Costs of War and Armies on the Scene in the 15th Century, between the Historiographical Reality and the Manipulation of Information

Authors

  • Elisabetta Scarton Università degli Studi di Udine

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.53351/ruhm.v6i11.238

Keywords:

Later Middle Ages, Kingdom of Naples, Warfare, Diplomacy, Politics

Abstract

How can we nowadays quantify the costs of a medieval war? There is no clear answer, because there are too many factors to count on and not all of them can be expressed in figures: the acquisition of men and animals, weapons and supplies; and, together with them, the costs of maintaining a whole host of commissioners, ambassadors, informers, spies... The credibility of the available numbers also plays against us: data on money handled, men, weapons or the fleet were often consciously manipulated by those who used them, according to their own interests. Thus, when it was intended to dissuade the enemy, the potential of the own forces tended to increase; while, in order to get aid from the Allies, the tendency was to reduce the value of the own army. In the wars of the first Renaissance, the powers in conflict used to fight with propaganda and information, so it was in the diplomatic arena that conflicts were often resolved. Until Charles VIII of France declared on Italy a real war: cruel, quick and without intermediaries.

This paper offers an original view about how to generate, spread and perceive information related to the size and potential of the armies in southern Italy in the late Middle Ages. From a wide diplomatic and chronistic documentary collection, this work shows that the conscious manipulation of the information became a useful political tool and that, in fact, the success of the diplomatic missions depended, mainly, on the expertise of the intermediaries to operate successfully in this area. Depending on the context and, above all, on the interlocutor with whom contact was made at any moment, the message and the arguments held by the representatives of each of the opposing powers could vary substantially, although the underlying reality was essentially the same. The holders of political power and their ambassadors and intermediaries were aware that the content of the message depended, to a large extent, on the identity and pretensions of its interlocutor. Thus, there was a clear difference between addressing their subjects, an allied lord, or the enemy.

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Author Biography

  • Elisabetta Scarton, Università degli Studi di Udine
    Elisabetta Scarton (Feltre, BL, 1973) es investigadora en la Università di Udine, en el Dipartimento di Studi umanistici e del Patrimonio culturale (DIUM), desde 2008. Doctora en Historia Medieval por la Università degli Studi ‘Federico II’ de Nápoles, en 2005. Entre sus líneas de investigación, destacan el estudio de la diplomacia en la Baja Edad Media y la actividad parlamentaria en el reino de Nápoles en el siglo xv. Es autora de numerosas publicaciones de impacto internacional, entre las que cabe señalar los libros Corrispondenza degli ambasciatori fiorentini a Napoli, I. Giovanni Lanfredini (aprile 1484-maggio 1485), Napoli, Carlone editore, 2005; Corrispondenza degli ambasciatori fiorentini a Napoli, II. Giovanni Lanfredini (maggio 1485-ottobre 1486), Napoli, Carlone editore, 2002; y Giovanni Lanfredini. Uomo d’affari e diplomatico nell’Italia del Quattrocento, Leo S. Olschki Editore, Firenze, 2007.

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Published

2017-06-15

Issue

Vol. 6 No. 11 (2017): Guerra y competencia entre Estados en el Mediterráneo Medieval (siglos XIV-XV)

Section

Dossier

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How to Cite

Costs of War and Armies on the Scene in the 15th Century, between the Historiographical Reality and the Manipulation of Information. (2017). Revista Universitaria De Historia Militar, 6(11), 23-42. https://doi.org/10.53351/ruhm.v6i11.238

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