The First & Second Italian Wars, 1494–1504

Fearless Knights, Ruthless Princes & the Coming of Gunpowder Armies

Julian Romane

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781526750525
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Italian History
• Index: History

A historical analysis of the course of military operations and political machinations in Italy at the turn of the sixteenth century. The First and Second Italian Wars begins with the French conquest of much of Italy. But the French hold collapsed. The second French invasion gained Northern Italy. This time, the French allied with the Pope's son, Cesare Borgia. Cesare managed to double deal too many people; his efforts ended in disaster. The French agreement with the Spanish allowed them to retake Naples only to be defeated at the Garigliano by the famous general, Gonzalo de Cordoba. These wars were not just another series of medieval fights. These battles were different from what had gone before: the French utilized a new method of artillery transport; the Spanish commander formulated a new system of military unit organization, and Cesare Borgia sought different systems of raising troops and forming states. And all the powers managed to spend vast amounts of money the likes of which no one had imagined before. This was the emergence of the so-called Military Revolution. Praise for The First and Second Italian Wars 1494–1504 "An amazing account of medieval warfare between two of Europe's principle nations." — Books Monthly (UK) "This is a fascinating, detailed look at these crucial wars, placing the military campaigns in their political context—the world that inspired the writings of Machiavelli, and you can see where he got his inspiration from!" —History of War

Chapter 1

Medieval Winter, Renaissance Spring

Autumn had come to Castle Bayard and France in the second half of the fifteenth century. Not the autumn that comes once a year with its gold, red and brown kaleidoscope of colours, but the autumn of age, rich with overgrown landscapes of well followed paths and fragile, brittle forms in baroque profusion, silhouetted against a cloudy grey sky. For centuries, French society had revolved around the mounted man at arms, the chevalier. He lived in the countryside, in a house that was also a collection of barns, stables and workshops. This house was fortified with watchtowers, strong gates and high walls. The house was the centre of a farm, with villagers attached to the estate who worked the fields and kept the animals. The main product of the estate was at least one chevalier, an armoured horse soldier, skilled in fighting.

The chevalier and his brothers provided the military strength to maintain authority in the land. Being strong, independent-minded men, the real authority that they respected was the strongest sword. Ambitious for personal and family power, they recognized the king and God as ideals but would fight for a minor slight of honour. The towns that lay scattered across the land, behind well-fortified walls, feared the chevaliers but understood how to profit from the horse soldiers’ estates and wealth. Here, the townsmen manufactured or imported fine tools, weapons, clothing, along with tasty spices, exceptional wines and salt. Alongside the castles and the towns, stood the churches. Here were the fortresses of Christ, whose salvation came from a hierarchy of clerics, men perhaps not as strong as the chevaliers but smarter, whose origins were often the castle, sometimes the towns and, now and again, the villages.

The chevalier estates dominated much of Europe north of the Alps. To the south, spread a different land. Centuries-old Mediterranean towns spread across the river lands and coasts of Italy. Manufacturers, merchants and bankers ran these towns often in rivalry with popular leaders threatening social upheaval or aristocratic landowners threatening military despotism. For over 300 years towns joined together in shifting leagues, either supporting or opposing different sides in the wars of emperors and popes. These positions solidified into the Guelphs and Ghibellines: the Guelph supported an independent papacy and built squared crenellations on their fortifications, and the Ghibellines supported the emperor and built scalloped crenellations. The questions about papal power involved the medieval church, an institution that involved just about everything.

The Holy, Apostolic and Catholic Church centred in Rome was over-shadowing Western Europe during this time as it had for centuries. From parish priest to town bishop, up through city archbishop, culminating in the deacons, priests and bishops of the city of Rome (these are the cardinals), the medieval church was the continuation of the civil administration of the Roman Empire in the west. At the apex of church administration sat the Pontifex Maximus, the High Priest of Rome, the Bishop of Rome, Successor of Peter, Holder of the Keys to Heaven and Hell, Vicar of Christ Almighty, Servant of the Servants of God, the Holy Father, His Holiness the Pope. Of all things sacred, Mother Church was the judge.

