Furies

by Lauro Martines

  This bewildering diversity of moneys was a nightmare for travelers but a boon for money changers, some of whom, astute traders, journeyed hundreds of miles to ply their trade. Such a one was Lippo di Fede del Sega, a small-time money changer who came from a little village outside Florence and spent years in France, pursuing profit.

  Wherever there was a legal title to mint coins, there, too, was a lawmaking authority and local arrangements to dole out justice—in other words, the rudiments of a state. The authority in question was also bound to have “foreign relations” and a little body of soldiers for defense. Here then was a micro half-state, as in all those places where the German emperor had granted or sold the rights of coinage to a city or a petty prince.

  As Europe emerged from the late middle ages, the course of change cut a path through a thicket of “statelets,” or microstates. Political fragmentation—and the movement or trend away from it—may be tracked in upper Italy, which teemed with bustling urban communes in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Cities such as Milan, Pisa, Genoa, Padua, Pavia, Verona, Florence, Lucca, Perugia, and Siena had broken away from a nominal subjection to the Holy Roman Emperor of the German Nation. But by the early fifteenth century, war and conquest had seen most of them incorporated into the territories of the biggest regional powers: Venice, Milan, Florence, and the papal monarchy. The pulling together of scattered authority went on in Italy right through the sixteenth century.

  If we turn to France, we find a process of parallel incorporation, as the French crown reclaimed a series of autonomous provinces (old fiefs of the kings of France): Normandy in 1358; Guyenne in 1451; Burgundy (and Artois briefly) in 1477; Provence, Anjou, and Maine in 1481; Orléans in 1499; Angoulème in 1515; Auvergne and Bourbon in 1527; and Brittany in 1532. France filled out.

  Spain knew a similar trend in the uniting of Castile and Aragon, and in the Spanish conquest of Navarre and Granada. The expulsion of the Muslim emirate from Granada was completed in 1492, at the end of a pitiless ten-year war, for which the monarchs of Castile and Aragon “kept an army of 50,000 men and 13,000 horses on a permanent footing.”

  In Germany, on the other hand, the swing toward consolidation was foiled by regional princes. They claimed to be acting in the name of “German liberties” and local customs. Emperors had to compromise or give way to their demands, including the demands of Imperial cities and of numerous lesser lords of the Empire. These, too, like the dukes of Bavaria or the electors of Saxony and Brandenburg, governed their territories as autonomous or independent rulers. They consulted the privileged in representative assemblies (Landsstände), levied taxes, raised small armies, administered justice, passed laws, minted currencies, and conducted their own foreign policies. The Thirty Years War (1618–1648) would exhibit in blood the perils of Germany’s fragmentation.

  War-making was an obvious characteristic of sovereignty. The costs of war, however, could hobble rulers, because war, as we have seen, had to be paid for primarily out of tax moneys, and taxes required the approval of the “estates”—representative diets made up of noblemen, urban elites, and clergy. There was no way around these, except by means of executive thuggery, and this was a recipe for trouble or even rebellion. Moreover, the need to obtain the fiscal consent of the upper classes was as obligatory in the kingdoms of Spain, France, England, and the Baltic countries as in the urban republics of Genoa, Venice, and the Netherlands. Kings were far from being absolute: Their right to tax, and even to legislate, was ringed in by limitations.

  In the face of an invasion or unprovoked aggression, all rulers had the obligation to defend the lands they governed. Hence any military crisis gave them the right to arm and assemble soldiers—either a local militia or fighters brought in from afar. Local militias satisfied customary defensive needs almost everywhere, but in the early modern world, they were too often inept and of little use in sustained warfare.

  An old feudal prerogative, the princely right to summon the military arm of vassals survived, ghostlike, into the seventeenth century, despite the fact that princes and self-governing cities began to hire professional mercenaries as early as the twelfth century. This expedient, the hiring of mercenaries, sprang from the need to meet the expanding scope of wars, as these broke out and became more frequent during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, in the trail of Europe’s explosive economic energies. By the early fourteenth century, the best troops were always mercenaries. In a Europe of war and more war, a prince’s obligation to defend his lands faded into the right to assemble armies more and more often, even for aggressive purposes. Such action could be passed off as defensive. The distinction, passive or active, was nudged into subtleties, and bold or clever princes found ways of getting what they wanted.

