Lehal Library

the prince the empire began to lose its hold in Italy while the pope increased his temporal power, so the country broke up into smaller states. Many of the larger cities rose up against the local nobles who had needed the emperor’s backing to keep control of them; the Church supported the rebels to increase its own political influence. In many other towns private citizens took over as rulers. The result was that with much of Italy now controlled by the Church and republics, which is to say by people who had no experience of war, leaders began to hire men from outside. The first successful mercenary commander was Alberigo da Conio from Romagna. With what they learned from him, Braccio da Montone and Francesco Sforza and others would become arbiters of Italy’s destiny. After them came all the other mercenary commanders down to our own times. And the end result of all their genius is that Italy was overrun by Charles, ransacked by Louis, torn apart by Ferdinand and humiliated by the Swiss. The mercenaries’ first tactic was to increase their own importance by playing down the importance of infantry. Hav- ing no territory of their own and living on what they got from fighting, they couldn’t feed large numbers of infantry, while smaller numbers weren’t sufficiently impressive; so they con- centrated on cavalry and were fed and respected with more manageable numbers. Things reached the point where an army of 20,000 would have fewer than 2,000 infantry. Aside from this the mercenaries did everything possible to avoid hard work and danger; they wouldn’t kill each other in combat but took prisoners, then didn’t even ask for a ran- som. They wouldn’t attack fortifications at night; and they wouldn’t leave their own fortifications to attack a besieging army’s camp. They didn’t dig ditches or build stockades round their camps; in winter they didn’t camp out at all. All these omissions became accepted practice for the simple reason, as I said, that they wanted to steer clear of danger and hard work. Thus they brought Italy to slavery and humiliation. infantry: Infantry refers to the soldiers on foot. ... Cavalry: It generally means mounted soldiers stockade:a barrier formed from upright wooden posts or stakes, especially as a defense against attack