… the Italian Wars.
"I often hear, watch and read a lot of bullcrap on the period (both by common people, in books, movies, games, and even by historians, but I believe that first and foremost the culprit is Machiaveli), so I decided I'd open a thread.
For the sake of easy writing and easy reading, I'll go with a point by point case, although some of them might overlap.
1) The "Standing army vs army of mercenaries" myth.
I've often heard that people believe that the Italian Wars marked the introduction of standing armies from France to a broader european scenario, and that the weakness of italian statues was due to the fact that they relied exclusively on mercenary forces. That is false. Most italian states already had extensive standing permanent armies by mid 1400. In fact, one of the clauses of the Italic League was that each state maintained a sizeable standing army for purposes of mutual defense. The first real standing army in Italy was organized by Bernaḅ Visconti in Milan in 1369, when many sons of noble families were enlisted in a cavalry regiment and were obligated to serve in it for two months each year, and would receive a regular wage al year, even in peace time.
In the 15th century almost all italian states got themselves standing armies, and most often before Charles VIII created his compagnies d'ordonnances. In some cases they were rather big. By the beginning of 1400, it's esteemed that the standing forces of Giangaleazzo Visconti were around 15.000 strong. By 1456 (in peace time) Milan had a standing force of 12.000 knights, which was bigger than the compagnies d'ordonnances, and again by 1476 we know that they had 10.000 "provisionati" (standing infantry).
Venice was no different, and Naples had a sizeable standing army as well.
Similarly, the French army (or any other army in Europe) employed mercenaries in great numbers as well…"
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Armand
looks at some new terrain products, which use space age technology!
