IT HAS BEEN described as a dreadful day, a most shattering and shameful defeat, a debacle, an unmitigated catastrophe, the breaking of Byzantium, the beginning of the end of medieval Hellenism, and the day that opened the gates of Anatolia to the Turks, while being pondered over whether or not it was “un désastre militaire” for the Byzantine army of the late 1060s. Whatever the case, the battle that was fought on August 26, 1071, between the forces of the Byzantine emperor Romanos IV Diogenes and the Seljuk sultan Alp Arslan is—rightly so—regarded as one of the most significant turning points in medieval history. In recent years, an increasing number of scholars specializing in the period have lent their voices in support of the view that the Battle of Manzikert was not the real military disaster as it was once portrayed, framing the upcoming collapse of the Byzantine rule in Anatolia that followed as the direct outcome of two factors: Byzantine aristocratic infighting and civil war, and the increased involvement of the Seljuks in these civil wars that “eased” their penetration into Anatolia.

Indeed, it is also my firm conviction that Romanos Diogenes's “Manzikert campaign” of 1071 may have been a strategic failure for the emperor, but it was not a tactical disaster. It should have only confirmed Turkish domination of the Armenian highlands in eastern Asia Minor, rather than almost all of Anatolia, which itself was overrun by the Turks within eight years. Therefore, even though no great military figure is said to have died in the battle, and it seems clear that the actual losses incurred were limited to the emperor's immediate retinue, the decisive outcome of the Battle of Manzikert ushered in an element of chaos in the geopolitical history of the Byzantine Empire in the 1070s: the civil wars of the early 1070s that followed the battle marked the political and military collapse of the empire in Anatolia, the Balkans, and Italy as well as central and eastern Asia Minor.

In the introductory part of this book found in the first three chapters, I examine the Christian and Muslim narrative sources for the battle strictly from a military perspective, and I reach several conclusions regarding the value of these sources for the his-tory of warfare in Anatolia and the Eastern Mediterranean in the eleventh century.

WHEN NEW WAVES of Western merchants and missionaries and eventually cru-saders came to the Baltic lands in the later part of the twelfth and early part of the thirteenth centuries they did not come to a region devoid of people—on the contrary. Already during the early medieval period Scandinavians in particular had visited these lands regularly on their way to the prosperous markets of Kyivan Rus’ and the even more prosperous markets of far-away Constantinople and Baghdad. These adventures brought great wealth to the Scandinavian lands and also played a significant role in the founding of several princedoms along the major riverways in modern-day Ukraine and Russia. While some of the Scandinavian merchants and warriors would settle down permanently in these foreign lands, many more simply visited, journeying to and from the local markets and trading posts on an annual basis. On these journeys, travellers also visited the coastal regions of Estonia, Livonia, and Curonia (Latvian: Kurzeme), each having their own important markets and trading hubs as contact points between the East and the West. Such local places also became convenient over winter when travelling became too difficult or outright impossible due to the harsh weather in the eastern parts of the Baltic Sea region. In this way, important bonds were forged between the visitors and the locals.

In the later part of the twelfth century, the local Baltic markets were still important steppingstones in a regional commercial network tying the West to the East and vice versa. Western merchants would do business with Estonians, Livonians, Letgallians, Semgallians, Curonians, Lithuanians, and of course, with people from the Rus’ princi-palities of Novgorod, Pskov, Jersika, and Polotsk bordering the Baltic lands. They met on an annual basis, each having their own cultural and religious traditions through which they turned the entire region into a sort of “middle ground” between an Orthodox East, a Catholic West, and a conglomerate of (mostly still) pagan people in the middle. Through-out the centuries, strong local and regional powers each sought to expand their domi-nance into this important region.

