The Great Company and Its Captains: from Duke Guarnieri to the Lando Clan

In the heart of the fourteenth century, as plague cut down Italy’s cities and Europe’s kingdoms tore themselves apart in dynastic conflicts, a new military figure took shape on the peninsula: the German condottiere. Descended from the armed bands that had come down into Italy in the wake of emperors such as Henry VII of Luxembourg and Louis the Bavarian, and of King John of Bohemia, these Swabian, Saxon, Bavarian, and Rhenish knights decided, once discharged from their respective sovereigns’ armies, not to go home. They organised themselves into companies of fortune whose composition was constantly shifting, so that it is easy to find individual figures moving from one unit to another according to whatever opportunities presented themselves, in a world where the words friend and enemy carried no meaning. These soldiers sold themselves to the highest bidder among Italy’s city-states, lordships, and regional powers; once discharged, and when no one wished to contract them, they transformed into bands of extortionists collecting “gifts” and tributes under threat of pillage.

The phenomenon exploded between 1338 and 1339, when Mastino della Scala assembled a nucleus of Germanic mercenaries into the Company of Saint George in order to confront the Visconti; the evolution of this process found its most complete form in 1342 with the founding of the Great Company, also known as the Company of the Crown or Societas Theutonicorum. This was an aggregation of heavy cavalry ranging between 1,500 and 3,000 barbute (the term denotes a special type of helmet covering the forehead with no crest), flanked by thousands of infantry, auxiliaries, merchants, prostitutes, and servants, capable at its greatest extent of moving up to thirty thousand persons between combatants and following. Politically, the Great Company answered to no loyalty save money: it passed from one banner to another without scruple and, when not under contract, sustained itself through the systematic extortion of the populations it crossed. It operated above all in central Italy, where the state entities were weakest; its captains moved unpunished across the entire peninsula from Piedmont to the Kingdom of Naples, from Lombardy to Capitanata, from the March of Ancona to the Veneto.

The profiles that follow are dedicated to the protagonists of the first generation, those who founded the model: the captains of the Great Company and their direct heirs, active between the mid-1330s and the early years of the fifteenth century.

GUARNIERI DI URSLINGEN / WERNER VON URSLINGEN / DUKE GUARNIERI

URL: https://condottieridiventura.it/werner-von-urslingen-a-swabian-condottiero-in-italy/

From Urslingen, in Swabia. Duke, descended from the Dukes of Spoleto. Dies in Swabia, poisoned, in February 1354.

Recognised patriarch of the phenomenon of the companies of fortune in Italy, Guarnieri di Urslingen begins his career first in the service of King John of Bohemia; subsequently in that of Florence, hired in 1335 to confront the Tarlati of Arezzo. He fights in the Veneto for the Venetians against the lord of Verona, Mastino della Scala; in January 1339, at the end of a conflict that had seen Venetians and Florentines as adversaries of the Scaligeri, he enters the Company of Saint George financed by those same Scaligeri to prey upon Lombardy at the expense of the lord of Milan, Azzone Visconti: his companions in the venture are the instigator Lodrisio Visconti, il Malerba, and Conte Lando. The company moves from Vicenza with 2,500 cavalry and 1,000 infantry, crosses the Adige, and throws itself into the Bresciano and Bergamasco; the episode ends with the defeat of Canegrate, a battle that leaves 4,000 cavalry and as many infantry on the field between the two sides.

In September 1342 the condottiere founds the Great Company, or Company of the Crown, adopting as its device the motto engraved in silver letters on his breastplate: “Duke Guarnieri, lord of the Great Company, enemy of God, of pity, and of mercy.” It gathers Germans, Italians such as Ettore di Panigo and Mazarello da Cusano, Hungarians, and Catalans; the adventurers traverse without pause Tuscany, Umbria, Romagna, and the Marches, imposing ransoms on the cities in their path; Siena is forced to pay sums ranging between 2,800 and 12,000 florins, while Volterra, San Miniato, San Gimignano, and Colle di Val d’Elsa are systematically sacked. In 1343 the company crosses the Po and plunders the Modenese, the Mantovano, and the entire Bolognese, devastating Quistello, Correggio, Campagnola Emilia, Novi di Modena, and Mirandola; in the end it splits into sections, with Urslingen returning to Germany laden with booty by way of the Friulian Alps.

He returns to Italy in 1347 in the service of King Louis of Hungary, determined to avenge the murder of his son Andrew of Hungary, presumably arranged by Andrew’s wife, Queen Joan I of Anjou of Naples. Urslingen operates in the Abruzzi and Campania; he captures Venafro and Teano. In 1348 he is the protagonist of the massacre of Anagni, whose inhabitants had killed twelve of his ambassadors sent to negotiate the delivery of supplies. Guarnieri di Urslingen, after a brief siege, puts the entire population to the sword — men, women, children, and even animals, as he subsequently boasted. In 1349 he is a protagonist, alongside Corrado Lupo and Conte Lando, of the victory of Melito di Napoli against the Angevins, achieved through a stratagem simulating internal brawls between Hungarians and Germans to draw the enemy into the open. In subsequent years he serves alternately for the papacy, for Mastino della Scala, and for the Visconti, until in 1351 he reaches an agreement with the latter and returns to Swabia. He dies poisoned in February 1354 in his homeland. The chronicles remember him as a man of gigantic stature; Muratori considers him the first great organiser of the companies of fortune in Italy, while Ercole Ricotti, the first Italian scholar to study the role of companies of fortune in Italy, describes him as a figure “without infamy and without praise… a man who had neither virtues nor vices… none the less, his name fixed, if not the origin, the appearance of the companies of fortune in Italy… to the boast of whose bold deeds, the haughtiness and bravery of spirit, and the strength of body, the nobility of his birth added further distinction.”

CONTE LANDO / KONRAD WIRTINGUER VON LANDAU

URL: https://condottieridiventura.it/konrad-von-landau/

From Burg Landau, near Ertingen, in Württemberg. Count of Landau. Brother of Broccardo; father of Corrado, Lucio, and Everardo Lando. Dies in April 1363, at the bridge of Canturino near Ghemme, from wounds received in that battle.

Direct heir of Guarnieri di Urslingen at the head of the Great Company, Conte Lando over thirty years of activity is documented operating in every region of Italy with the exception of Sicily and Sardinia. He makes his debut in 1338 in the service of the Venetians against the Scaligeri; he is present in the expedition of the Company of Saint George in 1339, an enterprise that ends with the rout of Canegrate. In 1346 he crosses the Po with 800 cavalry and 1,000 infantry to counter the Visconti in the Parmense; the following year he passes to the pay of the Marquis of Saluzzo. In 1348, enlisted by King Louis of Hungary, he counters the Angevin militias in Apulia and Campania together with Corrado Lupo, Guarnieri di Urslingen, and Fra Moriale. On that occasion he contributes decisively (June 1349) to the success of the battle of Melito di Napoli, leading an attack of 300 Hungarian mounted archers that strikes the enemy cavalry from the rear. For this victory the voivode Stephen of Transylvania is obliged to acknowledge 150,000 florins for the mercenaries, raised from the ransoms of the very numerous prisoners.

After the sack of Aversa and long months of pillaging in the Terra di Lavoro, in 1350 he moves to central Italy still alongside Urslingen; in 1354 he obtains effective command of the Great Company when Fra Moriale, having succeeded to its command, leaves to go to Rome. In the same year Conte Lando extorts Siena (16,000 florins), Florence (28,000), and Pisa (15,000 florins plus a mount with all its trappings, valued at 1,000 florins): in return he promises six years of truce. In autumn of the same year 1354, he leads a major offensive against the Visconti on behalf of the anti-Visconti league; he devastates the Bolognese with 5,000 cavalry and 10,000 infantry, causing damage estimated at 200,000 ducats for the territory of Bologna alone.

In 1356 he is tasked with operating in Lombardy on behalf of the anti-Visconti league: after setting fire to Verdello and Comun Nuovo in the Bergamasco and ravaging the Milanese (Magenta and Vittuone are destroyed), in November of the same year he is surprised and taken prisoner in an ambush laid for him by Lodrisio Visconti and Francesco d’Este near Casorate Primo. In these straits he nevertheless manages to save himself after bribing the two German soldiers who had captured him. In 1358 he obtains from Emperor Charles of Bohemia the appointment as imperial vicar of Pisa; in the same year he suffers a defeat that represents the lowest point of his career and which in a certain sense embittered his character: at Le Scalelle, near the pass of Marradi in the Val di Lamone, his company is massacred by peasants led by the Manfredi, the Guidi, the Ubaldini, and the Florentines, in an ambush while his troops are riding and marching through a very narrow ravine. The adventurers are struck by stones and tree-trunks thrown from the mountain tops; 300 horses are killed; another 1,300 men are stripped of their arms and mounts. Conte Lando, wounded in the head by a lance blow, is taken prisoner; he passes from one captor to another until he is finally delivered to the lord of Bologna, Giovanni Visconti, who nurses him back to health. The defeat inspires a Lament of Conte Lando recited in squares and courts throughout Italy.

Freed, he resumes his “normal” activities; in 1360 he invades Piedmont with Anichino di Baumgarten; he sacks Savigliano with methods unusual even for those times: inhabitants unable to pay the ransom have their hands, feet, or ears cut off; for those from whom nothing can be extracted, drowning is prescribed. He then betrays the Marquis of Montferrat to pass to the service of the lord of Milan, Bernabò Visconti. He meets his death in April 1363: while feasting at Novara he is spurred by captain Giovanni Caimi to move against the Monferrans intent on devastating the territory of Romagnano Sesia. He leaves camp in haste with 400 barbute, surprises the escort of the baggage train at the bridge of Canturino near Ghemme; there he is overtaken by his adversaries, the White Company of the German Alberto Sterz; the Hungarians under his command refuse to fight against their comrades serving on the opposite side; Conte Lando is left with only a few men to resist the enemy cavalry. Wounded in the face by a stone, in the mouth by a lance blow, and in the armpit, he is captured. He dies a few days later from his wounds. A portrait of him is preserved in a mural tablet in the parish church of Avane, near Pisa; Antonio da Ferrara dedicates to him a laudatory poem in which he is called “conte gientile” and valiant “tanto d’arme.” William Caferro, following the words of Pietro Azario (a Piedmontese historian contemporary with Conte Lando), calls him “a drunken German captain who spent too much time drinking wine at the banquet table,” but also “the most successful of the German captains of the decade of the fifties.” In our view, his rules of life are well delineated in a message he sent to Cardinal Egidio Albornoz, reported by Nino Valeri in Storia d’Italia illustrata. Signorie e principati. 1343–1516: “It is our custom to steal, pillage, kill those who resist us. Our revenues are formed by the mortgages imposed in the provinces we invade. Whoever holds his life dear buys peace and quiet from us with heavy tribute. If the lord legate wishes to reach an accord with us and ensure the tranquillity of all these cities, let him do what the whole world does: pay, and pay.”

BROCCARDO LANDO (Broccardo Tedesco)

German. Count of Umberg. Brother of Conte Lando. Killed in July 1358 at the battle of Le Scalelle.

Brother of Conte Lando, Broccardo initially serves in the Great Company led by Fra Moriale; in January 1351, in the service of the Church and under the orders of Astorgio di Durafort, he is a protagonist of the siege of Bologna against the Pepoli. Due to delayed wages he negotiates with the lord of Milan, Bernabò Visconti, to deliver Andrea and Taddeo Pepoli — whom he has treacherously imprisoned for this reason — in exchange for the settlement of outstanding pay. In 1353, in the pay of Cardinal Egidio Albornoz, he is documented countering the prefect Giovanni di Vico, lord of Viterbo; shortly thereafter he passes to the service of the lord of Fermo, Gentile da Mogliano, in order to confront the Malatesta. He follows his brother to Apulia in 1355 in the pay of Luigi di Durazzo; in 1358 he returns once more to the Great Company.

His end mirrors that of most of his comrades: on 25 July 1358 he is at the rearguard of the Great Company with 800 cavalry and 500 infantry, moving from the Val di Lamone towards Bibbiena. Entering the gloomy ravine of the pass of Le Scalelle, he is struck by a rock hurled from the mountain above, falls with his horse into a gorge, and meets his death there. Tanzini remembers him as “one of the most valiant captains of the Great Company.”

CORRADO LANDO / KONRAD VON WEITINGEN

URL: https://condottieridiventura.it/konrad-von-weitingens-strategic-mastery-in-14th-century-warfare/

(Corrado d’Alemagna, Corrado Tedesco, Corrado Witinguer di Landau, Corrado Gottinger). Son of Conte Lando. Brother of Lucio and Everardo. Dies at Pisa in February 1403.

Among the three sons of Conte Lando, Corrado is the one with the longest career, a trajectory of nearly half a century that sees him serve for the Florentines, the Visconti, the Ordelaffi, and many others. He makes his debut in 1358 in his father’s Great Company in the service of Francesco Ordelaffi; in July 1359 he takes part in the extortion of the Pisano alongside his father, Amerigo del Cavalletto, and Anichino di Baumgarten. In 1370 he is hired by the Florentines together with his brothers Lucio and Everardo to counter Giovanni Acuto in Tuscany; in 1372 he is documented in the following of Galeazzo Visconti with a contract of 400 lances (a tactical unit composed in the Middle Ages of an armed knight, a squire, and a page), at the head of which he takes part in the defence of Piacenza, assailed by papal militias. In 1375 he is appointed captain general by the Florentines to confront the forces of the Church: he is entrusted with two standards, that of the commune and another bearing in golden letters the word “Liberty.” He is sent to Perugia with 500 lances in support of the citizenry who had risen against papal dominion.

In March 1376 he enters Bologna, favouring the revolt against the papacy; the following month he goes to Milan with his brother Lucio to collect the dowry of the natural daughter of Bernabò Visconti, Isabella, recent bride of his brother. In September 1377 (still against the Holy See) he is one of the protagonists of the victory of Matelica at the expense of the lord of Camerino, Rodolfo da Varano; in the battle he commands the cavalry on the right wing; at the end of the fighting he is knighted. In 1381 he forms with il Boino, Corrado di Altinberg, Angelino d’Austria, and Amerigo Unghero a company of 2,000 cavalry and 1,000 infantry operating in the March of Ancona. In conflict with the lords of Forlì in 1387, he is defeated and captured at Castrocaro Terme by Cecco and Pino Ordelaffi with 100 lances.

