Renaissance Warfare

Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) was a Florentine historian, politician, military strategist, and humanist. Of his skill as a historian, Jacob Burkhardt noted that Machiavelli was the first of the “moderns” to present a city as a living organism that developed through a natural process.  Machiavelli is best known today, however, for his political treatise, The Prince. In it, he wrote about the ways an aspiring prince might build a principality and how an existing prince might maintain control. While perhaps a lesser-known work, his Art of War places Machiavelli among other well-known military theorists, such as Sun Tzu and Carl von Clausewitz, whose writings about military theory and practice have many similarities with Machiavelli’s. What sets Art of War apart is the noticeable influence of Renaissance humanism and the political and social forces at work in Florence, Italy and throughout Europe at the time. Machiavelli’s Art of War is, therefore, more than merely a treatise on military strategy. It is a reflection of the complex interaction of war, politics, and humanism in Renaissance Europe, assessed alongside classical modes of warfare, statecraft, and civic virtue.

Scholars who study craft books and books of secrets in the Middle Ages can engage on internal debates about the modes of transmission or interpretations of numerous facets of these important treatises, but they can all agree on two relatively firm facts. First, in the past, technical knowledge was more an art (techne) than a science (scientia); that is, it was about doing rather than necessarily knowing for knowing's sake. To put it another way, it was decidedly not philosophia naturalis, with its emphasis on causes but rather ars practica, with an emphasis on doing and making. Second, practitioners of these arts tended to disseminate knowledge from one generation to the next more or less directly
through the apprenticeship system rather than through written texts. What this means, on both counts, is that in the Middle Ages and early modem period textbooks in the modem sense were generally unavailable, irrelevant, and simply not needed. The craft treatises, which survive then, can only represent a small fraction of the vast craft tradition, and that they were ever written down at all should give us pause to consider by whom and for what purpose.

Considering the craft of gunnery and its preserved treatises also adds another layer of interpretive difficulty: the study of the rise of gunnery overlaps chronologically with the Scientific Revolution and its historiography in a peculiar manner. For the Scientific Revolution, a traditional narrative exists of the increasing rationalization, quantification, and geometrization of nature. For the military use of gunpowder weaponry, the narrative argues that the gunners, seeking ever-more-accurate bombardment of fortifications, turned to exacting understandings of ballistic trajectories to accomplish this task. The conflation of these two narratives is that the gunners became "scientific," that is, using science in the modem sense, and by some extension, quantitative natural philosophy in the historical sense.

Focusing on the contemporary manuals, this conflation is found to be quite unfounded for gunnery before at least the later seventeenth century. The vast majority of gunners' manuals, treatises, notebooks, and manuals before the eighteenth century have much more in common with cookbooks than they do with the Principia of Newton or even The Two New Sciences of Galileo. Gunnery manuals, in particular, preserve collections of the description of a variety of substances, processes, and mixtures that provided aides memoire to the users and perhaps didactic tools for the preservation and transmission of such knowledge. This study analyzes a number of gunners manuals and notebooks for their content, range of coverage, and material knowledge, and then looks in-depth at a number of firework recipes across a number of manuals to understand the gunners' interests, background knowledge, and goals. The material demonstrates
their great felicity with material properties and substances, and at the same time a remarkable disinterest in philosophical frameworks in which these materials might have meaning (notably, alchemical connections are entirely absent, and even Scholastic terminology does not appear).

Mariano Taccola’s eques scoppiectarius: an armoured knight who uses a hand-cannonon horseback.
This drawing was probably inspired by the vivacious construction of firearms in Siena, making
this city one of the main centers for the best master craftsman of hand-cannons and casters.
Taccola integrated his sketch with ample tag-lines which clarify mechanisms and inner workings
of hand-firearms of the mid fifteenth century, and also the relationship between architects and
military engineers. However, presently it is unknown whether this expedient was ever employed.
The earliest evidence of firearms being used on horseback is of the 1510, but their use can be traced
back to the years of Taccola idea.

