Battle of Ravenna (1512)
Encyclopedia
The Battle of Ravenna, fought on 11 April 1512, by forces of the Holy League and France, was a major battle of the War of the League of Cambrai
War of the League of Cambrai
The War of the League of Cambrai, sometimes known as the War of the Holy League and by several other names, was a major conflict in the Italian Wars...

 in the Italian Wars
Italian Wars
The Italian Wars, often referred to as the Great Italian Wars or the Great Wars of Italy and sometimes as the Habsburg–Valois Wars, were a series of conflicts from 1494 to 1559 that involved, at various times, most of the city-states of Italy, the Papal States, most of the major states of Western...

. Although the French drove the Spanish-Papal army from the field, their victory failed to help them secure northern Italy, and they would be forced to withdraw from the region entirely by August 1512.

Prelude

Beginning in February 1512, the French forces in Italy, newly commanded by Gaston de Foix, Duc de Nemours, had been engaged in capturing cities in the Romagna
Romagna
Romagna is an Italian historical region that approximately corresponds to the south-eastern portion of present-day Emilia-Romagna. Traditionally, it is limited by the Apennines to the south-west, the Adriatic to the east, and the rivers Reno and Sillaro to the north and west...

 and the Veneto
Veneto
Veneto is one of the 20 regions of Italy. Its population is about 5 million, ranking 5th in Italy.Veneto had been for more than a millennium an independent state, the Republic of Venice, until it was eventually annexed by Italy in 1866 after brief Austrian and French rule...

, in an attempt to deny control of those regions to the forces of the Holy League. Although he had been successful in a number of sieges, Nemours was aware that the impending invasion of France by Henry VIII of England
Henry VIII of England
Henry VIII was King of England from 21 April 1509 until his death. He was Lord, and later King, of Ireland, as well as continuing the nominal claim by the English monarchs to the Kingdom of France...

 would cause much of his army to be withdrawn, and he was determined to force the main army of the Holy League into battle before that occurred. Thus, in late March, Nemours, together with an Italian contingent under Alfonso I d'Este
Alfonso I d'Este
Alfonso d'Este was Duke of Ferrara during the time of the War of the League of Cambrai.-Biography:He was the son of Ercole I d'Este and Leonora of Naples....

, Duke of Ferrara
Ferrara
Ferrara is a city and comune in Emilia-Romagna, northern Italy, capital city of the Province of Ferrara. It is situated 50 km north-northeast of Bologna, on the Po di Volano, a branch channel of the main stream of the Po River, located 5 km north...

, marched east from Bologna
Bologna
Bologna is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna, in the Po Valley of Northern Italy. The city lies between the Po River and the Apennine Mountains, more specifically, between the Reno River and the Savena River. Bologna is a lively and cosmopolitan Italian college city, with spectacular history,...

 and laid siege to the city of Ravenna
Ravenna
Ravenna is the capital city of the Province of Ravenna in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy and the second largest comune in Italy by land area, although, at , it is little more than half the size of the largest comune, Rome...

, which was defended by Papal
Papal States
The Papal State, State of the Church, or Pontifical States were among the major historical states of Italy from roughly the 6th century until the Italian peninsula was unified in 1861 by the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia .The Papal States comprised territories under...

 troops.

Julius II, alarmed at the prospect of losing his last stronghold in the Romagna, demanded that an army be sent to relieve the city; Ramón de Cardona
Ramón de Cardona
thumb|250px|Tomb of Ramon de Cardona, by [[Giovanni da Nola]].Ramón Folc de Cardona y Anglesola was a Spanish general and politician, who served as the viceroy of Naples during the Italian Wars and commanded the Spanish forces in Italy during the War of the League of Cambrai...

 had to comply, and the Spanish army set out for Ravenna with a company of Papal troops in tow. By 9 April, they had passed Forlì
Forlì
Forlì is a comune and city in Emilia-Romagna, Italy, and is the capital of the province of Forlì-Cesena. The city is situated along the Via Emilia, to the right of the Montone river, and is an important agricultural centre...