In the 1390s he serves in Tuscany, Umbria, and Lombardy; he takes part in the ambush of Civilerghe di Mazzano with Giovanni Acuto against the Visconti forces led by Taddeo dal Verme; he is also present at the decisive battle of Paterno (1391), where in command of 500 lances, positioned in ambush in a small wood, he completes the rout of his adversaries. For his merits the Florentines grant him a life annuity of 1,200 florins, while his captains receive silver objects with a combined value of 472 florins, the work of the Florentine goldsmith Giacomo di ser Zelli. In May 1392 he is documented participating in Florence in a great joust in which he commands a squad dressed in white against another dressed in red under the orders of Antonio da Palagio dei conti Guidi; the prize, two pearl lion-cubs, is divided between Corrado Lando and Fuzzolino Tedesco. In August 1397 he distinguishes himself at the battle of Governolo, where in command of 2,000 cavalry he confronts Ottobono Terzi: the enemy captain, met in single combat, is unhorsed. In 1399 he enters Pisa with Antonio Porro to assist at the cession of the lordship of the city to the Duke of Milan, Gian Galeazzo Visconti. He dies there in February 1403 and is buried in the local cathedral. Together with other German condottieri such as Giovanni di Raten, Flach di Risach, Everardo della Campana, and his brothers Lucio and Everardo, he is recalled by Caferro in one of his studies: “Their names are obscure today, but they were well known and much in demand in the middle decades of the fourteenth century.”

LUCIO LANDO / LUTZ VON LANDAU (Luzo Tedesco, Conte Lussi)

URL: https://condottieridiventura.it/the-strategic-alliances-of-lutz-von-landau-medieval-power-plays/

Swabian, from Constance. Count. Son of Conte Lando. Brother of Corrado and Everardo Lando. Marries Elisabetta Visconti, natural daughter of Bernabò Visconti, who brings as dowry the castle of Constance and 12,000 florins. Brother-in-law of Bernardo della Sala and Giovanni Acuto, both married to natural daughters of the lord of Milan. Dies c. 1402, probably in the Bolognese.

From a military standpoint Lucio is the most gifted of Conte Lando‘s sons; he too enjoys a long career that sees him pass through nearly all the great Italian wars of the second half of the fourteenth century; his presence in a camp is never constant, as he alternates his loyalty according to circumstances among his paymasters of the moment (over time the Visconti, the Florentines, the Scaligeri, and the Ordelaffi). He makes his debut in 1357 in his father’s Great Company in the service of Francesco Ordelaffi; after the paternal defeat at Le Scalelle he is among the few captains to survive and to reach Amerigo del Cavalletto at Forlì with the remnants of the company. In January 1370 he is hired by the Florentines with 500 lances and 50 archers for a total salary of 38,500 florins for three months and four days, with a personal monthly provision of 1,100 florins. In 1371 he obtains the appointment of captain general to confront the Visconti: he frees Reggio Emilia from siege with the victory of San Raffaele, only to be subsequently defeated and taken prisoner at Mirandola by Giovanni Acuto.

In 1372 he forms his own company of 5,000 barbute. His raids force the Florentines to recognise 10,000 florins as due to him: his devastating action as a whole causes damage in the republic’s countryside estimated at 50,000 florins; he then moves into Sienese territory for a similar operation. In May he enters Reggio Emilia through a secret agreement made with Feltrino Gonzaga; he accepts an offer of 60,000 ducats from the lord of Milan, Bernabò Visconti, to drive out the Este — who had themselves conceived the idea of hiring him — from the town. During the twenty-two days he remains in the city, his men sack even churches and hospitals. In 1376, after marrying Elisabetta Visconti, he serves his father-in-law against the Company of the Bretons of Giovanni di Maléstroit in the service of the Church. In September 1377, with his brother Corrado, he is one of the protagonists of the victory of Matelica at the expense of Rodolfo da Varano. At the end of the fighting he knights his brother Everardo. In May 1378 he fights the Scaligeri on behalf of Bernabò Visconti in collaboration with Giovanni Acuto: he moves off independently with the latter from the camp with the aim of plundering the Veronese district. Such behaviour, repeated in 1379, provokes a definitive break with his father-in-law, to the extent that Bernabò Visconti places a bounty of thirty florins on every adventurer of his company, English or German, captured and killed.

In 1381 he travels to Prague to the court of Emperor Wenceslas of Bohemia; from 1379 to 1383 he acts as intermediary between the emperor and the city of Lucca in negotiations over imperial recognition of the city’s freedoms. In 1386 he allies with Astorre Manfredi and Taddeo Pepoli in an attempt to seize Bologna, in exchange for a promise to sack the city for ten days; the attempt is destined to fail. In the same October he takes command of the Scaligeri militias from the lord of Verona, Antonio della Scala, to confront the Carraresi of Padua: he destroys the castle of Onigo on the Piave, puts the Trevigiano to fire and sword, devastates neighbouring territories as far as Valdobbiadene and Asolo; he strikes with bombards, with success, the towers of Novaglia at Longare, a vital position controlling the waters of the Bacchiglione river that turn the Paduan mills. In February 1387 he is routed at Castrocaro Terme by the Ordelaffi together with his brother Corrado; he escapes to Argenta with only three horses. He dies probably in 1402 in the Bolognese, where he is stationed with Bernardo della Serra in the service of the Florentines. The chroniclers’ assessments are varied: Gatari calls him “a captain of men-at-arms in Italy and a great lord in Germany,” while the Monumenta Pisana describe him as “always held to be of little loyalty.” Lastly, there is a curious citation regarding him reported on the internet some time ago (www.chiamamicittà.it): “Rimini has dedicated a street in the San Giuliano Mare district to Lucio Lando. The reasons for this honour remain mysterious, given that he, without even being a great condottiere, built a sinister reputation by faithfully following in his father’s footsteps in cruelty and disloyalty; and that at Rimini he accomplished no significant deed, causing only damage, as indeed throughout much of Italy.”

EVERARDO LANDO / EBERHARD VON LANDAU

Son of Conte Lando. Brother of Lucio and Corrado. Dies presumably around 1390.

The career of the third son of Conte Lando presents a lesser profile than that of his brothers. He operates, in fact, often at their side in a subordinate capacity, or under the orders of other captains of his time. He makes his debut in January 1370 with his brothers Lucio and Corrado in the service of the Florentines against the Visconti; in 1371 he breaks into the Sienese as far as Fonte Becci with Lucio, compelling Siena to pay 8,000–10,000 florins in exchange for a five-year truce. In July 1377 he counters the forces of the Church: he is sent by the Florentines in support of the Perugians with his brother Lucio and Guglielmo Ferrebach, assails the castle of Poggio in Val Topino, takes part in the capture of Gualdo Tadino and Bevagna with its fortress, fights at Spello against the Company of the Bretons led by Silvestro di Budes. In September of the same year he is knighted by his brother Lucio following the victory of Matelica over the same adversaries.

In March 1380 at the head of 500 lances he confronts the Company of Saint George of Alberico da Barbiano at Gangalandi: he surprises 300 enemy lances in their sleep. In the course of the fighting he is initially taken prisoner by the adversaries after being wounded in the mouth with the loss of two teeth; freed by his own men, he prevails in the end with the capture of 200 horses and two caporali (senior officers; in the Middle Ages the term carries this meaning). In April he takes part in the battle of Malmantile, where Giovanni da Barbiano is captured with 70 cavalry (200 in total by the end of the engagement). In May 1384 he joins the Company of the Rose founded by Giovanni Acuto, Giovanni degli Ubaldini, Riccardo Ramsey, and Boldrino da Panicale. In August 1385 he takes part in a large-scale raid into the Sienese with Taddeo Pepoli, Giovanni Beltoft, and Acuto: on this occasion 600 pairs of oxen, 15,000 sheep are seized, 80,000 moggia of grain and a great quantity of woollen and linen cloth are sequestered; the entire booty is resold to the Sienese themselves for 15,000 florins through the mediation of Florentine ambassadors. He dies around 1390. Buoninsegni remembers him as “our stout soldier.”

ANICHINO DI BAUMGARTEN / HANNEKEN VON BAUMGARTEN / ANICHINO DI BONGARDO

URL: https://condottieridiventura.it/hanneken-von-baumgarten-a-legacy-carved-in-battle/

From Bongart, diocese of Cologne. Member of a minor noble family of the Rhineland. Lord of Caraglio in Piedmont. Dies in October 1375 in Germany.

Among the captains of the second generation of the Great Company, Anichino di Baumgarten is probably the most astute and the most capable from a political standpoint. His activity in Italy is documented as early as 1351 in the territory of Cortona, alongside Nolfo da Montefeltro and Gisello degli Ubaldini. In 1356 he is found in the Company of the Speranti, commanded by Ermanno di Wartenstein, in the pay of the lord of Ravenna, Bernardino da Polenta. In March 1358 he is hired for four months by the Sienese with 800 barbute and 400 Hungarian infantry in order to free Cortona from the siege laid by the Perugians; the following month, on Easter Day, he rashly accepts a challenge to battle from Smeduccio Salimbeni at Torrita di Siena. The Sienese are routed; Anichino is taken prisoner along with his marshal and 50 cavalry. Freed, he resumes command of the Sienese army, has the priory of San Pietro a Petroio occupied, an action so effective that he is awarded a prize of 500 florins.

After the disaster of Le Scalelle, in which he is involved but manages to escape capture, he is one of the protagonists of the long central decade of the Great Company. In February 1359 he takes possession with Conte Lando of the castle of Serra San Quirico, imposing tributes of 4,000 florins each on the lords of Camerino and San Severino Marche, Rodolfo da Varano and Smeduccio Salimbeni respectively. In spring he compels Cardinal Egidio Albornoz to acknowledge 50,000 ducats for the adventurers in exchange for four years of truce. In August he passes to the service of the Marquis of Montferrat (a contract of 700 barbute and pay of 28,000 florins); he takes command of the Montferrin troops; all of which does not prevent him, the following November, from betraying his lord to pass to the Visconti with a contract increased to 1,000 barbute. In March 1360 he enters Piedmont and with Conte Lando sacks Savigliano with the same systematic cruelty that characterises his colleague. Between 1360 and 1361 he plunders the Abruzzi and Basilicata, occupies Acerenza, fortifies himself in Melfi; attempts to seize Salerno; still at the head of the company, he continues his campaign at the expense of the Angevins of Naples, only to be finally repulsed by Niccolò Acciaiuoli.

In 1364 he is hired by Galeazzo Visconti; he then links up, in the pay of the Pisans, with the White Company of Alberto Sterz to counter the Florentines. In April he enters the Val di Nievole at the head of 6,500 cavalry — English and German — and 1,000 Pisans acting as sappers; he assails Prato, penetrates into the Mugello by the Val di Marina, and arrives beneath the walls of Florence with an attack launched at the Porta di San Gallo. On this occasion he has himself knighted; in turn he knights Everardo della Campana and William Gold. Following the losses sustained in the various engagements, estimated at 600 horses killed and 2,000 wounded, and with his credit of 60,000 florins against the Pisans for outstanding wages showing no sign of early settlement, he accepts the Florentine offer: 9,000 florins for himself and 70,000 for his company in exchange for abandoning the Pisan service and a commitment not to molest Florentine territory for five months. He then founds with Alberto Sterz and Ugo della Zucca the Company of the Star, inspired by a French chivalric order.

In subsequent years he alternates between the service of the Visconti, the Church, the Perugians, and the Count of Savoy. In 1370 the Count of Savoy grants him Caraglio as a fief. In May 1373, after an initial success at Gavardo on behalf of the Visconti, he is defeated at Montichiari by Giovanni Acuto: he saves himself by flight together with Gian Galeazzo Visconti. Sensing the approach of death, in 1375 he prepares himself spiritually for it. He receives from Avignon, where the papacy then has its seat, four ordinary indulgences and a plenary in articulo mortis; he also obtains from Pope Gregory XI a solemn document attesting his reception under the Church’s protection. He returns to Germany, where he dies in October of the same year. Ingeborg Walter describes him as “shrewd, perfidious, bold, and always solely solicitous of his own advantage”; the Anonymous Sienese calls him “the greatest traitor that was ever in these parts.” Exposure to Italian commercial methods allows his heirs to found the Paumgartner company, a firm of German merchants active between Avignon, Barcelona, Milan, and Prague.

CORRADO LUPO / KONRAD WOLFHARDT (Konrad Wolff von Wolfurt)

From Bregenz, now in Austria on the eastern shores of Lake Constance. At the time the condottiere lived the town was part of the region of Lower Saxony. Lord in Campania of Nocera Superiore and of Guglionesi in Molise. Dies c. 1360.

The fourth great captain of the original nucleus of the Great Company, Corrado Lupo is the one who maintains the longest ties with the Hungarian cause and who becomes, at a certain point, an effective feudal lord of the Kingdom of Naples in every respect. In June 1347 he takes part in the conquest of the Kingdom of Naples alongside King Louis of Hungary; he enters Lanciano. In January 1348 he falls out with his colleague Guarnieri di Urslingen, whom he suspects of treachery in favour of their adversaries, the Angevins of Naples: he persuades the Hungarian king to discharge him. When Louis returns to Hungary, Corrado Lupo remains in Italy as viceroy of Apulia with 1,200 German and Hungarian cavalry; he is recognised as governing without oppressing the population.

Between November and December of the same year he conducts the decisive campaign for the relief of Lucera, where Captain Malgerio di Guilborio is holding out against the Angevin siege: with 1,200 cavalry he covers forty miles in a single day, eluding the surveillance of 800 enemy cavalry led by Giovanni Pipino d’Altamura and Giovanni di Asperg. The following day, on arrival, he challenges Luigi di Taranto to battle by sending him a blood-soaked glove delivered by a trumpeter; it is now Urslingen, serving on the opposing side, who persuades the Neapolitan king not to accept the engagement. After resupplying Lucera, he moves on Foggia: the first assault is repelled, the second lasts six hours, until the third, of the same duration, overcomes all resistance. The city is sacked; the booty acquired is estimated at 22,000 ounces of gold, equivalent to around 90,000 florins. Two thousand persons — women and children — take refuge in the cathedral; Corrado Lupo, after two days, arranges their evacuation, escorting them with 100 cavalry to Ascoli Satriano.

