done in a way satisfactory to the collaterals, the man-at-arms was to receive an extra 6 ducats a month. The operation took time because, as the Senate acknowledged, the men-at-arms ' were anxious that their horses should not be ridden by men who were strangers to them', but by early in the new year the force had been doubled in this way.18 Their losses were heavy. The collateral-general, Antonio di Collalto, reported on 1 August 1616 that out of more than 1000 horses (some belonging to grooms) only 478 were left alive and among the men-at-arms themselves numbers had thinned for the following causes: dead, 190; ill or wounded, 48; absent without leave - a tellingly largefigure- 82.' It is all too true', he commented, 'that thanks to the rigours of the past spring and their continually being engaged in standing guard, clearing roads, patrolling, turning out with the other cavalry for night alarms and being ready to fight 13 14 15 16

17 18

Alberi, Relazioni degli ambasciatori, Appendice, 104 seq. De Pellegrini, doc. 27. Ibid., 216 seq. To judge from such lists of names as in ST. reg. 57, 150-1 (13 July 1587). Moro described the 454 in being in 1606 as * un terzo Gentilomini et cittadini, un terzo habitanti di terre et castelli, et l'altro terzo persone di manco conditione' (Prow. Gen. in Terraferma, Ba. 47, 26 Oct.). Prow. Gen. in Terraferma, Ba. 50. ST. reg. 85, 178V (30 Nov. 1615), 285V-286 (17 Feb. 1616), 298V (27 Feb. 1616).

371

Part II: 150Q-1617 by day when ordered, this sort of cavalry, whose role in an army is normally to take part in battles and stiffen the light cavalry . . . is, damply and crampedly lodged as it is, falling prey to sickness.' And he urgently recommended that they should be given a month's leave.19 This, after long delays, was granted, and the condottieri bidden tofillup their vacancies but no longer to bring a combatant as a primo piatto; their service had not been effective, and it was better for the second horse to be ridden by a servant-groom who devoted himself to the welfare of his master and the horses.20 To encourage the men-at-arms themselves to serve in a war bewilderingly lacking in 'battles', their pay was increased to 20 ducats a month.21 The Senate recognized the anachronistic nature of their equipment, but cautiously, ordering as early as January 1616 that some of them should fight as cuirassiers, 'leaving the others with the traditional lance, both to preserve the reputation of this arm, which is so much valued and respected by us, and because it is our intention that when these present troubles are over, all of them shall resume their old custom of bearing the lance'.22 The peacetime duties of men-at-arms were far from onerous. The whole force was on leave for four months in the year, from June to September, partly to save their horses the extra exertion of exercising in the hot summer months, partly because the family, and, indeed, in some cases political interests of the condottieri were such that their presence was required for long periods in their own estates. For four months, April and May and October and November, most of them were quartered together in Verona in the spring and Padua in the autumn. This was their training period, each company being required to muster for this purpose twice a week, at one of which occasions the rectors had to be present. Sforza Pallavicino's directions show at least what he considered should happen on these occasions. The men-at-arms should become practised in mounting and habituated to the feel of their equipment while performing all the evolutions necessary in war. They should practise with the lance both in mock charges, designed to accustom both them and their mounts to close combat, and in running at the ring, and should learn to throw away the lance and draw their swords without losing control of their horses. There should also be drill by squads to make movements in close order precise and automatic.23 In addition, the whole force was expected to train together twice a year, in April and October, the April manoeuvres being of special importance 19 20 21 22 23

De Pellegrini, 156-9 and doc. 51. ST. reg. 86, 227-227V (25 Oct. 1616). SS. reg. 109, 8v (4 Mar. 1617); ST. reg. 87, 27V (18 Mar. 1617). SS. reg. 105, 27 (9 Jan. 1616). Materie Miste Notabili, Ba. 8, n v .

372

Cavalry, infantry, artillery because in addition to their own exercises, detachments of cavalry including light cavalry - had to train together with the militia at sites in the Padovano, Veronese or Bresciano to accustom the militia to co-operating with horse. For the remaining few months of the year men-at-arms were on call, though not on full duty, and could return to their homes as long as they did not leave the Terraferma and were available at short notice. This was the system in the 1560s.24 Formerly, each company had spent six months in the country, six in one of the garrison towns.25 But from 1541 it was decided that owing to the high cost of living in the towns, which forced men-at-arms, although they lived rent-free in quarters, to sell their horses and weapons and even to discharge themselves, only one-quarter of the force should be in towns at any one time.26 In addition to their pay, topped up for lieutenants and ensigns and especially deserving men from their condottiere's caposoldo, or bonus fund, men-at-arms were entitled when on duty to billets and a cost-of-living allowance of 4 lire and 10 piccioli a month, a figure based on the cost of fodder for their horses and bread and wine for themselves.27 These subventions, or taxe di cavalli, were raised by a levy on rural communities, and, especially after the reduction in size of the lance, left spare taxe (or tasse) to use as rewards for gallant service and pensions for old or disabled men.28 Though out of consideration to communities the rate remained pegged throughout the period, food prices rose, and the men-at-arms came to be seen far more as an exploitative force - with their illegal demands for meat, cheese, fish and fresh linen - than a protective one. Pay could, in any case, never keep up with the self-imposed standards of a force more and more determined to assert its superiority as its usefulness was increasingly questioned. The Quattrocento tradition of conspicuous display - the surcoat of cloth of gold, trappings of cut velvet,fineBrescian or Milanese armour, imported chargers - continued throughout the Cinquecento; indeed, increased together with the corps' claim to social exclusiveness. All accounts late in the sixteenth century of the parades which preceded the donning of utilitarian armour for military exercises comment on the silks and damasks, the pearl and gold embroideries worn by the captain, lieutenant and ensign and such men-at-arms of the company as could afford 24 25 26 27

28

ST. reg. 43, 110-11 (25 Sept. 1561); reg. 44, 28V-33 (25 June 1562); reg. 46, nov (23 Nov. 1566). ST. reg. 30, 106V-107 (28 June). ST. reg. 31, 122V-123 (10 June). Sanuto, xix, 409-10. And see Ferrari, 'Com'era amministrato un comune del Veronese', esp. 232, 235-7. From the early seventeenth century citizens who owned land in rural jurisdictions were also subject to this charge. Sanuto, xxviii, 336-7.

373

Part II: them. They note the brave liveries of the men riding the primi piatti, displaying their masters' helmets, and the pages riding on the third horses still maintained by the richer cavalrymen. It is not surprising that when Fulvio di Porcia in 1598 offered the vacant lieutenancy of his company to his ensign, he warned him to think seriously about whether he could afford to maintain the expenses of such a position. Fulvio himself recorded in 1603 that on top of the annual caposoldo of 520 lire he was allowed by the government he paid 1474 out of his own pocket to keep up the appearance of his company.29 It was generally acknowledged that a man-at-arms could not manage on his base pay. For by convention men-at-arms were expected to have independent means of at least 200 ducats a year and not to have practised, or to have fathers who practised, a mechanical trade. The collateral-general and his vice-collaterals were instructed to make such inquiries as could ensure that 'the way was not open to men of any sort of background to enter this corps'. And if any 'peasant or other unworthy person' was found to have become enrolled, he was to be dismissed and, according to regulations of 1610, his horse and equipment were to be sold on the spot.30 This regulation was not intended to produce a Libro d'Oro for an exclusive military caste. It was an attack on the abuse of privileges. Only men-at-arms had more-or-less assured pensions - after 30 years' service or at age 60 (somewhat overripe for the effective management of a war stallion). Among other perquisites were exemption from paying gate-charges when entering a town with their baggage and from imprisonment for debt, and a specially speedy process of law if they were involved in a criminal case; the most highly cherished was the permission to carry arms. This included 'the arquebus, either wheel-lock or firelock, of the regulation size', i.e. not the pistol-like 'small' arquebus, which was forbidden to all as an assassin's weapon. During a time when law and order was becoming increasingly imperilled and licences to carry weapons more grudgingly granted by the Council of Ten — especially in the light of remarks like the ex-Podesta of Brescia's in 1607, 'nearly all murders are carried out with arquebuses'31 — the right to walk attended by an armed servant or by a group of them (each man-at-arms was entitled to three licences) was deeply cherished as a mark of distinction. The right extended to men who were not in essere but di condotta, that is, on stand-by duty, and to the men chosen by men-at-arms to be saccomani. Not surprisingly the privilege was abused. The savio of the Terraferma who attended the spring muster in 1584 warned the Senate that 29 30

