Battle of Calliano
| date | August 10, 1487 |
|---|---|
| place | Calliano south of Trento |
| output | Defeat of Venice |
| Parties to the conflict | |
|---|---|
| Commander | |
|
|
Friedrich Kappler |
| Troop strength | |
| 5,500 men | 2,000 men |
| losses | |
|
1,500 dead, |
700–1000 dead |
The Battle of Calliano was fought on August 10, 1487 during the war between the Republic of Venice and the County of Tyrol under Duke Siegmund and was the culmination of this conflict.
background
In the years before 1486 there was a peaceful, if fragile, equilibrium between the Count of Tyrol and the Republic of Venice, after Venice came into possession of numerous lands in the south of what is now Trentino at the beginning of the 15th century . There were no signs of an impending quarrel and after the peace of Bagnolo in 1484 the Doge Republic felt relatively safe from the other powers on the Italian peninsula. The situation only came to a head in the winter of 1486–1487, when the death of the Prince Bishop of Trento Johannes Hinderbach left a power vacuum that the local nobility tried to exploit to assert territorial claims. In these disputes, in which the Counts of Arco and Lodron particularly distinguished themselves , the lagoon republic and the Count of Tyrol were inevitably involved.
Also the influence of the so-called evil councilors on Siegmund, his always tight budgets and his resulting dependence on the Wittelsbacher Albrecht IV , who, due to the childlessness, had Siegmund's expectations of the County of Tyrol and thus in contrast to the Habsburg Friedrich III. stood, played a role in embroiling the Count of Tyrol in a war with Venice.
Between March and April 1487, the Tyrolean provoked the republic with the confiscation of some of the mines operated by Venice in Primiero and Valsugana as well as with the arrest of Venetian merchants and the confiscation of their goods at the Bolzano fair. At the same time mercenaries and weapons from Bavaria were brought to him and all preparations were made for a war against Venice.
On April 23, 1487, Siegmund's mercenary troops stood south of Trento under the walls of the city of Rovereto , which the Venetians had brought under their sphere of influence in 1416.
prehistory
The siege of Rovereto
Led by Gaudenz von Matsch , the siege of the city and the castle of Rovereto represented the first act in the Venetian-Tyrolean war. Matsch decided to besiege the city with his 8,000 men, since in his eyes a direct attack had little chance of success or would have involved great sacrifices. This mercenary army consisted mainly of soldiers who had been hired in Swabia , in Breisgau and Switzerland , as well as a Bavarian contingent led by Alexander von Pappenheim and Hans Pienzenauer .
While the Venetian Podestà organized the defense of Rovereto, Venice gathered its troops south of Rovereto near Serravalle and at the same time tried to find a solution through diplomatic channels and to prevent the conflict from spreading. During the siege, which lasted several weeks, Rovereto was set on fire by the artillery and badly damaged. Several attempts to fail failed and the Venetian Podestà Nicolò Priuli then withdrew to the castle with the last contingent. After five weeks of siege, the city's defenders surrendered on the evening of May 30, 1487.
A few days before the fall of Rovereto, Venice was able to employ the 69-year-old condottiere Roberto Sanseverino d'Aragona , who had already gone to war several times for the Serenissima . Sanseverino initially behaved cautiously and waited for the arrival of his son Antonio Sanseverino and his loyal ally Guido de 'Rossi with their troops. Venice continued to seek a diplomatic solution, also with the help of the Pope. They also secretly negotiated with Mud in order to pull him to the side of the lagoon city. On June 7th, a Venetian herald appeared in the camp of the Tyroleans who were preparing the decisive attack on the castle with the offer of an honorable duel between the son of Sanseverino and a Tyrolean knight who was prepared for it . Johann von Waldburg-Sonnenberg declared himself ready for a duel with Antonio Sanseverino, and met him on June 12 at Isera west of Rovereto below Castel Pradaglia on a specially prepared tournament course, which he left as the winner. Behind the duel there was an attempt to establish the supremacy of the two camps in an honorable way without major bloodshed and at the same time to convince Gaudenz von Matsch with the noble gesture of the cause of Venice. Meanwhile, on June 11th, the castle of Rovereto fell into the hands of the Tyroleans.
Preliminary skirmish
At the end of June, the Tyroleans were increasingly having problems with provisions. Matsch tried to stop and intercept the supplies of the Venetians coming from the direction of Lake Garda . For this purpose he had parked a contingent of about 800 men on the road leading to the right of the Adige towards Nago . After the last negotiations between him and Venice had failed, on July 3, 1487 near Ravazzone, today a district of Mori , there was a clash with the Sanseverino troops, which ended without a winner or a loser, but with Sanseverino's son, Antonio , was taken prisoner, from which he was only released after the end of the war.