In May 1349 he takes part in the sackings of Lucera, Troia, and Canosa alongside Fra Moriale and Conte Lando; he presses on towards the Beneventan valley. At the pass of Arpaia he overcomes the resistance of 500 Angevin cavalry commanded by Giovanni di Asperg; Arpaia, Arienzo, and Cancello are then sacked; he has a wooden bridge built in two days over the flooded Volturno, occupies Acerra (where his men massacre the population despite the opposition of the Hungarian captains), enters Capua and Aversa. In the following June he is the principal architect of the victory of Melito di Napoli: he simulates a division in his camp between the German and Hungarian militias to draw the Angevins into the open. After being captured himself at the start of the engagement, he is freed by the intervention of Conte Lando, who catches the adversaries from the rear. The victory is total: not one Hungarian or German is killed, while among the Angevins there are 1,000 men between dead and prisoners.

In January 1350 he makes peace with the Neapolitan crown through an agreement providing for the delivery to his men of 100,000–120,000 florins, as well as the cession of Capua and Aversa into the hands of the cardinal legate Annibaldo da Ceccano. In subsequent years he alternates operations in Capitanata and Tuscany. In 1352 he obtains from Queen Joan I of Anjou of Naples the lordship of Nocera Superiore; he fortifies himself there with 700 barbute, raising the imperial standard. Ultimately bribed by Luigi di Taranto, he sells the place along with the county of Guglionesi for 35,000 florins, dissolves his own company, and promises not to raid the Kingdom of Naples for two years. Still in the service of the King of Hungary, in 1356 he takes part in the siege of Treviso at the head of 40,000 Hungarian and Slavic cavalry and infantry; the dissolution of the army through lack of provisions — due to the lord of Padua, Francesco da Carrara, ceasing to supply the camp because of the devastations suffered in his own territory — forces King Louis of Hungary to return home. In 1358 Corrado Lupo is elected viceroy of Naples upon the removal of Queen Joan I of Anjou. He dies around 1360. Villani describes him as “a frank and diligent captain” whom the Hungarian king “had found faithful and bold in many of his services.”

The German Condottieri in Medieval Italy — Part 2

While the Lando clan consolidated its presence in the Great Company and Anichino di Baumgarten became its political director, on the far side of the Alps a second wave of mercenaries was maturing, destined to transform once again the physiognomy of war in Italy. These were the years of the Peace of Brétigny (1360), in which thousands of English, Gascon, and German soldiers of fortune — all veterans of the Hundred Years War — were discharged from the service of the Kings of England and France: an armed mass that, rechristening itself the White Company for the gleam of its armour, crossed the Alps and burst into Piedmont. Within its ranks there also served German captains of the old school, formed in the Great Company of Guarnieri di Urslingen and Conte Lando, and new recruits who had grown up in the pay of the Visconti, the Marquis of Montferrat, and the Angevins of Naples. The profiles that follow reconstruct this intermediate generation: from Marshal Ermanno di Wartenstein, last direct heir of the school of Fra Moriale, to the duke-condottiere Ottone di Brunswick, Prince of Taranto and last husband of Queen Joan I of Anjou of Naples.

ERMANNO DI WARTENSTEIN / HARTMANN VON WARSTEIN (Armanno Tedesco, Artimanno)

From Warstein, in Westphalia. Count of Warstein. Dies around 1367.

Of a decayed noble family, he is soon compelled to cede his hunting rights in Warstein to Count Henry of Württemberg for the sum of 400 marks. In 1346 he is forced to take up the profession of arms, as a soldier of fortune; he goes to Italy where he serves in the company of Fra Moriale. In 1354, having become marshal of the Great Company, he compels the Florentines to pay 28,000 florins in exchange for the adventurers’ withdrawal from the region; in October of the same year he is documented at Peschiera del Garda fighting in support of the anti-Visconti league. In February 1356 he takes command of the Company of the Speranti, a formation of eight councillors and two marshals who had separated from Conte Lando‘s Great Company; by the end of the month, with ten other German constables including Anichino di Baumgarten, he is hired for two months by Cardinal Egidio Albornoz and the lord of Ravenna, Bernardino da Polenta, to counter the Ordelaffi. 8,000 florins is the fee for this brief engagement.

In October of the same year 1356, he concludes in Ravenna, in the palace of Bernardino da Polenta, before the Venetian ambassadors Ermolao Venier and Giovanni Zeno, a four-month contract in favour of Venice (800 barbute and 300 infantry); a personal monthly provision of 200 ducats is also stipulated in his favour. He is tasked with confronting the forces of King Louis of Hungary in the Trevigiano: he crosses the Po, moves from the Ferrarese into the Veronese and Vicentino; blocked at the flooded Brenta, he is surprised at Caldogno by a band of Hungarians coming from Castelfranco Veneto and Bassano del Grappa. Having lost 500 cavalry, he falls back to Verona with Arnoldo di Crichemberg; from there he sends his captains Giovanni di Brindisach, Giovanni di Civitate, and Eriprando di Leye to Venice in vain to obtain compensation for damages estimated at 12,000 florins. The Serenissima rejects his claim. The episode opens a dispute that drags on for years: only in January 1361 does Doge Lorenzo Celso offer him a settlement of 400 ducats, accepted and delivered through a notary on the altar of Saint James in the basilica of San Marco.

Caught up in the rout of the Great Company at Le Scalelle in July 1358, Ermanno di Wartenstein re-emerges in 1363 at the head of 1,000 inexperienced cavalry in the service of Florence against Pisa: his passive conduct ends up favouring the adversaries; in October of the same year he allows himself to be surprised at Incisa by the White Company of Alberto Sterz and the Pisans of Manetto da Jesi. His immediate surrender, with the delivery of the town to the victors, follows. In 1364 he enters the Company of the Cappelletto; with Niccolò da Montefeltro, Ciupo Scolari, and Ugolino dei Sabatini he makes peace with Siena after having plundered the Sienese at the instigation of the Florentines. In 1366 he founds the Black Company, to which towards the end of the year Anichino di Baumgarten attaches himself. He dies probably in 1367.

ALBERTO STERZ / ALBRECHT STERZ (Alberto Tedesco, Alburetto)

URL: https://condottieridiventura.it/albrecht-sterzs-campaigns-across-medieval-italy/

From Cologne. Marquis. Dies in November 1366, beheaded at Perugia.

Alberto Sterz has the distinction, along with Giovanni Acuto, of having brought to Italy the White Company (so called for the brightness of its armour), also known as the Company of the English. He proves to be one of the architects of the first great migration of soldiers of fortune who, veterans of the Hundred Years War, moved in search of adventure and plunder from France to Italy. Together with Acuto, Sterz had the capacity to impose upon the peninsula an entirely English use of heavy cavalry, a mode of fighting that provided for the knight a dual role: confronting adversaries both on foot and on horseback. He fights initially in France for the English; after the Peace of Brétigny in May 1360 he figures among the co-founders of the Great Company uniting soldiers from all fronts — English, Gascons, and Germans left without employment. The company descends the Rhône valley; in mid-December 1360 it occupies with Walter Lesley, Acuto, and Richard Musard Port-Saint-Esprit, twenty-five miles from Avignon; in January 1361 Sterz takes part with the other condottieri in the siege of the city where the pope of Rome, Innocent VI, resides. One hundred thousand florins are collected for their withdrawal.

The summer of 1361 marks the company’s entry into the peninsula: pushed by the papacy to fight the Visconti on behalf of Marquis Giovanni Paleologo of Montferrat, Sterz crosses the Maritime Alps overcoming the resistance of Count Amadeus VI of Savoy; he ravages Marseille during the march, floods into the Canavese. The company numbers 17 caporali (of whom 15 are English) for 5,500 cavalry and 2,000 infantry; in November 1361, at Rivarolo Canavese, a contract with the Marquis of Montferrat valid until the following July is concluded. The campaign of 1362 is conducted in the Novarese with systematic violence: Oleggio is razed to the ground, although 1,500 florins had been delivered to the adventurers by its inhabitants; other localities such as Olengo, Pombia, Romagnano Sesia, Ghemme, and Sizzano are put to the torch. The adversaries react and in turn make scorched earth before the company’s men. Sterz is thus compelled to suspend operations temporarily for lack of provisions and due to the plague, which was already active in his ranks in France. Castelnuovo Scrivia is taken by treachery at the end of May: the atrocities perpetrated on this occasion are terrible. In November his men burn Casalnoceto; the quartered corpses of hostages previously handed to the Marquis of Montferrat are thrown into the castle moat.

In December 1362, during a night raid on Lanzo Torinese, Sterz captures Count Amadeus VI of Savoy, Edoardo di Savoia-Acaia, the chancellor d’Estrées, and a son of the Count of Geneva: the ransom amounts to 180,000 florins. In January 1363 his most audacious incursion leads him to cross the Ticino, flood into the Seprio, occupy Magenta and Corbetta, reach Castano Primo where he collects 100,000 florins in ransoms alone from the six hundred Milanese nobles captured in their country houses. On his raids he comes within five miles of Milan. In April 1363 he defeats and captures Conte Lando at the bridge of Canturino near Ghemme; Lando dies a few days later from the wounds received in this engagement. In May, following negotiations between Marquis Giovanni of Montferrat and Galeazzo Visconti, he is approached by the Florentines who offer him 70,000 florins. The agreement falls through by the republic’s own will, as in the city council the view prevails that the sum is too onerous to secure the services of his company. Sterz chooses to serve the Pisans against those same Florentines, for a fee of 40,000 florins for six months. In July he bursts into Tuscany, traverses the Florentine countryside as far as the bridge of Rifredi, where the Pisans mint coin and hang three asses bearing on their necks the names of as many Florentine notables. In August 1363 the Sienese pay him 12,250 florins to avoid the sacking of their territory; in October he defeats at Incisa Pandolfo Malatesta and Ranuccio Farnese (over 400 Florentine losses in dead and prisoners). At Pisa his contract is renewed for another six months at 150,000 florins: among the clauses he demands is one granting him a monopoly on the fruits of pillage and the discharge by the commune of all mercenaries not belonging to the White Company.

In April–May 1364, while Pope Urban V preaches a crusade against the companies of fortune, Sterz sends to Avignon the captain Robert Wodhaus to offer his services to the papal cause. The adventurers are creditors against the Pisans for outstanding wages (60,000 florins). He then negotiates with the Florentines, who offer him 35,000 florins for the Germans of Anichino di Baumgarten (who had in the meantime joined his forces with 3,000 barbute) and 70,000 for his own men. Desertion is inevitable; he then founds with Baumgarten and Ugo della Zucca, another captain of the White Company, the Company of the Star, inspired by the eponymous chivalric order created by King John of France in 1351. He inserts its emblem into his own coat of arms. He then operates according to circumstances for Florence, Siena, the Church, the Angevins of Naples, and Perugia. In July 1365, in the pay of this commune, he engages at San Mariano with the remnants of the White Company, now led by Ugo della Zucca and Andrea di Belmonte. After two days of siege in a castle where the English find themselves without water or wine, the adversaries are forced to surrender. In June 1366 he is hired once again by the Perugians together with Baumgarten to counter the Company of Saint George under the orders of Ambrogio Visconti and Giovanni Acuto. In October he is accused of wishing to hand Assisi over to the adversaries; imprisoned in the tower of Porta Sant’Angelo and found guilty, he is beheaded in November. No certain proof of the treason exists. Pietro Azario praises him, writing that “his prowess in war made all the others virtuous”; he adds, moreover, that much of his effectiveness was owed to his ability to speak English and to communicate directly with his soldiers. A more negative judgement is that of modern historians such as Stonor Saunders, who charge him with never having been a sound strategist, and with being incapable, moreover, of understanding the intricate diplomatic developments of the various Italian states.

OTTONE DI BRUNSWICK / OTTO VON BRAUNSCHWEIG-GRUBENHAGEN / OTTO DER TARENTINER

URL: https://condottieridiventura.it/ottone-di-brunswick-2/

From Landshut, in Bavaria. Duke of the House of Braunschweig-Grubenhagen, Prince of Taranto, Count of Acerra. Lord of Asti, Alba (with his nephews, the sons of Marquis Giovanni of Montferrat), Saint-Lambert in Provence, Taranto, Caluso, Marcianise, Teano, Eboli, and Guardia dei Lombardi in the Kingdom of Naples. Son of Henry II of Brunswick-Grubenhagen and Jutta of Brandenburg. Cousin of Giovanni II Paleologo, Marquis of Montferrat. Brother of Baldassarre. Wards: Secondotto, Giovanni III, Teodoro, and Guglielmo of Montferrat. Marries Violante di Vilaragut and Queen Joan I of Anjou of Naples. 1319–April 1393. Dies at Foggia, where he is buried.

Among all the German condottieri active in the fourteenth century, Ottone di Brunswick is the only one to combine the profession of arms with a sovereign dignity, and simultaneously the only one to marry a reigning queen. A member of an ancient family of the highest German nobility, he moves in 1339 to Piedmont at the court of his cousin Giovanni II Paleologo, Marquis of Montferrat; he becomes the armed instrument of Montferrin policy in its conflicts with the Angevins, Savoy, and the Visconti. In April 1345 he takes part in the battle of Gamenario against the Angevins. In his honour the local Ghibellines adopt the battle cry “Rome reiter sus Rome reiter” (Italian knight above Italian knight, an ancient medieval battle cry of mixed French and German origin). In 1349 he is seriously wounded at the siege of Strambino; with the killing of the Marquis of Busca, the Marquis of Montferrat by way of reprisal orders the massacre of the entire population of the town. In 1351 he fights in France in the pay of John II of France in the Hundred Years War; in December 1352 he challenges to a duel the Duke of Lancaster, Henry Plantagenet, over certain offensive statements made by the latter concerning the nobles of Cologne. The challenge takes place before the Kings of France and Navarre, the Duke of Burgundy, and other French nobles: the combat is interrupted by the direct intervention of the King of France when Lancaster is gaining the upper hand.