31

De Pellegrini, 140-1; also 46, 49 seq., 238. [ P r i n t e d ] Terminationi dell'Illustrissimo Signor Almoro Nani, savio sopra la regolatione d'arme, confirmate nell'eccellentiss. Senato a di 16 Decembre 1610. Senato, Relazioni Brescia, Ba. 37 (Leonardo Mocenigo).

374

della

gente

Cavalry, infantry, artillery men were getting themselves enrolled simply to get the licence and with no intention of serving the state, and that this was winked at by certain condottieri.32 In 1608 the Capitano of Padua warned that the corps was being infiltrated by personal dependants and bravi.33 Here lay the chief danger to the state. The corps' numbers were low, its cost high (67,800 ducats in 1609),34 its utility scant. Apart from the sheer ineptitude of some, it practised abuses such as attempts to pass off substitute men or borrowed horses at musters, the bullying of peasants, with a cynical persistence that produced a volume of legislation larger than was found necessary for any other arm - it was gathered together under 52 heads, printed and distributed to rectors in 1592.35 If the corps was tolerated, warts and all, it was because its abolition would offend families on whose good will as magnates in peace and on whose recruiting ability in war Venice depended. Yet the increasing cost of fodder, horses and arms was forcing men-at-arms into dependence on their condottiere's private bounty at a time when his own wish to play the independent grandee led him to salt their ranks with creatures of his own. The slaughter of Gradisca gave the republic at least a breathing space before it confronted the full challenge to law and order of bravoism and petty tyranny nourished by this so inappropriately cherished corps d* elite.

The importance of light cavalry not only in battle but in scouting, skirmishing, raiding and blocking roads and bridges was recognized in a Senate order of January 1509. 'The light cavalry, as everyone with military experience knows, is nowadays greatly valued and praised.' There is a shortage of them in Italy, the preamble continued, and lest we be forced to accept inferior men, 'as in the recent German war', let us recruit 530 of them while there is still time. The men were to be horse crossbowmen except for 20 per 100 who were to be armed with arquebuses.36 Indeed, though nomenclature was not consistent, horse crossbowmen (so called, but increasingly armed with arquebuses, especially after 1518, when the latter weapon replaced the former at sea) became the most numerous type of light cavalry raised in Italy up to 1529, and the horse became more a form of fast transport or — probably very rarely — a firing platform than the impetus behind a blow. The annual pay of a missile horseman was in war 40, and in peace 32, ducats a year, captains of companies up to 100 strong and up to 50 strong receiving 300 and 240 ducats respectively. For larger companies the provisione and caposoldo system was used, according to the fame of the 32 33 34 35 36

ST. reg. 55, 15V (24 Mar.). Piero Duodo: Senato, Dispacci Rettori, Padova, 30 May. De Pellegrini, 53 with refs. [Printed] Regolatione . . . 1592. S S . reg. 4 1 , 132V-133.

375

Part II: commander and the number of subordinate officers he employed, and — as with a condottiere of men-at-arms - on the persuasiveness of his agent in Venice. The equipment of companies of light horse, especially those involved in the guerrilla warfare of Friuli, depended to some extent on the taste of individual captains. In 1510, for instance, Luigi da Porto armed his lancers with supplementary small handguns 'looking more like maces than schioppV which were slung in front of the saddle in anticipation of the horse-pistols which were to be so widely used later in the century.37 Stradiots were probably always lightly armed lancers and swordsmen. In that same year, 1510, their proveditor, Andrea Ciuran, complained that they would not approach infantry armed with arquebuses.38 It was rare to judge the quality of stradiots so objectively. Of outlandish appearance, strange speech, dubious religion and, until 1519, riskily underpaid, even Venetian cosmopolitanism found it difficult to take these outlanders in its stride. AntiChristian, perfidious, born thieves and potential traitors: more pernicious to our own side than to the enemy, was Priuli's summing up in August 1509,39 and it reflected the depressed reports of Andrea Gritti that ' they are so disobedient that they can do us no good'.40 They deserted (the burden of complaints ran on) either to become full-time brigands or to join the stradiots who had filtered up through the Balkans to join German armies (Maximilian was said to have 400 at the beginning of 1509);41 they cheated by getting relatives in Greece and Albania to collect pay in their names as well as the pay they received in Italy; they defied the orders of savi of the Terraferma at musters. Their fierce incalculability (their ranks included a fair proportion of pardoned murderers) led Venice to treat them with something akin to kid gloves. The executive proveditor charged with sending the worst offenders against discipline home in 1512 was charged 'to use soft and persuasive words' and to give them a pay and promise them a free passage.42 Yet their indiscipline was in part caused by a rivalry between Greeks and Albanians which made them welcome the command of a proveditor, and, taking the period as a whole, blame was outbalanced by praise for their bravery, dash and endurance, documented in a long succession of promotions, pay rises, pensions for widows and dependants, gifts of cloth-of-gold surcoats, and knighthoods. They may have been especially praised for raiding deep into enemy-occupied country where opportunities for loot were freest, but 37

Lettere storiche, 193.

Sanuto, x, 558. Priuli, iv, 247. Ibid., 444. SS. reg. 41, 132. Collegio, Commissioni Secrete, 1500-12, 113 (21 Jan.). 376

Cavalry, infantry, artillery citation after citation for wounds gallantly received in combat, and the willingness of the College to recommend that sons should take over their fathers' commands, suggest that when the Senate proposed in 1511 (when criticism of them was at its height) that more should be raised 'because the present wars have shown how useful and fruitful it is to have stradiots in our armies', this reflected the balance of informed opinion.43 Indeed, were it not for their importance overseas in helping maintain law and order and guarding coasts and hinterlands from Turkish raids, it is likely that more would have been engaged in Italy; instead, on at least three occasions, in 1511, 1523 and 1524, stradiots were detached from the army and sent back to Dalmatia. After 1529, because it was easier, and certainly cheaper, to hire light than heavy cavalry at short notice, their numbers fluctuated: some 300 in peacetime,44 500 at moments of crisis on the mainland.45 In 1537-40 Venice relied on the stradiots and Croat horse (Crovati) already stationed overseas. In 1570-3 525 Italian light cavalry were newly raised, less for active service (though some were transported with the fleet for raiding and the forcible recruiting of oarsmen) than for the defence of a Terraferma more or less stripped of professional infantry. The permanent force was divided into two categories. The light cavalry literally so called, the cavalier ia leggier a, raised in 'lances' of two horses (though the second was simply a replacement plus baggage mount), wore spurred top boots, closed helmet 'alia Burgognona', gorget, cuirass, arm guards and gauntlets. They fought with the lance and carried a mace or cutlass as a secondary weapon. They were, in fact, medium, rather than light cavalry.46 Other light cavalry, the cappeletti, were raised, separately from the 300-500 cavalli leggieri. From 1549 100, and from 1551 200, were used in the Terraferma, but in peacetime exclusively for police work against 'outlaws and men of ill life, and in similar circumstances'. Foreigners (lest they become corrupted by local ties), and raised from Croats and Greeks, the cappelletti supplemented the cheaper but over-tolerant locally recruited horsed constabulary, the homini di campagna, and were sent by the Senate to whichever rector needed additional help in dealing with crime - mainly brigandage - in his territory. In 1589 their number was ordered to be raised from 500 to 1000 47 Armed 43

