"Italian Wars battles source?" Topic

Could someone direct me a good summary of Italian Wars battles useful for scenario design? I have a number of political histories and broad military surveys, but the battles remain illusive. I have looked at Wikipedia and there is some useful information for the purposes of war-game design, but a tight and scholarly survey has eluded me.
Cheers,
Chris

You could start with the several Osprey books that cover some of the individual battles as well as the forces involved. I have most of them and there is a lot of good research and bibliographies.

"The Art of War in Italy, 1494-1529" by F.L.Taylor, gives a lot of information on strategy and tactics and mentions many battles (although not in huge detail). It has a whole section on the battle of Ravenna 1512 which gives a lot of details on the orders of battle, deployments, maps and the sequence of the battle,
On Ravenna, there are some pages in "la battaglia di Ravenna, Il gran fatto d'arme del 1512" by Sergio Spada that give a much more detailed breakdown of the French forces.
I will be very interested to see what other books people recommend.

The recently released board game Arquebus from GMT Games has several battles from the Italian Renaissance campaigns complete with individual maps and orders of battle. You would just need to translate that into the scale that your rules use.
link

I'm probably going to receive a torrent of abuse for this, but Oman's Art of War in the 16th Century. has maps and some semblance of OOBs. (Some claim dated and opinionated.)
Also an Impetus supplement has a Pavia campaign in the Army lists.
Would go with Arqubus too. You could email the designers and see where they pulled their sources.

Thanks all, this information is useful. I have Taylor's book which is a good start but for most of the battles limited. I thought Osprey just had a book for Pavia, no? Will check out Arquebus.
So, thanks again.
Chris

I second Oman, it is a great starting point.

Generally there is not a lot in English. Most of the original texts are in Italian or French. Probably some in Spanish too. But that is changing with the wonders of the interweb, so it's really a case of keeping your eyes and ears open.

There is a Fornovo book too from Osprey.
Lance and the Longbow might have something too. Got a lot of Burgundian info there.

Thanks….forgot about L&L….

The Pike and Shot Society magazine, Arquebusier, has some Italian Wars stuff.

If you just want an overview on which battles happened (and why) then Mallets "The Italian Wars" is a good base that uses the scholarly approach.