Mariano Taccola’s eques scoppiectarius: an armoured knight who uses a hand-cannonon horseback.
This drawing was probably inspired by the vivacious construction of firearms in Siena, making
this city one of the main centers for the best master craftsman of hand-cannons and casters.
Taccola integrated his sketch with ample tag-lines which clarify mechanisms and inner workings
of hand-firearms of the mid fifteenth century, and also the relationship between architects and
military engineers. However, presently it is unknown whether this expedient was ever employed.
The earliest evidence of firearms being used on horseback is of the 1510, but their use can be traced
back to the years of Taccola idea.

7 I libri dell'entrata e dell'uscita della repubblica di Siena detti del Camarlingo e dei quattro provveditori della Biccherna. Libro terzo (anno 1230), Siena 1915 (d'ora in avanti Biccherna III), pp. 185, 200, 212. 8 Quattro interi carichi di farina furono destinati solo per Monteriggioni e uno a Quercegrossa. Rispettivamente: op. cit., pp. 15, 226, 135, 261, 346; I libri dell'entrata e dell'uscita della repubblica di Siena detti del Camarlingo e dei quattro provveditori della Biccherna. Libro quarto (anno 1231), Siena 1926 (d'ora in avanti Biccherna IV), p. 135. 9 A Quercegrossa arrivò una carico di farina che doveva essere distribuito anche a Selvole, mentre un altro arrivò a Monteriggioni ma parte era destinata a Cerreto: Biccherna III, pp. 184, 266, 338-341. A Quercegrossa e Cerreto furono nominati dei guardiani alle farine, anche con il compito di far rispettare le divisioni del carico: Biccherna IV, p. 136. 10 93 del 1262 15 .

Gunpowder arrived in Europe from Asia in the 13th century. It was first used militarily by medieval armies in bombards, large gunpowder-fired siege guns. By the late 17th and 18th centuries gunpowder weapons were the dominant weapons used on European battlefields. The prevalence and importance of gunpowder weapons rose during the Renaissance period, between roughly 1350 and 1550. When Charles VIII of France invaded Italy in 1494, Italians were shocked at the power of his siege canons, and during the later phases of the Italians Wars, both artillery and handguns became increasingly common in battles. Gunpowder weaponry was not as important to warfare during the Renaissance as they would become in later periods, however technological developments of and tactical usage of gunpowder weapons did impact the Italian Wars. Siege guns proved to be very effective and led to the creation of new types of fortresses. Field artillery and firearms had a more limited impact on warfare but were still important weapons.

il volume riporta le relazioni presentate al Convegno di studio Nel V centenario della battaglia di Agnadello promosso dall'istituto veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed arti (venezia, 15-16 ottobre 2009) iniziativa effettuata con il contributo della regione del veneto © Copyright istituto veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed arti -venezia 30124 venezia -Campo S. Stefano 2945 tel. 0412407711 -telefax 0415210598 [email protected] www.istitutoveneto.it iSbn 978-88-95996-25-7 1 Bari 1964 e Milano 1993 2 (dalla quale cito); è premessa una Prefazione alla seconda edizione (pp. 7-9).

Battle of Orsha (Belarus) fought  on September 8, 1514 was one of the largest pitched battles in series of wars between Muscovy and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and a brilliant victory of Lithuanian-Polish forces. However, the exact place of the battle is one of its most controversial issues. The paper examines all the existing versions and offers another one.

In the modern age of high-powered, nitrocellulose based artillery it is often difficult to describe or even to find information on early artillery performance. Writers in the 16th and 1 7th centuries wrote artillery treatises that laid out how artillerists should perform their duties and how the cannon ought to behave, but this is not to say that they are necessarily accurate records of what actually happened. What they write is often only qualitative in nature, for period artillerists could not have accurately measured the behaviour of a cannon shot, even if they had wanted to. The few texts we have that relate to the manufacture of the cannon are also often unsatisfactory in one way or another in terms of artillery performance: manufacturers either would not have been concerned with the performance of their products on the field or they could not have quantified it.

