Mercenaries and their Masters: Warfare in Renaissance Italy

It was part of the early myth of Venice that her policies were not directed by individuals but by some sort of corporate awareness of the eternal needs of the Republic. Niccolò Piccinino is said to have remarked on one occasion that he would like to serve Venice ‘because while princes are mortal, the Republic will never die’.

In the first place the Company derived its name from the highly polished armour worn by its men-at-arms. They wore more plate armour than was common in Italy and had sufficient pages to keep it brightly burnished. The three-man lance formation, which this company was reputed to have introduced into Italy, consisted of two men-at-arms and a page.

Some of the earliest mercenary companies originated as the bodyguards of civic officials.

Exiles and disbanded mercenaries were the two most likely starting points for any company and it was probably a combination of the two.

But perhaps the most significant and powerful of the new officials was the collaterale who began to assume an overall responsibility for the administration of the army. He drew up and signed the contracts, supervised inspections and pay, detected deserters and controlled demobilisation, and oversaw all the support services. He enforced the series o

Although a great deal has been written about a sudden transformation in the Italian military scene round about 1300 when professional mercenaries replaced largely native troops, either feudal or communal, as the main components of Italian armies, it is the change from employing mercenaries as individuals to employing them in companies which is perh

Their concern was not to annihilate their rivals, but to achieve security and predominance within clearly defined spheres of influence. Their population resources were a good deal more limited than their wealth, and so their weapons were small professional mercenary armies, the activities of which were related to the needs and intentions of the sta

One of the epitaphs on Colleoni, who died in 1475 after being Venetian captain general for twenty years, suggested that ‘he who serves a republic serves no one’. This was a common reference to the vacillating quality of leadership in the Italian republics, and it has been suggested that condottieri preferred to serve under princes where they knew w

Recent research into the Hundred Years War in Britain and France has emphasised that ‘war was the continuous exertion of military pressure, mainly on the civilian population’, but this is not the end of the interrelationship between war and society. Armies were not just the scourge of civilians, they were also the employees of civilians. They had t