Danubian Knights in the Wars of the Veneto and Tuscany: the Parabola of Six Captains in the Service of Padua, Venice, Naples and the Crown of Hungary
Historical-geopolitical introduction
The presence of Hungarian soldiers in Italy in the second half of the fourteenth century did not arise from a spontaneous migratory phenomenon like that of English or German mercenaries, but from a very specific dynastic entanglement. The Kingdom of Hungary, under King Louis (Louis the Great) first and then under his Angevin successors, maintained direct claims throughout the century on the Kingdom of Naples, where the Hungarian branch of the House of Anjou disputed the crown against the Neapolitan branch. Whenever the dynastic contest flared up again, bands of Hungarian cavalry would descend into Italy in the retinue of a pretender, of a captain related to the court of Buda, or simply hired by an Italian prince for their renown as heavy cavalry and formidable raiders.
The ground on which these captains moved with the greatest continuity was the Veneto, where between 1372 and 1381 the Republic of Venice fought a punishing war against Francesco da Carrara, lord of Padua and ally of the King of Hungary. Hungarian bands of several thousand horsemen repeatedly crossed the Julian Alps and Friuli to descend into the Paduan and Trevisan territories, burning, devastating, taking hostages and plunder, in a conflict marked by alternating dramatic victories and equally heavy defeats along the banks of the Piave and near the bastion of Lova. Alongside this Veneto front, individual Hungarian captains also moved through Tuscany, Umbria, the Abruzzi and the Kingdom of Naples, enlisted in the great mercenary companies that arose after the White Company, alongside Englishmen, Germans and Bretons, or directly in the retinue of the Angevin pretenders to the Neapolitan crown.
A separate chapter, but belonging to the same Magyar world, is that of Filippo Scolari, Florentine by birth but Hungarian by career, who traveled the reverse path compared to the other captains discussed here: born in Tizzano near Bagno a Ripoli, he moved to Hungary at a very young age, where he became the most powerful condottiero and advisor to King Sigismund of Luxembourg, earning the title of count and the nickname Pippo Spano. His story, which also touches closely on the fate of one of the Hungarian captains recalled here, ideally closes the circle between Florence and Buda.
The six profiles gathered by condottieridiventura.it depict a small world built on ties of blood as well as of arms: three of the captains, Stefano, Giorgio and Giovanni Unghero, belong to the same family, uncle and nephews, and often fought side by side in the same Veneto campaign.
Nicola Unghero and Amerigo Unghero: the first Magyar captains in Italy
Nicola Unghero
Also known as Nicola Atyinai, or in other spellings Nicholas Thod and Nicola d’Othin, bearing the title of Count of Thod, he is among the first Hungarian captains to appear in Italian chronicles in the mid-fourteenth century. In 1360 he was in the service of the lord of Pisa, Piero Gambacorta, from whom he was soon dismissed on suspicion of having let himself be bribed by the city’s exiled opponents. He then passed into the pay of Naples, joining Anichino di Baumgarten in a campaign that swept through the Abruzzi and Puglia, with assaults on Penne, Ortona and Lanciano. He abandoned the mercenary companies to turn against his former comrades after being persuaded by the kingdom’s grand seneschal Niccolò Acciaiuoli, who had good relations with the court of Buda, to defect in exchange for the promise of 36,000 florins: Acciaiuoli, who did not have the necessary money at the time, gave himself up as a hostage along with his sons until the agreed sum was collected.
In the following years his career took him to Piedmont, where on behalf of the Visconti he defended Tortona against the raids of the White Company under Albert Sterz, who was in turn devastating the Oltrepò Pavese and the Lomellina. He then moved into the pay of Cardinal Egidio Albornoz in Romagna, and in 1364 fought alongside John Hawkwood against the Florentines. In January 1365, together with the Englishmen Hugh de la Zouche and Andrew de Belmonte, he signed the Convention of Pissina in the Marsica with the papal captain general Gómez Albornoz, committing to oppose the Company of the Star. He then remained at Hawkwood’s side in a very small company of only four condottieri, two Englishmen and two Hungarians, himself among them. In 1368 he was defeated near Arezzo fighting for Milan against the Papal States. The last traces of him place him in 1373 in the Paduan territory, in the service of the Carraresi. He died in 1380.