Secular matters fell to the emperor. Chosen by the people and crowned by the pope, the emperor oversaw public policy in Res publica christiana occidentia: a superlative ideal which had never worked out. The line between secular and sacred being very blurry and quite broad, popes and emperors had a lot to disagree about, along with the very real questions of who got to control vast amounts of wealth and for what purpose. Moreover, the universal pretensions of the emperors were ignored by royal crowned kings, who began to maintain that kings were emperors in their dominion. And so, His Holiness had arguments not just with one emperor but with every king. This, as we know, produced a lively history with armoured horsemen, tall castles, gallant nobles, warrior bishops, all fighting for a myriad of causes. Thus, it had long been so.

But a new and different breeze had begun to waft through the lands. Petrarch (d. 1374) pictured his time as a world about to emerge out of darkness. Many people saw the start of a rebirth of the human spirit. Leonardo Bruni (d. 1444) wrote a history of Florence which portrayed the emergence of a new age, ending an age between the ancient world and the modern. In the new age, deliberative republican governments would oversee societies developing in all sorts of marvellous ways. Wonderful new ways of doing things had begun to appear and gained general acceptance.

Gunpowder

The Chinese invented what later was called gunpowder sometime after AD 900. Guns, first Chinese then Mongol, appeared by about 1250. The earliest record of gunpowder in Europe is in Roger Bacon’s writings, 1267. The oldest confirmed evidence of guns in Europe comes from 1327. Gunpowder technology spread not only to Europe, but also to India and the Islamic lands and the different traditions fed on each other, allowing a wide-ranging development. The first substantial use of gunpowder weaponry in Europe was the development of large bombards which threw massive stone balls against high fortification walls.

Fabulously expensive to manufacture, equally expensive to move and operate, only the richest political organizations could afford the great cannons. The French used bombards to force the occupying English out of their forts, ending the Hundred Years War (1453). Sultan Mehmed II used great cannon to blow down the ancient walls of Constantinople (1453). Every ruler sought to buy cannon to destroy or at least threaten their enemies’ castles. The great courts of Western Europe invested in new ways and designs for all types of gunpowder weapons. Smaller, more powerful cannon, easy to use handguns, more efficient fortifications, better command systems, all were open paths to military success for the bold innovator

Printing

As European development in metallurgy grew, a new business emerged which combined the quick production of malleable metal ‘typeface’, oil-based inks and the agricultural screw press to mass produce a permanent page of text. Initially, these businesses printed broadsheets, single page, printed on one side, which contained a single message such as a church indulgence. The idea was then to sell the broadsheets. The innovations associated with the invention of printing were connected with the efforts of Johannes Gutenberg and date to his printing of the Bible, 1450–1454. The immense importance of the printing business is difficult to understate. Looking at the incunabula printed before 1501, we see a great diversity of printing styles and book formats as printers looked for the best ways to satisfy their customers’ demands. By 1500 general formats became accepted, and books became much more common, spreading the practice of reading and the comprehension of complex ideas to a broad audience.

Sailing and Ship Design

Italy was the centre of many trade routes leading back to the east. Each main town had outposts in the eastern Mediterranean to which they shipped European goods and from which they brought back spices, fine cloths, metals and well-made goods. Lands near Italy imported these goods and most merchants made substantial profits. Further west, the kingdoms on the Iberian Peninsula saw the riches of the east in the hands of others. Aragon had staked out claims to southern Italy and Sicily, extending their routes further to the east. But Castile and Portugal were at the end of any route and poor besides.

In Portugal, Prince Henry, Duke of Viseu (1394–1460) valued learning. He established the original organization which became the University of Lisbon. He saw the possibility of finding an alternative route to the riches of the east. Herodotus told a story of how Phoenicians had sailed around Africa in three years. Prince Henry saw that the Portuguese could do the same in the opposite direction. He invested in ship design to send ships south following the African coast. Slowly, year after year, Portuguese ships sailed ever more south. Finally, Bartolomeu Dias rounded the southern tip of Africa in 1488. Ten years later in 1498, Vasco de Gama reached the Malabar Coast of India.