Perhaps the most glaring omission of these early writers, through no fault of their own, is the lack of any velocity data for the projectiles. Instead, we have ranges, but again, these are more often than not idealized ranges. This paper and its forthcoming companion paper intend to examine the external ballistics of spherical cannon balls using period gunnery treatises that recorded what was supposed to happen with cannonball flight, as well as modern information on fluid mechanics to attempt an explanation for their actual, or at least supposed, performance. This article is divided into two parts, historical perceptions of cannon ball ballistics and data from period gunnery texts, to suggest how contemporaries understood cannonball behavior. From these two we can derive some initial understanding of how they believed their ordnance behaved. … In the end the goal is understand both how users apprehended the behaviour of their cannon, how cannonballs actually fly, and particularly reconcile the two without resorting to an argument that the gunners were 'illiterate' or 'guessing' or simply 'clueless'. Period gunnery books were for something and purported to record the technical (read: real) effects of their technologies; that they do not always record what we would today consider 'correct' data is in itself worth investigating.

Bitwa pod Orszą 1514 roku: kwestia lokalizacji [w:] Biblioteka Europy Nowożytnej, T. 3: Bitwa pod Orszą, Warszawa, 2015, s. 127-141.
This is a reduced in terms of size but at the same time updated polish version of my paper about the problem of the exact place where the Battle of Orsha (1514) was fought.

In his edition of Caesar's Gallic Wars, Andrea Palladio imagines that the ancient model could bring military skill back to contemporary Italy. through many drawings (large engravings) he tries to represent Caesar's great battles. The article studies Palladio's intention and the precision of the images.

Quellenbasierte Studie zum Schefflin - Ein im deutschen Sprachraum während des späten 15. und 16. Jh. verbreiteter Mehrzweckspieß. Source-based examination of the Schefflin - A multi purpose spear used in German-speaking territories during the late 15th and 16th centuries.

[ENGLISH] Over the last few decades, a number of works have explored extensively the military organisation of late medieval Italian states, especially with regards to the condotte system and the development of standing armies. Having considered these two lines of research, this essay sheds light on the complementary military role played by local inhabitants in border areas such as the river Adda – which in the fifteenth century came to divide the duchy of Milan and the Venetian Terraferma. The analysis of a series of rural communities in the Milanese district, in particular, points out the correlation between the defensive role played by the inhabitants of the frontier and long-term political and military practices promoted by a number of local families. This paper shows that they took an active part in the defence of Milan’s territory: first by recruiting locally armed groups among relatives and clients, and secondly through the surveillance of the new frontier with Venice from their fortified estates.

[ITALIAN] Quello dell’organizzazione militare nel Rinascimento italiano è un tema molto studiato, specie con riguardo alla dinamica strutturale delle condotte e all’affermarsi di contingenti statali permanenti. Avendo considerato questi due aspetti, il presente contributo intende mettere in luce il ruolo complementare giocato a fianco delle armi e degli officiali dello stato da parte dagli abitanti di una frontiera come quella dell’Adda – confine fra ducato di Milano e Terraferma veneziana nel Quattrocento. Lo studio di alcune comunità del territorio milanese affacciate sulle rive occidentali del fiume, in particolare, mostra come la partecipazione degli abitanti della frontiera alla difesa dello stato fosse direttamente correlata a pratiche politiche e militari di lungo periodo facenti capo a una serie di eminenti parentele rurali. Una partecipazione che si esprimeva da una parte nell’arruolamento di squadre armate fra parenti e clienti, e dall’altra nella sorveglianza dei confini offerta da torri e proprietà fortificate.

Th e paper explores the origins and career of the military revolution theory within British
military historiography, from the beginning to the early 2000s, when, in the wake of
serious criticism, the theory was practically eliminated as a usable scientifi c paradigm.
Th e author also aims to shed light on reactions to the theory outside British-American
scholarship, as well as to reveal the potential role and opportunities of East-Central
Europe in this global discourse.

In the late autumn of 1567 a large Danish army crossed the border into southern Sweden. The campaign was meant to strike a decisive blow against the heartland of the enemy. Four years into the war the situation was close to a stalemate with both states exhausted, coffers almost empty and the mercenaries unreliable.. So, when the Swedish command structure was temporarily paralyzed due to the mental illness of King Erik XIV the Danes acted. An elite force of 8 000 men were sent towards the strategic fortress town of Jönköping in a lightning strike - like an early modern version of the Blitzkrieg tactics.