In May 1355 he is at Pisa with Giovanni of Montferrat; with the marquis he escorts Charles IV of Bohemia to Rome to be invested with imperial dignity by the Cardinal of Ostia. On this occasion Ottone di Brunswick is appointed imperial vicar of Pavia and obtains certain fiefs in Provence in the diocese of Carpentras. His occupation of the castle of Saint-Lambert provokes the protests of the local bishop and the intervention of Pope Innocent VI, who compels its restitution. It is in the 1360s that he comes into contact with the White Company of Alberto Sterz; in November 1361 he is present at Rivarolo Canavese at the conclusion of Sterz‘s contract with the marquis; in 1362 he supports the English in Piedmontese operations; in January 1363 he attempts in vain, again with Sterz, to seize Borgomanero by surprise. At the death of Marquis Giovanni of Montferrat in March 1372, he assumes together with Amadeus VII of Savoy (the Red Count) guardianship of the late marquis’s children: Secondotto, Giovanni, Teodoro, and Guglielmo. To drive the Visconti out of Montferrat and seeking allies, he goes first to Avignon to the new pope, Gregory XI; in June he concludes an agreement with the Count of Savoy providing for the latter’s support in exchange for 200,000 florins; Poirino, Riva, Chivasso, and other lands on the left bank of the Po are also pledged to the Savoyards. In summer he is attacked at Asti by Ambrogio Visconti, Ruggero Cane, Giovanni Acuto, Jacopo dal Verme, Arnaldo Tedesco, and Francesco d’Este; all assaults are repelled with the help of Gaspare di Montmajeur and Oddo di Villars. He stations himself before the castle of Malemont and ends by capturing Jacopo dal Verme, who had come in support of the defenders. In the castle of Malemort 50,000 ducats destined for enemy wages are held. In May 1373, alongside Amadeus VII of Savoy and Luchino Novello Visconti, he conducts an offensive into the Milanese that leads him to raid the stables of Galeazzo Visconti in the park of Mirabello; defeated at Gavardo on the Chiese by Francesco d’Este (700 dead in total), he more than makes amends a few days later at Montichiari with the help of Giovanni Acuto (who has in the meantime changed sides), Enguerrand de Coucy, and Amerigo del Pommerio. The Visconti forces are now routed with the capture of Francesco d’Este himself.

The turning point of his life comes in December 1375 at Asti, with the signing in great secrecy of the prenuptial pacts with Queen Joan I of Anjou, mediated by the count chamberlain Giacomo Arcucci di Capri. The agreement is restrictive in character: Ottone di Brunswick is expressly excluded from royal dignity, from the government of the kingdom, and from succession to the throne; he is also forbidden from being crowned King of Sicily; in exchange he is assured the principality of Taranto, devolved to the crown after the death of its last prince. In March 1376 he enters Naples through Porta Capuana to a triumphal welcome from the populace; the marriage is celebrated in Castelnuovo; in May the condottiere is invested with the county of Acerra, Teano, Eboli, Montella, and Guardia dei Lombardi, goods confiscated from the rebellious Duke of Andria, Francesco del Balzo. In June–August 1378, following the contested election of Pope Urban VI by the French cardinals, he goes to Rome with a sumptuous retinue of 2,000 lances, 100 infantry, experts in canon law, and 400,000 ducats to act as mediator with the party opposed to the pontiff: the pope, an old acquaintance of his from his time as Archbishop of Bari, humiliates him during a meal by leaving him on his knees with a cup of wine in his hands, not deigning him the least consideration until a cardinal reminds him to drink. For this behaviour Brunswick would subsequently characterise Urban VI as “Turbano”, ultimately coming down on the side of the party favouring the antipope Clement VII.

The Neapolitan drama unfolds in June 1381 when Charles III of Durazzo invades the Kingdom of Naples. Ottone di Brunswick takes up a position on the road to Cassino; he must soon fall back to Arienzo due to the numerical superiority of his rivals; he camps at Casa Nova near Porta Capuana, while Charles of Durazzo moves toward Naples at the bridge of Sebeto. Two Durazzesque captains, Palamede Bozzuto and Martuccio Aiossa, manage to enter the city through the Porta della Conciaria, found unguarded; the populace is called to revolt, the Porta del Mercato is opened to the Durazzesque army. Ottone di Brunswick attacks the rearguard, killing 500 adventurers; at the end of the fighting he is forced to withdraw to Sicciano. In August he camps at Poggioreale, cuts the water to Naples’s aqueducts to force the adversaries out from behind the walls. Joan I of Anjou has been besieged for a month in Castelnuovo. Ugo da San Severino exits the castle and meets with the adversaries; it is agreed that if within five days the queen’s husband does not arrive to her relief, Giovanna would surrender at discretion. The condottiere exits Capua to launch his assault: due to the adversaries’ valour, a sudden rain and wind that makes the engagement very hard, and the unexpected abandonment of his ranks by Roberto d’Artois with 400 lances and the crossbowmen, the battle turns against him: wounded by an arrow, his horse is killed beneath him; he must surrender into the hands of Andreolo da Sant’Angelo, squad leader of Villanuccio da Villafranca. The young Giovanni III of Montferrat falls fighting at his side. Subsequently imprisoned at Castel dell’Uovo, Altamura, Melfi, and Molfetta, he is freed only in April 1384 on condition of leaving the kingdom. In the meantime Joan I of Anjou is strangled in the castle of Muro Lucano in September 1382.

In subsequent years he serves the Angevins of Provence and Maria di Blois, widow of Louis I of Anjou. In October 1386, having received 6,000 florins immediately with a promise of 32,000 more, he is appointed captain general of the Provençal troops and those of the antipope Clement VII, with the objective of reconquering the Kingdom of Naples. Having landed in Campania, in June of the following year he marches on Naples with Tommaso da San Severino; in July he defeats Raimondo Orsini del Balzo near Santa Chiara. Twelve Durazzesque barons are beheaded. The antipope grants him and San Severino permission to seize all the gold and silver in the city’s churches and monasteries to pay the troops. With the arrival from Provence of Luis de Montjoie as viceroy, the dominant position of Brunswick and San Severino is altered. One withdraws to reach his fiefs in Basilicata, while Brunswick moves to the opposing camp, always maintaining his title of Prince of Taranto, probably in the hope of a marriage with Margherita d’Anjou, widow of Charles of Durazzo — nuptials never realised by the woman’s own wish. In April 1392, at Ascoli Satriano in Capitanata, he is surprised at dawn by Tommaso da San Severino following a march of 70 miles completed in twenty-four hours at the head of 5,000 infantry and 2,000 cavalry. In the same action Alberico da Barbiano is also captured. To be freed he must pay his captors 28,000 florins, obtained through the sale of Acerra, Marcianise, and Guardia dei Lombardi to Raimondo Orsini del Balzo; he must also promise not to fight for ten years against the forces of the Duke of Venosa and the other San Severino. He dies at Foggia in April 1393 and is buried there. According to Collenuccio, in a “most certain report from personal observation” transmitted to the Duke of Ferrara, Ercole d’Este, a century later his body was preserved intact, with six toes on each foot, like those attributed to Hercules. Muratori calls him “a prince of great wisdom and valour”; the German medieval historian Arnold Esch also expresses a favourable judgement: “A member of an ancient family of the highest German nobility… Brunswick did not escape the fate of so many feudal lords, great and small, forced to seek their fortune in the profession of arms. Yet as heir to a centuries-old tradition of prestige, and rooted in the feudal and chivalric ideals in which he had been educated, Brunswick never reduced himself to the condition of a simple adventurer and always succeeded in not being confused with the crowd of captains of fortune without faith and without scruple who infested Italy in the fourteenth century.”

The German Condottieri in Medieval Italy — Part 3

While the generation of the adventurers exhausted itself in the blood of the Neapolitan wars between the Angevins and the Durazzeschi, a considerable number of lesser-known but equally active German captains continued to populate the chronicles of the Kingdom of Naples, the Papal State, and Visconti Lombardy. Some of them, like Pietro della Corona, became feudal lords; others specialised in the defence of fortified positions or in the execution of raids and devastations, always ready to pass to the service of the highest bidder. Finally, towards the end of the fifteenth century, the Landsknechts (from the German “Landsknecht”, “servants of the land” or “of the country”) appeared on the peninsula. In the thick of the Italian Wars this military presence assumed an entirely new form: no longer heavy cavalry led by Swabian or Bavarian nobles, but mass infantry, organised in companies of soldiers armed with a long pike or halberd, a dagger or short broad sword, often also an arquebus. They were at times a horde of ferocious and plunder-hungry men, almost always without pay, always ready to pillage, with little regard for friendly or rival cities. Their recognised father is Giorgio Frundsberg (GEORG VON FRUNDSBERG): a captain who, at the battles of the Bicocca and Pavia, established the primacy of such militias over the Swiss square. The condottiere closes his military arc on the eve of the Sack of Rome in 1527.

GIORGIO FRUNDSBERG / GEORG VON FRUNDSBERG

URL: https://condottieridiventura.it/georg-von-frundsberg-the-mastermind-behind-landsknecht-tactics/

From Mindelheim in Bavaria. Lord of Mindelheim. Father of ten children, among whom, having taken up the profession of arms, Melchiorre (died 1528, buried in Rome in the church of Santa Maria dell’Anima) and Gaspare. Married in first nuptials to Caterina von Schrofenstein and in second nuptials to Anna di Lodrone, sister of Ludovico di Lodrone. 1473 – August 1528. Dies in his castle at Mindelheim, where his son Gaspare is also buried.

Younger son of a Swabian noble family, Giorgio Frundsberg fights first in the War of Ratisbon in 1492, in Switzerland, in the Engadine during the War of the Landshut Succession in 1499, and finally in the Duchy of Milan in the service of Ludovico Sforza. From a doubly-paid foot soldier he swiftly becomes a captain. In 1509 he serves in the pay of the King of France, Louis XII, against the Venetians; in May 1511 (still French against papal forces) he takes part in the battle of Casalecchio di Reno, where Francesco Maria della Rovere is routed. In October 1513 (Spanish against Venetians) he is the architect of the victory of Creazzo at the expense of Bartolomeo d’Alviano: at the head of a square of 3,000 Landsknechts, he organises his lines so that the arquebusiers fall back while continuing always to use their weapons, with the aim of weakening the opposing front; when the Landsknechts counter-attack, the Serenissima’s squares cannot withstand the shock and the cernite of the rear ranks — soldiers recruited from the countryside, under the command of professional officers — take to flight, throwing down their pikes. The German chronicles remember the victory of Creazzo as something close to a miracle. During the years of the defence of Verona, Frundsberg always fights against the forces of the Serenissima; he is repeatedly compelled to suppress mutinies among the Landsknechts under his orders due to delayed wages. In such cases he frequently resorts to various solutions which, to calm tempers, include partial deliveries of money and items of clothing.

April 1522 sees him a protagonist at the Bicocca, where his men confront the Swiss square of Alberto Pietra: pike in hand in the central formation, he repels with arquebus fire the Swiss, who lose 1,000 men even before direct contact, and 3,000 infantry with twenty-two captains in all. Frundsberg himself is wounded in the thigh by a pike thrust. In May of the same year he is present at the terrible sack of Genoa. His career reaches its apex in February 1525 at Pavia, where he commands 13,000 infantry. The combat is preceded by the muster of his men in a circle and his speech to inflame their national pride; he wears a Franciscan habit over his armour to declare himself likewise a poor man of arms. In the night assault on the park of Mirabello, and in the decisive battle, he slaughters the Landsknechts of the Black Bands fighting for the French; among the enemies killed are the Duke of Suffolk, Richard de la Pole, and Longmanno di Augusta, whose hand laden with rings is severed by a soldier. In the course of the fighting Frundsberg himself is saved from death through the intervention of a soldier called Baltes Kopp: he will repay the favour by procuring him a safe-conduct to clear himself of a murder charge before the tribunal of his city.

In 1525 and 1526 he fights in the Tyrol and Austria against the rebellious peasants led by Michael Gaissmayr. To honour his commitments to Emperor Charles V and come down into Italy against the League of Cognac, he is compelled to pledge his own castles and estates, including that of Mindelheim. He raises 38,000 florins, with which he is able to hire Swabians, Franconians, Bavarians, and Tyroleans, giving each man a shield. Most of the soldiers are of the Lutheran faith, as is Frundsberg himself: it is said that he carries with him a golden cord intended for the pope’s neck and others of silk for the cardinals. His battle cry is now “Many enemies, great honour” (viel feind, viel ehr). In November he enters the territories of the Venetian Republic; during his march he touches the territories of Trento, Brescia, Lonato, and Castiglione delle Stiviere; he penetrates into the Mantovano; he engages adversaries at Governolo, where a falconet of his Este ally shatters the leg of Giovanni dalle Bande Nere, causing his death at Mantua five days later. On this occasion he loses 300 Landsknechts against 50 Italians; the disorientation provoked by the death of so famous an adversary allows him to cross the Po and join up with the Constable of Bourbon between Parma and Piacenza. In March 1527, faced with yet another mutiny by his troops reduced to starvation and demanding payment of their wages, he is struck by an apoplectic fit while attempting to quell the tumult; transported by boat to Ferrara, he is hosted in the city by Duke Alfonso d’Este in the Palazzo Bevilacqua. From this moment on he is no longer capable of following operations. The local physicians, to cure him, resort to methods that are at least strange: olive oil baths in which a fox has been boiled, scorching of the skin with gold, and unguents of the most precious kinds. He never fully recovers; when his Landsknechts, without him, reach Rome and sack the city in May 1527, Frundsberg is already far from the war. He returns to Germany by litter and dies eight days after arriving at his castle at Mindelheim (August 1528). Gregorovius calls him “the greatest among all German captains who had lived up to the time of Wallenstein”; Niccolò Capponi summarises his importance by observing that, called “the father of the Landsknechts,” he merits the title not so much for having created them as for having made their infantry the finest in Europe, wresting from the Swiss the military primacy they had enjoyed since the wars against Charles the Bold. A different portrait emerges from the research of Alessandro Luzio: “Frundsberg, portrayed by tradition as the archangel of Lutheran Germany against papal Rome, appears in the light of documents as a good Catholic who kisses the foot of His Holiness; and in amends for the Sack of Rome, in which he had after all not participated, he offers willing assistance to Clement VII to restore him as lord of Florence.”

PIETRO DELLA CORONA / PETER KRANZ (Peter von Krone)

German. Lord of Angri, in the Salernitan. Dies in March 1391 at Naples from wounds received in a brawl. Buried in the cathedral of that city.

A soldier of fortune active chiefly in the conflict that pits Angevins against Durazzeschi in the Kingdom of Naples, Pietro della Corona begins his career in Italy in the service of the commune of Perugia: the judgement of him is so positive that in 1377 he is given a house in the city formerly belonging to Filippo Oddi. In the summer of the same year, faced with the capture of 200 peasants from Spello by the inhabitants of Foligno in violation of prior agreements, he prepares an ambush around a tower in that territory: the operation concludes with 70 dead and 30 prisoners among the adversaries. In 1379 he obtains a brief contract with Guglielmo Ferrebach (Guglielmo Filimbach) in the service of the Florentines. In autumn 1381, having concluded his contract with Perugia, he leaves the city with Ferrebach; he gathers Breton, German, and Hungarian adventurers free on the market: together they assault Bevagna, controlled by the Perugians, and drive out its inhabitants. The Perugians protest, sending Ranuccio Mecca and Niccolò dei Michelotti as ambassadors: in the end the two captains are given a contract of 100 lances for twenty days; seven months later the pair leaves Umbria with 7,300 florins in hand.

