genoese/pisan/venetian weapons

[pallas]

did the soldiers of the genoese/pisan/venetian republics have swords/armor/lances/ect that where unique from their neighbors? i havent been able to find much information on the weapons/armies or battle tactics of these three italian city-states between 950-1400 AD......

actually if anyone knows of any good monographs on the genoese republic and its posessions in the black sea/crimea (caffa) and the aegean and especially the republic's extensive slave trade, let me know!

[Jim McDougall]

Hi Pallas,
Truly a most interesting question about this fascinating period, and I would say extremely complex as it is more something for the historians here.
As for the weapons, I can only surmise that weaponry of these North Italian 'maritime republics' must have been very much similar in the period you describe.

The 'warring city states' of North Italy included others as well such as Milan, Siena, Ferrara, Mantua and Verona, and from what I understand by about the 13th century were typically dependant on mercenary troops in warfare. The 'condotierri' were bands of soldiers essentially from Germany and Switzerland , and it would seem that their arms were certainly well diffused into the scope of weaponry used in these city states.

With the Maritime Republics you are focused on, since these were key to the vast trade networks of the times, naturally influences from the East must have brought in Byzantine and Arab forms along with others.

The diffusion and development of weaponry is clearly a challenge without really being somewhat specific as to which type, period and region and developing patterns in the variations against historical resources. This is pretty much what you're trying to do here of course.

One of the best references for Italian weapons of the Renaissance as far as swords, daggers and some polearms is "Armi Bianchi Italiene" by Boccia & Coelho. While its period essentially opens at the terminus of the end of your 15th century scope, it does show the weapon styles of these city states with similiarities and some subtle differences.

As for the earlier period from 900AD onward, I would suspect that searching the works done by Dr. David Nicolle would be an excellent start. I think even some of the Osprey titles may offer some insight, I believe there is one on Venice for example. Nicolle did a two volume set on weapons of the Crusades that had a lot of weaponry that may be pertinant.

Dalmatia seems to have always been key in providing forces to these Italian city states, with of course the most familiar being those who became the guards for the Doge of Venice. The development of the schiavona swords would be a good example of infusion from European/Balkan sources, although clearly later.

The subject of Genoa and its Black Sea colonies is a great topic that is key to much of our study on the influences of Italian weapons and trade that entered many regions through these ports. I look forward to hearing of good titles on this as well. It seems there was a book titled 'the Black Sea' but I cant recall details offhand.

I thought I would just open this up with what little I know of this history to suggest some possible avenues for research, and look forward to input from our far better versed historians out there.
Great topic and thanks for posting it Pallas !

All best regards,
Jim

[pallas]

ive been more curious about the history of the black sea region lately, not just the genoans but also the cumans, petchenegs/patzinaks, crimean goths (who apparently still existed as late as the 1600s) circassians, laz, and especially the crimean tatars and related hordes (nogais/nogays, kazan tatars, ect) ive been currently trying to ascertain if the crimean tatars, who where originally a part of the golden horde, had their origins in mongolia or if they where descended from the kipchaks/cumans/petchenegs/khazars...apparently most of the girays liked to claim descent from chinggis khan, weather or not they actually had any mongol blood at all.......of course thats probably information for a whole other thread


so far the best source of info i have found on the genoan slave trade has been "Purity lost: transgressing boundaries in the Eastern Mediterranean, 1000-1400" By Steven Epstein.

anyways hopefully this sparks some conversation or even debate!

[celtan]

All I can add is that I remember once reading that the kid pilgrims of the Children's Crusade were offered transportation to Palestine by Genoese Shipmasters, then were instead taken to Turkey and sold as slaves for brothels.

Also, Genoans and Venetians had very close mercantile ties with the Ottomans, to the point that for the naval Battle of Lepanto, the Spanish placed heavy contingents of Marines within their ships, with explicit instructions to overpower them in case they switched sides or tried to leave the Battle. In fact, the genoese and venetians fought very well against the Turks.

My two cents.

Manuel

Originally Posted by pallas

did the soldiers of the genoese/pisan/venetian republics have swords/armor/lances/ect that where unique from their neighbors? i havent been able to find much information on the weapons/armies or battle tactics of these three italian city-states between 950-1400 AD......

actually if anyone knows of any good monographs on the genoese republic and its posessions in the black sea/crimea (caffa) and the aegean and especially the republic's extensive slave trade, let me know!

