Condottiero


Condottieri were Italian military leaders active during the Middle Ages and the early modern period. The term originally referred specifically to commanders of mercenary companies, derived from the Italian word condotta—the contract under which they served a city-state or lord. The word condottiero thus meant 'contractor'. Over time, however, in Italian usage, condottiero came to mean any 'commander' or 'military leader'.

Mercenary captains

Background

In the 13th and 14th 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 between the city-state and the soldiers, thus, the "contracted" leader, the mercenary captain commanding, was titled the "Condottiere".
From the eleventh century to the thirteenth, in the Crusades in the Holy Land, European soldiers led by noble and professional officers fought against the Muslims. These crusading officers provided large-scale warfare combat experience in the Holy Land. At the Crusades' conclusion, the first masnada appeared in Italy. Given their profession, some masnade were less mercenaries than bandits and desperate men. These masnade were mostly not Italian, but Flemings, from the Duchy of Brabant, and from Aragon. The latter were Spanish soldiers who had followed King Peter III of Aragon in the War of the Sicilian Vespers into Italy in October 1282 and remained there after that war, seeking military employment. By 1333, other mercenaries had arrived in Italy to fight with John of Bohemia as the Compagnia della Colomba in Perugia's war against Arezzo. The first well-organised mercenaries in Italy were the Ventura Companies of Duke Werner von Urslingen and Count Konrad von Landau. Werner's company differed from other mercenary companies because its code of military justice imposed discipline and an equal division of the contract's income. The Ventura Company increased in number until becoming the fearsome "Great Company" of some 3,000 barbute.

Rise

The first mercenary company with an Italian as its chief was the "Company of St. George" formed in 1339 and led by Lodrisio Visconti. This company was defeated and destroyed by Luchino Visconti of Milan in April 1339. Later, in 1377, a second "Company of St. George" was formed under the leadership of Alberico da Barbiano, also an Italian and the Count of Conio, who later taught military science to condottieri such as Braccio da Montone and Giacomuzzo Attendolo Sforza, who also served in the company.
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, 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.
The earlier, medieval condottieri developed the "art of war" into military science more than any of their historical military predecessors—fighting indirectly, not directly—thus, only reluctantly endangering themselves and their enlisted men, avoiding battle when possible, also avoiding hard work and winter campaigns, as these all reduced the total number of trained soldiers available, and were detrimental to their political and economic interest.
In 1347, Cola di Rienzo had Werner von Urslingen executed in Rome, and Konrad von Landau assumed command of the Great Company. On the conclusion of the Peace of Bretigny between England and France, Sir John Hawkwood led an army of English mercenaries, called the White Company, into Italy, which took a prominent part in the confused wars of the next thirty years. Towards the end of the century, the Italians began to organize armies of the same description. This ended the reign of the purely mercenary company and began that of the semi-national mercenary army which endured in Europe till replaced by the national standing army system. In 1363, Count von Landau was betrayed by his Hungarian soldiers, and defeated in combat, by the White Company's more advanced tactics under commanders Albert Sterz and John Hawkwood. Strategically, the barbuta was replaced with the three-soldier, mounted lancia ; five lance composed a posta, five poste composed a bandiera. By that time, the campaigning condottieri companies were as much Italian as foreign: the Astorre I Manfredi's Compagnia della Stella ; a new Compagnia di San Giorgio under Ambrogio Visconti; Niccolò da Montefeltro's Compagnia del Cappelletto ; and the Compagnia della Rosa, commanded by Giovanni da Buscareto and Bartolomeo Gonzaga.
From the 15th 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 Caterina Sforza, Giovanni dalle Bande Nere, from Forlì, known as The Last Condottiere; his son was 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 elapsed, the company entered an aspetto 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 was everything to the condottieri; a deceived employer was a reputation ruined; likewise, for maritime mercenaries, whose contratto d'assento 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 15th-century Italy, the condottieri were masterful lords of war; during the wars in Lombardy, Machiavelli observed:
In 1487, at Calliano, the Venetians successfully met and acquitted themselves against the German landsknechte and the Swiss infantry, the best soldiers in Europe at the time.
In 1494, the French king Charles VIII's royal army invaded the Italian Peninsula, initiating the Italian Wars. The most renowned condottieri fought in these conflicts. Since the mid-16th century, mercenary captains decline in importance. However, they continue to exist into the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries. The political practice of hiring foreign mercenaries also did not end. For example, the Vatican's Swiss Guard are the modern remnants of a historically effective mercenary army.

List

The following is a list of famous Italian mercenary captains:
Some of the most famous battles in which they were involved are: