The Ugly Renaissance (35 page)

The earliest known companies—such as those led by
William della Torre and
the deliciously named
Diego de Rat—were comparatively small, numbering anywhere between nineteen and eight hundred men, and appear to have had a relatively loose structure. By the third decade of the fourteenth century, they had grown to be fairly sizable, well-organized units with a defined identity and leadership structure, and some—like the
Company of Siena or the
Company of the Cerruglio—are known to have comprised troops from a number of different nationalities. Some were fairly specialized units, being devoted exclusively to infantry or cavalry, but many were composite bands that addressed all military needs simultaneously. The largest, the Great Company (led by
Werner of Urslingen and later by
Fra Moriale), Sir John Hawkwood’s
White Company, and the
Company of the Star, could comprise as many as ten thousand soldiers and twenty thousand camp followers.

Most cities and
signori
employed condottieri and their companies on the basis of short-term contracts (
condotte
, from which condottieri derived their name), normally lasting between four and eight months. The duration of these contracts probably reflects a certain wariness of bearing the cost of mercenaries for longer than was absolutely necessary. But this did not mean that mercenary companies were here-today-and-gone-tomorrow bands. Although they did flit between employers as the whim took them, the majority had their contracts reissued time after time. The German captain
Hermann Vesternich, for example, was kept on the Florentine payroll for nearly twenty years (1353–71, 1380) on
the basis of rolling four-month contracts. At the same time, some truly outstanding condottieri could be given longer contracts that would be renewed numerous times over much longer periods. Along with his fellow Englishmen
John Berwick and
Johnny Liverpool, Hawkwood was contracted for a year at a time, on the tacit understanding that his contract would be continued almost indefinitely. By the same token, the short duration of such contracts did not mean they were financially unrewarding. Quite the reverse. Highly valued for their skills, Englishmen, in particular, could command enormous salaries, sometimes far in excess of the monetary rewards given to a state’s highest officials.

Once employed, foreign condottieri often proved themselves both effective and loyal. Given that they were campaigning far from home and had no immediate ties to Italy itself, there was little danger of their wanting either to become too embroiled in the complex politics of the faction-torn peninsula or to carve out territorial states for themselves. By the same token, those companies headed by Italians exiled from their native cities were normally happy to stay aloof from the dirty world of politics inhabited by their masters. War was their business, pure and simple, and as long as the cash kept rolling, they would keep fighting.

T
HE
G
OOD
: T
HE
F
OREIGN
C
ONDOTTIERI AND
M
ERCENARY
M
ONUMENTS

That the states of northern Italy had reason to be extremely thankful for the unexpected arrival of these early, foreign condottieri can readily be seen in Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence. It was here, in 1436, that the Florentine
Signoria commissioned
Paolo Uccello to paint a large funeral monument to one of the city’s most respected public servants (
Fig. 26
). “
A beautiful work of extraordinary grandeur,” it was a remarkable—even overpowering—statement of the commune’s esteem, and
although moved on a number of occasions, it was designed to be seen by anyone who came to worship. It was unusual, to say the least.
Although the Duomo was the epicenter of civic and religious life, it was normally seen as being “above” such things. For anyone to be commemorated in such a manner was a high honor indeed, but for a foreigner—and a “barbaric” Englishman who earned his bread by renting out his sword—to be marked in such a way was almost beyond belief.

