Lead Adventure Forum
Miniatures Adventure => Pikes, Muskets and Flouncy Shirts => Topic started by: olicana on October 26, 2018, 08:47:50 PM
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This is a subject I have largely chosen to avoid, because it's simpler that way, but, I would like your views.
I think it is Oman that asserts that, after Agnadello in 1509, the Italians thought pike fighting unlucky and went for shot armed 'nationals' instead.
If that's the case, after 1509, what did Venice do for close combat troops?
The Papacy hired mercenary Swiss on occasion, and the Milanese (in their brief moments of 'independence') did the same. What of the rest - did the Italians actually use the pike to any great extent?
How long did the close combat troops, armed with polearm (and oval shield) such as bill and glaive, survive into the 16th century, and in what kind of numbers?
I'm sure M. Mallet would help me here, but I don't have that particular book.
Give it your best shot,
James
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Below quoted from the venerable George Gush's Renaissance Armies:
The arrival of the Swiss in 1494 indicated the possibilities of massed shock infantry; the condottiere Vitellozzo Vitelli was the first to train Italian pikemen using Swiss tactics, and there were attempts to do the same in the early 16th Century. Venice, firstly, had armies particularly strong in infantry, and at Agnadello, 1509, where they had over 20,000 infantry to only 2,000 gendarmes and 3,000 Italian light horse and stradiots, they employed several thousand Romagnol mercenaries with the pike, dressed in red slashed with white, to support their militia who were probably mainly arquebusiers.
Secondly, Florence attempted to turn to a revived citizen militia for defense (an experiment which much affected Machiavelli's views). In 1506 they had 10,000 infantry, trained by professional officers, and composed of 70 percent pikemen, ten percent arquebusiers and 20 percent halberdiers, crossbowmen and sword and buckler men.
(They later planned to raise 500 light cavalry, ten percent lancers, the rest crossbowmen.) In their final bid for independence (1528-30) the Florentines tried to get as many arquebusiers as possible, and of 3,000 City infantry raised, 1,700 were arquebusiers, 300 halberdiers, and 1,000 pike-men; only 60 had the new muskets. The 10,000 country militia may have been differently armed.
The ill success of such ventures (the Venetian pikes were slaughtered at Agnadello and the Florentines failed) may have discouraged the further development of Italian pike infantry. The Italian states' troops were usually fighting as part of alliances (such as the Holy League against France) where Landsknechts or other foreigners could provide the solid infantry base, or else Italian soldiers were being hired for other people's armies—invariably being called on for their national specialties of skirmishing with arquebus or musket on foot, or mounted with crossbow or arquebus (though Italian men-at-arms were also used).
The most famous of these mercenaries, and indeed one of the Elite forces of the later Italian wars, was the Bande Nere (Black Band) of Giovanni de Medici. Typically, this consisted of about 300 mounted and 3,000 foot arquebusiers (some of the latter may have been provided with poor mounts to turn them into an early species of dragoon or mounted infantryman). Few if any had pikes. (The name is often said to have been derived from black mourning bands or sashes worn by these mercenaries after the death of Pope Leo X, but this sounds a little like a rationalization for a name which was very widely used of mercenary groups at this time.) The only independent Italian army to survive into the 1530s was that of Venice, though in the 1550s Emmanuel Philibert of Savoy raised a well-organized force of infantry, about 1/3 pikemen and 2/3 arquebusiers, in centuries, 400 man companies, and six company Colonellas. The great majority of Italian troops later in our period would, however, be serving, often with distinction, in other armies, especially those of Spain and the Empire.
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Thank you for your time in making that reply.
That pretty well sums up what I know - we've obviously read the same books.
I think Venice is possibly the key state in knowing about Italian infantry. It was big enough to face off forays by the Empire into Italy on it's own, with varying degrees of success. Given the Empire would use Landsknechts, did Venice put pike into the field to face them? The difficulty in this, for me, is that there were no major battles between the two to have any kind of OOB, most situations being resolved by siege.
Perhaps I need to buy Mallet's book The Military Organisation of a Renaissance State: Venice C.1400 to 1617, it's just the cost - £50+ - for a book I don't know the relevant contents of. Would it add to my knowledge, of this particular question, in proportion to the money outlay? Now, that is a difficult question, and if I could simply buy the book without thinking about it I would.
