History, deeds and end of the Catalan, Aragonese and Castilian captains who fought in the peninsula between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries
The presence of Spanish captains in the Italian wars spans almost two and a half centuries and is linked, in turn, to three distinct historical phenomena that only appear independent of one another at first glance. The first is the expansion of the Crown of Aragon in the western Mediterranean starting from the end of the thirteenth century: after the revolt of the Sicilian Vespers in 1282, the Aragonese settled in Sicily and subsequently in Sardinia, while the Angevins maintained control of the kingdom of Naples. Between the two crowns, in constant dynastic competition, moved a swarm of Catalan and Aragonese knights in the service of the Angevins: men-at-arms accustomed to fighting on horseback or in the manner of the mugaveri, foot soldiers armed with javelins, known elsewhere as almogàvers, whom the Angevins employed systematically both in the kingdom of Naples and, on expedition, in the wars of Tuscany, Romagna and Lombardy.
The second phenomenon is the Aragonese conquest of the kingdom of Naples, completed by Alfonso the Magnanimous in 1442 after decades of war against the Angevins of Naples and Provence: from this moment on, and for the entire following century, Spanish captains settled in southern Italy as feudal lords and as condottieri of companies in the pay of the popes, the Sforza, or the Aragonese, alternating service for the Papal State, for Naples, for Venice, or for the smaller lordships of Romagna and the Marche. It is in this context that, in the last decade of the fifteenth century, a third specific and particularly dense phenomenon matures: the reliance of Cesare Borgia, the so-called duca Valentino, on a nucleus of Spanish officers, partly linked to his family of Valencian origin, to lead the conquest and government of Romagna between 1500 and 1503. These are the years in which Spanish names multiply in the Italian chronicles within a context of often extreme political violence.
The fourth and final chapter of the story coincides with the Italian Wars proper, from 1494 onward. The descent of Charles VIII, the successes of the Gran Capitán Consalvo di Cordoba, and the progressive rise of Spanish infantry, which relied on new siege and fortification techniques, form the backdrop to the career of Pietro Navarro, the military engineer who perfected the use of siege mines and who remains, among all the Spanish names recorded by the site, the figure of greatest historical importance. Around him, as around Giovanni Acuto in the English story, gravitates a constellation of lesser captains, some linked to Venice, others in the service of the Church or of Naples, whose paths repeatedly cross on the battlefields of Romagna, the Marche, Lombardy and southern Italy. The following pages reconstruct their stories drawing solely on the site condottieridiventura.it, arranging them by generation and by relationships of service, kinship and alliance where these are documented.
Catalans and Aragonese in the service of the Angevins: the first generation
The first nucleus of Spanish captains active in Italy formed around the Guelph-Ghibelline wars of the early fourteenth century and the southern policy of the Angevins, who employed Catalan cavalry and infantry both in the kingdom of Naples and, with important assignments as rectors and vicars, in Tuscany and Romagna.
Dalmasio dei Banoli
Originally from Majorca, also known as Diego Dalmasio di Bagnolo or Dalmaz di Banyuls, Dalmasio dei Banoli first appears in the Italian chronicles alongside Diego della Ratta, at the defense of Bologna, at the head of seven hundred Catalan horsemen. In September of that same period he is sent to the aid of the marquis of Ferrara Azzo d’Este against the Scaligeri and the Bonacolsi of Mantua: he storms the castle of Serravalle a Po, seizes the river fleet of Botticella Bonacolsi and conquers Ostiglia with his Catalans and the Bolognese militias. In 1309 he is sent to Ferrara by the nuncio of Pope Clement VI and is appointed governor of the city by Robert of Anjou; in the same period he is elected captain general of the Church with the order to remove Francesco d’Este, suspected of wanting to seize Ferrara with the support of Lamberto da Polenta and Bernardino di Cunio.
The most sensational episode of his career dates back to August 1312: taking advantage of Francesco d’Este’s departure for a hunting party, Dalmasio dei Banoli has the city gates closed and orders his arrest upon his return. The marquis defends himself and is killed by a soldier, struck first by a natural brother of Dalmasio dei Banoli himself; the body, covered with fifty wounds, is left exposed naked in the street for nearly two hours. There follow the arrest and torture of three Estense councillors, hanged in front of the shoemakers’ stalls, and the imprisonment of Aldobrandino d’Este, soon released. The popular uprising provoked by the abuses of the Catalan soldiers leads Robert of Anjou to dismiss him from his post.
In December 1312 he offers his services to Venice with two sons and two brothers, obtaining a contract for a thousand horsemen for six months against Zara, in Croatia. In 1313, after an illness that keeps him bedridden for several months, he lands near the city with a contingent of a thousand horsemen, a thousand foot soldiers and a thousand crossbowmen; he lays siege to it, but at the same time conducts secret negotiations with the ban of Croatia Mladen Šubić to betray the Venetians: the plot is discovered by a soldier named Lelio. Dalmasio dei Banoli nonetheless enters the garrison of Zara and obtains its surrender on terms on behalf of the Serenissima. At the end of operations he asks to be transported to Apulia according to the agreements made with the kingdom of Naples; the five galleys on which he embarks are wrecked during the crossing, and from this moment his name disappears from history. Historians’ judgments on his conduct are unanimous, going beyond his recognized personal valor. “One of the captains of fortune, who later multiplied so much in Italy, when it was discovered how to wage war with mercenary troops, and a contest arose as to who could pay the most for them, only to be betrayed or subjugated in the end.” Samuele Romanin in “Storia documentata di Venezia.”