Then again, Sir John Hawkwood was no ordinary man. A condottiere of the highest order, he was known as one of the foremost soldiers of the day.
As the inscription beneath Uccello’s equestrian portrait explains, this “British knight” was the “most prudent leader of his age, and most expert in military matters.”
Born somewhere in southeast England, he had served in France under Edward III during the
Hundred Years’ War and, following a brief cessation in hostilities, set himself up as a mercenary captain in Burgundy in around 1360.
It was while campaigning with the
White Company against the papacy in Avignon, however, that he first came to the notice of the Italian states. Respected for his courage and leadership, he was invited to take up arms in Italy for the first time in 1362. Over the next few years, he campaigned tirelessly throughout the North of the peninsula for various employers, but
it was in 1377 that he found his métier after being persuaded to take up arms for Florence at the height of the War of the Eight Saints (which Florence and its allies waged against the papacy between 1375 and 1378). For the next seventeen years, Hawkwood would serve almost continuously as the city’s “
most effective captain and the most accomplished soldier in all of Italy.” Leading the Florentine forces in the war against Milan, he earned a reputation both as the “savior” of the city’s liberty and as the most loyal of its mercenary commanders. So great was its gratitude that he was granted citizenship and a handsome pension, and on his death in 1394 he was honored with a state funeral. Though belated, Uccello’s magnificent funerary monument was just one more testament to the tremendous esteem in which he was held by the city of Florence.

Although he was undoubtedly an outstanding example of the foreign mercenary general, Hawkwood’s equestrian portrait was emblematic of the manner in which art could be used to celebrate and extol such figures. Lacking either permanent abodes or territorial interests, early condottieri like Hawkwood were naturally somewhat removed from the ordinary practice of artistic patronage, but they were held in such high regard that states often hired artists to give visual expression to their gratitude. Even more impressive than Hawkwood’s own monument, for example, was the fresco of
Guidoriccio da Fogliano at the Siege of Montemassi
, once thought to have been painted by Simone Martini for the Sala del Mappamondo in the Palazzo Pubblico in
Siena in around 1330.

But while Uccello’s equestrian portrait of Hawkwood was a heartfelt
expression of esteem, it also testified to a different dimension of the early condottieri’s habits. For all of their many laudable characteristics, the early condottieri weren’t paragons of virtue. In fact, they weren’t very decent people at all, and especially not the gallant English knight depicted by Uccello.

Hawkwood’s much-vaunted reputation for loyalty perhaps gives a false impression of the fidelity of the early condottieri. Neither foreign
mercenaries nor Italian exiles seem to have lusted after territorial aggrandizement, but they were passionately addicted to cash.

While wars were raging, mercenary generals had absolutely no hesitation in switching sides if the price was right. This was precisely how Hawkwood first came into Florentine service in 1377. Two years into the War of the Eight Saints,
Pope Gregory XI had made peace with Florence’s most important ally, Milan. Having thus shattered the antipapal alliance, Gregory, it was widely expected, would attempt to bring the conflict to a swift end by sending Hawkwood—then one of his most senior commanders—on a campaign against Florence itself.
To avoid such a devastating eventuality, Florence offered Hawkwood a bribe of 130,000 florins to come over to its side. Recognizing the dangers of such treachery, communes and
signori
were soon willing to pay insanely high salaries to the better condottieri in times of peace and war not only to make it worth the mercenaries’ while to stay loyal but also to price their enemies out of the market.

Even during peacetime, however, the early condottieri felt no compunctions about using their monopoly on violence to get what they wanted. In practice, this meant nothing more nor less than heavily armed extortion, and once again Hawkwood was the acknowledged master. In 1379, Florence was at peace, and hence had no need to employ a large number of mercenaries.
Yet by leading a band of marauders through the Tuscan countryside and threatening to wreak havoc on the inhabitants, Hawkwood gave Florence no choice but to keep him and one thousand lances on the payroll and hand over a hefty sum of money into the bargain. In part, high salaries can also be understood as ongoing bribes to ensure good behavior.

Mercenaries and their commanders were violent, unpleasant human beings inured to war and accustomed to violence. Even among the “better” condottieri, savagery was a way of life. Their campaigns were often waged with a brutality that went far beyond any strategic justification.
While praising the thirteenth-century condottiere
Farinata degli Uberti (d. 1264), for example,
Leonardo Bruni was compelled to admit that even so outstanding a general “
behaved more unforgivingly towards his adversaries than is consistent with the moderation of civilized conduct.” Just how unforgivingly can be gauged from Hawkwood’s actions in the next century.
In 1377, Hawkwood was responsible for butchering the entire population of
Cesena and presided over the massacre of some five thousand civilians. It was the awareness of this fact that underpinned the many attacks on condottieri in contemporary literature.
Lamenting the use of German mercenaries during the siege of
Parma in 1344–45, Petrarch not only bemoaned the “venal hearts” of the foreign soldiers who could so easily turn from “followers” to “enemies” but also drew attention to the “Teutonic rage” that had stained the grass red with Italian blood needlessly spilled.
Indeed, it was no coincidence that communes had caricatures of naughty condottieri undergoing horrible punishments painted in public places as frequently as they commemorated the same men with imposing monuments.