44

45 46 47

S S . reg. 4 4 , 1 0 (21 Apr.). F o r another estimate, by an ex-proveditor of light cavalry, S a n u t o , xxiii, 513 (22 J a n . 1517). T o t a l s for 1558 (330), 1561 (265) a n d 1568 (310) in S T . reg. 4 1 , 148-148V; reg. 4 3 , m v - 1 1 2 ; Misc. Cod., 1, Storia Veneta, B a . 123, 120V. As in 1557. S S . reg. 70, 66v. O r a t i o T o s c a n e l l a , Gioie historiche . . . (Venice, 1567) 3 3 . S T . reg. 3 8 , 23-23V a n d 3 1 . I n 1554, asking for t h e r e p l a c e m e n t of t h e local force by 'forestieri', t h e

ex-Capitano and Podesta of Rovigo remarked that 'they more readily supported criminals and banditi than otherwise' (Relazioni dei ret tori, vi, Rovigo (Milan, 1976) 61). The number of cappelletti was cut in 1586 on account of their expense, and more homini di campagna enrolled, but this policy was reversed in 1589 (ST. reg. 57, 25 (13 Nov.); SM. reg. 50, 25-25V (6 May)). 377

Part II:

i$og-i6ij

with wheel-lock carbines, they wore the cavalryman's cuirass, arquebusproof on the chest, pistol-proof on the back.48 From the early seventeenth century Corsicans too were employed, bands of them being deputed to scour whole areas for bandit gangs, especially in the otherwise sparsely patrolled Polesine and Friuli.49 In 1559 or 1560 Sforza Pallavicino had written about the republic's cavalry to the doge in unenthusiastic terms. Of the some 500 light cavalry 'many are well mounted, but few have had any experience of war'. Of the 600-odd men-at-arms, 'most are well-mounted but many are quite inexperienced'; and noting how their poverty was at odds with their expenses he recommended dropping the obligation to keep a third horse and raising their pay. The government chose the compromise described above. He also suggested, as a way of increasing the numbers of such a useful but expensive arm, that Venice ' should raise a cavalry militia as is done in many other places, that is, oblige everyone who has a certain amount of income to maintain a horse and weapons suited, according to his means, to a light cavalryman or a man-at-arms'.50 This was the idea taken up in the abortive scheme of the 1590s.51 Later in the century the very phrase 'cavalli leggieri' became vague, and Martinengo's title from his engagement in 1597 as their captain-general was little more than an excuse to retain his services as a leading military consultant.52 It was, however, he who advised on armour and weapons for the 650 light cavalry offered by the Terraferma towns in the crisis of 1606—7. Their cuirass was to be arquebus-proof on the chest, pistol-proof at the back. The helmet (celata) was to be pistol-proof, and the protection for shoulders, thighs and knees and lower back and the gauntlets were to be of light unproofed plate. To keep the horse as free as possible there was to be no armoured saddle. The arms were to be two pistols apiece 'longhe almeno cinque quarti di canno' holstered on the saddle bow and either a sword or dagger. In addition, half the men were to carry lances, the other half arquebuses; these, too, should have a form of holster so that the cavalrymen when changing weapons would not have to discard them. All firearms should be wheel-locks.53 How far this blue-print for a nimble, multi-purpose light cavalry and the revival, after three-quarters of a century, of the mounted arquebusier was ST. reg. 74, 149V-150V (19 Feb. 1605). E.g. SS.reg. 99, io9v-no(i3 Dec. 1608), reg. 100, 63V (31 Oct. 1609) and ST. reg. 81, i46v(22Nov. 1611). Materie Miste Notabili, Ba. 7, 77V-78. See above, 349-50. SS. reg. 94, 153 (23 Oct.), 161 (20 Dec). Prow. Gen. in Terraferma, Ba. 45, enclosure with Moro's letter of 5 Aug. 1606.

378

Cavalry, infantry, artillery realized is not shown. Given the expense and short supply of wheel-lock weapons and the more absolute shortage of suitable mounts,54 its implementation, at least on these lines, is doubtful. What is not in doubt is the unpopularity of the foreign cuirassiers who were raised and the native version alike. The billeting regulations were clear, and were distributed in printed form.55 Nonetheless, the usual misbehaviour of the military was compounded by the abuses whereby their reluctant hosts tried to get their own back, chiefly by misrepresenting the tolls charged on the transport and sale of hay, fuel, bread and wine, and inventing 'shortages' that justified excessive prices being charged for the foodstuffs the troopers were expected to pay for themselves. It was for prudential reasons, as well as the result of a calculation of the usefulness of leggieri in peacetime, that the government ran down its cavalry force save for the unbudgeable men-at-arms and the unavoidable cappelletti. As a result, the need for lighter cavalry in wartime led, among the mobilization measures taken in November 1615, to a call to the feudatories, castellans, prelates and communities, first in Friuli and then elsewhere in the Terraferma who enjoyed fiscal and jurisdictional privileges in return for military service, to send horsemen to Palma.56 They were also asked to send a list of other horses and men available; Fulvio di Porcia, for instance, reported 301 men and 55 horses on his estates around the castle of Porcia, and 273 men and 64 horses on his properties in and about Brugnera.57 No loans were to be made for equipping the men ' because they are bound to serve the Signoria when called upon and to provide themselves with horses', but in service they would be paid the normal light cavalry rates.58 Rectors and collaterals throughout the Terraferma were charged with compiling lists of horses available for feudatories and for volunteers who had none of their own. A list surviving for Rovigo and its territory is impressively thorough, each animal being described in terms of age, sex, colour, defects and current use: for riding, hire, draught and so on. And against each was marked its suitability for use by a man-at-arms, a cuirassier or a light cavalryman or as a pack animal.59 The summons itself, however, was widely protested against or ignored. In May 1616 the Senate threatened those 'feudatories enjoying jurisdiction or whose title of investiture clearly speaks of personal military service' who had left Venice's dominions or (worse) were serving Venice's enemies to 54 55 56 57 58 59

Yet the average value of a military mount was only 10-20 ducats. Ibid., Ba. 46, 28 Oct. 1607. E.g. in Brescia, dated 1 Aug. 1607. ST. reg. 85, 1 6QV (27 Nov.). De Pellegrini, 147-8. SS. reg. 105, 225-30V (7 Dec). Materie Miste Notabili, Ba. 66, 27 Aug. 1616.