For ten days the advance continued unopposed. Large tracts of land were laid waste. But a few miles west of Jönköping the defenders waited. Both regular Swedish troops and local militia made a stand at Getaryggen, a carefully chosen site with a blockhouse and some hastily constructed field fortifications. The ensuing battle was short and violent. But as the valuable professional soldiers were disentangled and the militia more or less left to hold the ground the outcome was inevitable. They faced the Danish "Landsknechts" - mercenaries, battle hardened veterans, well equipped and well led. The militia was sacrificed to win time to evacuate and burn the town with its castle, the Swedes thus using the "scorched earth"-tactics against an invader.

This popular article summarizes the historical background and the results of a research project - "Getaryggen 1567" - that has been going on since 2010. The aim of the project is to excavate the battlefield and to investigate the effects of a large scale conflict on the local communities that found themselves in harms’ way.

The Serenissima against the world
1499-1509, Venice and the War of the League of Cambrai

The beginning of the sixteenth century represents the century of the great turning point in Venetian history: the republic loses maritime hegemony and political weight in Italy and Europe. The Serenissima begins by facing the Ottoman Empire for the second time, leaving it defeated again. The War of the League of Cambrai, then, even risks destroying it.
Together with the domination of the sea, however, the maritime identity and culture built over the centuries evaporate. It is not only a question of having to share traffics and naval routes, previously exclusive, but of the crisis of civilization on which Venice built itself and its fortune, having failed, during the fifteenth century, to reach a territorial dimension adequate to the new challenges.
No longer a maritime power, Venice forgets that it is even just a maritime state and falls back into "armed neutrality": the republic is on the road to decadence.

In an excerpt of his book, The History of Italy, Francesco Guicciardini discusses the 1494 French invasion of the Italian peninsula in both a political and a military context. Guicciardini states that the forces available to Italian states were inferior to the French forces, and discusses how military tactics and technology are changing warfare during the renaissance. Guicciardini was born in 1483 in Florence, eleven years before the events of the invasion that he described later in his life. While still young at the time which the events took place, his work drew upon various government records available to him during his career serving the Spanish, Papal, and Florentine courts. Through his career he attained experience in governance, diplomacy, and warfare.  Guicciardini’s account of the 1494 invasion of Italy by France provides historians with a good account of the nature of warfare during the period depicted because of the reliability of the author and what it says about the transformation of warfare during the renaissance.

УДК 94(4)«15»; 7.044; 903.22; 357.11 Автор використав широкий спектр іконографічних та писемних джерел з метою встановлення походження, озброєння й тактики легкої кінноти у складі європейських армій, зокрема на теренах Центрально-Східної Європи. Авторська аргументація підкріплена посиланнями на речові дже-рела. Дослідник доходить висновку, щодо видатного значення творів ренесансової баталісти-ки, як історичних джерел. Він підкреслює, що процеси, які відбувалися у військовій справі Поль-щі та Литви у першій половині XVI ст., були цілком інтегровані у загальноєвропейські тренди. Ключові слова: гусарська кіннота, військова справа у Польсько-Литовських землях, битва під Оршею, баталістика Ренесансу. ВООРУЖЕНИЕ И ТАКТИКА ГУСАРСКОЙ КОННИЦЫ В ИЗОБРАЗИТЕЛЬНЫХ ИСТОЧНИКАХ ПЕРВОЙ ТРЕТИ XVI В. Аннотация УДК 94(4)«15»; 7.044; 903.22; 357.11 Автор использовал широкий спектр иконогра-фических и письменных источников с целью установить происхождение, вооружение и так-тику легкой конницы в составе европейских армий, в частности на территории Центаль-ной и Восточной Европы. Особое внимание уделено рассмотрению ренессансного памят-ника станковой живописи «Битва под Оршей» (1530-1560 гг.). Авторская аргументация под-креплена привлечением вещественных источ-ников. Исследователь приходит к выводу, что в комплексном изучении исторических источни-ков, произведения ренессансной баталистики играют выдающуюся роль. Он подчеркивает, что процессы, происходившие в военном деле Польского и Литовского государств первой по-ловины XVI в., были полностью интегрированы в общеевропейские военные тренды. Ключевые слова: гусарская конница, военное дело в Польско-Литовских землях, битва под Оршей, баталистика Ренессанса.