ABRAHAM WHEELOCK (1593–1653) was the first individual to hold a university appointment dedicated to research on the earliest phase of English history and the study of texts written in the Old English language. In the late 1630s, the noted antiquary Sir Henry Spelman (ca. 1562–1641) provided the funding for Wheelock to take up a lectureship in “British and Saxon Antiquities” at the University of Cambridge. Spelman's primary goal in creating the lectureship was to enable Wheelock to conduct research on the rich array of manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon period available in Cambridge. Having been the university's librarian since 1629, Wheelock enjoyed privileged access to the university library's own collection; he also closely studied manuscripts in several of the university's constituent colleges, in particular, Corpus Christi College and Trinity College. The major product of Wheelock's tenure of the lectureship was a magnificent edition of the Venerable Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People that issued from the university's presses in 1643 and that displayed Bede's eighth-century Latin text in parallel columns with the Old English translation of the Ecclesiastical History made in the late ninth or early tenth century. Wheelock supplemented his edition with extensive notes that he appended to many of the individual chapters of Bede's work. These notes incorporate numerous quotations from a broad array of the Old English texts that Wheelock encountered in the manuscripts he studied.

As he emphasizes in the book's prefatory materials (comprising two epistles dedicatory and a preface to the reader), the major goal of Wheelock's publication was to present evidence that, in his view, demonstrated the historical basis of the doctrines and practices of the Anglican church against its Roman Catholic counterpart. This was an enterprise in which Wheelock had a personal and professional stake: he had been ordained as an Anglican priest in 1622 and was the vicar of Cambridge's church of the Holy Sepulchre, the twelfth-century round church located near the intersection of Bridge Street and St. John's Street.

In January 1515, at just twenty years of age, Francis I became the King of France, and, like his predecessor Louis XII, almost immediately turned his attention to the Italian peninsula. He wanted to reclaim Milan for the French after the Swiss had routed Louis's armies at the Battle of Novara (1513). Competitive and impatient, the young monarch led his men over a secret Alpine passage and surprised the papal commander, Prospero Colonna, behind enemy lines. Although the Swiss almost immediately surrendered Milan and the incumbent duke, Massimiliano Sforza, one commander compelled his troops to resist the French and the two armies clashed at the burnt-out village of Marignano on the outskirts of Milan. Francis emerged victorious, and the decisive Gallic victory affirmed the arrival of a talented new warrior king and the decline of the famed Swiss infantry. Yet, the Battle of Marignano was more than a military encounter; it was a clash of cultures, a clash of ideologies, and a clash of generations.

Marignano marked a changing of the guard in the Italian Wars. The new King of France was only two when the Wars began, and he brought a new style of rulership to the battlefield and to the Valois court. Meanwhile, many of the Wars’ original combatants were either dead or in decline, either as a result of the pox, like Francesco Gonzaga, or devastation to formerly rich agricultural lands, like the March of Monferrat, trampled by cavalry, infantry, and carts laden with heavy artillery.

In 1522, Milan once again changed hands in dramatic fashion. The duchy continued to serve as a bellwether for the wider changes occurring in the Italian Wars and Mediterranean politics, with its fall to Imperial forces marking a turning point in the conflict and signalling a shift in the balance of power. On April 27, the Spanish infantry led by Prospero Colonna defeated the Franco-Venetian army at the Battle of Bicocca, just north of Milan. The governor of Milan, Odet de Foix, was defeated by the imperial army's combination of traditional pike and shot formations, and new tactics involving the use of wagons to protect their flanks. The triumph led to the collapse of French control in northern Italy, allowing for the imperial capture of Milan and Genoa. It was a decisive victory for the twenty-two-year-old Charles V against his rival, Francis I. Buoyed by the victory, the emperor elect claimed that the remaining Italian states were part of his empire, and they should pay to maintain the imperial army in Lombardy. Charles's agents extorted money from Siena, Lucca, and Florence, although the states claimed the money was gifted and not a regular payment.

The Battle of Bicocca marked the beginning of French decline in Italy and the rise of the Habsburgs in Europe. Charles's victory at the Battle of Bicocca intensified the nascent rivalry between Francis and Charles, and confirmed the permanent shift in the status quo in Italy.

In the town of Guastalla, an imposing two-metre-tall bronze statue of Ferrante Gonzaga gazes down at his prey. Dressed as a Roman warrior, the balding general stands with one foot atop the personification of envy, right hand on his hip and his left holding a spear. The striking statue was commissioned by Cesare Gonzaga in 1560 and completed five years later. Today, the statue stands in front of the Palazzo Ducale in the town's centre, known to locals as “Franton.” Latin inscriptions on the modern pedestal announce the duke's titles and deeds, while, at the base, locals have placed a makeshift panel in memory of the partisan Franco Filippini, shot by fascists on December 17, 1944. Despite four hundred years separating both Italians, the acts of war, and how certain deeds are remembered, link both men.

