Francesco Ferruccio
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Francesco Ferruccio (or Ferrucci) (1489 – 3 August 1530) was an Italian captain from Florence who fought in the Italian Wars.
Biography
After spending a few years as a merchant's clerk he took to soldiering at an early age, and served his apprenticeship under
Early in 1530 Volterra had thrown off Florentine allegiance and had been occupied by an Imperial garrison, but Ferruccio surprised and recaptured the city. During his absence, however, the Imperials captured Empoli by treachery, thus cutting off one of the chief avenues of approach to Florence. Ferruccio proposed to the government of the Republic that he should march on Rome and terrorize the Pope by the threat of a sack into making peace with Florence on favourable terms, but although the war committee appointed him commissioner-general for the operations outside the city, they rejected his scheme as too audacious.[1]
Ferruccio then decided to attempt a diversion by attacking the Imperials in the rear and started from Volterra for the
Left alone, Ferruccio encountered a much larger force of the enemy on 3 August at Gavinana. In the desperate battle that ensued, the Imperials were at first driven back by Ferruccio's onslaught and the Prince of Orange himself was killed. But when 2,000[citation needed] Landsknecht reinforcements under Fabrizio Maramaldo arrived, the Florentines were almost annihilated, and Ferruccio was wounded and captured.[1] Maramaldo out of personal spite dispatched Ferruccio with his own hand: "Vile, tu uccidi un uomo morto!" ("Coward, you kill a dead man!") were, according to popular accounts,[2] Ferruccio's last words uttered to his murderer. This defeat sealed the fate of the Republic, and nine days later Florence surrendered. Maramaldo's deed earned him immortal infamy, even turning his own surname into a synonym for "villainous" in Italian, while the verb maramaldeggiare exists as well-meaning "to bully a defenceless victim".
Posthumous myth
During the Risorgimento, when the country of Italy was being assembled from parts occupied by foreign empires or dynasties, the figure of Ferruccio became a historical metaphor for the present struggles. L'Assedio di Firenze, the most famous novel of
Under Fascism, the legend of his life and death was much celebrated, and a festival in his name was set up in Florence to inculcate his life as an exemplary model. That partially accounts for the popularity of naming male children in Tuscany born at that period 'Ferruccio'.[4]
See also
- Asteroid 82927 Ferrucciwas named in his honor
- Condottieri
- Italian Wars
- War of the League of Cognac
References
- ^ a b c d public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Ferruccio, Francesco". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 10 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 289. Bibliography cited:
- F. Sassetti, Vita di Francesco Ferrucci, written in the 16th century and published in the Archivio storico, vol. iv. pt. ii. (Florence, 1853), with an introduction by C. Monzani
- E. Aloisi, La Battaglia di Gavinana (Bologna, 1881)
- P. Villari’s criticism of the latter work, "Ferruccio e Maramaldo,” in his Arte, storia, e filosofia (Florence, 1884)
- Gino Capponi, Storia della repubblica di Firenze, vol. ii. (Florence, 1875)
- ^ See the Fabrizio Maramaldo article for details on the actual words.
- ^ Lucy Riall, "Garibaldi: Invention of a Hero", London, 2007, p. 83
- ^ D. Medina Lasansky, The Renaissance Perfected: Architecture, Spectacle, and Tourism in Fascist Italy, Penn State Press, 2004 p.71