Grazie a un approccio innovativo, l’autore fa luce sulla seconda fase delle
Guerre d’Italia, un periodo sin qui poco studiato, indagando le complesse
relazioni fra i molteplici attori coinvolti nel conflitto che contrappose gli Asburgo ai Valois per il controllo della Lombardia e dell’Italia settentrionale, nel più ampio contesto della lotta per l’egemonia continentale. Impegnate in quest’asperrima contesa, tra il 1536 e il 1558 le due grandi potenze attinsero a piene mani alla ricchezza dei propri sudditi tramite la tassazione, investendone in larga parte il gettito nella difesa (o nella conquista) dello Stato di Milano, ganglio vitale dei possedimenti asburgici in Europa. Le risorse fiscali tuttavia risultarono insufficienti ad alimentare l’enorme sforzo strategico teso a conservare o smantellare l’assetto peninsulare configurato dalla pace di Bologna del 1530. In un’epoca caratterizzata da profondi mutamenti nella tecnologia bellica, lo scontro violento tra due visioni politico-strategiche inconciliabili, anziché condurre a una rapida risoluzione del conflitto, originò una lunga e dispendiosa guerra di logoramento, durante la quale divenne essenziale il ricorso all’aiuto finanziario, militare e organizzativo dei “privati”, in particolare dei maggiorenti italiani.
Chiamati a prestare servizi strategici di varia natura, i sostenitori degli
Asburgo ottennero, quale ricompensa, il favore di Carlo V, che si concretizzò nella concessione di giurisdizioni feudali, privilegi fiscali et similia. Il potere sovrano poté dunque combattere la sua “guerra globale” solo riconoscendo e aggregando alla propria causa altri poteri, saldamente radicati nelle società e nei territori dell’Italia settentrionale.

In his Discorsi Politici (1599) the Venetian Ambassador Paolo Paruta (1540-1598) analyzes several topics from ancient and modern History. Writing during the passage from Late Renaissance to the Age of Raison d’État, Paruta has the opportunity to face the new Renaissance warfare: mercenary troops, modern State armies, gunpowder and fortifications. As Ambassador of the Most Serene Republic in Rome, he announced to Pope Clement VIII the building of Palmanova fortress (1593); as political writer, he shows a deep aware of this historical turning point for Venice. The Lion Republic, harshly defeated in the Battle of Agnadello (1509), can aim no more for an offensive war, it has just to try to defend its territory from the Hapsburg and the Turks. So politics and military tactics match together: as mouthpiece of the Venetian neutrality, he opts for defensive tactics. This basic choice works as historiographical criteria, too: Charles V was right in not attacking Suleiman the Magnificent during the two Sieges of Vienna (1529, 1532); the Venetian Republic was betrayed during the Italian Wars by its offensive commanders, such as Bartolomeo d’Alviano. The last sentence of Paruta’s book («[W]here the business is doubtful and difficult, we must rather adhere to that which holds us from doing any thing, then to what eggs us on») is very far from the final, offensive exhortation of Machiavelli’s Principe: Venice and Florence have different points of view not only in the Parliament, but in the battlefield too. Yet the whole Italian Renaissance is on its last legs, under the Spanish dominion of the Peninsula. No more place for Scipio Africanus: the wise Parutian politician should follow the example of Fabius Maximus in his struggle to save the borders of the State.