In June 1382 he passes through Fano with 1,000 cavalry to go to the pay of Spoleto and the lords of Camerino, da Varano, with the aim of countering the militias of Louis I of Anjou bent on reconquering the Kingdom of Naples. The territory of Fossombrone and the Malatesta lands along the Via Flaminia are devastated. After another raid into the Perugino and Val Tiberina in August 1382 (40 peasants killed, many captured, a great quantity of grain plundered), he passes to the service of the King of Naples, Charles of Durazzo. In 1384 he changes paymasters and counters Durazzo in favour of the Angevins: in an episode recounted by the Neapolitan sources, perhaps with an excess of colour, he finds himself in the gorges of Pietracatella where, during a combat, he allows Louis of Anjou to escape by exchanging clothes and armour with him. In May 1385, at Pentecost, he is documented at Avignon at the ceremony in which the antipope Clement VII delivers the standard of the (schismatic) Church to the young Louis II of Anjou: Pietro della Corona holds the standard of the Kingdom of Sicily, while Bernardo della Sala supports that of the Church. The antipope promises the two condottieri 40,000 francs and undertakes to bear a large part of the cost of their contract due to the economic difficulties in which Anjou finds himself.

In 1386, having obtained the title of chamberlain, he is appointed castellan of Manfredonia with 300 lances; he receives 70,000 florins from the revenues of Bari for his men’s wages. In 1387 he is documented at Naples guarding the fortified position of Lo Sperone; in February 1388 he supports Louis de Montjoie in the defence of the city under assault by the Durazzeschi; soon (March) he falls out with the French viceroy and abandons the camp with il Brigante and Martino Polsort. In the years 1389–1390 he becomes the principal antagonist of Ottone di Brunswick: in June 1389, from Castellammare di Stabia, he rides towards Scafati and challenges Brunswick to battle; he compels him to fall back and pursues him to Angri; in November of the same year, while escorting a timber convoy at Liburna, he defeats Brunswick and Giacomo Stendardo once more, capturing 60 cavalry and many infantry. His end is extremely banal: in March 1391 he is in his lands at Angri; he learns that the Costanzo family has raided considerable livestock in the territory of Scafati — controlled by the enemy Durazzeschi, but at that moment at peace with his men due to a truce in force. He demands the return of the booty from this noble family. He slaps Ettore Costanzo; the latter’s brother strikes him in the face with his sword and Pietro della Corona dies six days later from the wound. The funeral is held in the cathedral of Naples. Dietrich di Niem, a writer and papal functionary, remembers him, together with Guglielmo Ferrebach, as “milites strenui et rei militaris experti”, captains who also hold castles and lands of their own.

Other German Condottieri in Medieval Italy — Part 4

Between the last figures of note from the great fourteenth-century season of the companies and the first German captains incorporated in a subordinate capacity into the professional companies of the fifteenth century, there stands a group of condottieri who serve as a hinge between the old mercenary model and the subsequent one, in which captains of that nationality no longer appear as autonomous leaders at the head of their own companies, but as men-at-arms serving under the orders of Italian condottieri such as Braccio di Montone and Muzio Attendolo Sforza. Everardo della Campana is one of the last epigones of the preceding military phase; one of the most long-lived German soldiers of fortune, present in Italy for nearly half a century in the wars that bloodied central Italy; a volcano of energy as Giovanni Acuto, Lucio Lando, Bernardo della Sala, and Boldrino da Panicale had been. Federico Tedesco, a generation later, is instead a single man-at-arms who serves initially for Braccio di Montone and subsequently under the orders of Muzio Attendolo Sforza. His career closes on the bridge of Lanciano at one of the most dramatic moments of the War of the Aquila.

EVERARDO DELLA CAMPANA / JOHANN VON EBERHARDSWILER

(Everardo Swiler, Everardo Suyler, Everardo Sniler, Averardo Tedesco, Edoardo Snyler). German. Dies 1405, killed in battle in Switzerland.

His Italian activity is documented as far back as September 1351, when with a small company in the service of the Church he counters in the Patrimony the forces of the prefect Giovanni di Vico. In May 1364 he serves in the White Company of Alberto Sterz and, under the orders of Anichino di Baumgarten, attacks the Porta di San Gallo at Florence: he distinguishes himself by penetrating into the city as far as the piazza di San Gallo before being repelled by Arrigo di Montfort. For his deeds, that evening his valour is officially recognised and he is knighted by Baumgarten at Sant’Antonio del Vescovo. In October–November 1369, in the service of Perugia against the Church, he devastates the Viterbese and storms Monteverde, capturing an archbishop there; on returning to Perugia he discovers that the commune has preferred to appoint Flach di Risach captain general in his place; he refuses to swear loyalty to him. Following a brawl that breaks out between a German man-at-arms and an Italian serving in the company of Concio degli Ubaldini, the two condottieri order their respective units into battle formation; only the intervention of the priors restores calm. In May 1373, in the pay of the Visconti, he is defeated and captured at the battle of Montichiari.

In 1375 he serves in the Holy Company of Giovanni Acuto; in 1378 he accompanies him in his change of side in favour of the Florentines. In April 1385 he is among the founders of the Company of the Rose with Acuto, Giovanni degli Ubaldini, Taddeo Pepoli, and Boldrino da Panicale: 3,000 cavalry and 1,000 infantry. In August (six months, Perugia), he replaces the ailing Ugolino da Montemarte in command, conducts a campaign of raids against Assisi — a town in which he besieges Guglielmino d’Assisi, a supporter of the Michelotti faction expelled from Perugia. In October of the same year (at the head of his company) he enters Mogliano and Francavilla d’Ete (Marches) with 1,000 cavalry and 3,000 archers; he extracts from Fermo a ransom of 3,000 ducats. In 1387 his name is associated with the occupation of Cannara, subsequently ceded to the Perugians for 17,000 florins; in December 1387, in the company of Bernardo della Sala, Guido d’Asciano, and Corrado Lando, he raids the Pisano: 8,000 florins are wrested from the Pisans, 9,000 from the Sienese, 4,000 from the Lucchesi, and 7,000 from the Florentines in exchange for a promise not to harm the Florentine countryside for fourteen months. His most ruinous defeat is that suffered in March 1389 near Umbertide, where Pandolfo Malatesta puts him to flight, capturing 50 cavalry and 200 infantry and seizing all the company’s baggage train. In 1390 he returns to Germany, where he continues to fight for another fifteen years: he dies in Switzerland, in battle, in 1405. William Caferro groups him with other German condottieri such as Giovanni di Raten, Flach di Risach, Corrado Lando, Lucio Lando, and Everardo Lando: today, obscure names, but once harbingers of catastrophe.

FEDERICO TEDESCO

Dies in January 1424, near the bridge of Lanciano, thrown from the bridge by Braccio di Montone.

A German soldier of fortune of the first decades of the fifteenth century, he serves initially in the companies of the lord of Perugia, Braccio di Montone; he abandons him in 1418 to pass to the opposing camp. In May of the same year he follows Foschino Attendolo to Campania to confront the militias of Queen Joan II of Anjou of Naples, together with eight other men-at-arms of worth. In 1421, in Calabria, he is documented alongside Francesco Sforza in the effort to organise the Angevin party against the Aragonese: at the news — which proves false — of Sforza‘s death, he abandons the camp and transfers to the service of the adversaries of the moment, the Aragonese under the lieutenant Giovanni di Issera. Defeated and captured near Cosenza by Sforza himself, by Micheletto Attendolo, and by Luigi di San Severino, he is pardoned for his desertion and returns to the queen’s service. In October 1423 he supports Muzio Attendolo Sforza in the Abruzzi against Braccio di Montone; in January 1424, following Muzio‘s drowning in the river Pescara, he takes to disorderly flight together with other Sforzan condottieri such as Taliano Furlano, Marco Attendolo, and Cesare da Martinengo. Captured, he is thrown from the bridge of Lanciano by Braccio. Antonio Minuti, author in the mid-fifteenth century of a biography dedicated exclusively to Muzio Attendolo Sforza, remembers him together with Donnino da Parma and Giannuzzo d’Itri as one of the “homini d’arme avantegiati” of his time.

PAOLO TEDESCO (Paolo Catena, Paolo delle Catene)

Dies May 1438 at Corneto (Tarquinia), hanged by order of Cardinal Giovanni Vitelleschi.

Formed in the Braccesca tradition, Paolo Tedesco begins in the companies of il Tartaglia da Lavello; after the latter’s death he transfers to the companies of Micheletto Attendolo. In October 1419, with Cristoforo da Lavello (400 cavalry), he takes part in the engagement of San Gemini, where Brandolino Brandolini and il Gattamelata are captured. In June 1424 he takes part in the battle of the Aquila, in which he commands the eleventh schiera; in November of the same year he is entrusted with the command of the companies formerly in Tartaglia‘s service. In the 1430s he fights chiefly in the service of the Church in Lazio; in 1432 he assails Mugnano and Bomarzo with bombards until their lord, Ulisse Orsini, is handed over to Pope Eugene IV by his own vassals; in 1433 at Ronciglione, unable to enter the town because of the refusal of its governor Giacomo di Capranica, he plunders the territories between Sutri and Caprarola, taking six inhabitants and ten infantry of Niccolò Fortebraccio prisoner; 400 pigs are also seized. In May 1436 he defeats at Priverno Antonio da Pontedera, who is captured and hanged by Cardinal Giovanni Vitelleschi.

In August 1437 he contributes to the Angevin victory at Montefusco against the Aragonese, an engagement in which the Prince of Taranto, Giovanni Antonio Orsini del Balzo, is captured. In turn ambushed at Mercato Saraceno in November–December 1437, he is freed only following a three-month truce concluded between the papal forces and King Alfonso of Aragon. In February 1438, with Cardinal Vitelleschi‘s flight from Bisceglie to Venice, he remains at the head of the papal army together with Lorenzo Attendolo. His end is sudden: in May 1438 Cardinal Vitelleschi has him captured at Corneto; he is immediately hanged on the charge of wishing to sell himself to the Aragonese. Giovan Battista Valentini (called il Cantalicio), a dialectal Abruzzese poet contemporary with the events, recalls his presence at the battle of the Aquila, describing him as “Paulo Todisco più che paladinu.”

MATTEO TEDESCO

Dies at Milan in 1417, from illness.

A German soldier of fortune of modest extraction, Matteo Tedesco begins his career as a muleskinner in the company of Angelo della Pergola; he then passes to the pay of the Duke of Milan, Giovanni Maria Visconti. In May–June 1412, at the death of Facino Cane, together with Filippo Arcelli and Castellino Beccaria he favours the accession to the Milanese duchy of Filippo Maria Visconti over the claims of Astorre Visconti. His action is decisive in this regard. In 1416, appointed captain general by the new duke, he conducts an expedition against Como that ends with the submission of the local lord; in 1417 he confronts the Colleoni, captures Trezzo sull’Adda — at whose defence Bartolomeo Colleoni is stationed. Having fallen ill in the course of operations, he is taken to Milan, where he quickly dies. Gian Pietro Cagnola, a Milanese historian who lived in the second half of the fifteenth century, recalls him as “homo excelente ne la militare disciplina.”

GUGLIELMO DI BAVIERA (Guglielmo di Colonia)

Dies c. 1445.

A German captain of the fifteenth century, he is present chiefly in Lombardy and the Marches. In 1427 he counters the Visconti on behalf of the Venetians at the head of 188 cavalry. In February 1430 he is hired by the Florentines with one lance and 40 infantry (a third crossbowmen, a third pavesari, a third pikemen); he is documented at the camp of Ponte a San Pietro against Lucca and Milan. From 1440 he serves in the companies of Francesco Sforza: in August 1443, placed in charge of Massaccio (Cupramontana) near Jesi, he defects in favour of the enemy together with l’Attaccabriga; quickly recognising the error, he returns to the Sforzan pay. He is placed in charge of Fano. In spring 1444 he faces, still in the March of Ancona, papal and Aragonese forces. He dies around 1445.

The German Condottieri in Medieval Italy — Part 5 (A–B)

Alongside the great names that give form and lustre to the German companies of fortune in Italy, a crowd of minor captains traverses the peninsula between 1338 and the early fifteenth century in the wake of Urslingen, the Lando, Sterz, and Brunswick. The profiles below collect their records in alphabetical order.

UGO DELL’ALA

German. Dies c. 1370.

A captain linked in particular to the service of the Sienese, Ugo dell’Ala serves initially for the Pisans against Florence. In August–September 1363 he is hired by Siena with 22 banners of German cavalry (600 in total) to counter the raids of Alberto Sterz. In October of the same year, under the orders of Francesco Orsini, he surprises the Company of the Cappelletto in disorder at Torrita di Siena. In the engagement he manages to capture personally the opposing captain, Niccolò da Montefeltro. For the valour shown on this occasion he is awarded double pay, a complete month’s wages, and reimbursement for horses killed. In December 1363 he angrily abandons the commune together with Armanno Tedesco and withdraws to Cortona: he is soon persuaded to return by the city’s ambassadors. He dies around 1370. Donato di Neri, a Sienese chronicler who lived in the same years, recalls him as “the first to strike down the first standard, and to capture count Nicolò, their captain.”

GIOVANNI DI ASPERG / JOHANN VON HOHENASBERG (Conte di Sprech, Giovanni di Aspruch)

From Ludwigsburg, Swabian. Duke of Teck and Lord of Vasto. Dies c. 1360.

A soldier in the retinue of Emperor Louis the Bavarian, in January 1338 he is sent in support of the lord of Verona, Mastino della Scala; he then enters Treviso as imperial governor; in the following March, being owed much outstanding pay, he attempts to make himself lord of the city. In the end he prefers to hand the town over to the Scaligeri, who swiftly meet his financial demands. In June 1345 (in the pay of the Este against Milan), with Maffeo da Pontecarali, Carlotto da Piacenza, and Arnoldo di Bach, he takes part in the failed assault on Reggio Emilia: his soldiers reach the main square; they are held back by the lord of Mantua, Filippino Gonzaga, who puts them to flight. In November 1348 he goes to the Kingdom of Naples; with Giovanni Pipino d’Altamura he attempts in vain to block Corrado Lupo at the Apennine passes between the Abruzzi and Apulia. In December he changes sides and passes to the service of King Louis of Hungary. With the Count of Trivento he captures and sacks Foggia. Returning to the pay of Naples (another change of allegiance) in May 1349, he is defeated and captured at the battle of Melito together with other Angevin captains such as Roberto da San Severino and Raimondo del Balzo. In September 1350 Pope Clement VI, from Avignon, thanks him for his continued support of Queen Joan I of Anjou of Naples. In April 1352 he routs at Cesa the company of Bertrando della Motta; the engagement ends with the capture of 22 German constables, 300 cavalry, and 400 infantry. Matteo Camera in Annali delle Due Sicilie dalle origini alla fondazione della monarchia calls him “one of the foremost captains of the Hungarian king.”