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Hi - can’t claim any great knowledge re the Italian Wars (C17th more my thing!) but just wondered if the terrain in Italy might have something to do with the seeming reluctance by Italians to adopt the pike en masse successfully? The Appenines and the Dolomites might not be hugely conducive to massed pike actions? The pike is, also, not an ideal siege weapon. Not sure if this viewpoint “has legs” but wonder if, as wargamers, we often look at historic decisions too much through the viewpoint of the big battle rather than the day to day drudgery and realities of campaign (this is certainly a common problem amongst many ECW wargamers and rule writers). Will be interested to read what others think (not least as it may expand my limited knowledge of the Italian Wars - a period I’ve always fancied trying inspired by Olicana’s fantastic collection!).
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I don't have much to contribute beyond what's stated above. However, great topic of conversation and/or debate. I suspect we could spend a pleasant evening discussing this over many bottles of Chianti.
Given the lack of hard sources, I'd say go with what you feel is right. My own cut is that Italians mostly fought for the French or a Imperialists as cavalry or light troops, because that's what the employers wanted! I also figure that mercenary Italian pikemen are not impossible especially for an Italian state. In most cases captains tend to pick the best tools for the job once the fighting gets real rather than stick with trafional weapons.
I'll be watching this thread.
Cheers, Peter
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According to Mallett and Hale's 'The Military Organisation of a Renaissance state', Venice couldn't recruit from it's on mainland possessions (terra-firma) because most of it was being occupied by their enemies (although they did gain most of it back by 1517. The Venetians instead hired 'Foreigners' for their infantry. The list given in the book includes Captains and Companies from Piedmont, Calabria, Alessandria, Pavia, Bologna, Siena, Perugia, Naples, Genoa, Parma, Faenza, Pesaro, Prato, Pisa, Pistoia and Cortona. The greatest number of recruits would have come from the Marche, Romagna, and Umbria. Increasingly they recruited men from Corsica, Dalmatia and Albania. In 1521 a relationship was established with Graubünden (Grisons) who were not part of the Swiss confederation and supplied troops to Venice for the next hundred years. Venice also recruited small amounts of Landsknechts (seldom more than 1000) and took in some French 'adventurers' (6000 in 1517) and sometimes Spanish deserters (1849 in the same year). The book doesn't really discuss who is armed with what but I'd imagine 20 years after the French first appeared on the peninsula and 40 years after the Swiss kick the Duke of Burgundy's butt, a large proportion would be pike armed alongside crossbowmen and arquebusiers.
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I suspect we could spend a pleasant evening discussing this over many bottles of Chianti
What a wonderful idea!
Joking aside, really interesting what Whiskey Priest says about how occupied recruiting grounds affected army composition. Is this why Venice used so many Stradiots (or is this more to do with the extent of their “colonial settlements” on the Adriatic coastilne)?
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Not sure hilly Italy is that much of a deterrent to developing pike units, given that they reached their zenith in precipitous Switzerland.
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Not sure hilly Italy is that much of a deterrent developing to pike units, given that they reached their zenith in precipitous Switzerland.
That’s a very good point!
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Is this why Venice used so many Stradiots?
Not really, they were used in the wars against the Ottomans then introduced into western conflicts. This is a good overview with a useful bibliography
https://byzantineoplomachia.wordpress.com/2015/08/29/stradioti-balkan-mercenaries-of-fifteenth-and-sixteenth-century-in-italy/
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The Stradiots initially came to Italy in the service of Naples under Scanderbeg and his decedents were given lands and titles in the south. Venice initially saw him as a nuisance and only changed their attitude to him and the Albanians when they realised they'd make a useful ally in Venice's own war against the Ottomans.
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On the point about Italy being hilly. When thinking about Italy we tend to think about the advance of the allies up the country in WW2, where the positions chosen by the Germans were very rough country dominated by the natural strong points of the Apennines but, in fact, the vast majority of Italian Wars battles took place in the north, in the region of the Po valley -
(https://t4.ftcdn.net/jpg/01/90/36/65/240_F_190366520_FUN4PFlTMNb2wjLaSk3BwpVD68MwZ50e.jpg)
Looks like pretty good pike country to me.
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If you think about all those Heavily armoured Condottieri romping about then the flat lands in the North would make sense.
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Cheers Smirnoff - have put it on my “to read” list!
Yep - given the flatter terrain in the North, pike makes a lot more sense (you’re right, Oilcana, one does think first of Monte Cassioi type terrain etc!).