[Dmitry]

A book that you might find helpful is -
W.L.Rodgers - Naval Warfare Under Oars, 4th to 16th Centuries; A Study of Strategy, Tactics and Ship Design
Rodgers spends quite a bit of time on the Venetian and Genovese naval warfare.

[pallas]

awesome, ill try to hunt that one down

[Gonzalo G]

Pallas, sorry for my delayed response, but as I has said in other posts, I have serious problems with connecting to internet.

I relation with your original post, I wanted to say that maybe those city states could have differences among their weapons, so it is necessary first to study them before making generalizations. In particular, Venetia had a long and interesting history related to production of edged weapons. And their weapons, particularily the swords, seem to me (though I am not versed on European edged weapons since they are not of my personal preference) under some stylistical influences from the orient, as you often find a ´scimitar´type of falchion and other curved short sabres of a very particular style in their arsenal, which seems to recall in some ways to oriental weapons. You can search for Venetian swords on the web, and make comparisons among them, and those from other European states of the same era. But as curved swords were already known by Europeans, which seems to differenciate the Venetians was, as I understand, their extensive use on them in sea warfare, in which short, curved and heavy weapons are very useful to fight in the thight areas of the ships´s decks, and sea warfare was their specialty. On the area north of Venetia, there were at least two important production centers of edged weapons: Brescia and Milan. Once, Venetia was under the domain of Milán, as Brescia. This neighborhood and political ties implied trade with this weapons, and probably also mutual influences over them. As Jims says, Venetians also employed mercenaries. There is documented evidence that they also purchased weapons to Catalonia, and also employed Catalonian mercenaries, among others. But it is understood that influences also existed among those rival city- states, as it natural among neighbor enemies with long and well established foughts.

In relation with your interest over the Black Sea region, the Geoans are not so important, as they had just a very little role on its history. More interesting and relevant than the Geonoans were the old Greeks and the Bizantines, and you can find many references related to this area on the books from Arrian (the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea) and Herodotus (his History books), and latter from the books from the Roman and Bizantine historians, like Appian (the History of Rome books), Procopius (the History of the Wars), Ammianus Marcellinus (History), Constantine Porphyrogenitus (or Constantine VII, On the Administration of the Empire), Theophilactus Simocatta (there is a translation of his work into english made by the Cambridge boys , and although I don´t have at hand the title in english, you can find it on the catalog of the Cambridge University Press), Theophanes the Confessor (his Chronicles), Zozimus and others. There is a splendid compliation of passages from the books of all those classic historians, on which there are direct references to the Eurasian steppe, by A.N. Garkovec´s The Great Steppe from the Ancient and Bizantine Sources, but it is in Russian. But many of those classic books are for free on the web. Before the Turks, the area was dominated by the Scythians, there were Greek colonies and the Goths had also a presence, not forgetting the Sarmatian-Suromatin¡an, the Pontic Kingdom (as you know, the Pontus Sea is an antique name of the Black Sea), and the Alans, and latter it was dominated by the Hun confederation, and after the Huns, by some of its tribal Turkish components, named the Savir and the Khazar. There is a classic work in english about the Khazar Kaghanate (this empire had the outmost importance on this region between the 7th-10th Centuries!), from D.M. Dunlop (The History of Jewish Khazars), a small work in french by Jaques Piatigorsky and Jacques Sapir (L´Empire Khazar. VII - XI Siécles) and the works from M.I. Artamov (History of the Khazars) and S.A. Pletnyeva (Khazar), though then again, this last two works were written in Russian and I don´t know if they are already translated. Please, just avoid the tremendist and useless panphlets´from the antisemitic authors about the Khazars, scandalously ignorant and biased by their visceral and obscure obsessions, and so inclined to distort facts and make a very serious omission of the main historically important core of the events on the trajectory of this Turkish people, much better known by the antique Roman, Bizantine, Arab and Armenian historians and the modern Russian archaeologists. I have already mentioned another book in other thread, if you are interested on the Kipchaks and Tatars, from Itsván Vásáry (Cuman and Tatars). You can find on the web the Codex Cumanicus (or part of it), with valuable comments. Though not specifically oriented to the Black Sea area, the book from David Nicolle, Atila and the Nomadic Hordes, is useful to understand the culture, weapons and tactics used by the nomad warriors on this area, which was also occupied or fought by Oghuz, Kipchak and Ottoman Turks (among other Turkish peoples), and Slavs (though, as I said, this are only names of political and cultural units, which don´t reflect necessarily a definite ethnic or national identity....that would come latter), so on the history of this peoples you can find more material over the subject. In fact, there is so much material I can recommend you to read, but if you make a search and begin with this books, you will find a wide bibliography, or send me a PM ir you need more extenive references.

