Renaissance Warfare

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).

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.

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.

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.