Simone da Villa
Catalan, lord of the Piedmontese castle of Melazzo received in fief from the Angevins in 1312, Simone da Villa fought for years in the ranks of the Neapolitan monarchy in Piedmont with the post of marshal of the Angevin troops. He is subsequently recorded in Parma, where he received, on behalf of King Robert of Anjou, the oath of fealty of Giberto and Matteo da Correggio. Transferred to the defense of Pistoia against the Pisans, he foiled a plot aimed at handing the city over to Uguccione della Faggiuola. In August 1315 he took part in the battle of Montecatini, after having managed to bring a convoy of supplies into the city through the Ghibelline lines. He died in October 1318 in Genoa, then under siege by the Ghibellines: having rushed on foot to the point where the enemy had brought down a house by digging a tunnel under the walls, he was severely wounded in the legs and died a few days later. “Prudent and valorous” is how Michelangelo Salvi describes him in “Delle historie di Pistoia e fazioni d’Italia”; “He was one of the best and most valiant knights the king had.” Storie Pistoresi: 1300-1348, a historical work forming part of the collection “Rerum Italicarum Scriptores.”
Guglielmo della Scala
Catalan, also remembered by the sources as Guglielmo Scoliere, Guglielmo della Scala operated in Tuscany in the service of the kingdom of Naples in opposing the militias of Emperor Henry VII of Luxembourg. In February 1313, in particular, he defeated an imperial contingent heading toward Casole d’Elsa: the clash ended with the capture of the Lorraine nobleman Adamo di Belmont and about thirty other knights. Between March and May he besieged Asinalunga, today Sinalunga, together with the podestà of Siena Nello dei Gueffoni. Operations ended with the surrender on terms of the defenders, left without water: the campaign cost the Sienese the deaths of many men and the wounding of another 800. The episode is depicted in a fresco by Ambrogio Lorenzetti in the Sala del Mappamondo of the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena. He died in 1320.
Gilberto di Santilla and Diego della Ratta, counts of Romagna
The careers of Gilberto di Santilla, also known as Giliberto Scintilli or Gilberto di Centelles, and of Diego della Ratta, an Aragonese or Catalan also remembered as Diego de Larat, are intertwined on several occasions in the government of Angevin Romagna, a land in which both held, for alternating periods, the office of count and vicar on behalf of Robert of Anjou.
Gilberto di Santilla, who besides the profession of arms also dealt in the timber trade, was appointed count of Romagna in 1311 in place of the more conciliatory Nicola Caracciolo. Having just arrived in Forlì, with the help of Diego della Ratta himself, he had the city’s moats leveled. In the attempt to keep the city’s factions under control he alternated arrests and releases involving, on one side, Ghibelline leaders such as Scarpetta, Pino and Bartolomeo Ordelaffi, and, on the other, Guelph leaders such as Fulceri da Calboli and the brothers Marchese and Nerio degli Orgogliosi. The strategy proved ineffective: the Ordelaffi, once freed, attacked the Orgogliosi without Gilberto di Santilla managing to intervene, while the Calboli openly rebelled, taking refuge in their castles of Predappio, Pietra dal Moro, Rocca d’Elmici and Petrignano. Driven out of Cesena in 1315, Santilla tried several times, without success, to re-enter Forlì to help the Orgogliosi, until in 1316 he was replaced in the post by Diego della Ratta himself. He died around 1320. “A man without scruples,” is how he is “christened” today by Sergio Spada in “Gli Ordelaffi. Signori di Forlì e di Cesena”; a similar attitude is also noted by Leone Cobelli, with a similar comment about him, in his Cronache forlivesi from the late fifteenth century: “A cruel and malicious vicar.”
Diego della Ratta, from a family originally from the area of Zaragoza, arrived in Sicily at the time of the Vespers in the retinue of the infanta Violante d’Aragona, sister of King Frederick; he soon became a squire at the court of King James II of Aragon. In 1302 he escorted Violante to Naples for her marriage to the duke of Calabria Robert of Anjou; he received in fief the castle of Ruviano in Terra di Lavoro. From this point his career unfolded almost entirely in the service of the house of Anjou: in 1305, as captain general of the Catalan militias in Tuscany, he besieged Pistoia at the head of three hundred Aragonese and Catalan horsemen and numerous mugaveri; in 1307 he was sent to oppose the marquis of Ferrara Azzo d’Este, reconquering Ostiglia, which was put to the torch, and the castle of Serravalle a Po. He returned to Bologna and was tasked with suppressing an insurrection there. He sallied out of the citadel where he was besieged and defeated his opponents: 30 prisoners were hanged and others were forced to ransom themselves by paying large sums. In 1308 he was appointed count chamberlain in Romagna.