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I'm not sure about Gush's assertion that pike fighting became unpopular with the Italians after Aganadello. If you look at the Spanish army in the Low Countries in the second half of the century, they had an Italian contingent that included pikes. At Ceresole in 1544 the Italian contingent of Sanseverino in the Imperialist army was 6,000 strong, and fought off an extended assault by French "light" cavalry; so probably included pikes.
I think there is definitely evidence that the Italians preferred ranged weapons, but I doubt they stopped using pikes altogether. In his treatise on the Black Bands in the Neapolitan campaign of 1528, Mauritzio Arfioli goes into some detail on the negotiations between the captains of the Black Band and their Florentine employers, who insisted on them increasing the number of pikes in their contracts. Apparently the Florentine government believed they would stand up on the battlefield much better with pikes for support, but the captains believed the pikes would force them into defensive tactics.
So from my perspective, shot should outnumber pike in Italian units, but there is no reason to believe Italians stopped using pikes altogether.
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I'm not sure about Gush's assertion that pike fighting became unpopular with the Italians after Aganadello.
Ah, it was Gush. I thought it was Oman. I stand corrected, I knew I'd read it somewhere.
Your info on the Black Bands is interesting as it has quite a late date (it's about as late as I game the wars). My info, from memory, on the Medici Black Band (assuming it's the same one) is that (before 1528) it numbered around 3000 arquebusier, around 300 of whom were mounted. I know that at least one source (I don't have it) credits the Band with a proportion of pike but, I can't remember how many, or when they were recruited - Phillius, do you know?
James
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I'm not sure pikes were ever actually in favour, there was no tradition for them in Italy, as was otherwise the case in the Alps, Swabia and Flanders.
Apart from Florence's attempt to resurrect the classic army of the Roman Republic, but swapping spear for pike and the mercenaries of (but not necessarily from) the Romagna, I'm not certain anyone adopted the pike before the second quarter of the 16th Century.
Milan vs Venice in the 15th Century had been a war of light infantry and sieges across the Val Padana, when it wasn't one of heavy cavalry vs itself on the rest of the Po Plain. Most Italian states had mercenary men at arms (and increasing numbers of mercenary infantry with them) as their core, backed by a mostly crossbow-armed rural militia and communal militias of a few polearm-wielding troops and yet more crossbows.
After the Battle of Nancy in 1477, the Swiss 'style' became 'the thing' across Europe North of the Alps, but it wasn't until the French invasion of 1494 that anyone saw the need for them in Italy, apart from the Spanish. Don't forget that even the Swiss themselves weren't predominantly pikes until around the turn of the 16th Century.
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At Arbedo (1422), to face the Swiss pike/polearm squares, there were no pikemen in the Milanese army; the dismounted Men at Arms used ‘pikes’ (probably lances or the traditional Lanze Longhe or long spear). It does beg the question why you’d get the men at arms off their horses to do it if you have pike infantry to hand?
The soldier in the San Romano painting (done 3 years after the battle and from reports, Uccello was not an eye witness) may be carrying a replacement lance for a Man at Arms or it could be a Lanze Longhe, it is not necessarily a pike. There is no depiction of formed ‘pikemen’ as part of the main battle, they do seem to be incidental figures and in all probability are carrying the Lanze Longhe.
Bruni, chancellor of Florence (died 1444) had written on the art of war and how to improve the Florentine army and never mentioned pikemen.
Guicciardini wrote that Vitellozzo Vitelli the condottieri was the first to train Italian soldiers with the pike in 1497.
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I always think about the example of Scotland when it comes to the desire to arm your infantry with pike. Before Flodden James IV was hiring french advisors to come over and train his infantry in the european style of Pike warfare. If poor, isolated Scotland could do it then it's not beyond the imagination that it was going on in Italy as well. Put yourself in the place of an Italian city state. You have to hand out new contracts to mercenary infantry captains/companies to fight your wars. Do you A) Hire troops armed with Roncon (the traditional Italian bill) or B) Hire troops armed with the Pike. I know which I'd be doing. Knowing this, any Italian captain worth his salt will know that in order to get the best contracts he needs to make sure he is offering his employer an up to date, cutting edge (pardon the pun) military service. By paying some of the French adventurers, that were infesting italy at the time, to help train his troops the captain is making use of the resources that are available. In fact many captains would have fought for the French and therefore gained some first hand experience in the new form of warfare. The French invasion of 1494 had horrified the Italians and they had realised that there form of warfare wasn't up to the dealing with the aggression and martial skills of the French. They had been playing catch up ever since.