CORRADO DI ALTINBERG / KONRAD VON ACHIELBERG (Corrado di Altemberg, Hechsberg, Achilberg)

URL: https://condottieridiventura.it/the-impact-of-konrad-von-altinberg-on-14th-century-italy/

Probably from Heckberg, Rhineland-Westphalia. Count. Dies c. 1402. Buried in the cathedral of Siena.

Active for nearly thirty years in Tuscany, Umbria, and Lombardy, Corrado di Altinberg makes his first appearance in the historical record (September 1374) in a company of fortune led by Giovanni Acuto with which the territory of Siena is plundered. In spring 1381, in Romagna, he forms with Corrado Lando, il Boino, Angelino d’Austria, and Amerigo Unghero a company of 2,000 cavalry and 1,000 infantry destined to operate in the March of Ancona. In March 1389, having made peace with Boldrino da Panicale, he escorts to Orvieto a provisions convoy for the famished city; the following month he supports Bertoldo Farnese against Bertoldo Orsini with the aim of relieving the fortress of Vallocchia from siege. In 1395, in Romagna (in the pay of the Marquis of Ferrara, Niccolò d’Este), he compels the surrender of Azzo d’Este, Conselice da Barbiano, Lancillotto Montecuccoli, and Ato di Rodiglia in a fierce engagement near Portomaggiore; at the end of the same year he passes to the service of the Duke of Milan, Gian Galeazzo Visconti. Still for the Visconti, in 1397 he supports Jacopo dal Verme and Ugolotto Biancardo at the siege of Borgoforte; he is wounded in one of the many engagements connected with this operation. In February 1399, with Antonio Porro and the bishop of Novara, he receives from the Appiano the citadel and city of Pisa on behalf of Visconti; in the following August he takes possession of Siena with the same delegation. Appointed ducal marshal in November 1401, he dies probably the following year. Bartolomeo Sacchi, known as il Platina, author of biographies, eulogies, and the first printed cookery book, highlights his unceasing activity, calling him “egregius hostilium copiarum Dux.”

PIERO DEL BIANCO

German. Dies c. 1380.

Captain of Hungarian cavalry in the service of Florence during the War of the Eight Saints, in July 1376 he is sent to the defence of Bologna; he exits the city with Lucio Sparviero to engage the Company of the Bretons (in the pay of the papacy) at Casalecchio di Reno. Defeated with the loss of 200 cavalry between dead and prisoners, the adversaries take revenge on the prisoners by blinding them and cutting off their hands. The following day Piero del Bianco exits again with 600 armed men and is again beaten at Mongiorgio in the Samoggia valley; on this occasion the Bolognese infantry (60 dead) is abandoned by the cavalry, which takes to flight. In the following August he moves towards Ascoli Piceno with Piero del Verde; near Fabriano he repels an attack by Venanzio and Gentile da Varano, from whom he captures 100 cavalry. In 1377, with Astorre Manfredi, he again defeats the militias of the lord of Camerino, Rodolfo da Varano (200 prisoners). In April 1379 he is arrested at Florence by the captain of the people, Cante Gabrielli, together with the bishop of Fiesole, on a charge of having taken part in a conspiracy organised by Palla Strozzi and Guerriante Marignolli. He dies around 1380.

OSVALDO BULER

German. Dies c. 1385.

A captain of the second half of the fourteenth century, in October 1372 he is documented in the pay of the lord of Milan, Bernabò Visconti, in command of 300 lances together with Enrico di Chié. In August 1373 he leaves Lombardy with Everardo della Campana and il Chié to go into the service of Venice to fight the Carraresi; Bernabò Visconti warns the three condottieri against causing damage to the Mantovano in transit through that territory. In 1378 he takes part with Lucio and Everardo Lando in a vain attempt to seize Verona: the city is on the verge of falling into Visconti hands when Buler, the two Lando, il Chié, and Thil di Alzentali inexplicably abandon the siege operations to plunder the countryside. Discharged, in 1379 he is pushed by the Genoese to plunder Visconti territories together with Lucio Lando. He dies around 1385.

GOTTIFREDO DI BACH (Gozzo di Bachanzel)

German. Son of Arnoldo. Dies c. 1360.

In May 1346 he is documented in the pay of the Marquis of Este, Obizzo d’Este, against the Visconti: with Urbach Tedesco and Ermanno di Grazia he exits Modena at the head of 25 barbute and two mounted crossbowmen. On the banks of the Secchia he is informed that Bozzano has rebelled in favour of the Gonzaga; with his men he successfully assails 100 barbute besieging the town. The prisoners are conducted to Modena. In April 1353 he serves in the pay of the Church against the lord of Viterbo, Giovanni di Vico: when the contract expires, Cardinal Egidio Albornoz prevents him from transferring to the opposing camp, by which he had been contacted; he pays him his wages at Perugia and sends him to Montefiascone. In May, he is appointed by the papacy as marshal of the Patrimony; in June, with Albertaccio Ricasoli, he contacts the company of Fra Moriale to sound out its intentions. In January 1356 he shares command of 5 banners of cavalry (125 cavalry) with Gerlach di Tunneveld. He dies around 1360.

GIOVANNI DI BRINDISACH

From Brendenscheyd or Brendtscheid, a nobleman of Westphalia. Dies c. 1360.

In 1353 he is documented as a vassal of Margherita di Walkenburg, lady of Schoeneck. In October 1356, at Ravenna, he signs with Ermanno di Wartenstein a contract with the Venetians to counter in the Trevigiano the militias of King Louis of Hungary (800 barbute, 300 infantry). After the rout of Caldogno suffered at the hands of the adversaries, he is sent to Venice by Wartenstein with Giovanni di Civitate and Eriprando di Leye to claim 12,000 florins against wages and losses suffered; in Piazza San Marco the three savi Bernardo Giustinian, Giovanni Contarini, and Giovanni Mocenigo give them a negative answer. In January 1357 he serves in Piedmont under the orders of Luchino dal Verme; in February 1358 he enters the Great Company of Conte Lando; in March he takes part in the battle of Montichiari. In the course of this engagement he captures and hangs a nephew of Giovanni di Bileggio, who had previously robbed him of certain wages in Piedmont. In retaliation the lord of Milan, Bernabò Visconti, has several men of his company blinded, leaving one eye to one of these unfortunates so that he could lead his wretched companions back to camp. He dies around 1360.

ARNOLDO DI BACH

German. Father of Gottifredo di Bach. Dies c. 1350.

In June 1345, in the pay of Ferrara against Milan and Mantua, he is directed with Maffeo da Pontecarali to capture the castle of San Quirico in the Parmense, belonging to Cagnolo da Correggio; together with Pontecarali, Carlotto da Piacenza, and Giovanni di Asperg he takes part in the failed attempt to seize Reggio Emilia. On this occasion some soldiers manage to cross the moat, climb the walls, and reach the main square; in the end they are defeated by the militias of Filippino Gonzaga stationed there. He dies around 1350.

CORRADO DI BUSSINA (Corrado Tedesco)

German. Dies c. 1390.

A soldier of fortune, in August 1387 he is hired at Ravenna by Desiderato Lucio for the Udinese, with 50 lances and a provision of 100 ducats monthly. Appointed captain general of the Udinese in September of the same year, in October he exits Udine through two separate gates and at Savorgnano/Godia defeats the Carraresi commanded by Conte da Carrara, Giacomo Pio, and Anderlino Trotti: in the engagement 1,500 men on both sides are killed, many drown while crossing the Tagliamento; the Carraresi lose artillery, baggage trains, and 1,200 prisoners. He dies around 1390. G.A. di Maniaco, in his history of Friuli, calls him “hominem antiquum in armis, multum sagacem et expertum.”

The German Condottieri in Medieval Italy — Part 6 (C–L)

ENRICO DI CHIÉ (Enrico Cher)

German. Dies c. 1385.

In October 1372 in the service of the lord of Milan, Bernabò Visconti, he shares with Osvaldo Buler the command of a contract of 300 lances. In August 1373 he moves towards Venice with Everardo della Campana and Buler, all hired by the Serenissima to fight the Carraresi. The three condottieri, while crossing the Mantovano, are warned by Visconti against committing raids and devastations during their journey to the Veneto. Having returned to Visconti service in 1378, he supports Lucio and Everardo Lando, Buler, and Thil di Alzen in an attempt to seize Verona. The condottieri prefer to abandon the siege operations and plunder the surrounding territory. They are all discharged. In 1379 he supports Lucio Lando in his raids into Visconti territory carried out on behalf of the Genoese. In January 1382 his services are recommended to the Florentines by Giovanni Acuto for a possible engagement by the commune. He dies around 1385.

CORRADO CODISPILLO (Corrado Gottspiel)

German. Dies c. 1370.

From 1347 he fights in the Kingdom of Naples in the service of Joan I of Anjou against the forces of Louis of Hungary. He is subsequently documented in the pay of King Luigi di Taranto against the rebellious barons. In 1356 he abandons his royal service; at the head of 80 barbute and 100 masnadieri (armed servants attached to the person of the feudal lord) he enters Venafro, plunders the territory from Capua to the Abruzzi. He is defeated while attempting to leave the kingdom; Venafro, his base, is sacked. Returning to the service of the Kingdom of Naples in September 1368, he severely defeats the Count of Trivento and other rebels near Isernia. He dies around 1370.

GUGLIELMO FERREBACH / GUGLIELMO FILIMBACH

See entry in site. German. Dies c. 1395.

The contracts he sustains in favour of Florence, Venice, Siena, Perugia, Charles of Durazzo in his conquest of the Kingdom of Naples are many; many too are his raids with companions in fortune such as Pietro della Corona, Alberico da Barbiano, Villanuccio da Villafranca, Lucio Lando, and Lucio Sparviero. The last record of him sees him, with Alberico da Barbiano, selling Pescara to Nicola Orsini for 16,000 ducats on behalf of the King of Naples, Ladislao d’Anjou. Remembered by Dietrich di Niem, who judges him, together with Pietro della Corona, an expert captain and lord of lands and castles in Italy. He dies around 1395.

GIACOMO DI FIORE (Jacob di Fiore)

German. Dies c. 1360.

From 1341 to 1357 he serves in the pay of Florence for fourteen years, not as a permanent soldier but with his contract renewed every four to six months; in 1350 he is sent to Germany in search of soldiers to recruit for the commune. His most celebrated exploit remains the defence of Scarperia (August–October 1352), assailed by the Visconti forces of Giovanni Visconti da Oleggio at the head of an army of 5,000 barbute, another 2,000 cavalry, and 6,000 infantry. With Salvestro dei Medici, in command of 150 picked cavalry and 300 masnadieri, he has built there a double moat and an earthwork with palisades and counterforts. The general assault is repelled — in which the Visconti manage to lower 64 scaling ladders into the first moat and three more into the second: the Florentines respond with counter-mining in the Visconti underground tunnels, killing the workers and setting fire to two mobile wooden siege towers built to protect the operations. A series of further attacks follow on the Milanese side, conducted with a great number of siege engines. Houses and fortifications in the town are destroyed; arrows and stones block the enemy advance from within. After forty days of siege, the arrival of the Florentine relief army coming from Borgo San Lorenzo is reported: the presence of reinforcements for the defenders, combined with the failure of yet another nocturnal escalade attempt, the scarcity of provisions, the great number of wounded, and fear of the autumn rains, ultimately persuades Visconti da Oleggio to withdraw in good order. Giacomo di Fiore and Medici are knighted by the podestà and each receives a prize of 500 florins. He dies around 1360. Lorenzo Pignotti in his Storia della Toscana sino al Principato remembers him as “a valiant German captain.”

MONACO DI HECZ (Monaco di Herckz)

German. Dies c. 1375.

A soldier of fortune active in Piedmont. In October 1366, with the connivance of Filippo di Savoia-Acaia, he threatens the territory of Moncalieri at the head of 500 German and English cavalry and 2,000 infantry, described by contemporary sources as brigands. In March 1368 he is documented in the service of the same Filippo with two companies of 300 German cavalry each: setting out from the fortresses of Fossano and Vigone, he devastates Piedmont with killings, robberies, and plunderings; the booty is piled up at Vigone. A few months pass and in June he is contacted by Count Amadeus VI of Savoy with offers to induce his desertion. These are rejected by Monaco di Hecz; the Count of Savoy accuses Filippo di Acaia of treason before the emperor and the Duke of Clarence, simultaneously challenging Hecz himself to a duel. In August 1368 a challenge between two squads of 50 cavalry is arranged: Emperor Charles IV of Bohemia and Galeazzo Visconti prevent the engagement; on the appointed day, Filippo di Savoia-Acaia does not dare leave Fossano and Monaco di Hecz passes to the service of Amadeus of Savoy, who pays him 4,000 florins. In 1369 he serves in the pay of Marquis Federico di Saluzzo; in February he supports the Visconti against the company of Edward Despenser. He dies around 1375.

ORLANDO DI LUCHOM

German. Dies c. 1340.

Marshal of King John of Bohemia, in 1333 he confronts the forces of the anti-papal league. In 1334 he founds the Company of the Colomba with other Germans who are veterans of service in the Lucchese under Marco Visconti: the name derives from the Badia della Colomba in Lombardy, where its members gathered for the first time. When the company has no engagements it devotes itself to robbery and kidnapping. In July 1335 he is hired by the Perugians with 1,300 German cavalry for 13,000 florins to fight Arezzo; in August, alongside Ranieri Casali, he devastates the enemy territory and besieges Castiglion Aretino. In September, following an agreement with Guido del Monte Santa Maria, he seizes Città di Castello at the expense of Rodolfo Tarlati. In October of the same year he surprises the adversaries in an ambush while they are returning laden with plunder from a raid into the territory of Cortona. He pursues the enemy to Montecchio, leaving 130 dead on the field. He dies around 1340.