In September of the same year he is recorded in Florence, where, together with his brother-in-law, the Catalan Berengario Caroccio, he pursued Corso Donati, who had attempted to make himself lord of the city with the support of Uguccione della Faggiuola: his Catalans captured the Florentine nobleman at Rovezzano. According to some sources reported by the entry, it was Berengario Caroccio himself who killed Donati with a lance thrust to the throat as he was being led to Florence. Appointed vicar general in Provence and in Romagna in 1310, in 1312 he defended Florence from the attacks brought against the city by the troops of Emperor Henry VII of Luxembourg. The defeat suffered at Montelfi shook his prestige so badly that the Florentines entrusted the defense of the city to his very brother-in-law Berengario Caroccio; he redeemed himself the following year by defeating the imperial forces at Castelfiorentino and forcing them to take refuge in Pisa. He held the office of count and vicar of Romagna several times, even alternating with Gilberto di Santilla. He ended his active career as grand constable and count of Caserta in the kingdom of Naples, where he had the opportunity to devote himself to the administration of his own estates.
Diego della Ratta married, in his first marriage, Domicella di Maiorca, a favorite of the queen of Aragon Sancia, who brought him an annual income of fifty gold ounces as dowry, and, in his second marriage, Oddolina Chiaromonte, lady of Mignano Monte Lungo. His fame in Florence was such that it caught the attention of Giovanni Boccaccio, who included him in the third story of the fourth day of the “Decameron” as the handsome Catalan knight, able to win the favors of a bishop’s niece by paying her husband with counterfeit coin. He died in June 1328, after having drawn up his will in May of the previous year. Historians, more or less contemporary with him, are unanimous in their assessments of his conduct. “A man of great valor and governance,” Giovanni A. Summonte in “Dell’historia della città e regno di Napoli”; “Most practiced and most valorous in the art of war,” Raffaele R. Roncioni in “Istorie pisane.”
Raimondo di Cardona / Ramon de Cardona
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From Tarascon. Marquis of Incisa, viscount of Tarascon. Raimondo di Cardona is present in all the conflicts that pit Angevins, Visconti and Aragonese against one another in the first half of the fourteenth century, leaving behind one of the most extensive traces among those recorded on the site. After distinguishing himself in the defense of Girona against the French and in some minor undertakings in Liguria and Piedmont, he was appointed seneschal and vicar in Lombardy by Pope John XXII in 1321. The assignment involved leading a veritable crusade against the Visconti, accused of heresy. He devastated the territory of Alessandria and besieged Milan with an army of eight thousand horsemen and thirty thousand foot soldiers gathered from the papal forces, the Angevins and the Tuscan and Emilian communes. In the end he was forced to retreat when plague decimated his ranks, reducing them to two thousand five hundred usable horsemen. He decided to fall back to Monza with the baggage train. He took advantage of the plague, which had also struck the opposing camp, to resume the conflict. With his army left without supplies, he sought a pitched battle. He was defeated on the banks of the Adda. Taken prisoner, he was released by Galeazzo Visconti on the promise that he would actively work to begin negotiations with the papal forces, and on the oath not to bear arms again against the Ghibelline Milanese and their allies.
In 1325 he was called to Florence as captain of war against the lord of Lucca Castruccio Castracani: after a series of victorious sieges at Montefalcone, Altopascio and Carmignano, he suffered, in September of that same year, the defeat of Altopascio. The flight from the battlefield of the marshal Bornio di Borgogna with part of the cavalry, together with his own inaction, caused the rout of the Florentine army; he was taken prisoner by Azzone Visconti and forced to follow, together with a son, Castruccio Castracani’s triumphal entry into Lucca. On that occasion he was forced to walk ahead of the chariot bearing the victor, holding a lit torch in his hand. He remained imprisoned for three years, until Castracani’s death.
Freed upon payment of a ransom, he moved to Sardinia as governor and lieutenant general of the kingdom on behalf of King Alfonso the Benign. He supported the judge of Arborea in his struggles against the Doria and the Malaspina; he defeated the Genoese troops in battle, forcing them to submit. He finally returned to Catalonia, where he died in 1338 without the sources transmitting the exact day with certainty: it is only known that his will was executed in October. “A man famous and excellent in the art of war and of peace,” according to Niccolò Tegrimi, author of a biography on the life of Castruccio Castracani. In the early years of the sixteenth century another Raimondo di Cardona was active in Italy, Ramon Folch de Cardona, a Catalan, baron of Bellpuig, count of Alvito and duke of Somma, Spanish general of the troops of the Holy League and viceroy of Naples from 1509 to 1522, the year of his death.
The fifteenth century: Spanish captains in the service of the Church and of the companies of fortune
After almost a century of silence in the chronicles, Spanish names reappear in central Italy in the fifteenth century; they are all linked to the wars involving the Papal State, the lordships of Umbria and the Marche, and the companies of fortune that convulse central Italy in years dominated, first, by the charisma of Braccio di Montone and Muzio Attendolo Sforza, and later by that of Niccolò Piccinino and Francesco Sforza.
Pietro Navarrino
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Originally from Navarre, Pietro Navarrino held in 1407 the post of lieutenant general of the companies of the lord of Fermo Ludovico Migliorati, together with Angelo della Pergola. In the service of the papal forces, he was sent in 1423 to help the inhabitants of L’Aquila against Braccio di Montone: descending from Rocca di Mezzo he was caught in an ambush by Montone himself and taken prisoner (May). He was imprisoned in the castle of Ocre and remained there until the death of his rival in the battle of L’Aquila in June 1424. He then passed into the service of Florence against the Visconti and, subsequently, of the Venetians against the Visconti forces. In 1427 he fell into an ambush set for him by Niccolò Piccinino, Angelo della Pergola, Francesco Sforza and Guido Torelli at Gottolengo: he barely escaped capture; in September he deserted from the ranks of the Serenissima. This choice caused his effigy to be hanged for a time, by the feet, in the public brothel of Rialto in Venice.
