Battle of Marignano
This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations. (October 2015) |
Battle of Marignano | |||||||||
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Part of the War of the League of Cambrai | |||||||||
Francis I Orders His Troops to Stop Pursuing the Swiss, a Romantic 19th century work by Alexandre-Évariste Fragonard (Galerie des Batailles, Palace of Versailles) | |||||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||||
Kingdom of France Venice |
Old Swiss Confederacy Milan | ||||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
Louis de la Trémoille Charles III, Duke of Bourbon |
Cardinal Mattheus Schiner | ||||||||
Strength | |||||||||
22,200 men
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Casualties and losses | |||||||||
5,000 dead[4] Unknown wounded |
10,000 dead[5] Unknown wounded |
The Battle of Marignano was the last major engagement of the War of the League of Cambrai and took place on 13–14 September 1515, near the town now called Melegnano, 16 km southeast of Milan. It pitted the French army, composed of the best heavy cavalry and artillery in Europe, led by Francis I, newly crowned King of France, against the Old Swiss Confederacy, whose mercenaries until that point were regarded as the best medieval infantry force in Europe. With the French were German landsknechts, bitter rivals of the Swiss for fame and renown in war, and their late arriving Venetian allies.
Background
The campaign of Marignano followed years of Swiss successes, during which French fortunes in Northern Italy had suffered greatly. The Swiss had taken control of Milan (for France the gateway to Italy) after their victory at the Battle of Novara (1513), and returned to its ducal throne Massimiliano, son of Ludovico Sforza, to make Milan a protectorate of Switzerland.[6]
The prologue to the battle was an Alpine passage, in which Francis hauled pieces of artillery (72 huge cannons
The capture of Colonna, along with the startling appearance of the French army on the plains of Piedmont, stunned the allies. The Pope and the Swiss both sought terms with Francis, while the Spanish allies en route from Naples halted to await developments. The main Swiss army retreated to Milan, while a large faction, tired of the war and eager to return home with the booty of years of successful campaigning, urged terms with the French.
Though the parties reached a peace agreement that gave Milan back to the French, leading large portions of the Swiss army to return home, fresh troops also arrived from the Swiss cantons who refused to abide by the treaty. Discord swept through the Swiss forces until Matthäus Schiner, cardinal of Sion and an arch-enemy of King Francis, tricked the Swiss into doing battle with a far superior force by exaggerating the extent of a minor skirmish.[9]: p. 52 The Swiss issued forth from Milan in disciplined columns.
Battle
The Swiss encountered Francis's forces at the little burnt-out village of Marignano on a plain dotted with vineyards, farm fields, small orchards, and pastures. A treaty signed, the French were not expecting battle. Francis was in his tent, trying on a new suit of armor, when scouts reported the coming of the Swiss. The French army quickly sprang into action, forming up in three divisions. The French vanguard, under the joint command of
Close to sunset, the Swiss approached the French in three divisions of their own, each a dense mass of pikemen. They had no artillery or cavalry, and had learned in past actions that a rapid advance into the enemy would sweep all before them. At Marignano, the battle began with a “forlorn hope” detaching from the Swiss vanguard phalanx, and charging the grand battery in front of the King’s position in the center with lowered pikes. Their intent, justified by experience in other battles, was to quickly overrun the French cannon and then turn them upon their owners.[citation needed]
At first the Swiss attack succeeded in driving back the landsknecht defenders and capturing a few of the guns, the speed of the Swiss advance rendering their fire ineffective. But Bourbon’s cavalry from the French right counter-attacked their flank, driving the forlorn hope back to the shelter of the Swiss vanguard. The pursuing French horse were themselves forced to retreat back a full kilometer after taking heavy losses.[12]
Smoke and the coming of night obscured the battle; in the moonlight and confusion, the outcome hung in the balance. Furious French cavalry charges, often led by the king himself, with Bayard at his side, succeeded time and again in throwing back temporary Swiss gains. Many of the foremost French commanders were wounded or killed in the desperate night fighting, including the Prince of Tallemont, son of Louis II de la Trémoille, who died with sixty-two wounds on his body. The Black Legion counter-attacked and threw back the Swiss, only to be repulsed in turn. Bayard had to cut his way through the Swiss phalanx to rescue the Duke of Lorraine, stranded in the dark amongst his enemies. In the darkest hours, the fighting stopped, and both armies extracted themselves and reorganized. During the night, some of the Swiss soldiers, and even entire units, slipped away from the battlefield rather than fight another day. Those that remained were determined and the battle commenced again the following morning.[12]
In the French center, the grand battery had been reassembled. Opposing them, the Swiss had reformed their largest phalanx. Encouraged by the evening before, the Swiss once again lowered pikes and charged the French guns. This time the grand battery was ready for them. Massed cannon fire tore bloody furrows deep in their ranks, slowing the advance. But the undaunted Swiss continually closed ranks and pushed forward. Again, the defending German landsknechts were driven back; but the massed fire of the guns at point blank range prevented the Swiss from pushing farther forward. Still another French cavalry charge, this time led by Bayard, forced the attacking Swiss to give ground.