, and were advancing north along the Ronco River
Ronco River
The Ronco is a river of Italy, a tributary of the Montone. The Battle of Ronco took place here.-References:...

 towards the city, and on the next day had reached Molinaccio, only a mile south of the French positions, but still separated from them by the Ronco. Nemours, short on supplies and increasingly anxious to give battle before he was forced to withdraw from Italy, ordered a general attack for the following day.

Dispositions

The strengths, relative positions, and commanders of the component elements of both armies are unclear, and different arrangements are given by historians. The French army formed up in an arc to the east of Cardona's fortified camp; closest to the river were about 900 men-at-arms
Gendarme (historical)
A gendarme was a heavy cavalryman of noble birth, primarily serving in the French army from the Late Medieval to the Early Modern periods of European History...

 of the "vaward", under Jacques de La Palice
Jacques de la Palice
Jacques de la Palice was a French nobleman and military officer. His full name and titles are Jacques II de Chabannes, Lord of La Palice, of Pacy, of Chauverothe, of Bort-le-Comte and of Héron...

 and Alfonso d'Este. Next to this cavalry was the bulk of the infantry. According to Charles Oman
Charles Oman
Sir Charles William Chadwick Oman was a British military historian of the early 20th century. His reconstructions of medieval battles from the fragmentary and distorted accounts left by chroniclers were pioneering...

, it consisted of three separate units: 3,500 Gascon crossbowmen, 5,000 landsknechts under Jacob Empser, and 3,000 Picards and Gascons under Thomas Bohier, the Seneschal of Normandy. Frederick Taylor groups the infantry into only two units: 9,500 landsknechts under Empser and 8,000 "Gascon archers and Picard pikemen" under the Seigneur de Molart. The men-at-arms of the "main-battle", consisting of 780 men, was commanded by either Bohier alone, or by Bohier together with the Vicomte de Lautrec
Odet de Foix, Vicomte de Lautrec
Odet de Foix, Vicomte de Lautrec was a French military leader. He gained the reputation of a gallant and able soldier, but this scarcely seems to be justified by the facts; though he was always badly used by fortune....

, Louis d'Ars, and the Chevalier de Bayard. This cavalry occupied one of two positions: according to Oman and Thomas Arnold, it was placed in the arc to the left of the French infantry, while Taylor has it behind the cavalry of the "vaward", next to the river. Farther to the left of the French line—beyond the cavalry of the "main-battle", according to Arnold and Oman, or directly flanking the infantry, according to Taylor—was the "rearward" corps of the army, commanded by Yves d'Alégre. It consisted of about 4,000 mostly Italian infantry under Frederigo de Bozzolo, flanked, on the extreme left, by about 2,000 light cavalry under Gian Bernardo Caracciolo.
The arrangement of the Holy League army is similarly a matter of dispute; Oman comments that "the array of Cardona's army, though elaborately described by more than one narrator, is not very easy to make out." At the north end of the camp, near the river, was the cavalry of the "vaward", consisting of about 670 Papal men-at-arms under Fabrizio Colonna
Fabrizio Colonna
Fabrizio Colonna was an Italian condottiero, a member of the powerful Colonna family. He was the son of Edoardo Colonna and Filippa Conti....

. Farther along the river were two more bodies of men-at-arms: the "main-battle", consisting of 565 men under the Marquis of La Palude, and the rearguard, consisting of 490 men under Alfonso Carvajal. Taylor divides the Holy League infantry into four blocks: three divisions of Spanish infantry, each consisting of four colunellas of 500–600 men each, and one formation of Papal infantry, numbering about 2,000, all under the general command of Pedro Navarro; Taylor places the formations of infantry in a deep column parallel to the river, on the far side of the cavalry, and perpendicular to the entrenchments. Oman and Arnold place the infantry in three lines running along the length of the entrenchements; no number is given for the first of these, but the second is given as consisting of 4,000 men, and the third, placed as a reserve, as including "three Spanish foot regiments" as well as the 2,000 Papal infantry. Beyond the infantry—to the far side of it from the river, according to Taylor, or at the end of its line, according to Oman and Arnold—was the light cavalry, consisting of 1,500–1,700 Spanish ginetes and Italian mounted arquebusiers under the command of Fernando d'Avalos, Marquis of Pescara.

