Order Number 9401207 Fortifications and statecraft of the Gonzaga, 1530-1630 Arnold, Thomas Francis, Ph.D. The Ohio State University, 1993 UMI 300 N. ZeebRd. Ann Arbor, MI 48106 FORTIFICATIONS AND STATECRAFT OF THE GONZAGA, 1530-1630 DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of the Ohio State University By Thomas Francis Arnold, B.A., M.A. ***** The Ohio State University 1993 Dissertation Committee: Approved by John F. Guilmartin Williamson Murray John C. Rule Adviser, Department of HistJ ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation would not have been possible without the guidance and support of many people. My advisers in the Department of History at the Ohio State University, Professors Williamson Murray and John F. Guilmartin, rewarded me with their confidence in my abilities, and spurred me on with their encouragement. They were always truly interested in listening to my ideas, showing a patience and respect that many other professors unfortunately lack. Professor John C. Rule, also of the Department of History at Ohio State, taught me the importance of the broader perspective in understanding the early modem period. Professor Geoffrey Parker, now of the History Department at Yale University, shaped this dissertation in many ways; above all by suggesting that I look beyond the larger states of early modern Italy for an example of the military revolution at work. Daniela Ferrari, director of the Archivio Di Stato di Mantova, shared her own work on the fortifications of the Gonzaga and welcomed me to the archives in Mantua. My parents, who indulged my desire to clamber over European castles and forts when I was at an impressionable age, bear considerable responsibility for this dissertation. Above all, my wife Tiffany Janney Arnold proved unfailingly supportive of an endeavor that at times looked impossible or endless. 11 VITA November 12,1963 ................................................... Born - Groton, Connecticut 1985 .............................................................................. B.A., Oberlin College, Oberlin Ohio 1988 .............................................................................. M.A., The Ohio State University, Columbus Ohio FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: History 111 TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................... ii VITA ................................................................................................................... iii LIST OF FIGURES ............................................................................................. v LIST OF PLATES ............................................................................................... vi CHAPTER PAGE I. INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................... 1 n. FORTMCATION THEORY AND PRACTICE ......................................... 22 m. THE FORHHCATIONS OF MANTUA ................................................... 78 IV. THE FORTIFICAHONS OF MONTFERRAT ....................................... 150 V. THE MONTFERRAT AND MANTUAN SUCCESSION CRISIS, 1612-1627 ......................................................... 202 VI. THE MANTUAN WAR, PART ONE: THE FIRST SIEGES OF CASALE AND MANTUA, 1628-1629 ........ 240 VII. THE MANTUAN WAR, PART TWO: THE SECOND SIEGES OF CASALE AND MANTUA, 1629-1630 .. 295 Vffl. CONCLUSION ........................................................................................ 340 BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................ 348 APPENDICES PAGE APPENDIX A. FIGURES .................................................................................. 361 APPENDIX B. PLATES .................................................................................... 374 IV LIST OF FIGURES FIGURE PAGE 1. Map of North Italy.......................................................................... 362 2. The House of Gonzaga........................................................... 363 3. Diagram showing fortifications at the siege of Pavia, 1525 ................... 364 4. Woodcut view of fortifications at the siege of Pavia, 1525 .................... 365 5. Woodcut views of bastions at the siege of Ingolstadt, 1542 ................... 366 6. Woodcut of artillery tower, 1527................................................................. 367 7. Diagram comparing medieval tower and angle bastion........................ 368 8. Topography and fortifications of Mantua................................................ 369 9. The modernized Gastello at Casale............................................................ 370 10. Map of the Duchy of Mantua................................................................... 371 11. The Oglio line defenses in early September, 1629................................. 372 12. Diagram of fortifications at Mantua in winter, 1630.............................. 373 LIST OF PLATES PLATE PAGE I, Bernardino Faciotto's proposal for a citadel at Casale.............................. 375 n. The modernized Gastello at Casale........................................................... 376 m . Plan of Casale, 1585 .................................................................................... 377 IV. Proposal for a double-citadel at Casale.................................................... 378 V. Proposal for a citadel at Casale.................................................................. 379 VI. Savorgano's final proposal for a citadel at Casale, c. 1590...................... 380 Vn. Plan of the citadel at Casale...................................................................... 381 Vm. Section of rampart at Casale................................................................... 382 IX. Section of rampart and ditch at Casale.................................................... 383 X. Designs for ale walls at Casale.................................................................... 384 XI. Section of ale rampart and ditch................................................................ 385 Xn. Street plan of Casale.................................................................................. 386 Xni. Map of Casale in early seventeenth century........................................ 387 XIV. Siege study by Giorgio Domenico Faciotto ........................................... 388 XV. Second siege study by Giorgio Domenico Faciotto ............................... 389 XVI. Sketch of siege of Casale, 1629 ................................................................ 390 XVn. Detail of plate XVI.................. 391 VI CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION The Gonzaga are certainly not under-studied. Historians, particularly art historians, have long recognized them as among the most colorful, most individually talented, and intrinsically most interesting of Renaissance Italian princely families. In architectural, literary, and musical taste the Gonzaga were unquestionably and continually in the lead. In the mid­ fifteenth century Marquis Ludovico (ruled 1444-1478) brought Alberti, the father of Renaissance architecture, from Florence to Mantua to remake a large downtown church, Sant' Andrea, into a masterpiece alia antica, at that moment a daring plan much opposed by the local Mantuan clergy. Isabella d'Este, wife of Marquis Francesco (ruled 1484-1519), surrounded herself with an admiring bevy of minor poets (who obsequiously prefaced their works with encomiums praising Isabella's beauty) and collected books with a fastidious and expert eye, including issues of classical and Italian works from the famous Venetian printer Aldo Manuzio. Duke Vincenzo I (ruled 1587- 1612) retained Monteverdi, the originator of opera, to design and orchestrate the court and civic spectacles of Mantua. The outstanding painters and sculptors patronized, sometimes almost exclusively, by the Gonzaga make a long list: Pisanello (lived c. 1390- c. 1455), Mantegna (1431-1506), Titian (c. 1485-1576), Giulio Romano (c. 1499-1546), Pourbus (1569-1622), Rubens (1577- 1640), and many others. The artistic side of the Gonzaga court at Mantua has 1 2 been minutely studied; their theatricals and musical programs; their passions for collecting coins and cameos, profane sculptures and holy relics, swift horses and human dwarfs; their penchant for devising and displaying intellectually subtle and obscure visual symbols. The fashionable influence of the Gonzaga court, in Italy and abroad, was not negligible. Castiglione, whose 1528 Courtier defined the ideal prince as part aesthete and part bold warrior, learned his etiquette at Mantua from the example of the Gonzaga. The greatest-or at least most famous-patroness of the sixteenth century, Isabella d'Este, married a Gonzaga, Marquis Francesco, and her taste made the Gonzaga court at Mantua the most stylish of the day. Isabella d'Este, though she never had quite funds enough for all the jewels, dresses, and antique sculptures she desired, presided over an obedient throng of poets and painters that more than equaled the retinue of every other socially ambitious Italian princess. In historiographical perspective, the life of Isabella d'Este became the model for the Romantic nineteenth-century idea of the Renaissance, so much so that Proust thought of her as an emblem of the period as a whole.l Clearly, the court life of the Gonzaga is worth scholarly attention; but such examination alone yields an interior view of the