In the pay of Lucca against the Florentines, in 1430 he was involved in a conspiracy against the lord of the city Paolo Guinigi; he arrested the latter’s son Ladislao on behalf of Francesco Sforza, who in turn handed him over in chains to the duke of Milan Filippo Maria Visconti. He returned to the pay of the Venetians; in 1443 he was treacherously captured by his opponents and imprisoned in Bologna by Niccolò Piccinino. The city rebelled at the instigation of Annibale Bentivoglio, who became its lord. Freed, he was appointed captain general; he defeated the Visconti forces at San Giorgio di Piano, occupied San Giovanni in Persiceto and sacked the territory of Imola. In 1447 he was imprisoned by the Bolognese senate together with his son Giovanni and his own chancellor, on suspicion of wanting to hand over Castelfranco Emilia to the exiles. Freed, he withdrew to the duchy of Milan, where he lived on for several more years until his death in 1465. His was a very controversial career, full of betrayals and much time spent in prison. Yet the citations concerning him do not dwell on these aspects, preferring to focus on his valor. “Erat enim vir cupidus rerum, sed bellicae gloriae cupidissimus,” Angelo Fonticolano in “De bello Aquilae gesta”; “He was a valiant and wise captain,” Gaspare Broglio in “Cronaca malatestiana del secolo XV.”
Jacopo Catalano
In the service of Venice, Jacopo Catalano distinguished himself in the long defense of Brescia against the Visconti forces between 1438 and 1440. He took up position at the bastion of Canton Mombello and, together with Andrea Leoni and Moccino da Lugo, repelled the general assault of Niccolò Piccinino; at the end of the siege the city council granted him the honor of inserting the lion of Saint Mark into his own family coat of arms. He fought again for Venice in the campaigns against the Ambrosian Republic and against Francesco Sforza, distinguishing himself at the battle of Caravaggio in 1448, where he was the first to confront the enemy before being wounded and taken prisoner by Guglielmo di Monferrato. He was allowed to escape by the latter, in memory of an old friendship that had once bound the two captains together. He died in January 1450, struck by a culverin shot while fighting on the bridge of Brivio against the Sforza forces. In recognition of his valor, four months later, the Serenissima granted his daughters five hundred ducats for their dowry. “His valorous deeds, his labors, the dangers he faced, his prudence, his magnanimity, his fervent readiness in the most difficult and dangerous moments are recounted with excessive satisfaction, with no regard for his life amid the fire and the violent arrows.” Antonio Brognoli in “Memorie anedote spettanti all’assedio di Brescia dell’anno 1438.”
Sante Carillo / Sancho Carillo
Sante Carillo served for decades in the territories between the Marche, Romagna and Tuscany, first for the Papal State and subsequently for the kingdom of Naples. He fought against Braccio di Montone in the Abruzzi and took part in the papal reconquest of San Severino Marche in 1427; in 1431 he entered Pesaro at the head of four hundred horsemen together with his uncle Alfonso, cardinal of Sant’Eustachio, taking advantage of the city’s rebellion against Galeazzo Malatesta. He then passed into the pay of the duke of Milan and, finally, into that of King Alfonso of Aragon. He took part in the siege of Piombino in 1448; from 1451 he held the post of governor of Castiglione della Pescaia. In 1459 he supported the rebel barons opposed to Ferrante of Aragon; together with his French and German hand-gunners he repelled an attack brought by the king himself at Calvi and at Teano. He was captured in 1463 at Sessa Aurunca by Roberto da San Severino. He died in 1465. “A most vigilant man, consumed by many years in the profession of arms,” is how Gioviano Pontano recalls him in his work “Le guerre di Napoli.” The judgment of the already cited Summonte is similar: “An alert and judicious man.”
Pietro da Cartagine
Pietro da Cartagine, originally from Cartagena, took part in the defense of Shkodër against the Turks in 1477; still in the pay of the Venetians, he distinguished himself in the following years in Lombardy (against the ducal forces) and in Trentino (against the Austrians). Previously, in 1485, he was chosen by Roberto da San Severino as judge for the jousts organized in Piazza San Marco. By 1499, now elderly, he preferred to send his son in his place, at the head of the company, rather than join the camp himself; his men, however, did not accept this solution, preferring to serve in the company of Filippo Albanese instead. On his retirement, the Serenissima granted him a monthly pension of twenty florins. He died in 1500.
Between Venice and the Italian Wars: Spanish captains of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries
With the arrival of the Spanish infantry in the kingdom of Naples in the retinue of Consalvo di Cordoba, and with the multiplication of fronts opened by the Italian Wars, a new generation of Spanish captains, sometimes risen from nothing, distributed themselves mainly in the service of Venice or of the kingdom of Naples.
