A Brief History of the Italian Wars

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen D. Bowd
Keyword(s):  
Spanish Empire ◽  
Charles V ◽  
History Of ◽  
Italian Wars ◽  
Francis I

In 1494 King Charles VIII of France (1483–98) decided to extend French influence southwards and led a force of 30,000 men into Italy. The invasion was followed by interventions by his successors Louis XII (1498–1515) and Francis I (1515–47), as well as by the sporadic involvement of the Spanish King Ferdinand of Aragon (1479–1516) and by the emperor-elect Maximilian (1493–1519), and finally Emperor Charles V (1519–58), which drew parts of Italy into the Spanish empire. These monarchs clashed bloodily at battles such as Fornovo (1495), Agnadello (1509), Ravenna (1512), Novara (1513), Marignano (1515), La Biccoca (1522), and Pavia (1525). For these princes Italy offered a rich prize, for many Italian princes the alliances with the ultramontane powers provided opportunities to extend their power, but for many Italian civilians the wars were a disaster.

Italian Wars, 1494–1559

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stella Fletcher
Keyword(s):  
Military History ◽  
Roman Emperor ◽  
Charles V ◽  
Art Of War ◽  
Kingdom Of Naples ◽  
Italian Wars ◽  
Francis I ◽  
Official Records ◽  
War Art

According to the Florentine historian Francesco Guicciardini, Italy enjoyed peace and plenty in the years around 1490. From 1494 it was plunged into what he and others regarded as a series of “calamities,” triggered by the French kings Charles VIII (r. 1483–1498) and Louis XII (r. 1498–1515), who claimed to rule the kingdom of Naples and the duchy of Milan, respectively. Francis I (r. 1515–1547) retained the claim to Milan, and the wars themselves continued through the reign of Henry II (r. 1547–1559). Rule over Naples was contested and secured by Ferdinand II of Aragon (r. 1479–1516) and maintained by his Iberian successors. Milan was an imperial fief, so was contested by Ferdinand’s grandson Charles V in his capacity as Holy Roman emperor (r. 1519–1556). The conflicts waged in Italy in the names of these various princes between 1494 and 1559 are collectively known as the Italian Wars. They include the War of the League of Cambrai (1508–1516), that of the League of Cognac (1526–1530), and the War of Siena (1552–1559). This article approaches the wars by means of Reference Works and Overviews specifically devoted to the Italian Wars, though it is also worth teasing information from histories of Renaissance Warfare. Contemporary Sources provide innumerable angles on a subject that can be difficult to define beyond events on the battlefield or the besieged city and are therefore subdivided into four types: Memoirs and Chronicles, Histories, Official Records, and cultural evidence, the last of which appears under the heading Art of War, Art and War. Some publications deal with individual episodes or short spans of time and therefore feature in a Chronology of War, itself subdivided at the death of Louis XII/accession of Francis I, 1494–1515 and 1515–1559. The biographical genre—Lives and Times—is the most obvious way of dealing with the leading protagonists, who tended to be Princes, but group studies are also relevant when one turns to Subjects and Citizens who contributed to the conflicts in some form or other. Some authors have confined their research to military history, including the recruitment of soldiers, their pay, and provisions, as well as their activities on the battlefield, but the Italian Wars witnessed so much overlap between the lives of Soldiers and Civilians that they are brought together in the penultimate section of the article, which then concludes with the miscellanies that are Collections of Papers.