379

Part II: return on pain of expulsion from their fiefs.60 In July those whose titles of investiture made no reference to military service were required to make a 'voluntary' contribution to the state's military expenses.61 A few, notably Cornelio Frangipani, one of the most 'Austrian' of Friulian nobles, obeyed but most did not, and in September two more proveditors were added to the 'magistrate di provveditori sopra i feudi' in order to prepare prosecutions and confiscations.62 At the same time, comparably unsuccessful attempts were being made to extract the horsemen due from the nobles and other feudatories of Crete.63 The device of feudal service had long outlived its usefulness, and contributed far more to skirmishes in the law courts than in the field. During the war years ten contracts were placed for 750 'foreign' Italian cavalry.64 All but 200 of these were for corazze. The rest were horse arquebusiers, also armed with pistols, protected as to breast and back and 'obliged to serve on foot when occasion demands', as were an additional company of 100 mounted wheel-lock musketeers.65 How many actually turned up is unclear. A remark of Giovanni de' Medici, Venice's commander-in-chief in Friuli, perhaps throws light on the paucity of references to them in the records of the war: ' I am frightened by their quantity but appalled by their quality.'66 The infantry garrisons on the Terraferma were held fairly steady at between 1500 and 2000 men throughout the century - figures reflecting those of the only years of true demobilization, 1517-20, during the period 1509-29.67 Yet because their numbers were so frequently augmented in times of political crisis and because they were liable to be drafted into the enormously inflated numbers of hired infantry in wartime, it is perhaps worth prefacing an account of the peacetime garrisons with some general comments on the infantry employed by Venice in 1509-29, comments which, with due allowance for their different circumstances, apply to the wars of the rest of the period. The brigading of infantry remained haphazard. Attempts were made to unify large bodies into colonelcies (colonelli)6S of as many as 3000 men, to round up companies under individual captains to even numbers of 100 or 60

ST. reg. 86, 78V-79. Cf. SS. reg. 108, i6v and 17V (9 Nov. 1616).

61

ST. reg. 86, I I 7 - I 8 V (5 July).

62

Ibid., 190V-191 (17 Sept. 1616). SS. reg. 108, 72-72V (29 Nov. 1616). ST. reg. 85,183-183V (5 Dec. 1615), 290V (20 Feb. 1616); SS. reg. 105,231-2V (7 Dec. 1615); ST. reg. 86, 25-25V (26 Mar. 1616), 172 (1 Sept. 1616); reg. 87, 5 (1 Mar. 1617), 124 (20 July). ST. reg. 86, 138 (21 July 1616).

63 64

65 66

J o p p i , Lettere

67

ST. reg. 19, 138; Sanuto, xxiii, 512-13, 526-7. The expression was used at least from 1510: SS. reg. 42, 117V (24 Jan.).

68

storiche

sulla guerra

del Friuli,

1616-1617,

380

23-31.

Cavalry, infantry, artillery 200 in 151169 and 4-600 in 1527,70 and to obtain a rational proportion of subordinate ranks: ensigns and corporals. Notionally, companies were divided into squads of 25 under corporals. On his reappointment in 1513, Alviano, fired to demonstrate both his zeal and his learning, proposed that companies should henceforward be standardized at 256 men envisaged as a four-square parade formation sixteen ranks by sixteen files. Each file or decuria should be headed by a decurione and its rear steadied by an experienced tergiductor. One decurion in every four files should be the corporal in charge of 64 men and answerable for them to the captain. There should in addition be an ensign whose flag would be guarded by four halbardiers.71 That this scheme, rightly described by Andrea Gritti as 'more antiquo'72 and anonymously as 'divine rather than human',73 was taken seriously on at least one occasion is shown by a pay list for 2460 infantry divided under headings for captains, corporals, decurioni, tergiductori and ordinary soldiers.74 But though the need for a rationalization on these lines was recognized on the grounds of discipline, tacticalflexibilityand financial control, it was never achieved. Numbers were never constant thanks to the system of individual contracts based on the number of men a constable could raise and to the fluctuations within these companies caused by illness, wounds, capture or desertion, or by the temporary adherence of wandering free-lances (lanze spezzate) who in spite of their name were as often foot soldiers as former men-at-arms turned light cavalrymen. Unbalanced company numbers, too many captains and too few men of intermediate ranks: these factors, which encouraged simplistic and undisciplined tactics, were not even to approach a cure in the Cinquecento. The same is true of equipment. Later in the century the proportions of arquebuses, muskets, pikes and halberds were frequently spelled out in contracts, even if they were not insisted upon, but in these campaigns there was no rationalization of weapons. Men were rounded up with the arms they happened to have become familiar with. It was, besides, a real period of transition, when pikes and a miscellany of other pole-arms, schioppi and arquebuses, crossbows and long bows (including those which, under Eastern influence, were drawn back against an induced curve)75 might all be used together in battle and regularly were in sieges.' Una ex principalissimis rebus quae necessariae sunt in bello est salnitrium', proclaimed the Council SS. reg. 44, 8 (12 Apr.). Sanuto, xlvi, 116. Ibid., xvi, 639-41. Ibid., 660. Ibid., 641. Ibid., xvii, 429-30. This type is shown in Carpaccio's Heron Hunt.

381

Part II:

i$og-i6ij

of Ten in August 1509 -within days of licensing the dispatch of 20,000 arrows from its armoury.76 In May 1514, Girolamo Savorgnan announced that he had accumulated sufficient men to attack Marano: 200 schioppettieri, 300 archers, 100 crossbowmen and more than 2000 men armed with pole-arms (aste), 'of which I have readied 600 in my own way'77 — probably with pikes in the manner of German Landsknechts. Hand firearms changed rapidly from the schioppo, in which the match head had to be applied to the touch-hole by hand, to the arquebus in which it was moved down by a trigger: 5020 arquebusiers were ordered to be raised in April 1528. It was not until 1570 that the Council of Ten formally accepted the musket (archibusone da posta) as' the best weapon for offence and defence that can be used in fortresses, armies and fleets', established competitions in Venice and the Terraferma to encourage its practice, and ordered the Arsenal to keep a stock of 2000, to be topped up as soon as weapons had been issued.78 For military (as opposed to sporting) use the matchlock was long unchallenged by any form of wheel-lock, a mechanism first mentioned in a Venetian context in 1532.79 Thoughfirearmswere on occasion ordered from Germany most were forged in the iron-bearing regions in the northern Bresciano: Val Camonica, Gardone in Valtrompia and the Riviera di Salo, and finished and mounted in Brescia itself. It was from Brescia, too, that bulk purchases of swords, sallets (the commonest form of helmet and capable of stopping a bullet),80 and back and chest pieces of armour were made. Indeed, the Venetian government rigidly controlled the export both of iron and of manufactured arms and armour,81 and the recovery of Brescia in 1517 came at a time when the stocks of the Council of Ten and in the Arsenal were gravely low. Because the cutting down of numbers in winter or, more drastically, in times of truce or actual demobilization, affected the infantry more sharply than the cavalry, fewer infantry commanders were engaged as stipendiati, that is, with contracts lasting at least a year, renewable at the government's discretion and involving payment in peace as well as in war. The rest - over the protests of their agents, if they were established enough to have one were engaged 'a beneplacito', that is on a pay-to-pay basis which gave them 76

77 78

79

80 81

'Saltpetre is one of those principal things which are necessary in time of war.' Dieci, Misti, reg. 32, 137V and 135. Savorgnan, 'Lettere', iii, 33. Dieci, C o m u n e , reg. 29, 37-37V and 46 (21 July a n d 19 Aug.). O t h e r orders in S S . regs. 75 and 76 and S M . regs. 38 a n d 3 9 . S a n u t o , xlvii, 182; M a r c o M o r i n , ' O r i g i n of the wheellock: the G e r m a n hypothesis', in Art, Arms and Armour: An International Anthology, ed. R. Held (Chiasso, 1979-80), i. S a n u t o , xlii, 426. E.g. S T . reg. 24, iv—2 (9 M a r . 1525). O n g u n production, see M . M o r i n a n d R. Held, Beretta: la dinastia industrial piii antica al mondo (Chiasso, 1980) 20 seq.