Shortly thereafter, Matsch withdrew completely surprisingly in the direction of Innsbruck, without staying in Trento and only leaving a small rearguard in Rovereto. The withdrawal was primarily due to military reasons, as the Venetians were now in the majority and further Venetian troops threatened to advance from the Valsugana towards Trento, which would have cut off the Tyroleans' return.
Venice increasingly took the initiative in other sections as well, but without drawing any decisive advantages from it. In the Judiciary , Parisotto von Lodron advanced north as an ally of the lagoon city, on Lake Garda the Venetian garrison of Rivas besieged the castle of Tenno without success and there were more border crossings between Toblach and Cortina .
course
Battle preparations
When the Tyroleans withdrew from Rovereto on July 10, 1487, the overall strategic situation changed in favor of Venice, so that the Republic took over the initiative from mid-July. On July 17th the advance was ordered with the aim of conquering Trento. The day before, Sanseverino had already started to move his troops from the camp in Serravalle to Sacco near Rovereto. By building a boat bridge over the Adige, he also wanted to facilitate supplies from Lake Garda. Shortly thereafter, the Venetian condottiere moved north to Pomarolo and also pulled the boat bridge. Sanseverino's army now had a strength of about 4,200 men and 3,000 riders. On July 20, he succeeded in conquering the castle of Nomi on the orographic right bank of the river . This left the Tyroleans only with the castles Pietra and Beseno on the other side of the river , which were defended by a few hundred men in order to stop the further advance of the Venetians, while in Trento about 1,000 mercenaries under the orders of their Alsatian leader Friedrich Kappler ready for defense that had previously separated from mud.
Venice was well aware that an occupation of Trent would not have been possible in the long term due to the resistance of the numerous opponents of the Doge Republic. Nevertheless, the overall situation was assessed as positive and even a mere temporary occupation would certainly have strengthened Venice's position at the negotiating table.
In the first days of August Sanseverino worked out his plan of attack. The alleged battlefield around Calliano played a decisive role. In the end, the natural conditions also decisively influenced the outcome of the battle. The Adige Valley near Calliano, for example, forms a bottleneck which, together with the castles Beseno, Pietra and Nomi, formed an additional well-developed obstacle on the way to Trento. The Adige, which was not straightened at the time, looped far east at this point and thus represented a kind of natural moat between Nomi and Castel Pietra. A defensive wall leading from Pietra to the Adige, which had only one gate, also blocked the left side of the river the passage.
The plan of Sanseverino to conquer Castel Pietra first failed, as the bombardment by the Venetian artillery positioned on the right bank of the river proved to be practically ineffective after the defenders had reinforced the walls. Sanseverino deliberately avoided a frontal attack because he considered it too costly for the attackers. He then changed his plan to bypass Castel Pietra and move the Adige crossing further north. In addition, a second contingent of Rovereto should bypass Castel Pietra over the mountains to the east and then enclose it coming from the north.
The battle
Preparations for the battle were completed by August 9th. Despite the changed plan of attack, people in the Venetian camp were confident, especially since Castel Ivano in the Valsugana fell into Venetian hands on August 7th . On the night of August 9th to 10th, 1487, protected from the view of the Tyroleans standing on Castel Beseno and Pietra, the Venetians built a boat bridge south of Calliano over the Adige, which was the fulcrum of the attack plan. The parts of the bridge necessary for the construction had previously been transported to the construction site from Rovereto, where they had been completed out of sight of the enemy. At dawn on August 10th, the first Venetian troops crossed the orographic left bank of the river and secured the strategically important bridgehead .
At 11 a.m. the entire force planned for the advance was on the left bank, about 3,000 soldiers and 2,500 horsemen. Only a few soldiers remained in the camp near Pomarolo, but the majority of the cavalry, which were available as reserves in an emergency. The Venetian troops had been distributed on both banks of the Adige, because the artillery operating from Castel Beseno did not want to offer too large a target area. The hours of bringing the troops up and crossing over left their mark and tiredness spread. The contingent at Castel Pietra that had pushed over the mountains from Rovereto was anything but fresh after eight hours. Sanseverino now divided up the troops transferred, the majority of the infantry should help to position the artillery in order to be able to fire Castel Pietra from the north. A smaller contingent of riders was parked below Castel Beseno, while two more troops, one in the valley and the other halfway up the slope, were supposed to advance north as flank protection .