Condottieri were addicted to anarchy and death. Their bands were given to wholesale outlawry, often in the lands of their erstwhile employers. Plundering, looting, and raping wherever they chose, mercenaries could enrich themselves with great ease while leaving suffering and chaos in their wake. Condottieri themselves were, however, often even worse than the troops they commanded. Many were almost sadistic in their cruelty.
Malatesta da Verucchio (1212–1312), for example, secured his family’s rule of Rimini by assassinating all of his rivals with unusual viciousness, thereby earning a place in Dante’s
Inferno
. His son was no better.
On discovering that his wife,
Francesca da Polenta, was conducting an adulterous affair with his brother Paolo,
Giovanni Malatesta (1240/44–1304) slaughtered them both with his own hands.

This casts Uccello’s portrait of Hawkwood in a very different light. Far from merely wishing to commemorate the crack commander of a highly prized company of professional troops, Florence was also more than a little afraid of the man on whom it had come to depend so profoundly. Although they might have represented the best of what mercenaries could be during the Renaissance, Hawkwood’s equestrian monument shows that the good were not so good, and that the magnificent artworks erected in their memory are a testimony more to the fear they instilled in others than to the virtue they embodied.

T
HE
B
AD
: L
ORDS OF
W
AR AND
K
INGS OF
P
ATRONAGE

Not only was the character of the condottieri to change significantly in the century after Hawkwood’s death, but the moral standing of mercenary generals was also to take a dramatic turn for the worse. And, like so much else in the Renaissance, these changes were to catalyze a seismic shift in the way mercenaries approached art: a shift that transformed them from being the objects of patronage to being patrons in their own right.

Originally commissioned for the ducal bedchamber in the Palazzo Ducale in Urbino,
Pedro Berruguete’s
Portrait of Duke Federico and His Son Guidobaldo
(ca. 1476–77; Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino) is an intimate depiction of one of the most prominent condottieri of the fifteenth century (
Fig. 27
). Seated on a high-backed chair, Federico III da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino, is shown reading a finely bound codex in a full suit of armor while his son and heir stands at his side. He is the very image of the learned warrior-knight. His nobility is beyond question. While his stoat-trimmed crimson mantle testifies to his aristocratic title, he discreetly shows off the symbols of his chivalric nature. Around his neck hangs the pendant of the Order of the Ermine, bestowed upon him by
Ferrante I of Aragon, king of Naples; on his left leg can be seen the Order of the Garter, which he received from Edward IV of England; and on the shelf in front of him sits a jeweled miter presented by the Ottoman sultan.

In depicting his patron in such a manner, Berruguete encapsulated the highest points of Federico’s glittering career as a condottiere, as well as the essence of the second generation of Renaissance mercenary generals. During the ferocious battles of the fifteenth century, and especially in the course of the Lombard Wars of ca. 1425–54, the nature of warfare had changed dramatically.
Campaigns had become more brutal, conflicts had started to last for longer periods of time, and alliances between increasingly centralized states had made wars altogether larger-scale affairs. The “art of war” had now evolved into “military science.” Neither city-republics nor
signori
could rely on hiring loose bands of unreliable and itinerant foreigners to meet the latest unexpected crisis. They began thinking in terms of long-term defensive strategies. And for this, they needed clearly defined military units that were not
only better equipped and trained but also more hierarchically arranged and better disposed to giving loyal service on a semipermanent basis.