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Hi, I have a limited experience with this period but I did some rather heavy reading on the one war I was interested in - Siena's rebellion against Charles V and the subsequent war against the Hapsburg Empire in which Siena allied with France and the Emperor with the Florentines (1552-1555, if you stop at the capitulation of Siena, or 1559 if you include the last resistance in Montalcino, where Sienese diehards set up a government in exile - yes, I know what you are thinking, they chose it because of the Brunello. But it's not true as the Brunello was invented much later, in the late 19th century...). Both sides seem to have heavily relied on firearms and fortifications, and this was mostly siege warfare, with ruses, ambushes, and lots of maneuvering. There were, however, a few pitched battles, and both sides seem to have used pikes - mostly hired ones. As some one else in the thread already mentioned, there were "grisons" from Switzerland fighting for Siena, as well as Gascons in the French contingent under Blaise de Monluc. And I assume the Spaniards had their lot of pikes as well: in the infamous (in case you did not get it yet, I am from Siena) paintings in which Vasari, always eager to please his Florentine masters, portrays the "war for Siena" in Palazzo Vecchio, you do see lots of pikes in the Battle of Scannagallo, where the Franco-Sienese under Piero Strozzi were defeated by the Hispano-Florentine (August 1554)
https://www.florencewithguide.com/wp/assets/2015/04/Salone-dei-cinquecento_battaglia-scannagallo.jpg (https://www.florencewithguide.com/wp/assets/2015/04/Salone-dei-cinquecento_battaglia-scannagallo.jpg)
Jan van Straet also shows an interesting episode of the war, the initial night attack on Porta Camollia, which gives you a better understanding of how the war was carried out - surprise raids and sieges rather than pitched battles:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ebr7XzXLkLs/VTeJcw0ehwI/AAAAAAAALN8/4R96XcdXEaw/s1600/001.jpg (http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ebr7XzXLkLs/VTeJcw0ehwI/AAAAAAAALN8/4R96XcdXEaw/s1600/001.jpg)
The best book in English on this war is the old one by Simon Pepper and Nicolas Adams, Firearms & Fortifications: Military Architecture and Siege Warfare in Sixteenth-Century Siena
Then there is a large literature in Italian, for those who are interested I would be happy to share it - just drop me a separate message as I do not want to clutter the thread with information that most readers might not be interested in. Unfortunately, I have read most of it trying to figure out the ratio of pikes to firearms in order to build a proper Sienese army, but there is very limited information. There are references to bands of arquebusiers from Siena, and to skirmishes with swords and buckles, which makes me think that the internal militia of the city was mostly equipped with firearms and swords/halberds, while the pikes might have been mostly hired ones. But it is just an assumption...
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That’s a very good point!
Also, many of the battles of the Italian Wars were fought in the Po Valley, which is not hilly, but does have plenty of watercourses and marshes.
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Arfaoili includes a graph of the make up of the bands in 1527 to 1528 -
November 1527 - 28% pike
December 1527 - 38% pike
January 1528 - 45% pike
Judging by this rapid increase, there must have been Italians around to recruit into these roles. And, there were presumably experienced captains and sergeants around to undertake the training and organization. As the bands were being recruited under contract to Florence, I would assume that the majority of these new recruits were Italian, as the League of Cognac already had its forces in the field, so available Germans would presumably, mostly, already be employed. Arfaioli also quotes a purchase request to the Ten in Florence for 1,000 pikes from the captains leading the Black Bands. This is around the time that the League army is starting to move south.
There is a lot of discussion about how the Italians and Spanish were primarily shooters, and only latterly came to the pike. And that generally there was no mass availability of unemployed poor to fill the ranks of the military (as in Germany), so there was no justification to build pike units that could not be resourced properly. So maybe, earlier in the period, Italian pikes were a relative rarity, but not an impossibility.
And there is always the logical question, why bother forming your own pike when Germans are cheap enough and available?
I've tried to attach the Arfaioli treatise, but it was too big. It is a great read (well I enjoyed it), and a bit of an eye opener. Happy to share it, PM me, though I found it on the web easily enough.
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Thank you. the treatise has been downloaded.
James
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After reading Arfaoili, I concluded that for pike and shotte I would organize the Bande Nere as 3 units of shotte and 2 units of pike. They should probably have 2 units of mounted arquebusers as well.
Jim
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That’s a very good point!
Also a disturbing bit of evidence that I'm developing senile dyslexia!