The actions of the Venetians were immediately reported to Trento by the Tyroleans on Castel Beseno and Pietra with optical signals. News of looting also reached the city, despite the ban imposed by Sanseverino, which triggered a general mobilization in Trento. The Venetian plan of attack slowly began to take a direction other than that originally intended. The Venetian artillery was brought into position very slowly and the flank protection of the troops advancing in the Adige Valley was only carried out half-heartedly. The troops hurriedly assembled by Venice for the campaign were to show themselves to be increasingly unreliable in carrying out the attack plans. The town's garrison, headed by Kappler, of around 1,000 men, saw itself exposed to a serious threat despite everything, was far inferior to the Venetians and could not expect any greater help from outside, even if on the morning of August 10th an unexpected help of 400 men Had arrived in the city under the command of Micheletto Segato, who had previously distinguished himself in the judiciary in the fight against the Lodron and had come to the rescue after the situation there had eased. In a few hours the Tyroleans managed to work out a daring plan for a counterattack. This envisaged an attack in three waves, with Segato and his warriors forming the first wave of attack, while Kappler and his troops were to form the second wave and the troops of around 600 men rushed together in the area under the command of Georg von Ebenstein should serve as a reserve and third wave of attack. Altogether hardly more than 2,000 men. At 10 o'clock Segato set off with his troops, followed by the other two contingents. At Mattarello, south of Trento, the vanguard of the two sides clashed for the first time at 1 p.m. The surprise attack hit the marauding Venetian vanguard completely unexpectedly, and the Tyroleans cleverly used their better local knowledge in their approach. Also, the rate applied by the Tyroleans turned pike square as an advantage compared to the preferred Sanseverino heavy cavalry of his army of knights , who had to bear the brunt of the Venetian attacks.
The troops of Sanseverino began to withdraw completely in a disorderly manner in order to regroup at Besenello . Here they found the support of other Venetian units, including a contingent of horsemen commanded by Sanseverino himself and the cavalry led by his ally Guido de 'Rossi. In the subsequent attack by Segato on the Venetians gathered at Besenello, all 400 attackers were wiped out and Micheletto Segato himself was killed in the attack. But the Venetians also suffered heavy losses and when the advancing main army under Kappler came into view, the Venetians began to partially withdraw. The retreat quickly turned into a chaotic escape, during which the retreating troops also overran their own artillery positions. The crossing over the boat bridge also began to be chaotic. Meanwhile, Kappler was involved in hard arguments with the remaining Venetian troops. When the third contingent, led by Georg von Ebenstein, advanced around 4 p.m., panic broke out among the Venetians and the Venetian front collapsed completely. De Rossi and Sanseverino also began to give way. The Venetians escaped in the direction of the boat bridge to get to safety on the other side of the river. For reasons unknown to this day, however, the bridge ropes that held the bridge together broke, either because they were cut or because they were no longer able to withstand the loads. This heralded the end of the battle and the retreat turned into a catastrophe. Pressed by the advancing Tyrolean and Trentino troops, the Venetians rushed into the Adige and drowned while trying to reach the other safe bank of the Adige. Roberto Sanseverino d'Aragona also died while retreating, although the chroniclers of the time did not agree on how he died. The most common variant assumes that the Condottiere fell injured into the Adige and drowned in the process. His body was recovered the next day by the Tyroleans on the banks of the Adige and brought to Trento. Maximilian I later (1490–1493) had a monumental grave slab built for him, which is located in the Cathedral of Trento and was made from red Veronese marble by the Kemptner sculptor Lux Maurus .
Guido de 'Rossi, who initially wanted to retreat over the mountains and had separated from Sanseverino, attacked the Tyroleans in the back after the collapse of the Venetian main army with his 400-500 riders and forced Kappler with his exhausted troops to retreat. At 6 o'clock in the evening the battle, which had begun unevenly, ended and during the night de 'Rossi reached the right bank of the Adige with his troops after leaving their equipment and horses swimming.
The losses of the Venetians in the Battle of Calliano amounted to about 1,500 dead and around 110-120 prisoners, if one takes into account that some of the troops had fled the battlefield when the Tyroleans appeared. On the other side, the Tyrolean mercenary troops lost around 700 to 1,000 men.
consequences
At the meeting of the Tyrolean estates in Hall in Tirol on August 16, 1487 , Siegmund was criticized for his unnecessarily instigated war against Venice, which had brought trade with the republic to a standstill. On the other hand, any attempt by Venice to expand further north was prevented. Although the war was not officially over after the Battle of Calliano, both sides avoided further open confrontation and pursued a policy of damage limitation. Until the peace treaty concluded on November 13, 1487, there were only minor skirmishes along the border and the war ended without significant territorial gains.
