Condottiero

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The equestrian statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni in Venice, Italy

Condottieri (Italian:

Marquis of Pescara, Andrea Doria, and the Duke of Parma.[1][2][3]

The term "condottiero" in

free companies
(capitani di ventura) and their transformation into captain generals fighting for the major powers during the struggle for political and religious supremacy in Europe.

Mercenary captains

Background

Clement VII at Marino [fr] in 1379 as well as fostering notable other condottiere such as Facino Cane and Braccio da Montone
.

In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the Italian city-states of Venice, Florence, and Genoa were very rich from their trade with the Levant, yet possessed woefully small armies. In the event that foreign powers and envious neighbours attacked, the ruling nobles hired foreign mercenaries to fight for them. The military-service terms and conditions were stipulated in a condotta (contract) between the city-state and the soldiers (officer and enlisted man), thus, the contracted leader, the mercenary captain commanding, was titled the Condottiere.

From the eleventh to the thirteenth century, European soldiers led by professional officers fought against the

Great Company
" of some 3,000 barbute (each barbuta comprised a knight and a sergeant).

Rise

The first mercenary company with an Italian as its chief was the "Company of St. George" formed in 1339 and led by

Giacomuzzo Attendolo Sforza, who also served in the company.[6]

Once aware of their military power monopoly in Italy, the condottieri bands became notorious for their capriciousness and soon dictated terms to their ostensible employers. In turn, many condottieri, such as Braccio da Montone and Muzio Sforza, became powerful politicians. As most were educated men acquainted with Roman military science manuals (e.g. Vegetius's Epitoma rei militarii), they began viewing warfare from the perspective of military science, rather than as a matter of valour or physical courage—a great, consequential departure from chivalry, the traditional medieval model of soldiering. Consequently, the condottieri fought by outmanoeuvring the opponent and fighting his ability to wage war, rather than risking uncertain fortune—defeat, capture, death—in battlefield combat.

Detail of the frescoes, with soldiers

The earlier, medieval condottieri developed the "art of war" (

pikemen and musketeers; this helped to contribute to their eventual decline and destruction.[citation needed
]

In 1347,

Compagnia della Rosa (Company of the Rose), commanded by Giovanni da Buscareto and Bartolomeo Gonzaga
.

Portrait of a condottiero by Ermanno Stroiffi

From the fifteenth century hence, most condottieri were landless Italian nobles who had chosen the profession of arms as a livelihood; the most famous of such mercenary captains was the son of

Cosimo I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany; besides noblemen, princes also fought as condottieri, given the sizable income to their estates, notably Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, Lord of Rimini, and Federico da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino; despite war-time inflation
, soldier's pay was high:

The condottieri company commanders selected the soldiers to enlist; the condotta was a consolidated contract, and, when the ferma (service period) elapsed, the company entered an aspetto (wait) period, wherein the contracting city-state considered its renewal. If the condotta expired definitively, the condottiere could not declare war against the contracting city-state for two years. This military–business custom was respected because professional reputation (business credibility) was everything to the condottieri; a deceived employer was a reputation ruined; likewise, for maritime mercenaries, whose contratto d'assento (contract of assent) stipulated naval military-service terms and conditions; sea captains and sailors so-contracted were called assentisti. Their principal employers were Genoa and the Papal States, beginning in the fourteenth century, yet Venice considered it humiliating to so employ military sailors, and did not use naval mercenaries, even during the greatest danger in the city's history.

In fifteenth-century Italy, the condottieri were masterful lords of war; during the wars in Lombardy, Machiavelli observed:

None of the principal states were armed with their own proper forces. Thus the arms of Italy were either in the hands of the lesser princes, or of men who possessed no state; for the minor princes did not adopt the practice of arms from any desire of glory, but for the acquisition of either property or safety. The others (those who possessed no state) being bred to arms from their infancy, were acquainted with no other art, and pursued war for emolument, or to confer honour upon themselves.

— History I. vii.

In 1487, at

landsknechte
and the Swiss infantry, the best soldiers in Europe at the time.

Decline

Bartolomeo d'Alviano, one of the condottieri who took part in the Battle of Garigliano (1503)

In time, the financial and political interests of the condottieri proved serious drawbacks to decisive, bloody warfare: the mercenary captains often were treacherous, tending to avoid combat, and "resolve" fights with a bribe—either for the opponent or for themselves.[citation needed] Towards the end of the 15th century, when the large cities had gradually swallowed up the small states, and Italy itself was drawn into the general current of European politics, and became the battlefield of powerful armies—French, Spanish and German—the venture captains, who in the end proved quite unequal to the gendarmerie of France and the improved troops of the Italian states, gradually disappeared.

The soldiers of the condottieri were almost entirely heavy armoured cavalry (men-at-arms). Before 1400, they had little or nothing in common with the people among whom they fought, and their disorderly conduct and rapacity seem often to have exceeded that of medieval armies. They were always ready to change sides at the prospect of higher pay—the enemy of today might be the comrade-in-arms of tomorrow. Further, a prisoner was always more valuable than a dead enemy. As a consequence, their battles were often as bloodless as they were theatrical.

The age of firearms and weapons utilizing gunpowder further contributed to the decline of the condottieri. Although the mercenary forces were among the first to adapt to the emerging technologies on the battlefield,[citation needed] ultimately, the advent of firearms-governed warfare rendered their ceremonial fighting style obsolete. When battlefields shifted from chivalric confrontations characterized by ostentatious displays of power to an everyman's war, they were ill-prepared to adjust.

Captain generals

In 1494, the French king

Marcantonio II Colonna, Raimondo Montecuccoli and Prospero Colonna were prominent into the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries. The political practice of hiring foreign mercenaries, however, did not end. For example, the Vatican’s Swiss Guard
are the modern remnants of a historically effective mercenary army.

The end of the

Westphalian sovereignty
diminished Roman Catholic influence in Europe and led to the consolidation of large states, while Italy was fragmented and divided. The condottieri tradition greatly suffered from the political and strategic decline of Italy and never recovered.

List

Main article: List of condottieri
Bartolomeo Colleoni defeated the French at Bosco Marengo (1447).
Ambrogio Spinola, one of the last examples of the condottieri tradition
Farinata degli Uberti by Andrea del Castagno, showing a 15th-century condottiero's typical attire

Principal battles

References

  1. ^ Tomassini, Luciano; storico, Italy Esercito Corpo di stato maggiore Ufficio (1978). Raimondo Montecuccoli: capitano e scrittore (in Italian). Stato Maggiore dell'esercito, Ufficio storico.
  2. ^ Pronti, Stefano; civici, Piacenza (Italy) Musei (1995). Alessandro Farnese: condottiero e duca (1545–1592) (in Italian). TipLeCo.
  3. ^ Lenman, B., Anderson, T. Chambers Dictionary of World History, p. 200
  4. ISBN 9781349200894
    .
  5. ISBN 9780307476661
    .
  6. ISBN 1593083289
    .
  7. ^ Mallett 1974, p. 6.

Sources

External links

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article "Condottiere".
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