Renaissance Mass Murder

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen D. Bowd
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Social History ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Mass Murder ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Contemporary Culture ◽  
The Face ◽  
History Of ◽  
Italian Wars ◽  
Human Tragedy

Renaissance Mass Murder explores the devastating impact of war on the men and women of the Renaissance. In contrast to the picture of balance and harmony usually associated with the Renaissance, it uncovers in forensic detail a world in which sacks of Italian cities and massacres of civilians at the hands of French, German, Spanish, Swiss, and Italian troops were regular occurrences. The arguments presented are based on a wealth of evidence—histories and chronicles, poetry and paintings, sculpture and other objects—which together provide a new and startling history of sixteenth-century Italy and a social history of the Italian Wars. It outlines how massacres happened, how princes, soldiers, lawyers, and writers, justified and explained such events, and how they were represented in contemporary culture. On this basis the book reconstructs the terrifying individual experiences of civilians in the face of war and in doing so offers a story of human tragedy which redresses the balance of the history of the Italian Wars, and of Renaissance warfare, in favour of the civilian and away from the din of the battlefield. This book also places mass murder in a broader historical context and challenges claims that such violence was unusual or in decline in early modern Europe. Finally, it shows that women often suffered disproportionately from this violence and that immunity for them, as for their children, was often partially developed or poorly respected.

Scriptural Battlefields: The Old Testament, Legal Culture, and the Polemics of the Spanish New World Empire, 1492–1821

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra ◽  
Adrian Masters
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Social Order ◽  
New World ◽  
Legal Culture ◽  
Spanish Empire ◽  
Correct Interpretation ◽  
Group Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Social Order

Scholars have barely begun to explore the role of the Old Testament in the history of the Spanish New World. And yet this text was central for the Empire’s legal thought, playing a role in its legislation, adjudication, and understandings of group status. Institutions like the Council of the Indies, the Inquisition, and the monarchy itself invited countless parallels to ancient Hebrew justice. Scripture influenced how subjects understood and valued imperial space as well as theories about Paradise or King Solomon’s mines of Ophir. Scripture shaped debates about the nature of the New World past, the legitimacy of the conquest, and the questions of mining, taxation, and other major issues. In the world of privilege and status, conquerors and pessimists could depict the New World and its peoples as the antithesis of Israel and the Israelites, while activists, patriots, and women flipped the script with aplomb. In the readings of Indians, American-born Spaniards, nuns, and others, the correct interpretation of the Old Testament justified a new social order where these groups’ supposed demerits were in reality their virtues. Indeed, vassals and royal officials’ interpretations of the Old Testament are as diverse as the Spanish Empire itself. Scripture even outlasted the Empire. As republicans defeated royalists in the nineteenth century, divergent readings of the book, variously supporting the Israelite monarchy or the Hebrew republic, had their day on the battlefield itself.

Baron Alexander Stroganov’s Mission to Vienna (1761): Dynastic Policy and Symbolic Communication

2021 ◽  
pp. 117
Author(s):  
Olga Khavanova
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Symbolic Communication ◽  
Bilateral Relations ◽  
History Of ◽  
Personal Qualities ◽  
European Education ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Francis I

The article is based on the materials from Russian and Austrian archives and devoted to lesser-known circumstances of the preparation and course of the 1761 diplomatic mission of Baron A.S. Stroganov to Vienna on the occasion of the wedding of the heir to the throne, Archduke Joseph, with Isabella of Parma. The embassy is considered in the context of symbolic communication through ceremonial gestures between St. Petersburg and Vienna. It emphasised the particularly friendly nature of the relationship between the two dynasties and two courts, not only united by a bilateral treaty and membership in the anti-Prussian alliance during the Seven Years War but also symbolically related as godparents. A.S. Stroganov was a young aristocrat without proper experience in the field of diplomacy and of the modest court rank of Kammer-Junker. The appointment was explained by his kinship with Chancellor M.I. Vorontsov whose daughter Anna officially accompanied her husband on the trip. The imperial ambassador to St. Petersburg Count Nicolaus Esterházy spared no effort to smooth over the awkwardness and find benevolent patrons for the young couple in Vienna. European education and the exceptional personal qualities of the ambassador allowed A. Stroganov to fulfil the commission with honour and receive the title of a Count of the Holy Roman Empire from Emperor Francis I as a reward. The embassy became the last page in the history of relations between St. Petersburg and Vienna on the eve of the break of bilateral relations and Russia’s withdrawal from the Seven Years War in 1762.