382

Cavalry, infantry, artillery no sense of commitment to their own units, let alone to their co-operation with others. The common foot soldier received 3 ducats every 36 days (40 for the tenth pay) in war and every 45 days in peace; squad leaders and ensigns (in theory) 9 per pay. In April 1528 it was recognized, very late in the day, that much desertion and indiscipline was caused by the inadequacy of wages, and the Senate decided that while the number of pays should remain the same, the ducat of 6 lire and 4 soldi should be replaced by the scudo of 6 lire and 14 soldi. At the same time a captain's caposoldo, which for the infantry took the form of dead pays {paghe morte), that is, so many extra salaries to use as the bonus fund, was fixed at 15 for every 100 men, to be distributed 'to men of outstanding merit, free-lances, arquebusiers and those known by captains to deserve something over and above their three ducats a pay, it being emphasized that captains may divert no part of this money to their own use'.82 This more than doubled the previous average caposoldo, which amounted to approximately 210 ducats per 100 men, or seven dead pays. Only one pay sheet of the following year suggests that this system was actually applied; an infantry captain of 150 troops in Apulia was credited with 22^ dead pays. But this company was also suspiciously neat in containing a squad leader for every 25 men, and an ensign.83 Three ducats remained the norm throughout the century, and, even though bonuses were introduced for musketeers and pikemen, its inadequacy meant that while men could be expected to expose themselves to discomfort and, less regularly, danger for it, they could not be expected to improve their efficiency by frequent drills and inspections. The thin and unanalytically conceived accounts of battles give little indication either of the tactics involved in the few large-scale engagements which Venetian-raised armies fought on their own rather than as components of an allied force, or of the degree of co-operation achieved between infantry and the various types of cavalry. On the eve of Agnadello the army was divided into the traditional European components (of almost equal size) advance guard, battle (battaglia) and rear guard, each containing men-atarms and infantry, while the light cavalry scouted for information.84 On the march in July 1512 it was divided into two large groups, advance and rear guards, the first headed by light horse followed by men-at-arms and infantry, the second led by men-at-arms followed by infantry and light horse; the artillery and baggage proceeded in the middle.85 Another marching order, in August 1515, was: advance guard (light horse, men-at82 83 84 85

SS. reg. 53, 13-13V. The change to scudi was not implemented. Sanuto, lii, 155-60. Da Porto, Letter e stork he, 54. Sanuto, xiv, 521-2.

383

Part II: arms); artillery; battle (men-at-arms, infantry); rear guard (men-at-arms, infantry); stradiots scouting ahead and on the flank nearer the enemy.86 Other accounts of march or battle formations and their outcome are less clear, though most give the impression that for the foot what counted was, in spite of the presence of the captain of infantry,87 the reaction to circumstances of the bands immediately surrounding the captains who had raised them, and those captains' nearness to, and personal relations with, the commanders of the large units of which their men formed part. With this in mind, plus the absence of an adequate stiffening of non-commissioned officers, it is not surprising that neither tactical agreement in a war council, nor the wearing of surcoats or sashes bearing a common symbol or combination of colours, nor shared war-cries and banners could do much more than fill a motley assemblage of men with a vague sense of what was expected of them. When senators spoke of Fortune as the determining factor of battles it was because while spies and scouts could report an enemy's size and probable deployment, and comparative strengths in men and topographical advantage could be calculated, neither the degree of co-operation nor the morale of individual units could be anticipated with any confidence. Something of why this should be so can be inferred from the military code issued by Alviano in 1514.88 Captains were to swear to be faithful to Venice. They were not to cheat the paymaster by passing off non-combatants (servants or others) as soldiers or getting men to present themselves again at the pay desk under the name of another who was absent without cause, dead, or was merely a phantom name smuggled on to the pay-roll. They were not to maintain notorious swindlers, gamblers, ill-livers or idlers in their companies. They were not to possess valuable horses (i.e. fast ones) and in action were to fight on foot among their men; nor were they to allow their men to possess these temptations to flight. They were not to grant leave of absence nor take it themselves without the permission of the captaingeneral. They were not to retain any of the pay due to a soldier, nor more of his booty than the customs of war allowed. They were to see that their men were armed and equipped, drill them and see that they could handle their weapons. They were to give an honest account of all booty to the pro vedi torgeneral or paymaster; use the bonus fund only to reward extra responsibility or good service; at each pay day they were to take an oath from their men to serve Venice faithfully, obey orders and never abandon their flag, and' to die rather than fail in their duty in battle, siege, skirmish, or foray against the 86 87

88

Ibid., xx, 484-6. 'Experience, which is the teacher in all affairs, has shown how necessary it is in an army to have a captain of infantry to control and draw them up' (SS. reg. 41, 179.V, preamble to the decision on 13 May to appoint Dionysio di Naldo). Sanuto, xviii, 219-22.

384

Cavalry, infantry, artillery enemy'. The troops were also to swear to abstain from brawling; drawing a weapon would be punished with the cutting off of the right hand; wounding a colleague, with death. In addition, they were to swear not to keep whores, to restrain their oaths this side of blasphemy, not to provoke quarrels, to rob neither their colleagues nor others, to respect the persons and property of peasants on whom they might be billeted. When captains were ordered to fill depleted ranks they were not to employ troops from any country not specified by the captain-general, nor peasants, artisans or any others unsuited to war or who had already been cashiered. Captains violating any of these ordinances, the code concludes, would be publicly disgraced and dismissed; soldiers would be executed. Like all codes, then and later, Alviano's is concerned with abuses, but each could be documented with a painful multiplicity of instances and none was cured by oath or gallows. Venice gave commanders-in-chief full jurisdiction over their troops save over such political offences as treason, the uttering of false coin and disputes with civilians. But a state whose lawenforcement agencies were so inadequate that it had to resort to the pardoning of murderers if they murdered other murderers, was not in a position to expect or even demand much of a military society into which drifted the restless and potentially violent — and whose numbers had to be kept up. The republic, through Senate directions to military proveditors, concentrated on what were not, essentially, matters of military discipline: frauds to the fisc and behaviour that harmed not so much the enemy as Venetian subjects. The code's early provisions had in mind captains like Piero Corso, cashiered by Andrea Gritti in 1511 for putting up straw men to answer the roll call on pay day.89 And as late as 1528 the Senate ordered paymasters not to show captain's clerks their own pay books, which noted a soldier's complexion and other distinguishing marks, nor to allow them within hearing while troops were questioned about their parentage (necessary when so many were known only by a Christian or nick-name and a place of origin).90 Fraud was too common in all armies, however, to be checked in one. As was vice. Just as an army was accompanied by itinerant food and wine vendors and dealers ready to change booty into cash, so it was by a horde of prostitutes and their male bawds (rufiani).91 On hearsay evidence their numbers varied between one and two thousand, and it was considered worthy of news when Alviano, tireless in his determination to revive 'the Roman discipline in its original and most 89 90 91

Ibid., xiii, 259. SS. reg. 53, 13-13V. Sanuto, viii, 414 (18 June 1509).