Amerigo Unghero
A captain of lesser documentary importance than Nicola, he first appears in 1370 in command of Hungarian cavalry in Istria. In July 1380 he fought in the Kingdom of Naples for Charles of Durazzo against the troops of Queen Joanna of Anjou; he took part in the battle at the Maddalena bridge, in which Otto of Brunswick was defeated. The following year, together with Corrado Lando, Corrado di Altinberg and Angelino d’Austria, he formed a company of 2,000 horsemen and 1,000 infantry that moved into the March of Ancona. In October 1381 he was among the signatories, together with Hawkwood, Lando himself and Giovanni Unghero, of the Convention of Isola Romanesca, by which they undertook not to move against Florence and its allies for three months. In February 1382 he fought on behalf of the Florentines against the Company of the Hook under Villanuccio da Villafranca. He died in 1385. Hawkwood, in a letter to the Signoria of Florence, described him as a noble and upright man.
The Unghero of Transylvania and Croatia: uncle and nephews in the war against Venice
The most coherent group among the profiles gathered here concerns a single Hungarian family, protagonists of the war between Padua and Venice in the 1370s. Stefano Unghero, voivode of Transylvania, is the uncle of Giorgio and Giovanni Unghero; the three appear repeatedly together in the war councils held at Padua by Francesco da Carrara.
Stefano Unghero
Count and voivode of Transylvania, also known as Stefano Derderighi (at least according to the spelling recorded by Italian chroniclers), he is the uncle of Giorgio and Giovanni Unghero. In March 1368 he was in the pay of the Papal States against Milan in Romagna with 30 horsemen. In 1372 he was garrisoned at Camposampiero on behalf of the Carraresi. In January 1373 he took part in a war council at Padua with Francesco da Carrara, Simone Lupo, Luigi Forzaté, the ban Benedetto Unghero, Giorgio Unghero, Giovanni di Polisna, Giovanni Unghero and Federico di Mathelor; on that occasion he was named field marshal of the Hungarian troops. He then led a relief march that, crossing through Gorizia and the flooded Piave, cost the lives of many of his men by drowning.
In July of the same year he took part in the decisive battle of the war: he divided his troops into three formations together with the Carraresi and attacked the Turkish archers and Venetian crossbowmen who opposed him in the service of the Serenissima. The marshy ground and the weight of the armor proved fatal to his knights, who were unhorsed and finished off by the Venetian infantry. Victory went to Giberto da Correggio; Stefano Unghero was captured along with numerous Hungarian nobles and Carrarese condottieri and captains such as Antonio and Bonifacio Lupo and Rizzardo di San Bonifacio. In 1381, hired by Siena against the Breton Company, he defected to the enemy camp in the very month he was supposed to fight them. He died in 1385. One source recalls him harshly, calling him a breaker of faith.
Giorgio Unghero
Nephew of Stefano Unghero, also known as Giorgio Zudar, he is recorded as early as 1356 at Sutri, in Lazio, where the population rose up against the abuses of his men. Most of his documented career, however, unfolded in the Veneto between 1372 and 1373, in the service of Padua against Venice. In December 1372 he crossed the Piave and defeated his opponents at Nervesa della Battaglia. In January 1373 he took part in the same Paduan war council as his uncle Stefano, then reached Bassano del Grappa with 1,200 horsemen. He raided the Trevisan countryside, seizing eight hundred head of cattle.
The following May, at the head of 700 horsemen, he was the first to attack the Venetian army of Giberto da Correggio, inflicting a heavy defeat with hundreds of dead and prisoners, including the Venetian nobles Taddeo Giustinian, Gerardo da Camino, Rizzolino degli Azzoni and Federico Taddei. He then returned to Hungary with the plunder, leaving command in Padua to Pietro Unghero. In July of that same year he crossed the Piave again and took part, together with Francesco da Carrara, in the attack on the bastion of Medicina, which this time ended in defeat for him and his Carrarese allies. In 1383 he fought again for Padua against Duke Leopold of Austria, devastating the Trevisan countryside. Surprised and captured by a contingent of German cavalry near Spinea, he was taken prisoner to Treviso. He died in 1390.
Giovanni Unghero
URL: https://condottieridiventura.it/giovanni-unghero-the-valor-of-a-forgotten-condottiere/
The most important of the three, nephew of Stefano Unghero, known in Magyar sources as János Horváti, and in other sources as Giovanni di Horwaz, Giovanni Samaritano, Giovanni Bano and Giovanni Zudar. A native of Croatia, a wealthy landowner, Count of Zadar and Ban of Bohemia, his career spanned over twenty years across the Veneto, Neapolitan and, finally, Hungarian fronts. In the summer of 1372 he led a failed diplomatic mission to Venice, after which hostilities broke out; in December he led 700 horsemen to the aid of the Carraresi. With a flanking maneuver against the Venetians near Nervesa della Battaglia, he won a victory that delivered to him all the banners of Saint Mark captured on the field.