Uno de los objetivos principales del presente trabajo es desarrollar el análisis del plan a largo plazo elaborado por la Corona de Castilla para lograr el dominio permanente del archipiélago canario, del que hay constancias anteriores al comienzo de siglo xv. Quedó latente durante décadas, fue imperfecto en su realización y, en una fase avanzada del siglo, implicó la intervención de los que posteriormente se conocerían como Reyes Católicos, de modo que se desencadenó una guerra total y se obtuvieron resultados contundentes. Es imprescindible estudiar algunos de los fenómenos a los que la conquista quedó vinculada, como la contienda con Portugal, amén de aquellos elementos constantes como las ambiciones ultramarinas y sus causas, la necesidad de los militares de conseguir bienes y títulos, así como la finalidad religiosa, con sus implicaciones económicas.

Vitelli, Vitellozzo. -Figlio del condottiero Niccolò, nacque a Città di Castello nel 1458. Al seguito del re di Francia Carlo VIII durante la sua discesa in Italia, grazie alla vittoria ottenuta a Soriano (1497) ebbe da papa Alessandro VI il titolo di signore di Città di Castello. Nel 1498 passò al servizio dei fiorentini insieme al fratello Paolo (→) che, l'anno seguente, per il fallimento della guerra contro Pisa, fu accusato di tradimento, arrestato e condannato a morte. V. riuscì a sfuggire alla cattura; intenzionato a vendicare il fratello, si pose al servizio di Cesare Borgia (il duca Valentino) e della sua ambiziosa politica di espansione in Romagna e nelle Marche. Intanto favoriva la resistenza di Pisa, e ai primi di giugno del 1502 appoggiò la rivolta di Arezzo, sottraendo a Firenze, in pochi giorni, buona parte del Casentino e della Val Tiberina. Colto del tutto impreparato (sull'insipienza del commissario della Val di Chiana, Guglielmo de' Pazzi, M. sarebbe tornato nei Discorsi III vi 193-96), il governo fiorentino inviò M. e Francesco Soderini a Urbino, presso Cesare Borgia, per sondarne le intenzioni. Pur negando un proprio coinvolgimento nelle operazioni del condottiero, il Valentino non rassicurò la Repubblica che, al fine di riacquistare Arezzo, dovette avvalersi dell'alleanza con il re di Francia appena stipulata, «non senza grande spendio» (Decennale I, v. 326; sulla rivolta aretina e il ruolo di V. cfr. invece i vv. 331 e segg.). Per far fronte alle crescenti ambizioni del Valentino, V., gli Orsini (Paolo →, Francesco e Giovanni Battista), Oliverotto Euffreducci e Giampaolo Baglioni, insieme ai rappresentanti dei Bentivoglio, dei Montefeltro e di Pandolfo Petrucci, si riunirono a Magione, tra la fine di settembre e i primi di ottobre, e strinsero un accordo in funzione antiborgiana. Per la seconda volta M. si recò quindi presso il duca a offrirgli l'aiuto di Firenze contro i luogotenenti che pure avevano tentato di coinvolgere la città nell'alleanza. Nonostante i successi dei ribelli, l'effettiva natura della sollevazione -frutto del malcontento di vassalli contro il proprio signore -emerse rapidamente, e M. fu testimone diretto dell'abilità mostrata dal Valentino nello sfruttare la scarsa coesione del fronte nemico. Non sfuggivano peraltro al Segretario fiorentino, nonostante la dissimulazione del duca, il suo desiderio di vendetta e il suo «sdegno» in particolare per la condotta di V., «serpente avvelenato» e «traditore» (M. ai Dieci, 8 e 28 nov. 1502, LCSG, 2° t., pp. 429, 469).

To affirm his political regime, Pandolfo Petrucci (1452-1512) took advantage of the potentialities
given by the Camera del Comune. It had been the arsenal of the city of Siena for a long time, but
Pandolfo changed its organization and widened its assignments. The maintenance and production
of weapons was still the principal purpose of this institution of the city. Under Pandolfo the production
of artilleries, ammunitions and the fortification activity was increased, thanks to specialists
like Francesco di Giorgio, Giacomo Cozzarelli and Vannoccio Biringucci, personalities who deeply
influenced the technical and military culture of all Europe. The Camera del Comune also managed
the military intelligence, useful tool to the dissembling politics of the Petrucci, and to the management
of the army. The Army of Siena was composed by a Condotta in Aspetto, which Pandolfo used
to create alliances. But the most important troops were the Provvisionati di Piazza, a professional
infantry faithful to the political regime and depending, both economically and for the supply of
weapons, on the Chamber of the town and the leadership of Pandolfo. The military politics of Pandolfo
Petrucci brought Siena among the greatest European powers of that time but its purposes,
mainly finalized to the maintenance of his own personal power, obstructed a true modernization
of the war apparatus of Siena, which in the following years had been inferior than its adversaries.