385

Part II: blessed form', threw out the army's whores in 1514 and slit the noses of those who defied the order and were found in camp.92 They were noted again as a normal part of the army in the order of march of the following year.93 Their inadequacy as an instrument of social hygiene was shown by the case of a soldier who, in that same year, organized the group rape of a peasant girl of fourteen.94 It would be too representative of men who were frequently accused of behaving 'worse than Turks' to be referred to if it did not have an additional point of interest: whereas the captain-general wished to hang the culprit as an example, a prominent captain pleaded that he should be pardoned if he married the girl and paid a heavy fine towards the fortification of Padua. The captain was Teodoro Trivulzio, who next year was to be appointed governor-general of Venice's armed forces. That in war as in peace the combination of venal captains and inadequately paid men led to abuses that maimed military effectiveness is a fact so amply documented on a European scale that only one later source of evidence need be cited here. The winter of 1570-1 saw a rapid build-up in the garrisons of Dalmatia. The usage then was to give one pay to the infantryman on recruitment, a second on mustering for embarkation and a third on arrival. The soldier's natural instinct was to spend the first two at once. The third was retained by the captain as a delayed down payment on the arquebus, morion and palliasse or cloak the man had been issued with, leaving him nothing to live on until the fourth. Part of this went on a stoppage to make up part of the balance of the cost of equipment; another part, in all probability, to recompense the captain for advancing him a loan. Even if he had worked off these obligations by the fifth or sixth, his pay was still inadequate.95 In January 1571 the Governor-General in Dalmatia, Giulio Savorgnan, explained the predicament the infantryman found himself in.96 He and the proveditor-general had gone round the market with a pair of scales pricing the bread, wine, soup, cheese and sardines a soldier's basic diet was based on; meat they ignored as too expensive, as was the wood to cook it with. Savorgnan found that 'the cost of keeping body and soul together' to be 12^ soldi a day, whereas a soldier's local pay averaged 11 soldi and 8 bagattini (local coins of the smallest denomination) and was thus 10 bagattini short of his requirements. 'What soldier', he asked the doge, 'would leave Italy for Dalmatia knowing that he would not be able to feed himself, let alone buy shoes and other necessaries, nor match, powder and lead for his arquebus?' 92 93 94 95

96

Ibid., xviii, 379 (21 July 1514). Ibid., xx, 486. Ibid., 92-3. S. Ljubic, Commissiones et relationes venetae (Zagreb, 3 vols., 1876-80) iii, 253. For hygiene on galleys, see S M . reg. 4 0 , 7V and 2 o v - 2 i v . E . Salaris, Relazione di Giulio Savorgnan. Cf. below, 4 9 6 .

386

Cavalry, infantry, artillery And what is more, the captains,' knowing that the infantrymen cannot stay the course', stop so much of their pay in order to be reimbursed for the arms they have loaned them that the men are left with nearer 7 soldi than 11, and how long can they remain in service on that? He proposed two remedies to 'the evil reputation of Dalmatia'; still higher pay and better captains: 'real soldiers or at least men of honour, unlike the base, contemptible thieves of whom too many have been sent here'. Let us follow this forward for a moment. On 15 March the Senate took up, though feebly, both these points. Henceforward all overseas service was to be paid each calendar month in ducats worth 7 lire each (the scudo d'oro) instead of 6 lire and 4 soldi, and a 10% bonus was to be distributed among the 20 men in each 100 who as file leaders wore corselets; this bonus was not to be in the captains' discretion but paid directly to men qualified to receive it. The Senate then referred to the commonest of captains' frauds: they presented a full company at the embarkation point and then, by connivance, let part of the men go home in return for a proportion of their pay, so that 'not only are we cheated of our money but of the proper numbers of men we have planned for the defence of our fortresses'. This was made a capital offence. The penalty was to be proclaimed throughout Venice's dominions and repeated on each pay day, as was the penalty - five years in chains at the oar — for employing or conniving at the employment of substitutes.97 Late in June the Senate confessed themselves aghast to hear that companies were still arriving shrunken in numbers and comprising 'abject and useless' men, led by captains 'who cannot be trusted to undertake any enterprise'. Yet the senators had been made well aware of the number of deserters ' among the soldiers' - as an order to round them up in April ran 'destined by us for the garrisons of our towns and fortresses in the Levant'.98 Given the scale of the mobilization for war, by the end of 1570 about half of the new contracts for infantrymen went to men Venice had not employed before. But the real trouble lay less with them than with the subordinate captains they chose for each company of 250 or 300, some 42 in all, for these were chosen at the contractor's discretion, subject only to confirmation by the College, which, given the pressure of time, was usually automatic. Military patronage as practised by the state certainly included appointments made from political motives; not all sons were as competent as their fathers, for instance; but the deputing of patronage led to the creation of captaincies for men over whom the government had no check until the results of their incompetence or corruptness had been demonstrated all too clearly. And by then rectors and proveditors were faced with weighing - as the Senate 97 98

SM. reg. 40, 8-8v and gv—10 (15 and 17 Mar.). Ibid., reg. 40, 6iv (26 June); SS. reg. 77, 8iv.

387

Part II: ordered them to do in these cases - which evil would prove the lesser: a bad captain or a reprimanded and thus resentful and mutinous one. For the difficulty offindingreplacements meant that degrees of reprimand were far more frequently employed than dismissal and that abuses had to be tolerated. Meanwhile, in the wave of relief that followed the political settlement of 1529, garrison forces were reduced to 1100" and held at this level for some years. Initially this was because the wage bill was inflated by captains whose contracts had not run out;100 it was maintained as the novel sense of security continued. What is the use, asked the returning Capitano of Legnago in 1537, of strengthening the walls of that fortress town if its garrison is too small and badly paid to be able to wish to defend it?101 But the government never made any fresh calculations about the suitable size of garrisons during the modernizing of fortifications. Garrisons were not then regiments on leave from field duties. They formed scarcely more than a skeleton crew of watchdogs and key-keepers; they were security guards rather than bodies competent to man walls and bastions against formal investment. Against that eventuality there was, it was assumed, always time to contract for additional men. Certainly each fortified town required a garrison sufficiently large to perform (according to regulations seldom observed in toto) the following functions: gate guard, wall walk, piazza guard, street patrol, sentinel and patrol duties on the glacis, the guarding of food and ammunition stores. In addition a reserve remained at all times in the castello, if there was one. The rectors' personal guard watched their palaces. In practice the numbers involved on any particular night varied with the degree of vigilance the situation called for, and in some cities, such as Brescia, wall-walk duty was performed by an indigenous force, the guardaroli.102 In their relazioni returning rectors regularly pleaded for larger garrisons. Thus in 1551 Marc'Antonio Morosini pointed out that 60 infantry were not enough to guard Treviso, a city so strategically important and (he shrewdly added) where so many patricians had 'houses, possessions and incomes'. Because the men 'as is customary' worked one week on and one week off, the effective force was 30 and at times, 'when they go to eat or are sick', fewer. He asked for 40 more, and was given 20, but by 1564 the garrison was down to 50.103 For the logic of what was needed in terms of men at each guard point was constantly contradicted thanks to the frequent partial mobiliz99 100 101 102 103

Sanuto, Hi, 517-21. ST. reg. 27, 13V-14. Collegio, Secreta, Relazioni, Ba. 42. Pasero, 'Aspetti dell'ordinamento militare', 15. Relazioni dei ret tori, iii, Treviso, 23-6, 43-4.