Alfonso Spagnolo
Alfonso Spagnolo fought in 1462 for the lord of Faenza Astorre Manfredi against the lord of Imola Taddeo Manfredi; in 1474, in the pay of the papal forces and under the orders of Pino Ordelaffi, he besieged Niccolò Vitelli in Città di Castello. In 1478 he confronted the Aragonese in Tuscany in the pay of the Florentines. In March 1480 Pope Sixtus IV sent him to Forlì with many foot soldiers to protect the lady of the city Lucrezia della Mirandola from the attacks of the partisans of Antonio Maria Ordelaffi. Although initially forced to abandon the town, he had the opportunity, again on behalf of the papal forces, to repel a new attempt at conquest by Ordelaffi two years later. In his last years he served first the marquis of Saluzzo and finally the duke of Milan Ludovico Sforza. In August 1499 he was placed in command of the garrison of Castello d’Annone, in Piedmont, attacked by the troops of King Louis XII of France. In one attack the opponents lost 300 men. After intense artillery fire the French cut the defenders to pieces and seized the fortress. Alfonso Spagnolo was captured; dragged to Asti together with two other captains likewise taken prisoner, he was hanged with them for the resistance they had offered to their opponents. He is remembered in writing as “a very vigorous soldier” by R. de Maulde La Clavière, and as “a man of experience” by Leon G. Pélissier.
Rames Spagnolo and Giovanni di Villa
Rames Spagnolo. In 1482, placed in charge of the defense of Rovigo on behalf of the Estensi, he surrendered on terms to the Venetians upon the promise of a monthly pension of 25 ducats. He subsequently served for almost thirty years in the pay of the Serenissima, up to the defense of Padua in 1509; he is then recorded in the pay of the French against the same Venetians, who captured him in the summer of 1511. He died in 1515. Giovanni di Villa is likewise recorded in the service of the Venetians. He served in the company of Giampaolo Manfrone from 1496. In 1510 he moved into the pay of the imperial forces against the same Venetians. Dissatisfied with the treatment he received, he left the camp with 13 horsemen. Along the way he stopped at Montagnana in order to offer his services to the Serenissima. He informed them of the discontent present in the enemy camp and of the possibility of inducing 400 Spanish foot soldiers to desert from their ranks. He died around 1515.
Luigi di Palma / Alfonso Spagnolo
Luigi di Palma served the Serenissima in the defense of Brescia and Treviso in 1512 and 1513. He died in October 1513 in the battle of Creazzo, where he distinguished himself for his valor before falling in combat: his head was cut from his corpse and carried to the viceroy of Naples Raimondo di Cardona, who fought in the opposing camp and was his personal enemy.
Pietro Maldonado
In the service of Venice from 1498, Pietro Maldonado defended the castle of Mignano in Tuscany together with Malmignato da Lendinara; captured, he was quickly freed following an assault by Paolo Vitelli. Transferred to Greece and then recalled to the defense of the Veneto during the War of the League of Cambrai, in 1518 he oversaw the fortification works of Corfu together with Bergamo da Bergamo. He held this post until his death, in 1520. In 1511, suspected of treason, he went to Venice with his wife and children to dispel any doubt about his loyalty. He obtained full acquittal. “Long experienced in arms.” So the poet Bartolomeo Cordo recalls him in “La obsidione di Padua.”
Fernando di Peralta
Constable of Navarre, also remembered as Mosen Pietro di Peralta, Fernando di Peralta distinguished himself together with Pietro Navarro in the defense of Canosa di Puglia in July 1502, where the two Spanish captains resisted the French assaults for hours before being forced to surrender. When Consalvo di Cordoba refused to release some French hostages, despite the agreements made, Fernando di Peralta personally intervened on their behalf; accused of treason and imprisoned, he escaped with the help of some friends and passed into the service of the French against his own countrymen. In November 1510 he presented himself in Parma at the head of seventy horsemen, almost all Spanish, dressed in velvet, accompanied by two brothers and his father: in the city he was the protagonist of a famous mounted duel, on a snow-covered field, against another Spanish captain likewise in the service of the French, Aldana: he managed only to wound his rival’s mount before being declared the loser. He died in May 1511 on the banks of the river Secchia. He was decapitated by a cannon shot while speaking with other Spanish captains in French pay, during a parley for which a truce had been guaranteed; a French soldier of fortune tore from his corpse’s neck the gold chain he was wearing at the moment of his death. “A man well experienced in war. A valiant captain.” So Jean d’Auton, French writer and poet, in “Chroniques de Louis XII.”
The men of Valentino: the Spanish circle of Cesare Borgia
Between 1500 and 1503 Cesare Borgia, duca Valentino, relied on a nucleus of Spanish officers to carry out the conquest of Romagna and to settle, often by ruthless methods, his relations with the Italian condottieri in his service. Their stories, parallel and intertwined at several points, make up one of the darkest and best-known chapters in the history of Spanish condottieri in Italy.