The German Condottieri in Medieval Italy — Part 7 (H–M)

UGO DI MONFORTE (Ugo d’Alemagna, Ugo di Montfort)

From the Rhineland. Count of Montfort. Marries Giovanna da Carrara, sister of Francesco da Carrara, at Padua in summer 1363. Brothers-in-law: Francesco da Carrara; Giovanni Savelli (who married that same day Lieta da Carrara). Nephew of Leopold of Austria. Dies c. 1410.

Cousin of Duke Leopold of Austria, Ugo di Monforte in October 1383 is sent with 500 lances to the relief of Treviso besieged by Simone Lupo and the Carraresi. He compels Arcuano Buzzaccarini to abandon operations; in November, with Falck Zimberg, he plunders the territories of Cittadella and Bassano del Grappa, amassing 250 carts laden with grain, animals, wine, and household goods. Another 200 carts, taken from the peasants, are needed to transport the remaining booty. He moves towards Treviso. The Carraresi, based at Castelfranco Veneto, assault the convoy and recover much of the loot. Other squads of German soldiers arrive in support of Ugo di Monforte. The Carraresi are defeated; the Austrians regain possession of the wagons. In the service of Florence, in 1391 he supports Giovanni Acuto in the expedition against the Visconti; he takes part in the battle of Paterno and at its conclusion is knighted together with other condottieri such as Corrado Prospero, Fuzzolino Tedesco, and Ugo Guazzalotti. In December of the same year, again escorting with John Beltoft a provisions convoy, he is captured at Cascina by Jacopo dal Verme and Jacopo d’Appiano: the Florentines immediately ransom him for the courage he has shown and give him two fine mounts; Beltoft is instead discharged for his cowardice. In April 1395, in the pay of the Marquis of Ferrara, Niccolò d’Este, and under the orders of Astorre Manfredi, he defeats Conselice da Barbiano at Consandolo. In July 1397 (again against the Visconti) he is defeated at Borgoforte; he remains wounded in the engagement. He is then sent in the dead of night to the relief of Marcaria. Along the way he is informed that the castle’s defenders have in the meantime surrendered. He changes objective and, at the head of 500 cavalry and as many infantry, assails the enemy camp. The adversaries, put on alert by Corrado di Altinberg, do not scatter and prepare to sustain the engagement. Ugo di Monforte requests a parley with Altinberg in the name of their old friendship. He complains of having been offended by him and challenges him fruitlessly to a duel. Captured in 1398 by the ducal forces of Ugolotto Biancardo near Marcaria and brought to Milan, he is questioned by the Duke of Milan, Gian Galeazzo Visconti, about the general situation and about the opinion of Francesco Gonzaga regarding the conflict then under way: his frank answer serves as a basis for the subsequent peace. Freed, he is summoned by creditors at Florence for 14,000 florins; feeling betrayed by the state for which he has loyally fought, he passes to the service of Visconti himself, who grants him 6,000 florins and loans him a further 10,000 to meet his debts. In July 1400, at the head of 800 cavalry of the Count of Savoy, he defeats Facino Cane at Caravino; surprised in turn the following night, he is taken prisoner with 600 cavalry. In September 1404, in the service of Padua against the Visconti, he unhorscs Taddeo dal Verme with a lance thrust and shatters his weapon with an axe; dal Verme surrenders into the hands of the Marquis of Ferrara, thus depriving him of the ransom. In December, at Camponogara, he is captured again while defending Francesco Novello da Carrara, struck by an arrow. He dies around 1410. Giovanni Sercambi in his Croniche calls him “a vigorous and bold man”; Alfredo Professione in Siena e le compagnie di ventura nella seconda metà del sec. XIV describes him as “a man of proven honesty and military experience.”

GERARDO DA MONTELORO (Gerardo di Mathelor, Gerardo di Mantelor)

German. Son of Federico di Mathelor. Dies c. 1385.

A captain in the service of the Carraresi of Padua, in June–July 1378 he supports, against the Venetians, Giovanni degli Obizzi at the siege of Mestre; he has two gatti (a type of siege engine) transported into the moat to cover the Carraran attack on the walls. In August he takes over command of the Paduan army from Obizzi. In May–June 1379 he captures the castle of Romano d’Ezzelino, at whose defence Andrea Morosini is stationed, thanks to the earthworks of the engineer Fasuola di Val di Lamone: by excavating a tunnel beneath the tower, it is caused to collapse along with part of the walls. In August of the same year he commands the general land assault against Chioggia; he divides the army into three sections with Giorgio Tedesco, Arcuano Buzzaccarini, and lo Squarciamischia; behind the promise of 150 ducats to whoever succeeds in setting fire to the connecting bridge to the beach, a Genoese on board a small boat manages to set it alight with straw, pitch, and gunpowder; the city is captured and horribly sacked, with 860 dead and over 3,800 prisoners. Gerardo da Monteloro quickly abandons Chioggia following disagreements with Pietro Doria (the captain general of the Genoese, allied with the Carraresi in the war against the Serenissima) over the division of the plunder. In August–September 1380 he takes part in the siege of Treviso with Guecellone and Gerardo da Camino; a great bastia is built in thirty-seven days near Casale sul Sile. In 1381 he is appointed captain of Udine in the service of the patriarch of Aquileia, Filippo di Alençon. He dies in 1385.

FEDERICO DI MATHELOR

German. Father of Gerardo da Monteloro. Dies c. 1375.

He serves the Carraresi of Padua. In February 1354 he is sent with Manno Donati to the relief of the lord of Verona, Cangrande II della Scala, in difficulties against his brother Frignano, who has rebelled against his lordship. In September 1357, having passed to the service of King Louis of Hungary, he is a protagonist of the capture of Zara: he organises a pact with a German, the abbot of San Crisogono, scales the city walls at night, the sentinels are killed, and a gate is opened from within in favour of the forces of the ban of Bosnia. In 1362–1363 he is charged with conducting several diplomatic missions in Friuli and Croatia on behalf of the lord of Padua and the patriarch of Aquileia. In 1373 he is sent by Francesco da Carrara to Hungary with Giovanni di Polisna in search of assistance needed to counter the Venetians effectively. In April he is documented at Padua: he oversees the works connected with the construction of the moat linking Curano with Camponogara and those relating to the bastia of Lova, all completed in seven days during Holy Week. He is known to have been aware of the conspiracy of Marsilio da Carrara against his brother Francesco. He dies around 1375.

OLFO / WOLF DI GROVENICH

German. Dies in combat in October 1384.

In 1370 he serves the lord of Milan, Bernabò Visconti; he fights the papacy in the Reggiano. Having passed to the pay of the Florentines, in June 1376 he takes part in the War of the Eight Saints, again against the papacy; he links up with Enrico Paher and Francesco di Vico, defeats at Capranica the Angevins of Luigi da Capua, and inflicts on them the loss of 150 men-at-arms between dead and prisoners. In September 1377 he follows Lucio Lando into the Marches; he is present at the battle of Matelica, which ends with the defeat of the lord of Camerino, Rodolfo da Varano. There are 900 dead on both sides; 1,000 prisoners on the papal side between Breton men-at-arms and infantry. In March 1379, at Florence, a brawl breaks out between German and Italian mercenaries at the Canto della Marina. He assails the latter at night in the piazza di San Lorenzo and in that of San Giovanni where, with eight comrades, he kills Giovanni da Fano. He dies in October 1384 fighting the Angevin militias of Enguerrand de Coucy beneath the walls of Arezzo.

The German Condottieri in Medieval Italy — Part 8 (P–R)

MARTINO POLSORT

German. Dies c. 1405.

A captain present in the Kingdom of Naples during the wars between Angevins and Durazzeschi. He supports Louis de Montjoie (February 1388) in the defence of Naples; the following month he abandons the camp together with Pietro della Corona and il Brigante due to disagreements with the French viceroy. Three years later he is documented serving the Florentines against the forces of the Duke of Milan, Gian Galeazzo Visconti. In July, under the orders of Giovanni Acuto, he takes part in the battle of Paterno, which ends with the defeat of Jacopo dal Verme. At the close of the fighting he is knighted together with 19 other condottieri. In 1401 he is in the service of the Visconti. He assists Giovanni Bentivoglio in his attempt to enter Bologna and, subsequently, in that of having himself proclaimed lord of the city. He passes into his pay. In June 1402 he is defeated by the Visconti at the battle of Casalecchio di Reno. He dies around 1405. His fame as a man-at-arms is attested by several authors. In particular, Cristoforo Poggiali in his Memorie storiche di Piacenza groups him with other condottieri of his time such as il Tartaglia and Muzio Attendolo Sforza, calling them all “captains of proven worth, already famed for courage and valour.”

HEINRICH PAHER (Enrico Paher)

From upper Germany. Dies c. 1385.

He serves initially for the papacy. Having passed to the pay of the anti-Visconti league, in 1361 he is captured by the Gonzaga. Brought to Mantua, to obtain his freedom he undertakes not to fight the adversaries for a year; he also promises that if required, should he find himself within a radius of twenty-five miles from Reggio Emilia, he would fight on behalf of the Gonzaga themselves for eight days at his own expense and for a further two months at reduced pay. Subsequently (1364) he is documented in the pay of the Florentines against the Pisans (the White Company); in 1367, for Perugia, he counters the Company of Saint George led by Ambrogio Visconti and Giovanni Acuto; in 1369, still for the commune of Perugia, he confronts the papacy. Captured by Francesco da Castello following a popular uprising in Città di Castello, he is immediately released. He has occasion, in January of the following year, to capture Francesco da Castello himself in turn: he immediately frees him, mindful of the courtesy he had received previously. Returning to the pay of the Florentines, in 1377 he takes part in the battle of Matelica, ending with the defeat of Rodolfo da Varano. He dies around 1385.

CORRADO PROSPERO / KONRAD PRASSBERG

From the Allgäu region. Of noble family. Lord of Cannara. Marries a daughter of Giovanni Acuto, named Catherine. Dies 1422.

After serving in the company of Corrado Lando in the early 1380s, in December 1385 he is contacted at Faenza by Lucio Lando on behalf of the Bolognese. There follows a contract of his with Florence and the Duke of Milan, Gian Galeazzo Visconti. Having returned to the pay of the Bolognese, in April 1390 he supports Ugolino Ghislieri in an expedition into Romagna against the lord of Rimini, Carlo Malatesta. He is defeated by Nicolò Malatesta together with Conte da Carrara. Quickly freed, he returns with the Paduan condottiere to the service of the Bolognese. In 1391 he supports Giovanni Acuto in his campaign in Lombardy against the Visconti, carried out in favour of the Carraresi and Florentines. In 1393 he is hired by the Florentines so that his company will not raid Tuscany; the Lucchesi also contribute to the payment of his contract. In the same spring he counters the papacy in Romagna in support of the lords of Forlì, Pino and Cecco Ordelaffi. In September he is found in the pay of the papacy to fight the Perugians. It is on this occasion that he makes himself lord of Cannara. In January 1394 he marries at Florence the fourteen-year-old daughter of Giovanni Acuto, named Catherine. For the wedding he asks the Florentines for an advance of 1,000 florins so that the nuptials may be celebrated with appropriate splendour. There follow over time further contracts with the papacy, Perugia, the Montefeltro of Urbino, Florence again, Bologna, and Venice. In 1402 he returns to Germany with his wife and three children. He dies in 1422. “A most brilliant man-at-arms” according to Antonio Rigon, and “a young and valiant soldier of fortune” according to J. Temple Leader and G. Marcotti in their biography of Acuto.

GOTTFRIED ROUGHER

German. Dies c. 1360.

He serves for eighteen consecutive years from 1334 to 1345 in the pay of the Florentines. This is a discontinuous engagement, renewable according to the authorities’ needs every four to six months. After a brief period in the pay of Siena, in June 1353 he is hired on behalf of the papacy by the rector of the Patrimony, Giordano Orsini, with 250 barbute. He is tasked with countering the forces of the lord of Viterbo, Giovanni di Vico. He is assigned the defence of Montefiascone; in July he distinguishes himself in the assault on the castle of Marta on the southern shore of Lake Bolsena. He drives the adversaries out of Narni; in August he besieges Orvieto with Fra Moriale; in the end, in September, he is contacted together with the French condottiere by Giovanni di Vico and defects from the papal ranks. He then operates in the territory of Todi, supporting the cause of the Chiaravalle exiles against the main town. He dies around 1360. He is cited by William Caferro in one of his works for the length of his relationship with the Florentines, an unusual event in the fourteenth century.

GIOVANNI DI ROD (Giovanni di Rood)

German. Lord of Santo Stefano di Sessanio. Dies c. 1380.

A soldier of fortune of the second half of the fourteenth century. In 1368 he serves the Queen of Naples, Joan II of Anjou. He is sent into the territory of L’Aquila to fight the Pretalti who had rebelled against the sovereign. With the defeat of Nicola d’Alemagna at Corvaro he must abandon the field and return to L’Aquila. The following year (1369) he is documented in the pay of the lord of Milan, Bernabò Visconti. With Giannotto Visconti (1,500 cavalry) he is sent to Lucca to provide assistance to the forces of Emperor Charles of Bohemia. He takes up position in the main square at the first signs of disorder among the inhabitants. He is soon forced to fall back to the nearby borghi due to the action of the rebels. He then forms his own company whose aim is essentially to devastate the territories of Cortona, Arezzo, and Siena. Contacted by the papacy in 1371, he is directed to Camerino to seize it at the expense of the da Varano. With the failure of the initiative he returns to Tuscany with his company; he assails Castiglion Fiorentino and plunders its countryside. He moves into the Abruzzi; he assists at L’Aquila Lallo dei Camponeschi in his attempt to pacify the city’s factions; he returns to the inhabitants of that city the fortress of Santo Stefano di Sessanio, which he had previously seized. In 1372 he fights for the Florentines against the Visconti. Taken prisoner at the battle of Rubiera, he is suspected of treachery and imprisoned. Freed, he is discharged. His last contracts find him in the pay of the Carraresi of Padua and the Visconti of Milan. He dies around 1380.

GIOVANNI DI RATEN / JOHANN VON RIETEN / ANZI TEDESCO

From Augusta, in Bavaria. Dies c. 1380.

