The Ugly Renaissance by Alexander Lee

Author:Alexander Lee [Lee, Alexander]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-385-53660-8
Publisher: Random House Inc.
Published: 2014-10-06T16:00:00+00:00

THE UGLY: MERCENARIES ON THE EDGE OF MADNESS

If condottieri like Sir John Hawkwood and Federico da Montefeltro were bad, Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta was the paradigm of all that was truly dreadful about the Renaissance mercenary. He pushed the boundaries further than anyone else and was able to do so by virtue of the interplay between the peculiar balance of power in Renaissance Italy and his own unique psychology.

The changing character of fifteenth-century warfare had produced a generation of unusually determined and dangerous condottieri. With large, highly trained, and well-equipped armies at their disposal, they had not only become invaluable to the conduct of war but had also emerged as disproportionately important players on the political scene. These same developments had exacerbated the darker side of the mercenary generals’ personalities. They possessed titles and land in abundance, which spurred their ambitious and acquisitive natures to new extremes. The greater the prizes were, the more violent and ruthless they became. At best, they were supercharged bandits, plundering, cheating, and extorting at will, and, at worst, they were cruel tyrants, given to conspiracies, poisoning, and murder.

There were, however, limits to how far most condottieri could go. Federico da Montefeltro and his ilk may have been uncompromising and savage, but they were businessmen first and foremost. They knew that too much wanton slaughter was bad for business, and while they could take advantage of Italy’s fractious political condition to a certain extent, there was only so much that the other players would accept. There was, in other words, a brake holding back the mercenary juggernaut.

It was, after all, because mercenary generals knew they couldn’t hope to live, thrive, and survive as murderous psychopaths that they sought to project an image of ancient valor, Christian virtue, and cultured refinement. And it was because the cities knew they had to find some way of working with these most dangerous of men that they occasionally hailed them as heroes, as a matter of artistic realpolitik.

This arrangement hinged on the condottieri’s willingness to respect the balance of political power and to employ a measure of sound judgment. Restraint and, by extension, familiar patterns of patronage depended on their being held in check by more powerful political actors, and on their keeping a good grip on their sanity. Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, however, was a law unto himself.

Fighting was in Sigismondo’s blood: he came from a long line of condottieri. Although they could trace their origins as far back as the eighth century, his family had first risen to prominence in 1239, when his great-great-grandfather Malatesta da Verucchio had become podestà of Rimini. Since that moment the family’s fortunes had relied exclusively on their peculiar brilliance as mercenary generals. War became the family’s profession. They were all brave, resourceful, and ambitious and, by dint of a careful program of territorial acquisition, had managed to gain a secure hold of Rimini, Pesaro, Fano, Cesena, Fossombrone, and Cervia by the time Sigismondo was born in 1417.

Although highly respected as commanders, the Malatesta were no strangers to the violence and cruelty that tended to characterize Renaissance condottieri.

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