Ramiro di Lorca / Ramiro de Lorqua
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Ramiro di Lorca, also remembered as Ramiro de Lorqua or Ramiro d’Orco, chamberlain of Cesare Borgia, accompanied the latter to France in 1498 on the occasion of his marriage to Carlotta d’Albret. Appointed governor of Forlì and subsequently of Pesaro, Cesena and the whole of Romagna, he was tasked with building public works and suppressing the cities’ factions: in Cesena he had a soldier responsible for embezzlement hanged to calm the population, while in Rimini he foiled a plot in favor of the Malatesta and the Venetians. In December 1502, accused by Cesare Borgia of having stolen and sold for his own profit a large quantity of grain from the warehouses of Cesena, he was arrested, tried and sentenced to death. Decapitated in Cesena on the day of Saint Stephen, richly dressed in a red cloak, his body was quartered by the inhabitants and his head, fixed on a lance, was left exposed to the people for an entire day. According to what Pope Alexander VI would later confide to the Venetian ambassador Antonio Giustinian, before dying Ramiro di Lorca had confessed to having secretly agreed with the Orsini to hand Cesena over to them and to having promised Vitellozzo Vitelli and Oliverotto da Fermo that he would kill Borgia himself with a crossbow shot during a ride. “Famous, a very capable man, cruel… Hated throughout Romagna for his cruelty and for the dishonesty of which he repeatedly gave proof. Once, angered at a page who had spilled some wine, he had him burned alive.” Pier D. Pasolini in “I tiranni di Romagna e i papi nel medio Evo.”
Michelotto Coreglia / Miguel de Corella
URL: https://condottieridiventura.it/michelotto-coreglia/
Michelotto Coreglia studied in Pisa together with Cesare Borgia before becoming his enforcer for the most burdensome tasks. In August 1500 he burst into the new tower of the Vatican gardens to surprise Alfonso d’Aragona there, the second husband of Lucrezia Borgia, who had already escaped a first attempt on his life; he strangled him in bed while he was still convalescing, and prevented anyone, including Lucrezia Borgia and Sancia d’Aragona, from seeing the body or attending the funeral. Between 1501 and 1503 he carried out, on behalf of Cesare Borgia, a series of summary executions that included the strangling of Giulio Cesare da Varano in the fortress of Pergola, that of his relatives Pirro, Annibale and Venanzio da Varano, the hanging of the bishop of Cagli Gaspare Gulfi and, on the last day of December 1502 in Senigallia, the strangling, with a viol string, the so-called corda pisana, of Vitellozzo Vitelli and Oliverotto da Fermo. Coreglia himself also helped to capture, by trickery, Paolo and Francesco Orsini. In June 1503, in a tower in Trastevere, before a Cesare Borgia who remained hidden, watching, he strangled the pope’s secret chamberlain Francisco Troccies, accused of spying on behalf of the French.
After the death of Pope Alexander VI in August 1503, he threatened the camerlengo cardinal Casanova with a dagger at his throat to force him to hand over the keys to the Vatican treasury: all this to allow Cesare Borgia to seize a hundred thousand ducats in cash and jewels worth a total of three hundred thousand. Captured by the Florentines after Borgia’s fall from grace, he was handed over to Pope Julius II and imprisoned in Rome; freed in 1505, he served Florence as bargello in the territory of the Mugello and the Casentino (head of police and responsible for security). He was eventually dismissed because of disputes with the local authorities. He died in January 1508; he was killed in Milan by some of his own countrymen as he was leaving the palace of the French governor Charles d’Amboise; his killers were never discovered and his body was buried in a common grave in the foreigners’ cemetery, outside the city walls. “He was an infantry captain, a soldier of fortune, who had served Cesare since the beginning of his military career, the man who is said to have strangled Alfonso of Aragon on Cesare’s order… Through his loyalty to Cesare and the implicit manner in which he carried out his master’s orders, he earned himself considerable hatred. It has been said of him that he was Cesare’s damned soul; but this is a romantic touch similar to the one that has attributed the same designation to Father Joseph with regard to Richelieu.” Rafael Sabatini in “César Borgia. 1475-1507.”
Pietro Remiro / Pedro Ramires
Pietro Remiro took part in the siege of Faenza in 1500. In February 1501 he kidnapped, on behalf of the duca Valentino, Cesare Borgia, the wife of Giovambattista Caracciolo, captain general of the Venetian infantry. He took refuge in Forlì. Appointed papal commissioner of the duchy of Urbino and of Montefeltro, in 1503 he led the siege of the castle of San Leo, defended by Ottaviano Fregoso and Lattanzio da Bergamo: he vented his military helplessness on the relatives of the defenders who fell into his hands. Appointed governor of Cesena and Forlì, he received from Cesare Borgia, after the death of Alexander VI, the secret order to kill his own former retainer Pietro d’Oviedo; he captured him and had him hanged, or thrown from the walls, before negotiating the surrender of the castle of Cesena to the Papal State in exchange for one hundred and fifty pounds of gold. Having passed into the service of Pisa and then of Florence, he is recorded again in 1512 alongside Melchiorre Ramazzotto in the bombardment of Bologna, and in 1527 in the area around Arezzo alongside the viceroy of Naples Carlo di Lannoy. He died in 1530.