388

Cavalry, infantry, artillery ations of the 'scare' years and to the need to draft troops from the Terraferma to the garrisons da Mar. From the demobilizations that followed 1573, as in 1529 and the War of 1537-40, the garrison force gradually came to be stabilized at about 2000, based as shown in the accompanying table. 1551*

1541'

Monfalcone Marano Chiusa di Venzon Cadore Treviso Padua Legnago Verona Chiusa di Verona Peschiera Anfo Asola Pontevico Orzinovi Brescia Sermione Bergamo Crema Total

1556'

1607*'

40

10 —

— —

—

100

6 16

12 20

20

17

— — —

20

80

90

30

200

25

12

8

160 500 16

232

230

170 160 510

75

256 161 —

25

166 28 60

40 120 —

210 —

200 —

345

25 80

50 245

—

550

684

1819

— —

150

25

16

88

120

12

32

100

120

32 260 20

225

200

1978

2239

ST. reg. 31, 159-159V. ST. reg. 67, 134-5 (an order for these to be built up to a total of 3733 in the face of troops reported to be moving into the Milanese). ST. reg. 40, I I O V - I I I .

Prow. Gen. in Terraferma, Ba. 46, 14 Aug. and 8 Oct. No Polesine or Friuli figures available.

Indeed, on 30 March 1560, the Senate determined that the standing force of infantry in the Terraferma garrisons should be 2000 men under four colonel-majors, eight colonels, twelve governors and forty captains.104 This top-heaviness (64 senior officers for 2000 men)105 was due to the number of small garrisons,106 the division of larger garrisons into small units for guard 104 105 106

SS. reg. 72, 4-4V. In 1568, 70 captains for 2235 men (Misc. Cod. 1 (Storia Veneta), Ba. 123, i2ov). E.g. in 1566 in the rocca at Sermione there were one captain, one corporal and five men; at La Crovara one captain and four men; at Malcesine, one captain, one corporal and four men, Relazioni dei rettori, ix, Verona, 52.

389

Part II:

isog-i6iy

duty, the need to have enough officers in garrison even when some were drafted overseas and, most important, the need to have a command structure ready to absorb additional troops raised in emergencies. This was to be the full extent of the 'ordinary' or permanent officer establishment, and the College was not to add to it without getting the assent of the Senate. A final reason for the top-heaviness was to avoid having to bring militia officers to accompany detachments of their men when they were summoned to reinforce garrisons. In this respect, too, the regulations of March 1560 clarified procedures. Rectors, with the advice of colonels or governors, could call up militia units on their own responsibility for periods of eight days in the case of Verona and the sites east of it, fifteen in the case of sites west of Verona. The College could authorize an extension of these periods up to a month, but applications for still longer periods had to be referred to the Senate. Lest it be thought, however, that regulations alone give a true picture, it should be noted that five months later the Senate decided to cut the infantry force which was 'about 2350' to 'about 1500', in order to save expense.107 The constant laying off, bringing men back or recruiting new ones - a process almost constant, in order to compensate for the stream of deserters left captains' pay books in a state of such confusion that the government never knew precisely how many men it did employ, nor whether they were actually the men they purported to be. Expertise in the art of taking pay and getting someone else to do the work had passed from the Church to the army. Regulations laid down that every soldier should be checked each pay day against a roll on which was entered his own and his father's names, his place of origin and a physical description, warts and all. Apart from blemishes, and their whereabouts, this description should note the colour of eyes, hair and skin, height (tall, medium or small) as well as outstandingly recognizable features such as a large nose, a receding forehead or unusually shaped ears.108 In practice substitution, though punishable by rectors by three years in chains in galleys or the amputation of nose or ears,109 was an ineradicable abuse. Again, in spite of regulations specifying that no Venetian subject could serve in the region in which he or his wife was a native,110 and that no one could serve more than five years at a time in one place, there was a steady stream of complaints from rectors that both native and 'foreign' troops had gone native and were supporting broods of 107 108

109 110

ST. reg. 42, 158 (3 Aug.). C . P a s e r o , La partecipazione bressiana alia guerra di Cipro e alia battaglia di Lepanto, 1570—73 (Brescia, 1954) 89. ST. reg. 44, 28V (25 June 1562). ST. reg. 33, 3 (7 Sept. 1543). Amended in ibid., 23V (3 Nov.) to allow men from a city or its territory to serve as long as their place of duty was not their birthplace.

390

Cavalry, infantry, artillery relatives, plying trades in the town or becoming 'indistinguishable from peasants' in the surrounding countryside.111 While the garrison force was not a body that could respond to the reformist military literature that was streaming from the printing houses of the capital, advantage was taken of the demobilization in 1573 to decide at least which captains to retain and which to dismiss. The savi alia scrittura and of the militia were to check records of service against contracts, take account of reports by proveditors and senior officers, and put individual names to the vote in the College, which would then submit them for confirmation to the Senate. The result was an approved list of 42 names, 12 of them Venetian subjects (2 from Cyprus). These men formed the new 'ordinary' or permanent establishment, at company commander level, of the garrisons and militia. Theoretically, applicants had to wait until one of them vacated his post.112 The system broke down at once. Not all wanted to remain. Some of those excluded protested that they should be retained. There were 21 places on the Terraferma where garrisons were maintained (not necessarily all the time, however) apart from the Lido forts, Chioggia and the sometimes manned lagoon posts at San Pietro in Volta, Malamocco and Brondolo. Each needed one captain, several needed more - eight at Brescia and Verona; six at Bergamo, for instance - and in addition there was the whole of the militia to care for. Nine garrison towns, moreover, were of sufficient strategic weight to have, in addition, military governors: Bergamo, Brescia, Crema, Asola, Orzinovi, Peschiera, Verona, Legnago and Marano. Some of these governorships were important enough to be offered to colonels (of whom it was discovered in 1578 that there were twenty instead of the legal eight);113 others were held by captains. Forty-two were clearly not enough to go round, and the College began considering new applicants almost at once. Garrison duty could not attract ambitious or efficient men. The duties were routine; the numbers of troops in a command were seldom as high as 40 and often as low as 12 or 15. Salaries were accordingly low and the chances of promotion slight, as the custom still obtained whereby contractors for 500 troops or more, at times of alarm or war, hired their own captains of companies, or accepted suggestions from the College's list of captains likely to be able to speed matters by bringing men of their own. Thus in 1591, when 2000 infantry were to be raised for Crete, the College turned to five men whose claims, on grounds of tradition, parentage or personal following, were considered greater than those of garrison captains: the Bolognese 111 112 113

ST. reg. 36, 104.V (14 June 1549) and reg. 37, 162-162V (25 July 1551); supporting detail in e.g. Pasero, 'Aspetti dell'ordinamento militare', 18-19 and Relazioni dei rettori, ii, Belluno, Feltre, 232-3. ST. reg. 49, 133-4V (30 June); SS. reg. 92, IIO-IIOV (28 Mar. 1597). ST. reg. 52, 47 (3 Mar.).