Vitelli, Paolo. -Figlio di Niccolò, capitano di ventura, nacque a Città di Castello nel 1461, e fin da giovane fu coinvolto nelle contese che agitavano la città. Nel 1494 si pose al seguito del re di Francia Carlo VIII, e con il suo consenso sostenne Pisa nella guerra contro Firenze; condottiero ormai rinomato, insieme al fratello Vitellozzo (→) militò quindi, in maniera discontinua, al servizio dei fiorentini, riconciliatisi con il re di Francia. Ai primi di giugno del 1498 fu inviato contro Pisa, con il titolo di capitano generale; in occasione della nomina, Marcello Virgilio Adriani (→) tenne l'orazione Pro eligendo imperatore exercitus Paullo Vitellio. Nonostante cadessero in rapida successione Buti, Vicopisano e Ripafratta, la meticolosa ma lenta strategia di V., volta ad accerchiare e isolare Pisa, era lungi dal soddisfare i fiorentini, che -esasperati dal prolungarsi del conflittopagavano a V. una condotta dispendiosa e si aspettavano una vittoria rapida e tempestiva, obiettivamente improbabile (Pieri 1952 2 , pp. 372-77; Mallett 1974 Mallett , trad. it. 1983). Allontanatosi da Pisa per cacciare dal Casentino i veneziani, allora sostenitori di Piero de' Medici, V. riuscì agevolmente nell'impresa; non riscosse tuttavia particolare approvazione a Firenze, dove soprattutto la fazione popolana -favorevole a Ranuccio da Marciano, suo rivale -l'aveva in odio (Tommasini 1883, pp. 147-60). Ritornato con ingenti forze sul fronte occidentale (giugno 1499), espugnò rapidamente Cascina, e il 1°a gosto cinse d'assedio Pisa. Dieci giorni dopo conquistò la rocca di Stampace, ma esitò a sferrare l'attacco decisivo, dando ai pisani il tempo di correre ai ripari e di ricevere rinforzi da Lucca. Persa l'occasione, e con l'esercito stremato dalla malaria, decise di togliere il campo. Tra i fiorentini si rafforzarono i sospetti di tradimento, serpeggianti da tempo. Richiamato a Cascina, il 28 settembre V. fu arrestato e tradotto a Firenze (mentre Vitellozzo riuscì a fuggire). Nonostante non avesse confessato il proprio tradimento neppure sotto tortura, né tra le sue carte se ne fosse trovata alcuna prova, tre giorni dopo fu condannato a morte e decapitato. «Si consigliò che chi non era da pigliare non era da lasciare», commentò all'epoca Piero Parenti (P. di M. Parenti, Storia fiorentina, a cura di A. Matucci, 2° vol., 2005, p. 304); il che non toglie che la maggioranza dei fiorentini restasse convinta della 'fellonia' del condottiero (cfr., per es., le vivaci pagine di Piero Vaglienti, Storia dei suoi tempi, 1492-1514, a cura di G. Berti, M. Luzzati, E. Tongiorgi, 1982, pp. 81, 85, 90). Tra le eccezioni (cfr. almeno Francesco Guicciardini, Storie fiorentine dal 1378 al 1509, a cura di A. Montevecchi, 2006 2 , pp. 309-14), pare non si possa annoverare M., il quale peraltro fu qualcosa più che un diretto spettatore della vicenda. Di sua mano, infatti, sono alcuni dei dispacci dei Dieci che portarono all'arresto di V. (Chiappelli 1984; ma cfr. anche gli appunti autografi di M., in Opere storiche, a cura di A. Montevecchi, C. Varotti, 2° vol., 2010, pp. 998 e passim); e pochi giorni dopo l'esecuzione, il 5 ottobre, egli ebbe a difendere la condotta della sua città in una sdegnata lettera «a un cancelliere di Lucca» (Lettere,. In essa non traspare alcun dubbio sulla «fraude vitellesca»; e, respinta con disprezzo l'accusa di avarizia rivolta al governo fiorentino -che avrebbe eliminato il condottiero per non restituirgli denari presi in prestito -il segretario dei Dieci liquidava il comportamento di V. come meritevole in ogni caso (o per corruzione o per incapacità) di «infinito castigo». La stessa certezza sul tradimento del condottiero torna nel primo Decennale (vv. 229-31); mentre nel Principe (xii 22) M. non accenna alla questione, limitandosi a presentare il fallimento militare di V. come una fortuna per le istituzioni fiorentine che in caso di vittoria del capitano avrebbero verosimilmente dovuto fronteggiare un suo tentativo di insignorirsi della città. Bibliografia: A. Fabretti, Paolo Vitelli da Città di Castello, in Biografie dei capitani venturieri dell'Umbria, 3° vol., Montepulciano 1844, pp. 71-87; O. Tommasini, La vita e gli scritti di Niccolò Machiavelli nella loro relazione col machiavellismo, 1° vol., Torino-Roma 1883 (rist. anast. Bologna 1994); G. Nicasi, La famiglia Vitelli di Città di Castello e la Repubblica fiorentina fino al 1504, 2 voll., Perugia 1916; P. Pieri, Il Rinascimento e la crisi militare italiana,