Francisco Maldonado
URL: https://condottieridiventura.it/francesco-maldonado/
In the service of Cesare Borgia from 1502, Francisco Maldonado sold for money the fortress of Rimini to Pandolfo Malatesta, together with the captain Sanchez: the episode led Pope Alexander VI to deprive him of his own possessions by a special brief. Having passed into the service first of the French and then of the Spanish, he was captured and freed several times during the fighting that took place in Lombardy and the Veneto in the first decade of the sixteenth century. He distinguished himself in 1513 in the conquest of Peschiera del Garda and in 1516 in a bloody night clash at Tombetta, near Verona, where the lansquenets at his side took no prisoners, while his Spanish foot soldiers behaved differently. In January 1517, at the end of the war, he decided to support the attempt of Francesco Maria della Rovere to recover the duchy of Urbino: he nevertheless secretly negotiated, through the mediation of the captain Suarez di Leon, the handing over of della Rovere himself and of Carlo Baglioni to the papal forces in exchange for fifteen thousand ducats and an ecclesiastical benefice for a son. The betrayal was discovered when some wagons heading to Pesaro were intercepted by the forces of Feltre, carrying letters that proved it. Summoned before a council of war, he was put to death at Gubbio in April 1517 together with his accomplices Suarez di Leon, Plazo, Marchio, Perez and Gonzales. His baggage was plundered, and the women of his retinue, including a concubine, were stripped of a safe-conduct and their belongings. “A man truly worthy of praise in war, had he not, moved by greed and pride, being by now old, stained with such wickedness, and with such an ugly and horrible death, the reputation he had acquired through long toil.” Paolo Giovio in “Dell’historie del suo tempo.” Along the same lines is also the judgment given by Gio. Battista Leoni in his biography concerning the duke of Urbino Francesco Maria della Rovere. “Who, greedy and overly ambitious, being of a restless and bold spirit, was to be feared in the highest degree as an almost perpetual source of sedition and discord.”
Pietro Navarro / Pedro Navarro
URL: https://condottieridiventura.it/pedro-navarro-the-renaissance-strategist-who-revolutionized-warfare/
If one Spanish name dominates Italian military history between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in the same way that Giovanni Acuto dominates the English story of the preceding century, it is that of Pietro Navarro, also remembered as Pedro de Roncal or El Salteador, born in 1454 in Roncal, in Navarre, into a family of the local minor nobility. He began his career as a stable hand to the cardinal of Aragon before turning to the profession of arms; in the course of his career he distinguished himself as a military engineer in the wars between Florence and Genoa in Lunigiana. He also practiced privateering in the Mediterranean for several years, first on his own account and then in the service of the marquis of Crotone Antonio di Centelles. In this activity numerous Genoese and Venetian ships were burned or captured. In 1500, following the death at sea of a brother together with his entire crew in Calabrian waters, he decided to serve the Spanish against the Turks under the orders of Consalvo di Cordoba.
Having become the right-hand man of the Gran Capitán, Pietro Navarro perfected, between 1502 and 1503, the use of siege mines: with the help of the engineer Antonello da Trani he blew up Castelnuovo and Castel dell’Ovo in Naples and, in August, overcame the resistance of Gaeta. Together with Fernando di Peralta he withstood the French siege of Canosa di Puglia in July 1502; he led the vanguard of the Spanish infantry in the victorious battle of Cerignola in April 1503, where he successfully confronted the square of Swiss pikemen. In December of that same year he commanded the Spanish vanguard at the battle of the Garigliano. Appointed count of Oliveto in 1504 and subsequently count of Alvito, he received in fief Settefrati, Posta, Vicalvi, Campoli Appennino, Atina and Picinisco. He also led numerous expeditions in the Maghreb on behalf of the Spanish crown, capturing, with mines and combined assaults, Mazalquivir, Oran, Bougie and Tripoli between 1509 and 1510. A subsequent expedition of his against the island of Djerba ended in a disastrous ambush in which thousands of Spanish soldiers died, including the duke of Alba, don Garcia Alvarez de Toledo.
The turning point in his career came with the battle of Ravenna in 1512, where he held command of the Spanish infantry, placed in the vanguard of the army of the League: the opponents were the French under the orders of Gaston de Foix. He arranged the artillery behind a line of two-wheeled carts armed with pikes and scythes, a sort of mobile trench, among the first ever tried in Europe. On this occasion he was accused by his own countrymen of having delayed too long in opening supporting fire for the Spanish cavalry, which had moreover left its positions prematurely and was thereby doomed to defeat. Captured by the Frenchman Vincenzo de la Fayette, together with Fabrizio Colonna and Ferdinando d’Avalos, he remained a prisoner in France until 1515, when King Francis I personally paid his ransom of twenty thousand scudi. Indignant at the failure of the king of Spain Ferdinand the Catholic to contribute to the payment of his ransom, and at the same time considering himself unjustly blamed for the defeat at Ravenna, Pietro Navarro passed into the service of the French. He held command of the Gascon infantry; in this role he distinguished himself in the victorious battle of Melegnano in September 1515. The following month he took part in the siege of the Castello Sforzesco in Milan: he was severely wounded by a battlement brought down by artillery fire while personally directing the cannon fire.
