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These men and their followers not only dominated most Italian battlefields. They were also capable of defeating the best that Italy’s neighbours could produce. In 1368 the condottieri system halted the Emperor Charles IV of Germany at Borgoforte, although both armies were eąually mixed. Venetian mercenaries were fighting successfully against Turks and practically everyone else in the eastern Mediterranean, while back in northern Italy Milanese forces defeated theFrenchat Alessandriain 1391 and theGermans at Brescia in 1401.

Efficient as it was, condottieri warfare was also very expensive. As early as 1362 Florence established a system of interest-free loans drawn from public funds to support financially em-barrassed warriors. Two years later that same city paid 100,000 gold florins to bribe an enemy mercenary army, while it has been estimated that 14th century Popes sometimes spent 60 per cent of their revenues on warfare. Other States are unlikely to have differed. The result was greatly increased taxation, bureaucracy, banking and credit facilities and further centralisation of political power. The condottiere’s greatest impact in Italy was less on the art of war than on the art of government!

Sforzeschi and Bracceschi

Men with political ambitions were found among the condottieri from the start, but they certainly became morę common by the end of the i4th century. Confusion in the Papai States and Naples had always offered them scope, and many were exiled petty nobility from this area who hoped to return as masters of their native cities. When Gian Galeazzo Visconti died in 1402, however, the subseąuent near-anarchy in northern Italy was greatly to the advantage of the political soldier.

The Duchy of Milan lost many of its newly acąuired territories and went through a period of confusion. Three condottieri, Pandolfo Malatesta, Terzo and Fondulo, withdrew from Milanese service and won control of Brescia, Parma and Cremona respectively. Dal Verme stayed faithful to the Visconti while Carlo Malatesta already had his ancestral powerbase in Rimini. Facino Cane also remained in Milanese employ, but at the same time established himselfin Alessandria while

Fe w towns in northern Italy preserve complete medieval city walls in a visible State, but those of Montagnana, near Padua, are fine examples of urban defences from the pre-gunpowder era. They probably survived because Montagnana was of minor strategie importance and remained firmly under Venetian control after Venice conquered the lordship of Padua early in the i5th century.

working towards domination of Milan itself. Eventually Facino did win control, but failed to destroy the Visconti dynasty.

Hardly surprisingly, Florentine suspicion of the condottieri deepened. Its preference for the militia was also reinforced by the rising tide of Renaissance civic humanist ideology— an ideology which, at least in the military field, was soon to fail. By contrast, Venetian expansion across northern Italy opened up a lucrative new field at the start of the 15th century. Subseąuent wars between Venice and Hungary merely reinforced this trend.

Both the Malatesta brothers now served Venice, but they are also interesting as representatives of the new breed of cultured condottieri. Carlo and Pandolfo were, in fact, true Renaissance princes with their Latin humanist educations and patron-age of the arts.

There was less time for the arts in Southern Italy, but continuing scope for the ambitious soldier. The Kingdom of Naples was again torn between Angevin and Aragonese dynastie claims, while Romę was simultaneously struggling to re-assert its control over the Papai States following a crushing Neapolitan invasion. Both Pope and Neapolitan king now commanded large military forces consisting of similarly inflated condottieri companies. It was here that the two men whose

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