Baffled by the artillery but as yet undaunted, the Swiss refocused their assault against Alençon’s left-wing division. After making some headway, this attack too was thrown back. In his report later to his mother, King Francis would boast that “thirty brave charges” were hurled by the French gendarmerie against the stubborn Swiss.
Only the mid-morning arrival of allied Venetian forces commanded by the condottiero Bartolomeo d'Alviano turned the tide against the Swiss. Their attacks repulsed everywhere, their ranks in bloody shambles, they grudgingly gave ground and withdrew by forming a single gigantic open square, maintaining extraordinary discipline in their retreat.[9]: p. 54
The battle was a decisive victory for Francis. This could be considered the expected outcome, seeing as the Swiss were heavily outnumbered and outgunned. But the Swiss during the preceding decades had almost habitually emerged victorious from such disadvantageous situations, and the French victory by no means came easily, the battle hanging in the balance until the arrival of the Venetian reinforcements.
The immediate causes of the Swiss defeat were their failure to capture the enemy artillery during the early phase of the battle and the arrival of the Venetians. But also contributing to the Swiss defeat were their lack of discipline and their ineffective command structure. Earlier in the same year of 1515, the
Results
French side
“I have vanquished those whom only Caesar vanquished” was printed on the medal King Francis ordered struck to commemorate the victory.[13] Considering the battle his most cherished triumph, Francis requested that he himself be knighted on the battlefield, in the ancient style, by the hand of none other than the Chevalier Bayard. Marshal Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, veteran of every war for the previous 40 years, praised Marignano as the “battle of giants” and stated that compared to it, all previous battles in his lifetime had been “child’s sport”.
Marignano established the superiority of French cast
Swiss side
The retreating Swiss army retained control of their upper-Lombardy provinces of
The battle ended once and for all Swiss aspirations in Milan, and the Swiss Confederacy never again went to war against France or Milan. In fact, the Confederacy never went to war again at all after 1525, and (apart from the conquest of
Perpetual Peace
After lengthy negotiations, a peace treaty between the
The "Perpetual Peace" with France was indeed kept for the remainder of the lifetime of the Kingdom of France, and was broken only during the French Revolutionary Wars, when the French Republic invaded Switzerland in 1798. It opened a period of close ties between the Swiss Confederacy with France over the next
Other
On 11 December 1515, Francis met with Pope Leo X in Bologna.[16] After several lengthy conversations, it was agreed that Francis would renounce the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, and the pope would accept Francis' demands in the matter of the selection of French bishops.[16] The terms of a concordat between France and the Papacy were negotiated by plenipotentiaries over the following six weeks, granting the king of France, among other things, the right to nominate candidates for all vacancies in bishoprics or abbeys, subject to confirmation by the pope.[17] The Concordat was signed by Pope Leo X on 15 August 1516.[18]
Also at the meeting in Bologna was Leonardo da Vinci, whom Francis persuaded to accompany him back to France, and granted him the Clos Lucé manor and a pension of 7,000 scudi.[19]
Also present [citation needed] at the battle was Huldrych Zwingli, who since 1506 had been church patron at Glarus. In Glarus, there was political controversy on which side the young men seeking employment as mercenaries should take service, the side of France or that of the Holy Roman Empire and the Papal States. The aim was to prevent that men of Glarus took service on both sides of
Legacy and commemoration
Commemorating the event are a
References
- ^ Sforza was present at the battle, and, being the nominal employer of the Swiss, may be considered their leader. It is extremely doubtful, however, that he exercised any actual command.