He initially forms part (1364) of the Company of the Star of Anichino di Baumgarten. Four years later (1368) he serves in the pay of Emperor Charles of Bohemia against the lord of Milan, Bernabò Visconti. A few months more (June) and he is found in the pay of the papacy, in conflict with the Perugians. Under the orders of Simone da Spoleto, with Flach di Risach, he surprises Giovanni Acuto in an ambush near Arezzo. The English condottiere is captured by the Church’s men. On this occasion Giovanni di Raten is knighted. Acuto is soon freed on payment of a ransom. At the expiry of the contract Raten is contacted by the adversary to pass with Flach di Risach to the pay of the Perugians. He goes to Assisi with Risach; he is invited to dinner by a minister of Pope Urban V: the pontiff, informed of the imminent defection of the two condottieri, orders both to be captured and condemned to death. Becoming aware of the danger, he immediately makes for the Perugino. In March 1369, having returned under the imperial banners, he attempts a surprise move to occupy Pisa at the expense of the city’s lord, Piero Gambacorta. In the course of the campaign a brother of Flach di Risach kills a German nobleman in the Loggia dei Mercanti at Lucca. Disorders break out; he takes refuge in the Palazzo di San Michele. Attacked by the imperial militias, he is compelled to surrender. He is not punished despite the fact that the affray has produced numerous dead and wounded. Probably discharged, with Flach di Risach he takes again to the fortune trail; he bursts into the Sienese; fights for the papacy against Perugia; then for Perugia against the Church’s militias, until towards the end of the year he is hired by the Visconti with the task of plundering the Valdarno alongside Acuto. Under the latter’s orders he defeats the Florentines, commanded by Giovanni Malatacca, at Cascina. In the summer of 1370 he is excommunicated by the pope together with Risach. Urban V writes also to the bishops of Augusta and Constance in Germany so that the sentence may be published in their dioceses and that the two condottieri’s lands may be subjected to interdict. For the rest of the year Raten indulges in his favourite pastime, raiding Tuscany and Emilia. In February 1371 he again devastates Tuscany in the company of Federico di Vallelonga and Lucio Lando. Further contracts with the Visconti and Perugia follow. Weary of so adventurous a life, he returns to Germany, where he transforms himself (source: William Caferro) into an agent of the Milanese Maino bank. He dies around 1380.

FLACH DI RISACH / FLASCHEN VON RIESACH

(Falco di Risach, Freccia di Risach, Frezza degli Scacchi)

From Constance. Dies c. 1385.

A captain of note in the generation following Conte Lando. His first appearance in the chronicles is not particularly brilliant: in March 1367 Flach di Risach proves the protagonist of strongly ambiguous conduct towards his paymaster. Perugia is at war with the papacy. In the battle of Ponte San Giovanni, at which he is present under the orders of Enrico Paher, he commands a schiera. Assailed by rivals — the Company of Saint George led by Ambrogio Visconti and Giovanni Acuto — he takes to flight without attempting any resistance. The following year (June) he is documented with Giovanni di Raten, under the orders of Simone di Spoleto; he now has occasion to redeem himself by surprising and capturing, near Arezzo, the same English condottiere, who is at that moment serving Perugia against the Church’s militias. Thereafter his name is always paired with that of Raten. Both in imperial service, a particular episode links them in April 1369 at Lucca, following the killing, by his brother, of a German nobleman in the Loggia dei Mercanti. Discharged, he is not inactive if, in October–November of the same year, he is appointed captain general of Perugia: in this capacity he finds himself at the centre of a serious incident with Everardo della Campana, who has returned victorious from the Viterbese: on his return to Perugia the latter refuses to swear loyalty to him. A brawl then breaks out between a German of his company and an Italian serving with Concio degli Ubaldini. The two condottieri order their respective units into battle formation. Only the intervention of the Perugian priors restores calm and averts a clash within the city. In May 1370, still with Raten, he is excommunicated by Pope Urban V and his lands in Germany are subjected to interdict (a severe canonical penalty of the Catholic Church prohibiting the celebration of masses and the administration of the sacraments). His presence is again documented in Umbria in 1373. From this moment his traces in Italy are lost; he reappears only in 1382 in the service of the Duke of Austria in the Trevigiano against the Carraresi of Padua. William Caferro numbers him among the best-known German captains of the central decade of the fourteenth century, alongside Giovanni di Raten and the Lando. He dies around 1385.

ANDREA DI ROD (Andrea Tedesco)

German. Dies c. 1375.

A soldier of fortune active in the central decades of the fourteenth century. Andrea di Rod operates in the German companies that represent the transition between the original Great Company and the subsequent formations of Anichino di Baumgarten and Alberto Sterz, in particular the Company of the Star. His is a subordinate presence, without the political prominence of the great captains of his day. He dies around 1375.

The German Condottieri in Medieval Italy — Part 9 (S–V)

SQUARCIAMISCHIA

German. Dies c. 1390.

A captain in the pay of the Carraresi, present in the wars between Padua and Venice in the second half of the fourteenth century. In August 1379 he takes part in the general land assault against Chioggia: Gerardo da Monteloro divides the Paduan army into three sections, entrusting one to him, one to Giorgio Tedesco, and one to Arcuano Buzzaccarini. The action concludes with the capture of the city and a savage sacking, with 860 dead and over 3,800 prisoners. Squarciamischia continues to serve the Carraresi in subsequent years. He dies around 1390. He is remembered by Andrea Gatari in Cronaca carrarese as “a man valiant in arms.”

ULZIO TROTTINGER

German. Dies c. 1390.

A captain of the last generation of the White Company, Ulzio Trottinger is noted in the 1370s and 1380s in the German companies serving the Tuscan city-states and the anti-Visconti league. His activity is documented in minor operations of raiding and defence, in the phase in which the model of the company of fortune was progressively giving way to the Italian professional companies of Braccesca formation. He dies around 1390.

ROBERTO TEDESCO

German. Dies c. 1390.

A soldier of fortune of the second half of the fourteenth century. He serves for various paymasters such as Pisa, Padua, and Duke Stefano of Bavaria. He is notable in particular in June 1390, taking part in the reconquest of Padua from the Visconti alongside Francesco Novello da Carrara. He dies probably in the same year.

RINALDO TEDESCO (Rinaldo d’Alemagna)

German. Dies c. 1375.

Present in Italy in the mid-fourteenth century, he serves in the pay of the Visconti and the Venetians. Lorenzo Coleschi in his Storia della città di Sansepolcro identifies him as “an illustrious condottiere of German bands.” He dies around 1375.

GOBBOLE TEDESCO

German. Dies c. 1335.

Among the most ancient German captains present in Italy, his presence is documented for the first time in Italy in June 1330, when he is in the pay of the lord of Lucca, Gherardino Spinola. Besieged in the city for several months, in October he defects to the Florentine camp on the occasion of three horse races run before the city gates by the opposing captain, Alamanno degli Obizzi. In December he is in turn documented at the siege of Lucca. He promotes within the city a treaty in favour of the Florentines. In the end, to everyone’s embarrassment, King John of Bohemia, called in by Spinola, enters Lucca and makes himself its lord. Remembered by Villani as “very skilled in war.” He dies around 1335.

GIORGIO TEDESCO

German. Dies c. 1420.

He serves Ottobono Terzi against the Este. He avenges the treacherous killing of the lord of Parma (May 1409), which took place near Rubiera at the hands of Muzio Attendolo Sforza and Micheletto Attendolo. In a subsequent engagement with the adversaries, he comes upon the governor of Modena, Alidosio Forzatè, unhorscs him, and puts an end to his life. In 1412, in the pay of the antipope John XXIII, he confronts in the Marches and Umbria the forces of the King of Naples, Ladislao d’Anjou, bent on the conquest of Rome and part of the Papal State. Remaining in central Italy, in 1416 still in favour of the antipope, he confronts in the territory of Fermo the militias sent to the support of Pope Gregory XII, led by Andrea Malatesta. He dies around 1415.

FUZZOLINO TEDESCO

German. Dies June 1402.

It is in May 1389 that the name of this condottiere first appears in the histories of the fourteenth-century Italian wars: he distinguishes himself in the defence of Fermo, besieged in vain by papal forces. In 1390 he is in the pay of Bologna against the Visconti. In July 1391 he supports Giovanni Acuto in his expedition into Lombardy. With the victory of Paterno over Jacopo dal Verme he is knighted together with 19 other condottieri, among whom stand out names such as Ugo di Monforte, Corrado Prospero, and Ugo Guazzalotti. In September of the same year he moves into Emilia where, again at the expense of the Visconti, he devastates with Corrado Prospero the Reggiano and the Parmense. After a further contract with Bologna, in 1399 he passes to the pay of the Malatesta of Rimini. In May he engages in the Marches, at Cingoli, the company of fortune led by Ceccolo Broglia and Conte da Carrara. He is defeated after nine hours of fighting. His last contract, after a brief parenthesis with the Serenissima, is with the new lord of Bologna, Giovanni Bentivoglio. The city is assailed by the Visconti. In June 1402 he takes part in the battle of Casalecchio di Reno, where with Muzio Attendolo Sforza he commands the first schiera, 2,000 cavalry strong. He fights against the armed men of Francesco Gonzaga; he is unhorsed by Facino Cane and is killed.

FRANCESCO TEDESCO

German. Lord of Chiusi. Dies c. 1375.

A German soldier of fortune who for a time becomes lord of Chiusi. He operates in the central decades of the fourteenth century in the service of Emperor Charles of Bohemia and of Perugia. His trajectory, even if on a smaller scale, recalls that of Corrado Lupo in the Kingdom of Naples or of Anichino di Baumgarten in Piedmont — German captains capable of transforming their mercenary service into a brief territorial foothold. He dies around 1375.

FEDERICO TEDESCO

See entry in site. German. Dies c. 1390.

He serves the Duke Stefano of Bavaria. In autumn 1389 he assists Francesco Novello da Carrara in the reconquest of Padua from the Visconti. In June 1390 he takes part in this action, which concludes successfully. He is notable in particular for his assaults on the city gates, breaching the first and second defensive perimeters. He dies probably in the same year.

ENRICO DELLA TRECCIA (Enrico Tedesco)

German. Dies c. 1410.

A captain of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, Enrico della Treccia carries out his activity in the last phases of the German companies in Italy, in a period in which the old mercenary model is being absorbed by the new Italian Braccesca and Sforzesca formations. He dies around 1410.

BENEDETTO TEDESCO

German. Dies c. 1345.

Among the captains of the first generation of the German companies in Italy, Benedetto Tedesco makes himself noticed in the years preceding and accompanying the founding of Urslingen‘s Great Company. He dies around 1345.

ARNALDO TEDESCO

German. Dies c. 1380.

A soldier of fortune of the second half of the fourteenth century, Arnaldo Tedesco is documented among the captains who in summer 1372 attack Asti, at whose defence Ottone di Brunswick is stationed, alongside other condottieri of the calibre of Ambrogio Visconti, Ruggero Cane, Giovanni Acuto, Jacopo dal Verme, and Francesco d’Este. His activity continues in Visconti ranks until the last years of the decade. He dies around 1380.

ARNALDO TEDESCO (Count)

German. Count. Dies c. 1345.

Distinguished from the eponymous captain belonging to a generation subsequent to his, this Arnaldo Tedesco belongs to the first wave of German nobles who came down into Italy in the wake of the emperors. He is particularly active in the years preceding the founding of the Great Company. He confronts the Turks in Asia Minor on behalf of the Serenissima. His funerary monument is in Venice in Santa Maria dei Frari. He dies around 1345.

ARMANNO TEDESCO (Ermanno Spisser)

German. Dies February 1396.

His first contract in Italy dates to 1351, when he serves the Florentines against the Visconti. Only twelve years later does he reappear in the history of the condottieri of fortune, first in the pay of Pisa and subsequently in that of Siena. He confronts the Company of the Cappelletto of Niccolò da Montefeltro. In October 1363, under the orders of Francesco Orsini, he catches the adventurers in disorder at Torrita di Siena: 300 cavalry and 1,000 infantry are captured. After a month he abandons Siena with Ugo dell’Ala to move towards Cortona. The commune’s ambassadors persuade the two condottieri to return. Further news of him comes only in 1378 for his service on behalf of the Carraresi of Padua at war with the Venetians. In September he manages to free his friend Gerardo da Monteloro, captured at Noale and on the verge of being brought prisoner to Venice. Another leap in time brings us to June 1390, when he is documented alongside Francesco Novello da Carrara at the reconquest of Padua. Finally he passes to the pay of the Duke of Milan, Gian Galeazzo Visconti. He is entrusted with the role of captain of the citadel of Bergamo. He dies in that city in February 1396 and is buried in the church of San Francesco.

AMERIGONE TEDESCO

See entry in site. German. Dies c. 1370.

In the pay of Florence against Pisa, in May 1363 he supports Piero Farnese in his action. He rides with 300 cavalry to beneath the walls of the city as far as the borgo di San Marco. He is defeated and taken prisoner by Gisello degli Ubaldini, who had exited the centre at the head of 600 barbute and many citizens. Freed in September, he returns to countering the Pisans, engaging in particular with the adventurers of the White Company of Alberto Sterz. He dies around 1370. Paolo Tronci in Memorie istoriche della città di Pisa remembers him as “a loyal and brave captain.”

PIERO DEL VERDE

German. Lord of Colle di Val d’Elsa. Dies 1384.

He distinguishes himself in the War of the Eight Saints in the pay of the Florentines against the papacy. In early December 1375 he appears before Città di Castello. With the help of fourteen inhabitants he brings about the town’s rebellion against the Church. He besieges the adversaries who have shut themselves in the cassero of the cathedral and two other fortifications. From Perugia the governor of the city, the Abbot of Montmajeur, Gherardo di Puy, sends Giovanni Acuto to the relief of the defenders. Two attempted assaults on the walls by the English condottiere are repelled, and he is ultimately compelled to abandon the enterprise. In August 1376 Piero del Verde moves towards Ascoli Piceno together with Piero del Bianco. Near Fabriano he repels an attack by Venanzio and Gentile da Varano. In 1378 he is sent with Arnaldo Tedesco to the support of the Sienese. Subsequently (1379) he operates in Tuscany, Lazio, and Umbria (in the pay of the antipope Clement VII) against the forces of the pope of Rome, Urban VI. In August he makes himself lord of Colle di Val d’Elsa. Confronted by the Count of Pitigliano, Aldobrandino Orsini, he is captured with his men. He obtains his release on payment of a ransom of 500 florins. His activity continues in the service of the Perugians, on whose behalf he fights once more against Città di Castello and the local exiles. He dies in 1384. For Pompeo Pellini in Della historia di Perugia, Piero del Verde is considered “a man in those times very skilled and valiant in the craft of arms.”