Кондотьеры: наёмные капитаны средневековой Италии.

Mercenary soldier leader in medieval Italy

Condottieri (kondotˈtjɛːri; : condottiero or condottiere) 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 term "condottiero" in medieval Italian originally meant "contractor" since the condotta was the contract by which the condottieri put themselves in the service of a city or of a lord. The term, however, became a synonym of "military leader" during the Renaissance and Reformation era. Some authors have described the legendary Alberto da Giussano as the "first condottiero" and Napoleon Bonaparte (in virtue of his Italian origins) as the "last condottiero". According to this view, the condottieri tradition would span a huge diverse period from the battle of Legnano in 1176 to the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. Most historians would narrow it down to the years from c. 1350 to c. 1650, with a particular focus on the rise of the commanders of free companies (capitani di ventura) and their transformation into captain generals fighting for the major powers during the struggle for political and religious supremacy in Europe.

In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the Italian city states of Venice, Florence, and Genoa were very rich from their trade with the Levant, yet possessed woefully small armies. In the event that foreign powers and envious neighbours attacked, the ruling nobles hired foreign mercenaries to fight for them. The military service terms and conditions were stipulated in a condotta (contract) between the city state and the soldiers (officer and enlisted man), thus, the contracted leader, the mercenary captain commanding, was titled the Condottiere. From the eleventh to the thirteenth century, European soldiers led by professional officers fought against the Muslims in the Crusades (1095–1291). These crusading officers provided large scale warfare combat experience in the Holy Land. At the Crusades' conclusion, the first masnada (bands of roving soldiers; plural: masnade) appeared in Italy. Given the profession, some masnade were less mercenaries than bandits and desperate men. These masnade were not Italian, but (mostly) Flemings, from the Duchy of Brabant (hence, Brabanzoni), and from Aragon. The latter were Spanish soldiers who had followed King Peter III of Aragon in the War of the Sicilian Vespers in Italy in October 1282, and, post war, remained there, seeking military employment. By 1333 other mercenaries had arrived in Italy to fight with John of Bohemia as the Compagnia della Colomba (Company of the Dove) in Perugia's war against Arezzo. The first well organised mercenaries in Italy were the Ventura Companies of Duke Werner von Urslingen and Count Konrad von Landau. Werner's company differed from other mercenary companies because its code of military justice imposed discipline and an equal division of the contract's income. The Ventura Company increased in number until becoming the fearsome "Great Company" of some 3,000 barbute (each barbuta comprised a knight and a sergeant).

In time, the financial and political interests of the condottieri proved serious drawbacks to decisive, bloody warfare: the mercenary captains often were treacherous, tending to avoid combat, and "resolve" fights with a bribe—either for the opponent or for themselves. Towards the end of the 15th century, when the large cities had gradually swallowed up the small states, and Italy itself was drawn into the general current of European politics, and became the battlefield of powerful armies—French, Spanish and German—the venture captains, who in the end proved quite unequal to the gendarmerie of France and the improved troops of the Italian states, gradually disappeared. The soldiers of the condottieri were almost entirely heavy armoured cavalry (men at arms). Before 1400, they had little or nothing in common with the people among whom they fought, and their disorderly conduct and rapacity seem often to have exceeded that of medieval armies. They were always ready to change sides at the prospect of higher pay—the enemy of today might be the comrade in arms of tomorrow. Further, a prisoner was always more valuable than a dead enemy. As a consequence, their battles were often as bloodless as they were theatrical. The age of firearms and weapons utilizing gunpowder further contributed to the decline of the condottieri. Although the mercenary forces were among the first to adapt to the emerging technologies on the battlefield, ultimately, the advent of firearms governed warfare rendered their ceremonial fighting style obsolete. When battlefields shifted from chivalric confrontations characterized by ostentatious displays of power to an everyman's war, they were ill prepared to adjust.

In 1494, the French king Charles VIII's royal army invaded the Italian peninsula, initiating the Italian Wars. The most renowned condottieri fought for foreign powers: Gian Giacomo Trivulzio abandoned Milan for France, while Andrea Doria was Admiral of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. In the end, failure was political, rather than military, stemming from disunity and political indecision, and, by 1550, the military service condotta had disappeared, while the term condottiere remained current, denominating the great Italian generals (mainly) fighting for foreign states; men such as Gian Giacomo Medici, Ambrogio Spinola, Alexander Farnese, Marcantonio II Colonna, Raimondo Montecuccoli and Prospero Colonna were prominent into the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries. The political practice of hiring foreign mercenaries, however, did not end. For example, the Vatican’s Swiss Guard are the modern remnants of a historically effective mercenary army. The end of the Thirty Years' War in 1648 and the birth of Westphalian sovereignty diminished Roman Catholic influence in Europe and led to the consolidation of large states, while Italy was fragmented and divided. The condottieri tradition greatly suffered from the political and strategic decline of Italy and never recovered.