391

Part II: Count Francesco Pepoli, whose brother Cesare had been employed by Venice in the past; the Tuscan Ottone del Monte Maria, a direct descendant 'of that Pietro del Monte who fought for us at the Ghiarra d'Adda [Agnadello]'; Count Ottaviano Vimercato, of the famous Cremasco military family; and the Paduans Paolo Conti and Giacomo Tacco, both of whom were ' persons of a large family and eager to demonstrate their loyalty and devotion to our Signoria'.114 The College was also tempted to bend the rules about checking for vacancies before making new appointments when they were petitioned by well-supported ex-employees, by for instance the Florentine Giovanni Altoni. He had served in Zara and Sibenico in 1568—9 and was taken prisoner to Constantinople. After more than three years he was freed, thanks to the bailo and the ambassador Andrea Badoer, but at a cost of 600 zeechini. Since then he had served in France and Hungary. He had already sent the doge 'a book of mine about military affairs' and enclosed a stoutish manuscript describing the Hungarian wars of 1594-7. And he cited an impressive list of referees including Del Monte, Ferrante de' Rossi and the military engineer Lorini.115 With transfers still constantly going on among stations within the Terraferma, Dalmatia and the third zone, not to mention desertion, dismissals, and retirements and deaths, it is not surprising that in years free from crisis the savio alia scrittura of the moment did not always check his books. The result was that there soon came to be too many garrison captains on the Terraferma, a situation damaging to their own career prospects and bad for the government's finances. In 1586 the Senate ruled that preference should be given them when vacancies appeared da Mar. In 1591 Alvise Grimani, reporting as former Proveditor-General in Terraferma, presented an alarming report on the garrisons' corrupt and vulnerable state,116 and the Senate elected Francesco Duodo, Marc'Antonio Barbaro and Zorzi Contarini 'to look into the reform of the armed forces as tre eletti supra la regolatione della militia\ After consultations with Del Monte, Giulio Savorgnan and the collateral-general they made their first suggestion in 1592: that peacetime pay (still at 3 ducats for the common soldier) should be given ten instead of eight times a year. How could captains ensure discipline and keep honest books when their men were forced to take other jobs? As usual, when reform meant spending money, the proposal was turned down.117 More successful was the proposal in the following year to reduce the number of captains from 58 to 38, 24 on the 114 115 116 117

SM. reg. 52, 35-35V. Capi di Guerra, Ba. A-D, 6 Nov. 1604. Collegio, Secreta, Relazioni, Ba. 52, 36-85. SS. reg. 89, 20-20V (6 June, referring to elections of 9 Sept. 1591). Cf. report of 28 Nov. 1591 in Materie Miste Notabili, Ba. 21. 392

Cavalry, infantry, artillery Terraferma and 14 da Mar - figures that did not include governors. Coupled with this was the condition that no new garrison captains should be engaged unless they had already held captain's rank and had served as ensigns or sergeants for five years or spent three in a theatre of war. Apart from presenting testimonials to this effect, candidates had to pass a viva voce examination devised with the most searching rigour by Del Monte.118 If they had known enough to get the answers right, Venice should have had, in the field and in siegework, the most competent permanent officer corps in Europe. Nothing was done about this. Nothing emerged from the next wave of senatorial reforming zeal, which also resulted from a gloomy report by a proveditor-general (Pietro Duodo in 1603) and led to the appointment of three patricians 'on the manner of proceeding in the reform of the standing infantry (sopra il modo et ordine di regolare la militia pagata)\119

Their

proposals were presented in 1605.120 Further proposals, this time from senior officers, were put forward in 1606.121 Indeed, the inspectorate system whereby proveditors-general and chiefs of staff supplied the College with fairly regular accounts of what was going on, together with advice on how to improve matters, was as admirable as ever. That no action was taken was due to three main factors: the reluctance to spend, the belief that the militia could save the situation in the short term, and the conviction that fortifications and the activation of long-term contracts with military entrepreneurs, tided over if need be with local recruiting, would provide a solution, as long as spies and diplomats kept on their toes and uttered their warnings in time. Perhaps it could be added that familiarity bred if not contempt at least resignation. That soldiers would neglect their duties or employ substitutes in spite of threats to their ears and noses, would look like beggars and act like bandits, that captains would fail to post their guards and teach men how to use their weapons, that armoury doors were not always bolted, that men in armour turned out to be shopkeepers while shopkeepers and carpenters turned out to be soldiers: these were oddities to bear, as they were known to be borne elsewhere. It was clear what should be done. The extremely detailed orders for the ideal system of patrols, guards and sentinels for a garrison city printed in 1603 is excellent example.122 But it was still better known that it would not be done. To bring armament abreast 118

SS. reg. 89,112-13 (29 J u n e ) - The examination is printed in Ricotti, Storia delle compagnie di ventura in Italia, ii, 470-82. 119 ST. reg. 74, n 7 v (3 Dec. 1604). 120 SS. reg. 96, 152V-157 (12 Feb.). 121 Materie Miste Notabili, B a . 25. 122 [ p r i n t e d ] Ordini deliberati dalFEccell1710. Senato. 1603. A di 11 Marzo. In materia delli presidij delle cittd e fortezze da Terra, e da mar.

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Part II:

isog-i6ij

of current practice it was ordered in 1607123 t n a t there were to be equal numbers of arquebusiers, musketeers and pikemen. But as the last two, because of the weight of weapon and armour, had to be paid more, the order was ignored. Impaired by crises as it was, 'peace' retained its soporific flavour. Salaries remained unchanged at an average of 20 ducats per pay for a garrison captain and 240 per annum for a governor.124 Pay was normally given to captains eight times a year, though in periods of food shortages and high prices or partial mobilization or in moments when a specially high security value was set on particular towns,125 it could be given ten or twelve times. Thisflexibility,which was yet another cause of confusion in the savio alia scrittura\ accounts, also applied to the pay of the men. Their base wage throughout the period was 3 ducats (or 18 lire, 12 soldi) a pay, making 24 ducats a year, or 8 soldi a day. Notionally, bonuses were available for men actually in possession of arms and armour at the rate of (per pay) 21 lire for an arquebusier, 23 for a pikeman, 25 for a musketeer. Pay could be increased, as we have seen, by calculating it in terms of the scudo of 7 lire instead of the ducat of 6 lire and 4 soldi. Normally this was done only for troops drafted in to supplement the standing force, out of consideration for their short term of service, but on occasion companies of 'extraordinary' infantry (especially Corsicans) were retained over long periods, presenting a contrast in wages that was a source of resentment among the 'ordinary' garrison troops, few of whom qualified for bonuses because they had commonly pawned their weapons and armour.126 The government did not attempt to reduce the basic 3 ducats a pay, but, in an attempt to pare down the costs of each company still further, in 1587 refused the bonus payments which had enabled ensigns, sergeants and even corporals to maintain a 'ragazzo' or batman,127 and in 1611 offered only a flat 8 ducats per pay (6.7 in peacetime) to all under-officers instead of wages that had come to range up to 16 ducats a pay for ensigns.128 It is uncertain, however, how far the latter reform was implemented. Save for the most prestigious governorships, those of Bergamo, Brescia and Verona, service in the standing infantry force for those of less than general officer rank thus offered little money and less glamour. This was 123 124 125

126

127 128

SS. reg. 98, 13 (19 Mar.). ST. reg. 54, 184 (10 Dec). E.g. at Legnago and Orzinovi in 1589