With respect to the ´race´or ethicity of the Tatar, you must be careful, since a racial, or ethnic approach in this terms, is a big mistake when dealing with the facts. It is not a matter that those over here were turks, and those over there were mongols. Usually it never existed a pure ethnicity among the central asian nomads (or, for this purpose, among any people in the world), but predominances, since they continually conformed very dinamic and changing confederations which incorporated mainly Mongols (the name ´Mongols´belongs originally only to one of the many ´mongolic´tribes from the area actually known as the Mongol Plateau) and Turks, though other cultural ethnic groups were also incorporated in small numbers. For example, those who were known in the west at that time as ´Huns´, in fact were a confederation of peoples from different origins, as Turks and Mongols, incorporating their new subjects, like the Alans and Goths (the hunnish infantry). Differences among groups usually are based on their languaje. But sometimes we find mongolized Turkish groups (speaking a mongol languaje) or vice versa, and Alan groups speaking a Turkish languaje, like those living in the area of the Khazar Kaghanate. The linguistic criteria are only that: linguistic, and not racial or ethnic in the narrow sense. The same can be said of the peoples of Europe and America.

Comming to the Tatar of the Golden Horde, I believe they were mainly a mixture of Mongol and Turks, but recently, because of political reasons related to the legitimacy of an actual (or pretended) regional autonomy or an autonomous State-Nation, as the modern ´Uighurs´ from the area of Xin Jian, actual Uighuristan, make claims of ancestries to the ruling clans of the old Turkish and Mongol Empires. Though in fact the actual Tatars are not decendent of the old clan of the Turkish Ashina (rulers of the Götürk Kaghanate, and maybe also of the Khazar Khaganate, although simbolically, as the Khazar Khagans often were not those who had the real executive power), nor the actual inhabitants of modern Uighuristan are really descendants of the old Uighurs. This is a very debated subject, as it is entangled with modern ideological and political bias and interests, but I believe you are interested in the facts. The modern names of some actual States of Eurasia-Central Asia often have nothing to do with the old peoples, since they emigrated, mixed or were relocated at the political or economic convenience of the Russian or the Chinese empires well into the half of the 20th Century. Cambridge has a very good inventory of books on the history of this area, or on the nomads who, comming from Eurasia-Central Asia steppe belt, conquered and dominated it. The Russian archaeologists and historians have a great deal of excellent material over the subject (since the Black Sea is part of their main area of influence), and also the very valuable primary source of history represented by their archaeological excavations in the Eurasia-Central Asia area, but most of their works (essays, articles, books) are still not translated to occidental Europe languajes. They even had translated into Russian the works of antique Greek-Latin historians which are not yet translated to english, though the Germans already translated some of them. But you will find a great deal of material on english, and meanwhile you read it, cross your fingers expecting the appearance of more translations or original reasearches published in english, as I do.

Dimitry´s recommendation is very good, and I can add Jan Glete´s Warfare at Sea. 1500 - 1650 (I saw it online, somewhere), specially the chapter 6, and although there is almost no mention to the edged weapons, the book gives very good information over other important subjects related to this commercial cities, their fleets, trade and technological innovations on sea warfare.

Regards

Gonzalo

[Gonzalo G]

However unimportant my last post, I am obligued to make a correction: in my hurry I wrote mistakingly "Periplus to the Erythrean Sea"; I intened to write "Periplus to the Pontus Euxinus", since this is the book relevant to the study of the history of the Black Sea Area. My apologies.