In 1373 he took part in the Paduan war council together with his uncle Stefano and his cousin Giorgio; he then undertook a new diplomatic mission to Venice on behalf of the King of Hungary. After his uncle’s defeat that same July, he returned to the Veneto with growing reinforcements, up to five thousand horsemen, and repeatedly devastated the Trevisan countryside. In 1378 he led a new crossing of the Piave, laying siege to Mestre, before handing over command to his brother and returning to Hungary. The following year he undertook a long campaign in Lombardy against the lord of Milan, Bernabò Visconti, an ally of the Venetians. His actions in the Mantuan territory brought him 1,700 prisoners and 20,000 head of cattle. During the campaign he surprised Hawkwood himself near Verona, as the Englishman was returning from a raid in the Veronese.
In 1380 he joined Charles of Durazzo in the conquest of the Kingdom of Naples, holding the post of captain general; under his command were eight thousand Hungarians and a thousand Italians. He crossed the Veneto, Lombardy, Emilia, Tuscany, Liguria and Umbria, swelling his ranks until he commanded an army of fifteen thousand men. The following year he negotiated, on behalf of the King of Hungary, the cession of Treviso to Duke Leopold of Austria; he laid siege to Vittorio Veneto in May; in June, with Duke Leopold’s departure from Italy, he handed over to the Carraresi the town of Portobuffolé, previously conquered by the Hungarians. In July he moved into Tuscany to raise troops on behalf of Charles of Durazzo; that same month he defeated Otto of Brunswick at the Maddalena bridge near Naples. In October he returned to Tuscany, where he joined forces with Hawkwood and Corrado Lando: with these condottieri he signed, at the Franciscan convent of Isola Romanesca (Bastia Umbra), a convention promising not to harm Florentine territory. Still with Hawkwood, he then moved into the Val di Chiana, where he obtained 6,600 florins from the Sienese in exchange for sparing their countryside from raids.
The turning point of his story came in 1386, when he witnessed the assassination in Buda of Charles of Durazzo, King of Naples and Hungary, struck down with an axe by the master equerry Balázs Forgách at the instigation of a faction of Hungarian nobles led by the Ban of Croatia, Miklós Garai. Giovanni Unghero managed to escape. He then allied himself with Giovanni di Polisna and the Ban of Bosnia, Tvrtko I, launching an insurrection against the central Hungarian power: he ambushed an army of thirty thousand men near Đakovo, captured Queen Mary, her mother Elizabeth, and Miklós Garai; he had Charles of Durazzo’s assassin and the Ban of Croatia beheaded, and proclaimed the young King of Naples, Ladislaus of Anjou, King of Hungary. In January of 1387 or 1388 he had Queen Elizabeth executed before the eyes of her imprisoned daughter. The revolt, however, was gradually put down by Sigismund of Bohemia (that is, Sigismund of Luxembourg) with Venetian support: thirty-two of Giovanni Unghero’s companions were captured and brutally executed in Buda. In 1394, defeated and captured at Dobor, Giovanni Unghero was taken to Pécs; subjected to torture, he was dragged at a gallop tied to a horse’s tail and finally quartered; his remains were hung on the city walls. Despite his extensive record, mentions of his presence on the military stage of his time are extremely scarce. Only one has been found, from Giorgio Tarcagnota, a Greek historian of the sixteenth century, who recalled him as “a Hungarian knight of great valor in arms.”
Pippo Spano, the Florentine in the Service of the Magyar Crown
Filippo Scolari
URL: https://condottieridiventura.it/pippo-spano-from-florence-to-hungarian-fame/
Filippo Scolari, of the Buondelmonti degli Scolari family, was born in 1369 in the Villa di Tizzano, near Bagno a Ripoli, and died in December 1426. At the age of thirteen he was entrusted by his family to merchants bound for Germany; he soon moved to Hungary, where he entered the service first of King Sigismund of Luxembourg’s treasurer, Miklós Kanizsai, and then of the Bishop of Esztergom. On the latter’s death in 1387, he passed into the direct service of King Sigismund of Hungary, of whom he became, over the years, one of the most trusted advisors and captains.