Artillery exchange

The advancing French troops halted about two hundred paces from the enemy lines. The sporadic exchange of artillery fire that had been taking place since the French had begun to cross the Ronco now developed into a full-scale artillery duel between the two armies that lasted more than two hours. A new tactic, the open-field exchange of artillery fire was "the most violent cannonade between armies in the field that the world had yet seen", according to Taylor, and "the first of its kind in the historical record", according to Bert Hall.

De Foix placed the bulk of his artillery in front of the French right wing, directing its fire into the Holy League's camp. Navarro ordered his infantry to take cover—the troops hid in the trenches, or lay prone on the slopes of the river embankments—but Colonna's men-at-arms had no shelter available, and began to take heavy casualties from the cannonfire. The Spanish artillery, meanwhile, ignored the French cavalry and concentrated its fire on the massed Gascons and landsknechts in the French center. The Spanish fire was, according to Oman, "excessively murderous", and casualties among the French infantry were substantial; as many as 2,000 men were killed, and the Gascons were so shaken by the fire that the landsknechts were forced to push them back with pikes in order to keep them in line.

Not content with bombarding the camp from one side, the French moved to enfilade it from the flanks. The Duke of Ferarra, who had apparently been acting independently of the main army since the crossing of the Ronco, had moved twenty-four of his cannon around the rear of the French position, finally bringing them up on the left flank, facing Pescara's light cavalry. From this position, d'Este's guns inflicted heavy casualties on Pescara and Carvajal's cavalry; so intense was the fire that some of it overshot the camp, inflicting casualties on the French troops on the other side. Yves d'Alègre, meanwhile, had devised a similar plan on the other flank; re-crossing the Ronco with two heavy guns, he positioned them across the river from the Spanish camp—directly to the rear of Colonna's position. The fire of these two guns inflicted massive casualties on Colonna's closely packed cavalry.

Cavalry fight

Pressed from both sides by the fire of the French and Ferrarese artillery, the Holy League's cavalry could not hold their positions indefinitely. The first to move were the heavy cavalry of the rearguard under Carvajal, riding out from the entrenchments towards the Ferrarese guns on the French left; according to Taylor, Carvajal's advance was disorderly and possibly spontaneous. Carvajal was quickly joined by Pescara's light cavalry and by the Marquis of La Palude, both having been sent forward by Cardona; together, these bodies of cavalry advanced on the French line, Palude moving directly forwards while Pescara attempted a flanking movement. The target of the cavalry attack is inconsistently named among contemporary sources; both Oman and Taylor agree that it must have been the heavy cavalry of the French "main-battle", commanded by Foix, Lautrec, and the Seneschal of Normandy, which had apparently moved towards the French left.

Carvajal, Pescara, and Palude converged on the French cavalry, which split into two bodies and met both Spanish attacks head-on. The initial Spanish charges were unsuccessful in breaking the French line; Taylor attributes their failure to the depleted morale of the Spanish cavalry after the artillery bombardment, the effect of "ditches and vegetation" on the Spanish formations, the better tactics of the French, and the arrival of reinforcements sent by La Palice from the French vanguard. The bodies of French and Spanish cavalry then engaged in a lengthy fight along the left of the French positions.

Meanwhile, Fabrizio Colonna, having seen the other Spanish cavalry engaged, rode out between the Ronco and the Spanish trenches and charged the French line; his target is similarly the subject of disagreement among contemporary sources, but Oman and Taylor agree that he must have attacked the portion of the French vanguard under La Palice which the latter had not sent to assist Foix in the center. As Colonna and La Palice fought along the French right, d'Alègre, who had earlier been summoned by La Palice, arrived with 400 fresh heavy cavalry, as well as the infantry of the French reserve. Colonna's formation, pressed from multiple directions, began to disintegrate, with some of his men-at-arms fleeing the field and others retreating south to where the other Spanish cavalry was engaged.

D'Alègre followed the retreating Spanish troops to the center, where the remnants of the Spanish cavalry were engaged in a desperate melee against the French. Finally, when a part of the French vanguard joined the fight as well, the Spanish cavalry broke; Pescara and La Palude were taken prisoner, Colonna retreated back into the Spanish entrenchments, and Carvajal and Cardona fled south-west towards Cesena. A large part of the French cavalry pursued the retreating Spanish, while the others turned to take part in the infantry fight which had unfolded in the meantime.

