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Fr. Lodovico Melzo's Rules for Cavalry
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2019
Extract
The lieutenant general of the Spanish cavalry in the Low Countries at the Truce of 1609 was Frate Lodovico Melzo, a Knight of St. John of Jerusalem and a member of an important Milanese family. He represents the Italian professional soldier of the period.
In 1611 there appeared at Antwerp his Regole Militari sopra il Governo e Servitio della Cavalleria. This is a folio volume printed in large Italic type, with an engraved title page representing Pallas and Hercules and three typical cavalry soldiers [Plate I], and with a number of double-page folding plates to illustrate the text. Melzo explains in the dedication to his leader, the Archduke Albert, that as soon as the peace of 1609 was made, he judged it a good employment of his leisure to gather together those rules that in the experience of many years he had observed on the conduct and special service of cavalry.
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- Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1954
References
1 Cardinal Bentivoglio in his account of the siege of Ostend writes that “Camp-Master Melzi was ill hurt in his leg” (The History of the Wars of Flanders, Englished by Henry, Earl of Monmouth [London, 1678], 357). This infantry service explains Melzo's approval (registered on p. 20 of his book) of the habit of giving the post of lieutenant general of cavalry to one who had been a camp-master of infantry.
2 See n. 1 and Bentivoglio's account of the siege of Rheinberg: “Spinola had a great care … to secure the fields without; in which the Cavalier Melzi, who succeeded Trivulsio in the Lieutenancy of the Horse, did worthily behave himself; and wherein amongst other Captains, our brother Cavalier Bentivoglio, was much employed with his Company of Lances, most commonly augmented with other Troops of Curassiers and Harquebusiers” (op. cit., 365).
3 Hans Delbrück entitles a chapter on the sixteenth century “Die Umbildung der Ritterschaft in Kavallerie” (Geschichte der Kriegskunst [Berlin, 1900+], Vol. III, bk. 2, chap. 1).
4 This suggests a practical reason for Sir Philip Sidney's lack of thigh armor at Zutphen. See also Cicuta, Aurelio, Della disciplina militare (Venice, 1572), 208.Google Scholar
5 Bentivoglio, , op. cit., 367.Google Scholar Melzo advises: “Quando il nimico è molto superiore di Cavalleria, … devono tutti i carri esser disposti, con buon'ordine, in duo ò tre file per parte, al fianco della Cavalleria, da’ lati di fuori. A difesa de’ carri si dispongono alcune maniche di moschettaria, e tra i carri si lascia qualch'apertura, ad effetto di poter mandar fuori Troppe di cavalli, conforme a quello che richiede il bisogno” (p. 155). For further references to sleeves of infantry, cf. Melzo's pp. 70, 85.
6 When going to seek information or patrolling the roads, they leave off their protection for the arms in order to be less encumbered.
7 Disciplina Militare (Venice, 1572), 258. He calls the archibugieri a cavallo also ferraroli from the ferraiuolo or riding cloak, such as Melzo suggests his mounted arquebusiers should wear to protect their weapons and powder from the rain (p. 40).
8 At Ivry in 1590 Henry of Navarre had 8,000 infantry and 3,000 cavalry, his opponents 12,000 and 4,000—somewhat higher than Melzo's ideal proportion.
9 Discorsi, 2. 18.
10 Possibly an echo of Machiavelli's Arte della Guerra, Book 6.
11 Through the sixteenth century there was much variation in this matter, with a tendency toward abandonment of armor. Aurelio Cicuta gives a formation in which about one-fifth of the pikemen are armored, but also allows for complete lack of them (op. cit., 217).
12 See, e.g., Firth, C. H., Cromwell's Army (London, 1921), 136-37.Google Scholar
13 Changed conditions later brought back such a reminiscence of Melzo's methods as the use of pistols rather than sabers by Forrest's cavalry in the American Civil War. Even the last fanatical believers in cavalry masses were obliged to admit that cavalry would often act on foot, as did Melzo's arquebusiers. See, for example, General Friedrich von Bernhardi, Cavalry, with a preface by Field-Marshal Sir J. D. P. French (New York, 1914).
14 Sir Charles Oman comments on the failure of the regularly embattled artillery at Ravenna to fire on the cavalry on the wings (Art of War in the 16th Century [New York, 1937], 139). Melzo's plate showing a formal engagement puts all the artillery in the center, where it could be directed only against infantry. At Ivry the Catholic cavalry did attempt to take Henry's artillery ( Spalding, Oliver L. and others, Warfare, A Study of Military Methods from the Earliest Times [Washington, 1937], 457 Google Scholar).
16 Machiavelli suggests such a charge by light cavalry and light infantry (Arte della Guerra, Book 3).
16 The employment of pikemen even when infantry are placed in ambuscade indicates Melzo's cautious desire to have at hand a solid body such as musketeers had not yet become; the pikes could throw off a cavalry attack that would have scattered the other infantry. On this Cicuta writes that the officer sending out infantry for a skirmish should “select a thousand including both arquebusiers and pikemen in that number for either arm determined by the danger and the fitness of the site for pikemen, realizing that the pike is the defense of the arquebus against the cavalry” (op. cit., 357).
17 For the effect of a different purpose, compare John Lothrop Motley's account of the same affair in The United Netherlands (New York, 1880), chap. 31.