This book has examined the diplomatic strategies deployed in reaction to changing political systems during times of crisis. It has sought to explore how Italian men experienced the impact of the Italian Wars by investigating the different masculinising political and diplomatic strategies they deployed to confront conflict. Initially, the Wars produced intense instability and ended the balance of power on the Italian peninsula between the larger city-states. Instead, rulers had to contend with foreign invasion, pestilence, famine, and ruin at a scale that they had not encountered for at least two generations. Smaller rulers, like the Gonzaga, were left bereft and turned to different modes of crisis diplomacy to preserve their authority and prevent capitulation to foreign forces. In addition to double diplomacy, the making and unmaking of treaties, and fair-weather friendships, the Gonzaga also sent their children abroad to pledge fealty in exchange for protection.

However, the initial phase of the Wars eventually gave way to something akin to a new status quo in Italy. The rise of Charles V and Spanish dominance in Italy confined the brutality of war to the north-western flank of the peninsula and allowed the next generation of the Gonzaga to engage in different forms of diplomacy to forge stability in their various domains. Crisis diplomacy shifted to cultural diplomacy, performances of loyalty and fealty, and participation in imperial networks that served to facilitate deeper connections between the Gonzaga and Spanish Habsburgs as part of a united imperial world.

In late December 1494, a Ferrarese chronicler reported that Charles VIII, King of France, had entered Rome. Pope Alexander VI had allowed the monarch to enter on the condition of peace after Charles's forces had ravaged several northern Italian towns. Beginning in September, Rapallo, Mordano, and Fivizzano were sacked by a thirty-thousand strong army of French cavalry and Swiss mercenaries, whose ruthless pike tactics caused a state of panic across the Italian peninsula. By November, Piero de’ Medici, lord of the once mighty Republic of Florence, yielded to Charles's demands for safe passage, provoking outrage among its proud subjects. Yet, no Italian state could halt the French: Charles's soldiers had rations for six months, while the papal and Neapolitan armies had none. These rations came at the expense of the Romans who complained to the pope that Charles VIII had so restricted Rome, no living person could enter. Yet, Alexander VI paid little heed, fearful of the army's savagery. By February 1495, the French had conquered Naples.

Italy was in shock. For almost half a century, Italians had enjoyed peace and prosperity following the Peace of Lodi and the formation of the Italian League in 1454. The League was an alliance between several Italian states, notably Milan, Florence, and Naples, that acted as a deterrent to the Venetians, who remained independent. Beginning in the 1480s, the balance of power was strengthened as a result of the collective diplomacy of Lorenzo de’ Medici of Florence, Ludovico Sforza of Milan, and King Ferrante d’Aragona of Naples.

On February 24, 1530, on his thirtieth birthday, Charles V was crowned Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire by Pope Clement VII in the San Petronio Basilica in Bologna. The coronation was a watershed moment in Imperial– Papal relations, following the nadir of the Sack of Rome in 1527 and eventual rapprochement after the conclusion of the Treaty of Cambrai in August 1529. In the following months, Clement VII negotiated the restoration of his Medici relatives to Florence and, in exchange, agreed to crown Charles in Rome. Charles must have imagined a splendid coronation at St Peters Basilica followed by a triumphant descent to Naples to celebrate his rule. However, such plans came to nought. In late September 1529, Suleiman I attacked the city of Vienna with over 100,000 soldiers in a two-and-a-half-week-long siege. Although the Habsburg stronghold withstood the Ottoman attack, the damage to imperial resolve was palpable. Charles V moved the coronation to the northern city of Bologna, so that he, and his troops, could move quickly to central Europe if necessary to assist his brother, Ferdinand. However, before travelling to Vienna, he spent a month in Mantua in the company of Federico Gonzaga, who lavished his important guest with sumptuous banquets, excellent hunting expeditions, and visits to the famed Palazzo Te.