Infantry fight

As the Spanish cavalry was making its initial attack, Foix had sent orders for the French infantry to advance on the Holy League's camp. A mixed group of 2,000 Gascon crossbowmen and 1,000 Picard pikemen, gathered from Molart's and Bozollo's troops, advanced towards the camp; according to Taylor, they moved along a path between the embankment and the river, and were shielded from view by the former. The Gascons advanced to the edge of the Spanish entrenchments and began to fire onto the Spanish infantry; according to Oman, they were immediately driven back by "a blistering fire of arquebuses and swivel guns", while Taylor writes that Navarro moved the Papal infantry forward to engage them.

The main column of landsknechts had meanwhile made its way to the edge of the Spanish entrenchments, and begun to force its way into the fortified camp. Jacob Empser and his lieutenant Fabian von Schlabendorf were both killed in the initial push, but parts of the German column finally crossed the ditch and engaged the waiting Spanish infantry hand-to-hand. The Spanish swordsmen inflicted massive casualties among the landsknechts—who were unable to defend themselves with long pikes at such close quarters—and the German column recoiled back across the trenches, having suffered more than a thousand casualties.

The landsknechts and the Gascons proceeded to attack once more, with even greater casualties. Fabrizio Colonna, who had by this time returned to the camp with the remnants of his cavalry, charged into the flank of the attacking infantry; he would write that "with 200 lances he could have retrieved the fortune of the day". Two companies of Spanish infantry attacked the Gascons engaged on the riverbank, breaking their formation, killing Molart, and pursuing them back towards the French artillery positions. The remaining infantry on both sides continued meanwhile to struggle across the entrenchments.

Endgame

At this juncture, the French cavalry—both those that had returned from the pursuit of Cardona and those that had remained on the field—descended on the Spanish infantry from all sides. Together with the German and Gascon infantry, which had reformed and now renewed its attacks, the French cavalry overwhelmed the Spanish formations, inflicting terrible casualties; Colonna and Navarro were both wounded and captured as they tried to rally the defenders. A few thousand of the Spanish infantry managed to escape, fleeing towards Cesena and Forlì; the others were "ridden over and trampled down", according to Oman.

The two Spanish companies which had earlier routed the Gascons, having found their path north barred by the French rearguard under the Bastard du Fay, had meanwhile retraced their path along the river back towards the camp. Marching south along the embankment, they were attacked by Gaston de Foix and his personal staff, numbering about fifteen; in the ensuing melee, the French knights were scattered, Foix was killed, and the Spanish proceeded to withdraw from the field. A few miles from the battlefield, the Spanish infantry encountered Bayard, returning from his pursuit of Cardona; lacking the numbers to break them, Bayard let them pass, not knowing that they had just killed his commander.

Aftermath

Following the death of Gaston de Foix, command of the French army fell to La Palice, who had little interest in pursuing the retreating Spanish forces, preferring instead to return to the siege of Ravenna. The city soon fell, and the French proceeded to thoroughly sack
Looting
Looting —also referred to as sacking, plundering, despoiling, despoliation, and pillaging—is the indiscriminate taking of goods by force as part of a military or political victory, or during a catastrophe, such as during war, natural disaster, or rioting...

 it. However, much of the French army was withdrawn to France following the battle, and La Palice was forced to extricate himself from Italy in August by renewed efforts on the part of the Holy League.

The Spanish forces in Italy were almost entirely destroyed at Ravenna, but Cardona would raise another army and appear in Lombardy
Lombardy
Lombardy is one of the 20 regions of Italy. The capital is Milan. One-sixth of Italy's population lives in Lombardy and about one fifth of Italy's GDP is produced in this region, making it the most populous and richest region in the country and one of the richest in the whole of Europe...

 in 1513. In the meantime, both Navarro and Colonna would see combat, Colonna in command of an Italian army and Navarro in the service of Francis I of France
Francis I of France
Francis I was King of France from 1515 until his death. During his reign, huge cultural changes took place in France and he has been called France's original Renaissance monarch...

.

Further reading and historiography

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