Giovanni dalle Gang Nere

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Giovanni dalle Bande Nere (posthumous portrait from 1545, after the death mask)

Giovanni de 'Medici , called Giovanni dalle Bande Nere , also delle Bande Nere , (born April 6, 1498 in Forlì , †  November 30, 1526 in Mantua ), was an Italian condottiere .

Childhood and youth

Giovanni de 'Medici was born in Forlì on April 6, 1498, the son of Giovanni il Popolano from the younger line of the Medici and the Countess of Forlì, Caterina Sforza . His father had him baptized Ludovico in honor of Ludovico il Moro , Duke of Milan . But only a few months after the birth of his son, the father died and Catarina renamed her son Giovanni.

Giovanni spent his childhood in a monastery as his mother had been banished there by Cesare Borgia . After the death of his mother, when Giovanni was eleven years old, his godmother handed him over to Canon Francesco Fortunati and the extremely wealthy Florentine Jacopo Salviati , the husband of Lucrezia de 'Medici and thus Lorenzo's son-in-law the Magnificent . Jacopo Salviati was often forced to use his name and fortune to stand up for the boy's numerous pranks, but in 1511 he could not prevent the boy from being banished from the city for a year after beating a peer in a fight between youth gangs.

1513 he followed Salviati to Rome after this as an envoy to the court of Pope Leo X had been sent. Thanks to his family ties with the Pope, he was accepted into the papal guard. On November 17, 1516 Giovanni married the daughter Maria (1499–1543) of his former godfather Salviati. The couple had a son, Cosimo I de 'Medici (1519–1574), who later became the first Grand Duke of Tuscany .

In the Pope's military service

Giovanni dalle Bande Nere in the Uffizi

Giovanni had his baptism of fire as a papal soldier on March 5, 1516 in the war against the Duke of Urbino , Francesco Maria I della Rovere . After only 22 days, della Rovere had to surrender, while Giovanni had managed to form an orderly and orderly unit from the undisciplined and uncouth mercenaries of his company. Recognizing the obvious decline of the armored knights, Giovanni converted his company, procured faster and lighter horses, and trained his troops as a vanguard or advance unit, whose main striking force was their agility and attacking spirit. New recruits had to go through separate training, often led by Giovanni himself. He mercilessly executed traitors. So Giovanni succeeded in welding his troops into a solid fighting community. In 1517 he fought again for Urbino, in 1520 he threw down some rebel uprisings, including that of Ludovico Uffreducci , who was defeated in the battle at Falerone.

In 1521 Pope Leo X. allied himself with Emperor Charles V against Francis I of France in order to reinstate the Sforza as dukes of Milan and to free Parma and Piacenza from French occupation. Giovanni was now under the orders of Prospero Colonna . In November he took part in the Battle of Vaprio d'Adda , crossed the river ruled by the French and put them to flight. With this he opened the way to Pavia , Milan, Parma and Piacenza.

When Pope Leo X died on December 1, 1521, Giovanni ordered his warriors to color the white-purple standards black as a sign of mourning. That made him Giovanni dalle Bande Nere , the "Giovanni of the Black Ribbons".

In early 1522 he entered French service after Hadrian VI. became the new Pope and was wounded in the Battle of Bicocca . After the French withdrew from Italy, he moved to the service of the new Duke of Milan, Francesco II Sforza . From August 1523 Giovanni served in the imperial army. In January 1524 he carried out an attack on the French camp at night and set it on fire, whereupon the enemy, surprised in his sleep, fled and 300 prisoners fell into Giovanni's hands. Then he attacked the Swiss Reisläufer , an elite troop that rushed from the Valtellina to come to the aid of the French; Giovanni beat them at Caprino Bergamasco , forcing the French to leave Italy.

Meanwhile, Pope Clement VII , a cousin of Leo X and a relative of his father , ruled Rome . The new Pope repaid all of Giovanni's debts, but instructed him to take the French side. This happened when Francis I invaded Italy again in 1524, occupied Lombardy , besieged Pavia and, after his defeat, was taken prisoner.

Giovanni's company did not take part in the battle. In a skirmish on February 18, 1525, Giovanni was wounded by a rifle bullet and taken to Piacenza, but later, due to the severity of the injury, to Venice , where, after his recovery, he placed himself in the service of the Serenissima .

After Francis I, again at large since April 1526, again concluded an alliance with the Pope against the Emperor ( War of the League of Cognac ), Clement VII gave Giovanni the supreme command of the papal troops. When, on July 6, Francesco della Rovere left Milan at the head of the papal troops, Giovanni received the order to withdraw. Contrary to his orders, he attacked the enemy rearguard at the confluence of the Mincio and Po and beat back the mercenaries under Georg von Frundsberg .

Wounding and death

On the evening of November 25, 1526, Giovanni dalle Bande Nere was badly wounded by a falconet near Governolo and was taken to San Niccolò Po, where his comrades could not find a doctor. He was then taken to Mantua to the palazzo of Luigi Alessandro Gonzaga , master of Castel Goffredo , where the surgeon Abramo, who had saved him the previous year, had to amputate his leg. While evaluations of an exhumation in 2012 showed that only the foot was amputated, according to an investigation by Gino Fornaciari, the foot was amputated right above the wound. Death is due to the gangrene formed . Giovanni died on November 30, 1526 and was buried with arms and armor in the Church of San Francesco in Mantua.

The gang Nere led by him remained in the service of the Pope, later of Florence, until their defeat after the siege of Naples in 1529.

Giovanni is now considered the last great Italian condottiere . Already admired by his contemporaries as an Italian national hero, Niccolò Machiavelli even trusted him to be able to become the unity of Italy due to his charisma . The memory of Giovanni as a national hero was promoted in particular by his son Cosimo de Medici , who benefited politically.

Film adaptations

literature

  • Josef Viktor Widmann : Giovanni dalla gang Nere. Ballad. In: Gedichte , Frauenfeld 1912, pp. 65–68.
  • Cesare Marchi: Giovanni dalla Bande Nere , Milan, 1981.

Web links

Commons : Giovanni delle Bande Nere  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Pope mercenaries amputated the wrong foot , Spiegel.de, accessed on December 2, 2012
  2. ^ Famed Warrior Died From Gangrene , Discovery News, accessed January 17, 2013