The limits of power: the political ecology of the Spanish Empire in the Greater Southwest

Antiquity ◽  
1992 ◽  
Vol 66 (250) ◽  
pp. 153-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas E. Sheridan
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
Political Ecology ◽  
Land Tenure ◽  
New World ◽  
Spanish Empire ◽  
The Political ◽  
Epidemic Disease ◽  
Spanish Conquest ◽  
History Of

The Spanish conquest of the Americas was one of the most dramatic cultural and biological transformations in the history of the world. Small groups of conquistadores toppled enormous empires. Millions of Native Americans died from epidemic disease. Old World animals and plants revolutionized Native American societies, while New World crops fundamentally altered the diet and land-tenure of peasants across Europe. In the words of historian Alfred Crosby (1972: 3),The two worlds, which God had cast asunder, were reunited, and the two worlds, which were so very different, began on that day [I1 October 14921 to become alike.

Igorot Squatters and Indian Wards: Toward an Intra-imperial History of Land Dispossession

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-239 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Tinio McKenna
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
American West ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Spanish Empire ◽  
Land Dispossession ◽  
Land Disputes ◽  
History Of ◽  
Legal Structures ◽  
Made In

AbstractThis essay considers two land disputes that took place in the first decade of U.S. rule in the Philippines and that reached the U.S. Supreme Court:Cariño v. Insular Government(1909) andReavis v. Fianza(1909). In arguing their cases, litigants were forced to reckon with the property rights regime of the former Spanish empire. In this regard, the cases affirm the import of inter-imperial frameworks for understanding colonial problems of land ownership and sovereignty. When arguing over the rightful owners of Philippine lands, parties to these cases also drew on the history and legal bases of land dispossession and settler colonialism in the American West. Further, in later decades, the arguments made in one of these cases would figure into legal conflicts over Native American lands. These cases thus suggest the value of also examining intra-imperial relationships, the emphasis of this essay. They demonstrate how histories and legal structures of settler-driven “expansion” and extra-continental colonialism informed, even constituted, each other.

Franciscans in Colonial Latin America

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
John F. Schwaller
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Spanish Empire ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
13Th Century ◽  
Catholic University ◽  
Imitation Of Christ ◽  
God's Love ◽  
History Of ◽  
Franciscan Order

Four religious orders have played central roles in the history of Latin America: Jesuits, Franciscan, Dominicans, and Mercedarians. But the first two of these are significantly more important and have had an outsized influence on the region. Of these, the order with the longest experience in the New World is the Franciscans, having been present in the Caribbean only a few years into the Spanish settlement of the region. The Franciscan Order was founded in the early 13th century. A wealthy young man, Giovanni Bernardone, known as Francesco, rebelled from the life of wealth and opulence into which he had been born, as the son of a wealthy cloth merchant. He took refuse in an abandoned chapel and attracted a group of followers. The central elements of his teaching were that as much as possible, they were to live in imitation of Christ by being poor and humble, and in this way attract people to God’s love. They rejected titles and outward signs of social differentiation, becoming known as the Friars Minor, or Lesser Brothers. Francis collected his teachings into a simple set of rules for his companions, which eventually received papal approval. The interpretation of these rules, however, led to many different fractures within the order, as one group or another claimed to live a life closer to the truth of the rule. In Latin America there were two principal male Franciscan orders: the Observants and the Discalced. The Franciscan Family also consists of female orders, mainly represented by the Order of St. Clare. The order for women is traditionally known as the second order. Beyond the orders for men and women, there have always been individuals who followed the Franciscan Rule but who never took clerical vows and remained laypersons. These lay people are organized into the Third Order of St. Francis, also known as the Secular Franciscan Order. Members of the order arrived in Mexico as the Spanish invasion became an occupation of the formerly Mexica territory. The first organized missions to that region were Franciscans. In South America, other orders had primacy of arrival, but the Franciscans soon arrived and began their missionary work there too. Many of the most famous mission systems of the far-flung fringes of the Spanish Empire were under the control of the Franciscans, including Florida, Texas, New Mexico, Upper California, and the Spanish Amazon. Thus, in order to fully understand the Catholic Church in Latin America, one must fully consider the contributions of the Franciscans. Many scholars have studied the order in Latin America. Undoubtedly the most important contributor to the study of the order has been the Academy of American Franciscan History (founded in Washington, DC; now located in Oceanside, California) as a research entity within Catholic University. It is underwritten and supported by the order in North America. There are few works that provide a complete overview of the Franciscan Order in Latin America. Nearly all scholarly work has focused on the activities of the friars in specific regions at specific times. Thus, the literature on the Franciscans remains highly fragmented both temporally and geographically. While there are studies of early missionary activity in Mexico and Peru, there is no comparison of the two experiences. Much scholarly attention has focused on the initial evangelization of the 16th century, but the arrival of friars belonging to the specialized Colegios de Propaganda Fide (Colleges for the Spreading of the Faith) dominated the study of the order of the late 17th and 18th centuries.