While the Portuguese struggled to circumnavigate Africa, an explorer thought he had found an easier way east. Christopher Columbus was a Genoese Italian from a small business family. Starting an apprenticeship with a merchant enterprise of important Genoese families, Columbus became a factor travelling to the eastern Mediterranean, the British Isles and Iceland. He set up his main base in Lisbon (1477–85) and sailed along the African coast. Columbus, his business compatriots and rivals looked west every day, sometimes wondering how far they needed to sail west to get east. They were not the first to think along those lines. What they did have, that no one had before, were newly available printed books so they could easily collate the information of millennia. Columbus studied the books, not as a scholar but as a master sailor. From his travels and discussions with sailors he believed that there was some land within three months sailing. He spent many years working on selling his plan to the court of Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand the Catholic of Aragon. After the joint monarchs conquered Granada, thus completing the Reconquista, Isabella financed an expedition under Columbus’s direction. And so, with three old ships, a carrack, the Santa Maria and two small caravels, the Pinta and the Nina, Columbus sailed off to go where no one had gone before – at least in recorded accounts.

Renaissance and Power

In the latter days of the twentieth century some have suggested that Columbus was no hero and initiated a great disaster. But the problem with Columbus was the problem with the Renaissance: men and women sought to change the world; using whatever tools they could find or invent, Renaissance people were driven, ambitious striving for all types of power. They stopped at nothing to achieve their ends, which was always to better mankind and themselves.

People love Renaissance art, literature and architecture, but often tend to forget the fact that the men and woman who were instrumental in the production of these things were hardly models of moderation and morality. Popes Alexander VI and Julius II, political bosses like those of the House of Sforza and d’Este, kings and emperors like Francis I of France and Maximillian of Austria, all of them were domineering amoral players in the games of power. Even when it came down to actual doing of things, Leonardo da Vinci was military engineer for Cesar Borgia and Michelangelo di Buonarroti designed fortifications for Florence.

The Good Knight

One of the few people to have a positive reputation as the Good Knight, Without Fear and Without Reproach was Pierre Terrail, seigneur de Bayard. For thirty-four years Bayard fought in the forces of the King of France. His career took him through much of Italy along with a campaign against Henry VIII. During that time he maintained loyalty and a sense of fair play, while supporting some of the more creative treasons and surprising underhanded manoeuvres in history. The reason that Bayard is so well remembered is that of a book.

Published at Paris in 1527, the account of The Right, Joyous, Merry, and Entertaining History of Bayard, was printed just three years after Bayard’s death. The book is authored anonymously; he called himself simply the Loyal Servant. Research over the centuries has identified the archer and friend of Bayard, Jacques de Mailles, as the most probable author. Whoever he was, the author draws a portrait of a near perfect soldier, able and honourable. Like a painting by Botticelli, the figure of the man is idealized and magnified in an artistic context. The subject was attractive to begin with and the Loyal Servant turned an interesting, if somewhat typical life of a soldier, into a work of art.

In an age of Machiavellian princes, Thomas More wrote Utopia (1516). Amidst the chaos and carnage of an age of violent disagreement and change, some wanted to draw a positive picture, a suitable goal to attempt to achieve. Because the Loyal Servant wanted to show his contemporaries that there were still good people amid evil, he saved for us the story of a man who swam in the wreckage of war yet maintained honour and reputation.

Castle Bayard

The Estate Bayard had been in the hands of the Terrail family for generations. Centred on a fortified manor house of unimposing size and style, the estate was a well-managed and productive farm. Families of tenant serfs worked the fields, divided between serfs’ lands and lord’s land. The lord, his lady and children had the skills and knew the difficulties of the work and were not beyond lending a hand when necessary. The most important serf households supplied the assistance and service needed to run the house and land. The whole was a well-integrated community, recognizing rank but emphasizing consensus. One of the main products the farm produced were horses. Necessary to the warrior who held the manor, horses were also useful for farming and income. In many ways, Castle Bayard was a self-supporting horse farm which produced a mounted soldier who was so necessary to the state.