- ^ Tucker, Spencer C. (2009). A Global Chronology of Conflict: From the Ancient World to the Modern Middle East. Vol. II. Santa Bárbara: ABC-CLIO. p.484
- ^ Nolan, Cathal J. (2006). The Age of Wars of Religion, 1000-1650: An Encyclopedia of Global Warfare and Civilization. p.575; Nolan, Cathal J. (2017). The Allure of Battle: A History of How Wars Have Been Won and Lost. Oxford University Press. p.68
- ^ Nolan (2006), p.575; Tucker (2009), p.484
- ^ Nolan (2006): p.575
- ^ Nelson Burnett, Amy (2016). A Companion to the Swiss Reformation. Brill. p. 43.
- ISBN 9781848859357.
- ^ Francesco Guicciardini, Storia d'Italia, Lib. XII, cap. 12
- ^ ISBN 9780850523126.
- ^ Dean, S. (2012). A blow to Swiss ambitions: The Battle of Marignano, 13–14 September 1515. Medieval Warfare, 2(5), 26-32. Retrieved August 28, 2021, from https://www.jstor.org/stable/48578039, pg. 28
- ^ Dean, S. (2012), pg. 28
- ^ a b Dean, S. (2012), pg. 29
- ^ McPhee, John (1983-10-31). "La Place de la Concorde Suisse-I". The New Yorker. p. 50. Retrieved 22 July 2013.
- ^ Canada's Digital Collections (collections.ic.gc.ca) Archived December 17, 2004, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ André Holenstein: Ewiger Frieden / Paix perpétuelle in German, French and Italian in the online Historical Dictionary of Switzerland, 2010.
- ^ a b Costigan 1966, p. 89.
- ^ Ludwig Pastor, The History of the Popes, from the close of the Middle Ages, Volume 8 (London: Kegan, Paul, Trench, Trubner 1908), pp. 414-417.
- ^ Concordat entre Léon X, souverain pontife, et François 1er, roi de France, (in Latin and French), (Paris: P. Gueffier 1804), p. 128.
- ^ Pooler 2020, p. 91.
- ^ "Marignan devient l'hymne officiel valaisan". www.24heures.ch. 27 April 2016.
Sources
- Costigan, Richard F. (1966). "State Appointment of Bishops". Journal of Church and State. 8 (1, Winter): 82–96. .
- Pooler, Richard Shaw (2020). Leonardo Da Vinci's Treatise of Painting: The Story of The World's Greatest Treatise on Painting. Vernon Press.
- Hervé de Weck: Marignan, bataille de in German, French and Italian in the online Historical Dictionary of Switzerland, 2015.
- Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 17 (11th ed.). 1911. pp. 716–717. .
- W. McAllister Johnson, "The Monumental Style of Fontainebleau and its Consequences: Antoine Caron and 'The Submission of Milan'" from National Gallery of Canada Bulletin 26 (1975)
External links
- Eric Niderost, "The Swiss defeat at the battle of Marignano: Ancient tactics tested" (niderost.com) 2007
- War of the Holy League (zum.de)
- (in Italian) La Battaglia dei Giganti (tiscali.it/curiosandomax)
45°22′N 9°19′E / 45.367°N 9.317°E