In Trento, the averted danger of a Venetian occupation was duly celebrated and August 10 was celebrated as a day of remembrance until 1919.
reception
A representation of the battle by the Flemish sculptor Alexander Colin can be found as a relief made of Carrara marble on the tomb of Emperor Maximilian I in the court church in Innsbruck . In the past, the battle of Calliano was hyped up for nationalist purposes and stood for the successful stopping of the French territorial claims to the north.
literature
- Claudio Azzara, Mario Dalle Carbonare, Giorgio Michelloti: Il Castello di Rovereto nel periodo veneziano: 1416–1509 , Comune di Rovereto - Biblioteca Civica, Rovereto 1998.
- Marco Bellaraba: Una nuova frontiera per l'impero: 1500, Trentino e Tirolo allo specchio in: 1500 circa , Skira, Milano 2000 ISBN 978-88-8118-712-6
- Gino Onestinghel: La guerra tra Sigismondo Conte del Tirolo e la Repubblica di Venezia nel 1487 , Comune di Calliano 1989.
- Luciano Pezzolo: La battaglia di Calliano e la guerra nel Rinascimento in: 1500 circa , Skira, Milano 2000 ISBN 978-88-8118-712-6
- Nicolò Rasmo : Storia dell'arte in Trentino. Nicolò Rasmo, Trento 1982.
- Martin P. Schennach: Law and rule: the emergence of the legislative state using the example of Tyrol , Böhlau, Cologne-Weimar-Vienna 2010 ISBN 978-3-412-20635-2
- Mariano Welber: La battaglia di Calliano 10 agosto 1487. Cronaca desunta dalle fonti narrative , Comune di Calliano 1987.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Mariano Welber: La Battaglia di Calliano 10 agosto 1487. Cronaca desunta dalle fonti narrative S. 23-25
- ^ The war of Venice against Tyrol in Italian, accessed on July 24, 2017
- ↑ Martin P. Schennach: Law and rule: the emergence of the legislative state using the example of Tyrol, pp. 57–58
- ↑ Marco Bellaraba: Una nuova frontiera per l'impero: 1500, Trentino e Tirolo allo specchio pp. 434-435
- ↑ Marco Bellaraba: Una nuova frontiera per l'impero: 1500, Trentino e Tirolo allo specchio p. 435
- ↑ Mariano Welber: La Battaglia di Calliano 10 agosto 1487. Cronaca desunta dalle fonti narrative S. 30-34
- ↑ Mariano Welber: La Battaglia di Calliano 10 agosto 1487. Cronaca desunta dalle fonti narrative S. 44-57
- ↑ Mariano Welber: La Battaglia di Calliano 10 agosto 1487. Cronaca desunta dalle fonti narrative S. 58-65
- ↑ Gino Onestinghel: La guerra tra Sigismondo Conte del Tirolo e la Repubblica di Venezia nel 1487 S. 136-139
- ↑ Mariano Welber: La battaglia di Calliano 10 agosto 1487. Cronaca desunta dalle fonti narrative pp. 69–70
- ↑ Mariano Welber: La Battaglia di Calliano 10 agosto 1487. Cronaca desunta dalle fonti narrative p.73
- ↑ Luciano Pezzolo: La battaglia di Calliano e la guerra nel Rinascimento p. 440
- ↑ Mariano Welber: La Battaglia di Calliano 10 agosto 1487. Cronaca desunta dalle fonti narrative S. 79-83
- ↑ Mariano Welber: La Battaglia di Calliano 10 agosto 1487. Cronaca desunta dalle fonti narrative S. 82-85
- ↑ Luciano Pezzolo: La battaglia di Calliano e la guerra nel Rinascimento p. 440
- ↑ Gino Onestinghel: La guerra tra Sigismondo Conte del Tirolo e la Repubblica di Venezia nel 1487 pp. 155–156
- ^ Nicolò Rasmo: Storia dell'arte nel Trentino p. 119
- ↑ Mariano Welber: La Battaglia di Calliano 10 agosto 1487. Cronaca desunta dalle fonti narrative S. 82-85
- ↑ Gino Onestinghel: La guerra tra Sigismondo Conte del Tirolo e la Repubblica di Venezia nel 1487 pp. 158–159
- ↑ Regarding the celebrations on August 10th in Trento in Italian, accessed on July 26th, 2017
- ↑ 'The Battle of Calliano 1487' at www.tirol.gv.at/.../landesarchiv (PDF; 21 kB) accessed on July 31, 2017.