Pierre Terrail, a man at arms, began the construction of the manor house in 1404, during the reign of Charles VI, the Mad King. Local people knew the place as Bayard. The house overlooked the Grésivaudan valley, offering a magnificent view of the surrounding mountain ranges, the Jura and the Chartreuse. His son, Pierre II gained the title Seigneur de Bayard and so the house became a castle. Pierre II met his end in the Battle of Montlhéry (1465) between Louis XI and the League of Public Good, the alliance between Charles the Bold of Burgundy, along with the dukes of Bourbon and of Brittany.

Pierre II’s son, Aymond, aged 45 at his father’s death, became Seigneur de Bayard. He already had spent many years in the king’s service as a man at arms and continued to do so. He married Helen Alleman, daughter of Henry II Alleman, Seigneur de Laval Saint Étienne and his wife, Jeanne de Beaumont, Dame de Saint Quentin. They had four children.

The story is told that when the old chevalier Aymond Terrail, Seigneur de Bayard was about 70 years old, he asked his children what life’s task they wanted. The eldest desired to stay with his parents and manage the estate. The second was Pierre, about 13 years old who announced his desire to become a warrior like his ancestors, following the path of the Chevalier. Pierre’s earnestness impressed his father who promised to place the young man in the house of a high noble so he could learn the skills needed for a noble horse soldier. This was in the year of Our Lord, 1489.

Page Bayard

Pierre’s mother was closely related to Laurent Alleman de Laval, Bishop of Grenoble. Pierre called him uncle. The bishop, when he learned of Pierre’s ambition to become a chevalier, promised to introduce the young man into a noble household where he would learn the arts necessary to an aristocratic man at arms. The bishop also paid for proper clothes and mounts for him. So it was, Pierre Terrail at age 13 or so, became a page at the court of Charles I, Duke of Savoy, son of Amédée IX and Yolande of France, daughter of King Charles VII. The court of Savoy was held in high esteem for its brilliance. Page Pierre learned arms handling, horsemanship, how to play the lute and important dance steps. In all of these, he excelled. Too soon, the young Duke fell ill and died (March 1490). The duke’s wife, Blanche Palaiologina of Montferrat, became regent and no doubt continued the page’s education, but the time had come for the young Bayard to move on.

In November 1490 Louis de Luxembourg, Seigneur de Ligny took the young Bayard as a man at arms. Pierre was a large and athletic youth, charming and personable. His horsemanship and particularly his skill of handling the temperamental warhorses earned him the nickname, piquez, that is, ‘spur’. On the tilt-yard and in the melée, he not only handled his weapons well, but his sense of honour and justice was also well remarked. Louis de Ligny was a favourite of King Charles VIII, and his royal master found Spur highly skilled and enchanting. Besides impressing the high and mighty, Spur made a lifelong friend and companion, Pierre de Posquières, Lord of Bellabre.

The teenage youth was drawn to the athletic prominence given to tournament victors. His strength, endurance and horsemanship promised success, but he lacked the wherewithal to acquire the necessary equipment. He needed a couple of warhorses plus at least one palfrey, an armoured suit complete with replacement parts, proper court costume, along with swords, shields and lances. The story is that his mother’s relative, Theodore Terrail, Abbot of Ainay, gave the youth the money to buy equipment. Since losers in the tournament had to surrender their horse and armour to the victor or the monetary equivalent, success at the tiltyards was profitable for some.

The young Bayard proved himself to be a formidable and chivalrous competitor. His surpassing skill on horseback and with weapons brought the attention of his lord, Louis Count de Ligny and Louis’ friend, King Charles VIII. Bayard became a man at arms for the Count of Ligny, following in the count’s retinue, and the count, being a favourite of the king, would become part of the royal entourage. Bayard was now a minor notable of the Kingdom of France.

Chapter 2

King Charles VIII’s France

Charles VIII ascended the throne of France in 1483. His father, Louis XI, had rebuilt the French state, eliminating, or taming unruly nobles. The Hundred Years War had engulfed France since 1337. The English had managed ...