Furies (39 page)

Authors: Lauro Martines

A battle scene showing
Landsknechts
(mercenaries) with a halberd, a two-handed sword, an arquebus, and a dense array of pikes.
German school (sixteenth century) c. 1550 (Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin, Germany/Â© DHM/The Bridgeman Art Library)

Despite his fancy dress, the cannoneer has a gunpowder pouch hitched to his waist. Gunners were nearly always commoners, not noblemen.
German school (sixteenth century):
Loading a Cannon through the Breech,
illustration from
L'Art de l'Artillerie
by Wolff de Senftenberg, late sixteenth century (MinistÃ¨re de la DÃ©fenseâService Historique de l'Armee de Terre, France/Giraudon/The Bridgeman Art Library)

Death here is ennobled as allegory by the dramatic foreshortening of the soldier, and by the highlights on the skull, leg, huge hand, face, armor, and sword handle. The suggestion is that although war brings death, there is something noble about it: a viewpoint that could belong only to Europe's military and political elites. A Dead Soldier
(seventeenth century) (Â© National Gallery, London/Art Resource, NY)

Murderous scuffles between soldiers and civilians fighting over loot, as war and a burning town light up the background.
Gillis Mostaert (c. 1534â1598):
A Scene of War and Fire,
1569 (Louvre, Paris, France/Photo: Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY)

War envelops a city. The scene is titled
Titus' Conquest of Jerusalem
, but the painting shows settings and bloodshed that might well have been seen in the artist's homeland, northern Europe.
Vienna Master of Mary of Burgundy (fl. c. 1470â80)
: Titus' Conquest of Jerusalem
(Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Ghent, Belgium/Â© LukasâArt in Flanders VZW/Photo: Hugo Maertens/The Bridgeman Art Library)

Vasari's muscular image of war here is bombast. Horses and soldiers were more likely to be lean, hungry, and ragged.
Giorgio Vasari (1511â74) and workshop:
The Defeat of the Pisans at the tower of San Vincenzo, from the Salone dei Cinquecento, 1569
(Palazzo della Signoria, Florence, Italy/The Bridgeman Art Library)

Notes

These notes provide sources for material on the pages indicated, but give only the last name of the author and page references. Full details are set forth in the bibliography. When an entry below refers to an author listed with two or more titles, the work in question is identified by the year of publication. Examples: G. Parker (2004), Wilson (2009), Lynn (1997).

PRELUDE

For source material on the state, see my comment at the start of the notes for Chapter 10.

Incident at bridge
: Bourdeille, II, 132; also Wood, 305â06; Lynn (2008), 71.

Standard accounts of the civil wars
: e.g., Bonney (1991), 164â72.

Mantuan villagers, incident
: Quazza (1926), I, 526, and (1933), 184.

Florence, ten thousand mercenaries
: Martines (2006), 44.

On torture
: Fiorelli; Langbein; Peters.

I owe a debt of gratitude to the following. For their work on Spanish armies
: Geoffrey Parker, I. A. A. Thompson, Fernando GonzÃ¡lez de LeÃ³n, and Ruth Mackay. On French armies: John Lynn, James Wood, David Parrott, and Guy Rowlands. On German armies: Peter Burschel, William Guthrie, Peter Wilson, Fritz Redlich, Otto BÃ¼sch, Bernhard Kroener, Ralf PrÃ¶ve, and Christopher Clark. On the Northern Wars: R. L. Frost. On Gustavus Adolphus: Michael Roberts. On the Russian army: John Keep and Lindsay Hughes. On Italian armies: Maria Nadia Covini, William Caferro, Mallet/Hale, Mallett/Shaw, and Gregory Hanlon. On English armies: Roger Manning and Mark Fissel. On the armies of the Dutch Republic: Marco van der Hoeven. On La Rochelle: Kevin Robbins. On the Emperor Charles V and war: Tracy (2002). And more generally: Frank Tallett and M. S. Anderson.

CHAPTER 1. A WAR MOSAIC

The young peasant
: Wagner, 53.

Pierre La Sire
: Lynn (1997), 397.

French army, manpower needs
: Lynn (1997), 55; Rowlands, 1.

Peter the Great, branding
: Keep, 107.

Prince Eugene, quote
: M. S. Anderson (1988), 130.

Florence against Pisa
: Buoninsegni, II, 790â803; Najemy, 194â97.

“The grass â¦ useless people”
: Capponi, 273.

Catapulted soldier
: Salviati, 248â49; message on corpse, Palmieri, 42â44.

Branding and mutilation
: Capponi, 264â66.

Promise made to mercenaries
: Ibid., 264.

“Was repugnant â¦ of prey”
: Palmieri, 56.