For years, in the service of France, he conducted the sieges of Brescia and Genoa, alternating command of the infantry with naval operations against the Barbary corsairs and against the imperial fleet; captured a second time in Genoa in 1522 by Giovanni d’Urbina, who had served years before as his own lieutenant, he was confined in the castle of Ischia by Ferdinando d’Avalos. He was freed only in 1526, in a prisoner exchange. In the last two years of his life he was still responsible for directing naval and land operations in the War of the League of Cognac; he conquered Pavia, Bosco Marengo and much of the Abruzzi and Apulia. The expedition to the kingdom of Naples under the orders of Lautrec ended tragically. He was taken prisoner again by the imperial forces in August 1528 in the course of the disastrous retreat from Naples of an army decimated by plague, of which Navarro himself was a victim. Emperor Charles V ordered his public decapitation; the governor of Castelnuovo, Luigi Icardo, according to the sources reported in the entry, had him strangled or smothered in prison while he slept, in order to prevent the public execution. In the early seventeenth century the duke of Sessa, nephew of Consalvo di Cordoba, had his remains transferred to the church of Santa Maria Nuova in Naples, beside those of his old adversary and later French ally Odet de Foix, lord of Lautrec, having Annibale Caccavello sculpt twin tombs with Latin inscriptions composed by Paolo Giovio. Pietro Navarro is also portrayed by Giorgio Vasari in the Sala di Giovanni in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, in the act of fighting in the battle of Ravenna: the only Spanish captain recorded by the site to have received, like the Englishman Giovanni Acuto a century and a half before him, an iconographic recognition comparable to that reserved for the great Italian condottieri. We are pleased to close his account with the assessments of two Spanish historians, the first from the 1600s and the second from our own time. “A captain of such renown as his valorous deeds deserved… Pedro Navarro was such a singular man of war, both by sea and by land, that he could stand among the most famous Spaniards of his century… Many other virtues of a wise and prudent captain… he was fortunate for most of his life, and esteemed by kings. His judgment was mature and sound in laying out and setting up a camp, and in making trenches and other defenses; no one surpassed him in his lifetime and few equaled him.” Prudencio de Sandoval in “Historia de la vida y hechos del emperador Carlos V, máximo, fortísimo rey católico de España.” “A companion in arms (to Consalvo di Cordoba), more than a friend. He was a man of grim appearance and firm expression, like all the inhabitants of that region of northern Spain… But neither the desire for adventure, nor the legend that spoke of him as ‘Roncal the assaulter,’ managed to alter his lucidity as a man of the Renaissance… A military genius, he possessed the ability to invent contrivances for the service of war. As a true forerunner, observing with the eyes of instinct what might be the requirements of a siege… this son of peasants traced his own furrow with the obstinate slowness of those who have worked the land for generations. The fruit that springs from it is the modern system of mining, so feared by the besieged of that era.” José Enrique Ruiz-Domènec in “Il Gran Capitan. Ritratto di un’epoca.”
The geopolitical weight of the Spanish condottieri in Italy
The twenty-one entries gathered from the site condottieridiventura.it sketch a map far more extended in time and more fragmented in space than the compact, single-thirty-year span of the English captains of the fourteenth century. The Spanish condottieri in Italy never formed a unified body: Catalans and Aragonese in the service of the Angevins in the early decades of the fourteenth century, isolated captains in the pay of the Papal State and the companies of fortune in the heart of the fifteenth century, officers of the Borgia circle in the Romagna of the early sixteenth century, and finally, soldiers of long service to Venice and military engineers of the Italian Wars: this is the overall picture they represent, in which distinct generations appear united only by their common Iberian origin.
The deaths reflect the variety of their trajectories. Some, like Raimondo di Cardona and Diego della Ratta, died after a lifetime of political service at the top of the Angevin or Aragonese administrations, the first in Catalonia after having governed Sardinia, the second in Naples as grand constable of the kingdom. Others, like Dalmasio dei Banoli and Simone da Villa, drowned at sea or died beneath the walls of a besieged city, according to the ordinary fortunes of the profession. Most, like Sante Carillo, Pietro Navarrino, Jacopo Catalano and Pietro da Cartagine, passed away after decades of honored service to Venice, to the Papal State, or to the lordships of Romagna. In the case of Jacopo Catalano, his memory was such that the Serenissima provided a dowry for his daughters. The most violent ends befell the men of Cesare Borgia’s circle: the public decapitation of Ramiro di Lorca at Cesena, the nighttime assassination of Michelotto Coreglia in Milan, the execution of Francisco Maldonado at Gubbio, together compose a sort of tragedy in several acts, marked by a level of political violence that neither the English captains of the fourteenth century nor the Spanish condottieri of the other generations experienced to the same degree. Above them all, for historical importance and length of career, stands the figure of Pietro Navarro, capable of crossing, in the service of three crowns, Naples, Spain and France, in alliance with Venice and with the papacy, the entire span of the Italian Wars, and of bequeathing to the European art of war the systematic use of the siege mine.
The blood ties and kinship relationships documented in the entries are few but not insignificant: the bond of brothers-in-law between Diego della Ratta and Berengario Caroccio; the uncle cardinal of Sant’Eustachio at the side of Sante Carillo; the brothers and the father who accompany Fernando di Peralta on his entry into Parma; the son Giovanni imprisoned together with Pietro Navarrino; the brother of Pietro Navarro lost at sea in the privateering wars. On the geopolitical level, the most lasting contribution of the Spanish condottieri concerns technical innovation: the increasing use of the siege mine perfected by Pietro Navarro at Naples, at Gaeta and in the Maghreb; the systematic use of Spanish infantry supported by mobile trenches first tried at Ravenna; the transformation of the kingdom of Naples, after the conquest by Ferdinand the Catholic and, above all, by Emperor Charles V, into a stable nursery of feudal lords and captains of arms to be employed in the wars that now tear apart not only Italy alone, but the whole of Europe.
