Condottieri were Italian captains in command of mercenary companies during the Middle Ages and of multinational armies during the early modern period. They notably served popes and other European monarchs during the Italian Wars of the Renaissance and the European Wars of Religion. Notable condottieri include Prospero Colonna, Giovanni dalle Bande Nere, Cesare Borgia, the Marquis of Pescara, Andrea Doria, and the Duke of Parma.
The Guelphs and Ghibellines were factions supporting respectively the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor in the Italian city-states of Central Italy and Northern Italy during the Middle Ages.
Sir John Hawkwood was an English soldier who served as a mercenary leader or condottiero in Italy. As his name was difficult to pronounce for non-English-speaking contemporaries, there are many variations of it in the historical record. He often referred to himself as Haukevvod and in Italy, he was known as Giovanni Acuto, literally meaning "John Sharp" in reference to his "cleverness or cunning". His name was Latinised as Johannes Acutus. Other recorded forms are Aucgunctur, Haughd, Hauvod, Hankelvode, Augudh, Auchevud, Haukwode and Haucod. His exploits made him a man shrouded in myth in both England and Italy. Much of his enduring fame results from the surviving large and prominent fresco portrait of him in the Duomo, Florence, made in 1436 by Paolo Uccello, seen every year by 4½ million tourists.
Giovanni Villani was an Italian banker, official, diplomat and chronicler from Florence who wrote the Nuova Cronica on the history of Florence. He was a leading statesman of Florence but later gained an unsavoury reputation and served time in prison as a result of the bankruptcy of a trading and banking company he worked for. His interest in and elaboration of economic details, statistical information, and political and psychological insight mark him as a more modern chronicler of late medieval Europe. His Cronica is viewed as the first introduction of statistics as a positive element in history. However, historian Kenneth R. Bartlett notes that, in contrast to his Renaissance-era successors, "his reliance on such elements as divine providence links Villani closely with the medieval vernacular chronicle tradition." In recurring themes made implicit through significant events described in his Cronica, Villani also emphasized three assumptions about the relationship of sin and morality to historical events, these being that excess brings disaster, that forces of right and wrong are in constant struggle, and that events are directly influenced by the will of God.
Werner von Urslingen was a mercenary of German-speaking origins in the Holy Roman Empire. He is also known as Werner of Urslingen.
The Battle of Campaldino was fought between the Guelphs and Ghibellines on 11 June 1289. Mixed bands of pro-papal Guelf forces of Florence and allies, Pistoia, Lucca, Siena, and Prato, all loosely commanded by the paid condottiero Amerigo di Narbona with his own professional following, met a Ghibelline force from Arezzo including the perhaps reluctant bishop, Guglielmino degli Ubertini, in the plain of Campaldino, which leads from Pratovecchio to Poppi, part of the Tuscan countryside along the upper Arno called the Casentino. One of the combatants on the Guelph side was Dante Alighieri, twenty-four years old at the time.
The Battle of Montaperti was fought on 4 September 1260 between Florence and Siena in Tuscany as part of the conflict between the Guelphs and Ghibellines. The Florentines were routed. It was the bloodiest battle fought in Medieval Italy, with more than 10,000 fatalities. An act of treachery during the battle is recorded by Dante Alighieri in the Inferno section of the Divine Comedy.
Enzo was an illegitimate son of the Hohenstaufen emperor Frederick II, who appointed him 'King of Sardinia' in 1238. He played a major role in the wars between Guelphs and Ghibellines in the Imperial kingdom of Italy, and was captured by his enemies in 1249. He remained imprisoned in Bologna until his death.
The Battle of Zappolino, the only battle of the War of the Oaken Bucket, was fought in November 1325 between forces representing the Italian towns of Bologna and Modena, an incident in the series of raids and reprisals between the two cities that were part of the larger conflicts of Guelphs and Ghibellines. The Modenese were victorious. Though many clashes between Guelphs and Ghibellines loomed larger to contemporaries than to historians, the unusually-large encounter involved 4,000 estimated cavalry and some 35,000 foot soldiers, and 2,000 men lost their lives. The location of the battle, at the foot of a hill just outside the castle walls, is now a frazione of the municipality of Castello di Serravalle, Emilia-Romagna.
The Battle of Parabiago was fought in February 1339 near Parabiago, in Lombardy, northern Italy, between the Milanese army and the St. George's Mercenaries of Lodrisio Visconti. A renowned condottiero, the latter was an exiled member of the Visconti family then in power in Milan with a kind of triumvirate formed by Azzone and his uncles, Luchino and Archbishop Giovanni Visconti. Aiming to return victoriously to his city, he hired some 2,500 knights, mainly from Germany, and 1,000 Swiss infantry which had fought in the unsuccessful war of Mastino II della Scala for the hegemony in northern Italy. These units were led by Werner von Urslingen and Konrad von Landau.
Lodrisio Visconti was an Italian condottiero.
The Great Company was a group of mercenaries, chiefly of German origin but operating in the Italian peninsula, who flourished in the mid-14th century. At its height, the company numbered approximately 10,000-12,000 men, chiefly armored cavalry. The Great Company's power set the pattern for later condottieri who came to dominate Renaissance Italian warfare.
Corso Donati was a politician and leader of the Black Guelph faction in 13th- and early 14th- century Florence.
The Nuova Cronica or New Chronicles is a 14th-century history of Florence created in a year-by-year linear format and written by the Italian banker and official Giovanni Villani. The idea came to him in the year 1300, after attending Rome's first Jubilee. Villani realized that Rome's many historical achievements were well-known and desired to lay out a history of the origins of his own city of Florence. In his Cronica, Villani described in detail the many building projects of the city, statistical information on population, ordinances, commerce and trade, education, and religious facilities. He also described several disasters such as famines, floods, fires, and the pandemic of the Black Death in 1348, which would take his own life. Villani's work on the Nuova Cronica was continued by his brother Matteo and his nephew Filippo after his death. It has been described as the first introduction of statistics as a positive element in history.
A free company was an army of mercenaries between the 12th and 14th centuries recruited by private employers during wars. They acted independently of any government, and were thus "free". They regularly made a living by plunder when they were not employed; in France they were called routiers and écorcheurs and operated outside the highly structured law of arms. The term "free company" is most often applied to those companies of soldiers which formed after the Peace of Brétigny during the Hundred Years' War and were active mainly in France, but it has been applied to other companies, such as the Catalan Company and companies that operated elsewhere, such as in Italy and the Holy Roman Empire.
The Battle of Canturino was a clash of two condottiere companies, the long-established Great Company under Konrad von Landau and the newer White Company under Albert Sterz and John Hawkwood near Novara, north-west of Milan.
Jean Montréal du Bar, also known as Fra Moriale or Montréal de Albarno, was a Provençal mercenary and condottiero.
The Compagnia di San Giorgio was the name of several companies of mercenaries in Italy during the 14th century.
Albert Sterz was a German noble who was a leader of mercenary Free companies, primarily operating in Italy.
Rinaldo Giver, known as Malerba, died 1345, was a German or Swiss condottiero.