Mad Blood Stirring

Mad Blood Stirring: Vendetta in Renaissance Italy by Edward Muir looks at the nature of Vendetta on the northern fringes of venetian territory through the history of a particular extend struggle between two powerful groups of nobles at from the end of the fifteenth through the end of the sixteenth century.  It focuses most of all on a particularly grisly outburst during the Carnival of 1511.

The struggle between the Savorgnan and Delle Torre family and their followers is tracked in loving detail along with the fortunes of Friuli as its Venetian rulers alter existing power structures to in an effort control Venice's frontiers with the Emperor and the Turks.

In addition to learning the unpleasant rules of Vendetta (where the objective is not just the to kill an enemy, but to utterly disgrace him in life and desecrate his remains in death), there is a good deal of information about the nature of small scale border raiding and ambush in the early 16th Century - a perspective lost (for good reason) in any history of the Italian Wars that focuses on great sieges, decisive battles, and high politics.

The Carnival disturbances went beyond the direct participants in the vendetta; it became a full scale peasant uprising.  In examining this aspect, Muir also gives us a look at life at the low end of the noble class.

Finally, looking a the conclusion of the vendetta - which evolved from ambush, to duels, to a war of words in print - lets us look at the evolution of the "new manners" from the courts of the sixteenth century.  The mechanisms of dueling that survived into our own time -- challenge, choice of weapons, seconds -- is in this corner of the world a late imposition on the older structure of revenge and is to some extent successful in resolving the vendetta by moving he contest from group to individual honor.

A book of interest to people interested in both social and military history; for re-enactors dedicated to the renaissance this might help show the tone of interactions behind the civilized facade.  The difficulty, of course, would come in generalizing from the particular of Friuli to  the wider sphere European or even of purely Italian traditions.

The Italian Wars

Pearson  has been making a real contribution to accessible scholarship with its Early Modern Wars in Perspective series; this book keeps up the high standard.

In the introduction, Christine Shaw (The Politics of Exile in Renaissance Italy) describes how she was brought on board to work with Michael Mallett (The Military Organisation of a Renaissance State with JR Hale, Mercenaries and their Masters, and many others over a long career) to complete this work.  While Mallett passed away before they could work together, she (with full support from his family) brought the work to completion.

Everyone who knows about the late Italian (or early northern) renaissance knows a bit about the Italian wars.  The battles are a large chapter in Oman's History of the Art of War in the Sixteenth Century, along with more recent "battle studies" such as Arnold's The Renaissance at War or Osprey's Campaign Series books on Pavia and Fornovo.  The period is a favorite of film and television as well.  Indeed, for a war that was not fought in English the anglo enthusiast has been amazing well served.  Up until now, however, we have lacked a single modern survey in English to place the whole series of wars in context.

That drought is over.  Shaw has produced a complete and solid narrative history that provides a complete background for the whole period, divided into chapters around the strategic themes that unfolded as the wars progressed and evolved.  In addition to the narrative we are provided with solid analysis.  Chapters on the changes in military operations and military recruitment follow the chapter on Pavia and its aftermath (the traditional place to take a big, deep breath) and a final chapter on the results of the wars.  For me, I think this last chapter was the most enlightening since the conventional conclusion for the period is "and then Italy got boring unless you talk about Galileo".

This is not the engaging, personal history of  Tuchman or Wedgwood.  While it is accessible to the amateur it is a first and foremost  a work of professional scholarship.  It is, on the other hand, superbly clean, readable prose well crafted for a 21st century audience.  This would be an excellent reference for an undergraduate or even an advance high-school research paper but it will also doubtless be used by professional historians as the go-to survey work for background reference.

Books in the series, sadly, seldom stay in print long so if you care about the topic for goodness sakes buy it now; university acquisitions are not what they used to be.