Digital Resources: Power of Attorney, A Digital Spatial History of Indigenous Legal Culture in Colonial Oaxaca, Mexico

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yanna Yannakakis
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Legal Culture ◽  
Native People ◽  
Spanish Empire ◽  
Power Of Attorney ◽  
Digital Maps ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Over Time

“Power of Attorney in Oaxaca, Mexico: Native People, Legal Culture, and Social Networks” is an ongoing digital research project that constructs a geography of indigenous legal culture through digital maps and visualizations. The Power of Attorney website analyzes relationships among people, places, and courts that were created by the granting of power attorney, a notarial procedure common across the Spanish empire. The primary actors in this story are indigenous individuals, communities, and coalitions of communities in the diocese of Oaxaca, Mexico, and the legal agents who represented them, some of whom were untitled indigenous scribes, and others, titled lawyers and legal agents of Spanish descent. The relationship between indigenous litigants and their legal agents created social networks and flows of knowledge and power at a variety of scales, some local and some transatlantic, whose dimensions changed over time. The pilot for the project focuses on the district of Villa Alta, Oaxaca, during the 18th century. “Power of Attorney in Oaxaca, Mexico: Native People, Legal Culture, and Social Networks” is an ongoing digital research project that constructs a geography of indigenous legal culture through digital maps and visualizations. The Power of Attorney (https://www.powerofattorneynative.com/) website analyzes relationships among people, places, and courts that were created by the granting of power attorney, a notarial procedure common across the Spanish empire. The primary actors in this story are indigenous individuals, communities, and coalitions of communities in the diocese of Oaxaca, Mexico, and the legal agents who represented them, some of whom were untitled indigenous scribes, and others, titled lawyers and legal agents of Spanish descent. The relationship between indigenous litigants and their legal agents created social networks and flows of knowledge and power at a variety of scales, some local and some transatlantic, whose dimensions changed over time. The pilot for the project focuses on the district of Villa Alta, Oaxaca, during the 18th century. The multiscalar narrative of the Power of Attorney project speaks to multiple audiences, and the digital multimedia format allows visitors to further tailor their interactions with information. The site operates on many levels. It provides maps and visualizations based on original research, data culled from primary sources that can be used as a research tool, historical and geographical background information, information about how to read letters of attorney, and microhistorical narratives of power of attorney relationships. For undergraduates learning about the relationship between Spanish administration and pueblos de indios, the maps and visualizations provide an at-a-glance overview of the spatial and social connections among Indian towns, ecclesiastical and viceregal courts, and the court of the king in Madrid from the perspective of an indigenous region rather than a top-down perspective. Graduate students and scholars interested in the production of notarial records in native jurisdictions, social history and ethnohistorical methodology and the relationship between local and transatlantic processes can explore the maps, visualizations, and data in greater detail. An educated general audience interested in the history of Oaxaca’s native peoples can find a general introduction to the region, its history and geography, and the long-standing relationship between Mexico’s native people and the law.

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