  But princes also had assistance from another quarter: in their claims to be hereditary rulers, that is, dynasts. This line of legal argument took on the raiment of a sacred right, especially when the claim concerned disputed territory, including, therefore, the possible need to use armed force. If early modern European political thinking accepted a hard axiom, it was in the idea that dynastic rights were somehow embedded in “natural” law. Accordingly, in a Europe of spirited economic energies, as rulers regarded their boundaries with more zeal, the banner of dynastic rights was carried to the forefront of international relations, and there it would remain until the nineteenth century.

  Princely bloodlines ran through marriages and offspring, spreading out, fanlike, to provide the legal substance for claims to territory. Marriage was the agency that made dynasties. But when a prince had muscle and loftiness enough, his bastards too moved in the shadow of majesty, married brilliantly, and could be centrally engaged in matters of war. This was the destiny of Margaret, Duchess of Parma, governor of the Netherlands (1559–1567), the daughter of a servant and of the Habsburg Emperor Charles V.

  At the dawn of modern times, when the king of France, Charles VIII, led twenty-five thousand soldiers down the length of Italy to lay hands on the kingdom of Naples, he was calling on a distant connection and a thirteenth-century claim of the dukes of Anjou. When Louis XII, his successor, invaded Lombardy in 1499, intent on seizing the duchy of Milan, the basis of his claim went back more than a hundred years to the marriage of a Visconti princess, Valentina, and Louis d’Orléans.

  Europe’s elites hearkened to the dynastic claims of the kings of Spain and France, of German princes and Habsburg rulers, and of lesser lords as well, even when the claimants jockeyed to bring new lands under their political sway. A dynastic claim to territory always pivoted on a question of legal rights, of honor, of duty, and even of squaring things with “divine and natural” law.

  Diplomacy itself was governed by assumptions about the rights of dynasties. Never mind the ways of rulers. King Charles VIII—a living caricature: short with skinny legs, a big head, and a funny beak of a nose—was publicity for the assumption that royal blood could raise the strangest men to the pinnacle of powerful states. In a decision that was altogether his, the astonishing invasion of Italy (1494–1495), he was really seeking adventure and glory, and dreaming of a heroic crusade against the Ottoman Turks. His successor, Louis XII, also turned his face and soldiers to Italy, urged on by predatory noblemen, and attracted not by the nonsense of chivalric dreams but by the visible wealth of Italy’s northern cities.

  A king inherited not only a personal domain but also a state and its lands, as though these had about them something of private property. If nationality, language, and religion in his territories happened to be different from his, this cut no ice. The essential point turned on a dynastic right, the legal grounds alleged by the kings of France and Spain in their wars (1494–1559) to be masters in Italy.

  Meanwhile, were dynastic claims doing something for the subjects and citizens whose taxes paid for the wars? Or something even for the rule of law? Very little, if anything. War, anyway, like diplomacy, was the business of princes and courtly elites, not a topic for the twitter of subjects in town a
nd country. Yet war, as we know, wanted money, tax money, and this compelled princes to turn to the high representatives of the nobility and rich bourgeoisie. These had to be consulted; there had to be discussions. Now every kind of ploy on both sides, menacing and silver-tongued, was borne into the key forums. Solutions varied, but a strong prince usually got some of the wished-for funds, then proceeded to rush into debt. Later, this too—managing the debt—would have to be negotiated.

  A GENEALOGICAL CHART OF THE Habsburgs—the most dominant dynasty in the history of western Europe—reveals nothing but the bare bones of a vanished animal. The real creature appears only when we clad the chart with inherited dominions, wars, public debt, and taxes, along with appalling mistakes and tragedies. There were the salutary things, of course, such as donations to monasteries, convents, and churches, and the commissions made to many leading artists. But these take us away from the motors of Habsburg dominance.