In 1563, Alfonso Ulloa's Vita del valorosissimo e gran capitano Don Ferrante Gonzaga was published in quarto by the Venetian bookseller, Nicolo Bevilacqua. In five books totalling over two hundred folio, the Spaniard described the deeds not only of Ferrante Gonzaga, but of “many other princes and captains” and the “wars of Italy and other countries, beginning in the year 1525, when Guicciardini finished his Historie, until 1557.” The title page was followed by a Spanish-language sonnet written by Antonio de Gusman and dedicated to Ferrante's son, Cesare. The sonnet serves as an introduction to the Vita, both in terms of its subject matter, but also its primary themes:

The placement of the sonnet, its authorship, and its language immediately prime the reader for two of the key themes of Ulloa's Vita: the close connection between Ferrante and Spain, and the celebration of the virile character traits traditionally associated with Italy's elite men.

On October 21, 1515, a fifteen-year-old Federico Gonzaga (1500–1540) arrived in Milan to pay homage to Francis I (1494–1547), King of France. Federico was the heir to the Marquisate of Mantua, a small principality located 150 kilometres to the east of Milan. His voyage likely took him several days and required the use of one of his father's gilded state barges to transport his household of fifty servants and forty-one horses. Francis was in Italy to continue his predecessors’ attempts to conquer parts of the Italian peninsula in a conflict that became known as the Italian Wars (1494–1559).

In September 1515, Francis had expelled the Duchy of Milan's former ruler, Massimiliano Sforza, in a pivotal battle and had taken up residence in the Sforza Castle. When Federico arrived in Milan, he met with his French cousin, Charles of Bourbon (1490–1527), the Constable of France, who took Federico to meet the monarch. Attentive to protocol, Federico tried to kiss the king's hand, but Francis rose to his full six feet and pulled the boy into a tight embrace. It is unknown if the informal greeting was disconcerting for Federico, but he was able to discharge his filial duty satisfactorily by delivering a message from his father, Francesco II Gonzaga (1466–1519), that expressed the marquis's regret that he was unable to pay homage to His Majesty personally. Federico expected his stay to be brief and had already made plans to be home for Christmas. However, the prolonged conflict between Francis I and the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian I (1459–1519), meant that he did not see his parents again until the spring of 1517.

Almost a decade later, Federico's sixteen-year-old brother, Ferrante (1507–1557), arrived at the Castilian city of Valladolid to fulfil a similar obligation to the new, youthful Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V (1500–1558). To reach the Castilian court from Mantua, however, required a much longer and arduous journey. Ferrante left Mantua sometime in May 1523 and travelled to Genoa before sailing west across the Mediterranean, eventually reaching Barcelona in late June. Unfortunately, the twenty-three-year-old emperor was some 750 kilometres to the northwest. Notwithstanding the unforgiving Spanish summer, a lack of mules, the cost of grain, and two servants dying of the plague, Ferrante and his small entourage finally caught up to the emperor's court in July.

In the summer of 1535, Ferrante Gonzaga came to the aid of the imperial army who had just launched a successful eight-hour attack on the port of Halq al-Wadi (Goletta). Ferrante and his small garrison of Italian soldiers made the journey across the Sea of Sicily to northern Africa, arriving at Halq al-Wadi as Charles V finalised his plans for an attack on Tunis. Literally translated as “river's throat,” Halq al-Wadi sat on a narrow spit of land some 15 kilometres east of the capital, separated by the shallow lagoon of the city's lake. The imperial army would need to navigate along the lake's shores to reach the citadel of which the Greek-Ottoman corsair, Barbarossa, had seized control almost a year earlier. The arrival of Italian reinforcements energised Charles's squadrons and they launched a successful assault on the citadel. Within days, the imperial army had claimed the city of Tunis and its port.

The Italian captain almost immediately wrote to his brother, Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga, to deliver the felicitous news. The letter, dated July 28, 1535, was published in quarto (approximately 24 cm x 30.5 cm) in Rome by Antonio Blado (1490–1567), the official papal printer. Its circulation is unclear, but there are numerous surviving copies across Italian and European libraries, particularly in German-speaking territories where a German translation, “Warhafftige Newe Zeytung des Kayserlichen Sigs zu Thunis geschehen.