In 1391 he took part in the capture of Giovanni Unghero at Dobor, in Bosnia; on that occasion he advised the king to have all thirty-two Hungarian nobles captured with him executed, all of them tied to the King of Naples. In 1396 he fought the Turks at Nicopolis, managing to escape by small boat together with the king; both were picked up at sea by Venetian galleys. In the following years he received the castle of Simontornya, married Borbála Ozorai, and obtained the oversight of the Slovak gold mines. In 1400 he helped put down the revolt of Baron Stephen Lackfi, whom he had killed along with his brother during a peace assembly. In 1401, at risk to his own life, he personally defended King Sigismund during a coup attempt by certain barons.
In 1403 he defeated on the Rába River the rebels allied with the King of Naples Ladislaus of Anjou, son of Charles of Durazzo, King of Hungary. The following year he received from Sigismund the castle of Timișoara with the title of Ispán, Italianized as Spano, from which his famous nickname derives. Between 1405 and 1410 he led several campaigns in Bosnia and Serbia, received the Order of the Dragon and the governorship of numerous counties; he also became known for systematic cruelty toward prisoners and captured rebels. In 1410 he traveled to Italy on a diplomatic mission, visiting Florence, Ferrara, Bologna—where he met the antipope John XXIII—and Venice, where he was suspected of a conspiracy against the Serenissima.
Between 1411 and 1413 he led the most famous campaign of his career against Venice, occupying Aquileia, Udine, Belluno and numerous other towns in Friuli and the Veneto; he often resorted to methods of extreme harshness against the population and prisoners of war (castration, blinding in one or both eyes). A five-year truce, signed at Trieste, ended the conflict. In 1415 he was present at the Council of Constance. In March he was given the task of guarding the antipope John XXIII, who was being held prisoner. It is said that the prelate managed to escape from his prison with the help of Duke Frederick of Austria. The churchman had a servant sleep in his bed and, disguised as a simple stable hand, rode a nag toward Schaffhausen, where a tournament organized by his temporary rescuer was taking place. Filippo Scolari acted swiftly, entering Austria with his troops and putting numerous castles to fire and sword until the duke handed over the antipope, who was promptly brought back to Constance. Still in that city, in July, he was present at the execution of the two heretics Jan Hus and Jerome of Prague. In the following years he continued fighting the Turks and the Hussites (followers of Jan Hus) in Bosnia, Serbia, Bohemia and Wallachia, suffering a severe defeat in 1422 at the hands of Jan Žižka on the Sázava River.
In September 1426 he achieved his last great victory against the Turks at Golubac. A collapse brought on by the exertions of the campaign left him nearly unable to speak. He died that same December, according to some sources at Ozora, according to others at Lipova in Romania. He is buried at Székesfehérvár, in Hungary, beside the chapel of the Magyar kings. A passionate patron of the arts, he brought the painter Masolino da Panicale to Hungary and financed, in Florence, the construction of the Rotunda of Santa Maria degli Angeli, designed by Filippo Brunelleschi. Below are two assessments of his career, the first by an English historian and the second by two members of the Hungarian Historical Society: “By virtue of his long experience fighting the Turks, Pippo Spano became skilled in military techniques generally outside the repertoire of most Italian condottieri. Indeed, he was a fearless cavalry commander accustomed to fighting to the death. His cruelty toward prisoners, and the speed and ruthlessness of his actions, astonished the Venetians… Gradually, however, the more methodical and cautious tactical approach of the Italian condottieri prevailed, and Pippo met with defeat” (Michael Mallett, “Mercenaries and their Masters: Warfare in Renaissance Italy”). “Filippo Scolari, alias Pippo Spano, alias Ozorai Pipó, is not among those great figures of Hungarian history surrounded by an aura of eternal glory; indeed, he has remained rather obscure and is still little known both in Hungary and in Italy, despite having had considerable weight in the historical and political affairs of the Magyar kingdom by virtue of his working relationship with King Sigismund of Luxembourg, whose favor and trust he had won” (Németh Papó–A. Papó, in their biography of Scolari titled “An Anti-Turkish Hero, Forerunner of the Renaissance”).
The six stories gathered here span an arc of more than sixty years, from 1360 to 1426, in which the Hungarian presence in Italy moved from the raids of mercenary captains in the Veneto on behalf of the Carraresi against the Venetians, to the personal trajectory of Filippo Scolari, the only Florentine to build in Hungary a power comparable to what Hawkwood managed to create, in the same span of years, in Tuscany and Romagna.