  The high fortunes of this dynasty began with the Duke of Austria, the Emperor Maximilian I (d. 1519). His marriage to Mary of Burgundy brought the Netherlands and parts of France as inheritances to their son, Philip the Handsome. Philip, in turn, was married to Joanna, who inherited Castile and Aragon. And their son, Charles V (d. 1559), was heir to the Spanish crown, the Netherlands, Austria, Franche-Comté, and in Italy the kingdom of Naples: “all kingdoms and territories”—he noted in his memoirs—“given to him by God.” In 1519, with gold borrowed from German bankers (850,000 florins), Charles bought the Imperial crown from the Empire’s seven electors, and this enabled him to claim the duchy of Milan, an ancient and nominal fief of the Empire. The bribe money would have sufficed—by cutting corners—to cover the wages for a year of about twenty-four thousand foot soldiers in the Venetian and other armies.

  An “impresario of war,” as one historian has called him, Charles now attempted to exercise political control over much of western Europe. He ended by abdicating in 1555–1556 and dividing his dominions, but he also bequeathed prodigious debts to his heirs. Spain, the Netherlands, Franche-Comté, and his lands in Italy went to his son, Philip II (d. 1598). The German lands he willed to his own brother, Ferdinand I, who succeeded him as Holy Roman Emperor.

  War became the métier of the leading Habsburgs. Almost continually on the move for more than thirty-five years, traveling by horse, boat, and carriage, Charles V spent much of his reign and resources fighting the kings of France for the control of contested lands in Italy. His son, Philip II, and the next two Habsburg kings of Spain pushed Castile to the brink of economic ruin with their wars in the Netherlands. In the 1580s and 1590s, Philip’s armies were also marched into the French Wars of Religion. Thereafter, two Habsburg emperors, Ferdinand II (d. 1637) and Ferdinand III (d. 1657), would be leading actors in an Empire bloodied and depopulated by the Thirty Years War.

  FROM THE MOMENT THEY COULD touch bankers for enough money to field an army, princes took their lands into war with relative ease. But once the enterprisers had mustered the ambulant city—that is, the desired army—cascades of additional cash and credit would be needed to keep it together, to move it, and to pursue the war. Now was the time for princes and their counselors to exhibit their vaunted leadership.

  5

  Siege

  In degrees of violence and bloodletting, the sacking of cities would seem to be the fiery edge of war. For all its trauma, however, a three-day hurricane of torture, theft, and rape was not necessarily the measure of the utmost cruelty. Long sieges touched every aspect of war, including food supplies and the use of artillery. A prolonged attack on a city—adding the horrors of starvation to death by shot and sword—could turn into an even more murderous operation than a sacking.

  Siena, our point of departure, provides a remarkable entry to the horrors of famine in the midst of sieges. Sancerre, a little French town (and home of that wine), will come next, borne into the chronicles of Europe by the pen of a brave Calvinist minister. But Paris was to be the scene of the deadliest siege of the age. And Augsburg, one of the chief victims of the Thirty Years War, lost more people to starvation than any other German city.

  SIENA (1554–1555)

  The Italian Wars (1494–1559) were dynastic conflicts between the kings of France and Spain. Each side claimed the rich duchy of Milan and the crown of Naples, but they were fighting in effect for political dominion over the Italian peninsula. The wealthy and populous cities of Italy, with their harvests of taxes and commercial know-how, were scintillating prizes. And a peninsula divided into minor states was an open road—all but an invitation—for the mercenary armies of the Valois (French) and Habsburg (German-Spanish) royal houses. No Italian state—neither the proud Venetian Republic, nor the fragmented Papal State, still less Medicean Florence—could stand up to the armed might of the royal contenders, with their armies, when combined, of twenty-five to forty thousand foot soldiers, ten to fifteen thousand horsemen, and long artillery trains.

  In the 1550s, Tuscany turned into the peninsula’s flash point. Seeing the little republic of Siena, a client state, as a weak node in his web of controls against French designs, the Emperor Charles V decided to build muscle there by constructing a new fortress on the city’s highest point. A hugely expensive operation, it was to be paid for by Siena itself, with its diminished population of twenty thousand people. They were fiercely opposed. Against the will of the city, nevertheless, construction of the fortress began at the end of 1550 and was relentlessly pursued. But in late July, 1552, with help from the French, the Sienese broke out in rebellion against the small garrison of Spanish soldiers and forced them to abandon the city. The rebels at once turned to obliterating the new fortress. It was war. And now Charles V’s deputies in Italy scrambled to find the money for it.