Rebellion in Late-Medieval and Early Modern England has generally been regarded as posing little military threat to the realm, with conflicts between loyalists and insurgents commonly dismissed as one-sided routs of hopelessly outclassed, poorly armed peasants. More detailed investigation, however, suggests that rebels could be tough and resourceful opponents, with access to effective weaponry, training, and leadership, and that government forces faced stiff resistance when supressing popular insurgencies. By exploring the resources available to uprisings ranging from the Peasants’ Revolt to Wyatt’s Rebellion, this article will also assess their implications for England’s uncertain position within the European military context.

rivista di storia regionale 10/2018 Famiglie nelle Marche. Economia, relazioni e potere (secoli xiii-xx) t Il Kastron Ghetteon e l'origine del distretto bizantino del Montefeltro t La scultura in pietra a Fermo nel XV secolo: il Rinascimento adriatico dei maestri schiavoni t «Bellum Truentinum»: preparativi, spionaggi e militarizzazioni nelle Marche meridionali dall'inizio del pontificato di Paolo IV fino alla guerra combattuta dalle potenze europee tra il Regno di Napoli e lo Stato pontificio (1555-1556)

On 7 March 1573, after only three years, the Holy League (mainly Spain, Papacy and Venice) split up. The Most Serene Republic came to an agreement with the Ottoman Empire it had defeated just two years before in the glorious Battle of Lepanto (1571). There was a general outcry from all Europe: Venice, the merchant Republic, sold out its dominion (Cyprus) and its dignity to the enemy. Was it the truth? Why Venetians would have act like that, if they were the driving force of the Holy League (formed after Ottoman attack against Venetian Cyprus, 1570)? Paolo Paruta, a young writer, wrote a Discorso in order to justify this decision: a linguistic and rhetorical analysis of this work is going to help us to understand Venice’s reasons. Paruta, an honest spokesman of his city’s mentality in early 1570s, can introduce us to each matter (pro pace or pro bello) of this hard contention the Lion Republic had to face in this turning point of its history.

The concept of the Military Revolution has dominated the historical debate since Michael Roberts presented it in 1955, and it received new impetus in 1988 with the publication of Geoffrey Parker’s work. Since then many studies have eroded the solidity of the thesis. The authors claim that there was no Military Revolution. They assert that the changes in the practice of war observed in Europe during the Early Modern period took place on a global scale, occurred numerous times throughout history, and are part of an endless evolutionary process of research and development prompted by immediate threats.