  Fearful of passing soldiers, peasants and other rural folk began to pour into Siena, nearly doubling its population. By late December, the city was also host to 10,500 defending mercenaries (five hundred of whom were cavalry), for a total amounting to roughly half of Siena’s ordinary population. These numbers put tremendous strains on daily food supplies and raised the question, almost at once, of Siena’s “unwanted” or “useless mouths” (bocche inutili): a pointed reference to the begging poor who would be a drain on foodstuffs once the enemy mounted the expected siege. The town council took steps to have new flour mills constructed and to lay in stores of grain, salted meat, and cheese. But keeping the enemy, too, in mind, the defenders also combed the country for twenty kilometers around Siena, seeking to sequester or destroy all edible goods, with an eye to denying future provisions to the enemy soldiers, who would certainly be foraging for victuals.

  Always short of money in his grand war aims, Charles V and his envoys forced a protégé, Cosimo I, Duke of Florence, to raise and pay for a small army of ten thousand men to assist in the assault on Siena. To do so, Cosimo had to break a secret agreement with the king of France, Henry II. More, he had to come out candidly in favor of Spain and the Empire, borrow large sums of money in different parts of Europe, and ramp up Florentine taxes. An extra spur for Cosimo lay in the fact that he feared and hated the small throng of Florentine republican exiles who were now gathering in Siena, in zealous support of the revolt against Charles V. They were aiming to bring Cosimo himself down, and to succeed his overthrow with the reestablishment of the Florentine Republic. In its lines of ramification, the battle for Siena stretched from bankers in Antwerp, Augsburg, Genoa, and Venice down to the Spanish viceroy in Naples. German mercenaries would soon be joining the Italian and Spanish troops directed against the French in Siena.

  By March 1553, the Imperial forces in Tuscany had been raised to nearly twenty thousand foot and horse, and operations against Siena’s territories were soon under way. Posted to serve as military governor of French forces in Tuscany, Piero Strozzi, one of Duke Cosimo’s most bitter enemies, reached Siena on January 2, 1554. The new commander of troops in the city itself was to be a French nobleman, Blaise de Monluc; but he was very ill and did not ar
rive in Siena until mid-July. Under Strozzi and Monluc, everything was done to prepare the city for a prolonged siege. The sale of bread, for example, was put under strict controls, and all people without a store of flour had to apply for a special permit, allowing them to collect two small loaves of daily bread from a specified baker. Soon this ration was reduced to one loaf. Meanwhile, the Marquis of Marignano, the commander of Imperial and Medicean troops in Tuscany, was conducting a scorched-earth policy designed to choke off any leakage of victuals into Siena. His troops were also assaulting and taking Sienese towns and villages. Anyone who dared to resist their advances was executed without further ado.

  The summer of 1554 turned into a disaster for Strozzi. His fifteen thousand troops, mostly unpaid, were running short of food and even water; desertion was thinning his ranks; and he lost a major battle, near Marciano, at the beginning of August. Marignano’s mercenaries, on the other hand, seemed to become more robust; they received daily bread supplies from Cosimo’s territories. All the while, too, on both sides, the war in the countryside was turning more savage.

  In Siena, for civilians as for soldiers, the tightening blockade continued to reduce the daily rations of the all-important foodstuff, bread. Looking at moments as though it might end in violence, bitter wrangling broke out between civil and military authorities over the matter of whether or not to expel the “useless” mouths from the city. What did “useless” mean? Were the mouths in question those of the mendicant poor only, or those of all children, women, the sick and the old? What about upper-class women: Were they “useless” as fighters or defensive workers against the besiegers?

  Military theory, as represented, for example, by Bernardino Rocca’s De’ discorsi di Guerra (1582), did not touch fine points on this matter. Its ruthless assumption was that when a city came under siege and food supplies were short, you put the so-called useless or unnecessary mouths outside the great curtain of walls. Who the useless were exactly was evidently a decision for local authority, civilian and military. With equal ferocity, however, military theory also called for the besiegers, the army outside the walls, to kill or somehow drive back into the embattled city all the expelled refugees.