Returned to his state after so long a separation, Francesco Maria found, during the next two years, ample leisure to attend to its internal administration, and to watch the progress of his promising family. The eldest of these seems to have been Donna Ippolita, for whom he soon received, through the Marquis del Vasto, an offer of marriage from Don Antonio d'Aragona, son of the Duke of Montalto. At the nuptials, which were celebrated with suitable splendour, he had a very unlooked-for guest in Ascanio Colonna, whose intrigues to supplant him in the duchy we have lately noticed, but who, finding these hopelessly foiled by the Duke's establishment in the good graces of the Emperor, sought a reconciliation through the bridegroom, his cousin, whom he accompanied to Urbino. This frankness was met in a kindred spirit by his host, and their amity was cemented by a generous hospitality.
It was now, perhaps, that Francesco Maria took opportunity to dictate the results of his long experience of war, in a series of Military Discourses, which were published fifty years later, but which, being evidently printed from loose and unrevised notes, are not fairly amenable to literary criticism.[29] They are but desultory and disjointed observations, carelessly jotted down, with little attention to order or style, and edited without emendation, or even intelligible punctuation. The matter abounds in truisms and common-places, displaying neither enlarged views nor knowledge of mankind: the style is garrulous, diffuse, and redundant. Yet, as on matters of military skill the Duke was considered a high authority, it may not be improper here to record some of his opinions.
This was his idea of a fortified town: "It ought to stand in a plain, its citadel commanded by no eminence. The rampart-wall should be three paces wide at base, supporting an earthern rampart of fifteen or twenty paces wide, with barbicans. This retaining wall should be in height about twenty feet, and have above it a curtain of nearly as many. The upper part, being most exposed to be battered, had better have an earthen facing. There ought to be a platform, rising sixteen feet over the curtain, placed half-way between each baloard and bastion. The baloards should have guns mounted only at the sides, and be of massive strength, from fifty to sixty paces in diameter, that the guns may be freely wrought. Should a baloard be taken, it will still be flanked by the adjoining platforms, a ditch drawn between each of which would in a night's time recomplete the defences. The fosse should be about twenty paces wide, and is best without water, so as to allow artificial fire to be showered down upon the enemy. There ought to be no counterscarp, seeing it generally serves as a protection to the besiegers; but, if there be one, it had better be only of earth, at a low angle of elevation. Above all, there ought to be provided many secret ports for frequent sallies, and for the easy return of the men. It has been long noticed that no fortress was ever carried but by some oversight of its defenders, and everything depends upon a judicious selection of positions for defence. Unquestionably a single sin suffices to send a man to the devil, whatever be his other good works; and, in like manner, one oversight in fortification may lose the place, as happened when I took Pavia and Cremona. In short, it is all very well to play with plans and models, but one must see to everything on the spot."
"He said, in reference to the fortresses of Legnano and Verona, that it was very ill-judged in the Republic never to carry things out as they had been planned, in consequence of frequent ministerial changes, and the system of governing from day to day, and bit by bit, without reference to any general design. By adopting an opposite method, he had completed the defences of Pesaro much more efficiently, and at a third of the outlay it would have cost any one else, simply because he was the sole head and executor, and kept in view the entire works, not the individual gates, baloards, and details; and by so completing them that it must be attacked on two or three sides, whilst provided with ten or twelve concealed sally-ports." He contended that a fortress on a hill was difficult to defend, one on a plain less so; but that the easiest and most secure was one whose defences partly extended along the level, and in part rose upon steep ground, such as Verona, which he maintained could be more easily held by five thousand men against eighty thousand, than most towns by eight thousand against half that besieging force.
In conducting a siege, the Duke dwells upon the necessity of a choice infantry, in which German solidity should be happily combined with the active troops of Italy and Spain; yet he admits that men-at-arms, when dismounted, can be turned to excellent account in an assault, and that light cavalry are of obvious value. "Above all," he says, "you require a well-supplied commissariat, and regular pay, with sufficient artillery and military machines. After choosing the most eligible spot for encampment, just without range of the enemy's guns, the first thing is to provide your baggage and supplies against sudden surprise; next to open trenches for your artillery, securing your men by a ditch wide enough for their operations, but not so broad as to be commanded from the walls, and taking care not to let too many of them at once into the trenches, so as to embarrass each other. It is an immense protection to flank your trenches with lines drawn from your principal encampment close up to the city walls, which must be strongly defended against the enemy's guns, and must contain a force adequate to check their sallies, and, if necessary, to cover the trenches, or even succour your camp."
"Should you resort to a blockade, it is best to establish your army in one or two towns ten to fifteen miles off, taking care to secure every intervening place. At that distance your own supplies are more easily procured, and your light cavalry can readily intercept the enemy's convoys, whilst the garrison cannot attack you, except at every disadvantage, and without artillery."
As for artillery, we find a recommendation of battering guns carrying from thirty to one hundred pound balls, and of field-pieces and ship's cannon from fifteen to twenty pounds. The gunpowder in Italy being bad, fifty was the average of daily discharges; but the Turks, having very superior powder, could fire as many as seventy times, which was looked upon as a stupendous performance.
Animadverting upon those tardy tactics which never anticipated a movement of the enemy, the Duke compared them to a child applying its hand to the parts successively chastised, without attempting to ward off the next blow; yet, Fabius-like, he considered that a general's talent was more shown in his selection of suitable posts than in the conduct of a pitched battle. Popular risings he held very cheap, believing them utterly contemptible when not supported by disciplined troops, and instancing his own experience at Florence in 1527, when, with eighty soldiers, he put down an insurrection, and maintained the ascendancy of the Medici.
With reference to the respective merits of various nations whom he had seen in the field, he said that "a good Italian and a good Spanish soldier are equal. The Swiss at the outset are an excellent force; but, in a protracted campaign, they deteriorate, and become good for little. The Germans sustain an onset of men-at-arms most valiantly, and, during these Italian wars, have become in other respects expert, especially at skirmishes, either in cover or in the open country. The Turks, being unskilled in war, have hitherto owed their victories rather to the deficiencies of their opponents than to their own superiority. He ascribed the success of French armies against the Italians to an absurd practice of the latter, who always fought in squadrons of twenty-five men-at-arms, each squadron engaging another, so that the battle was made up of many separate skirmishes; and, in the end, the most numerous army generally carried the day. Charles VIII., on the contrary, formed in three battalions,—the van, centre, and rear,—and, with his force thus concentrated, bore down the detached tactics of his opponents. Yet the Duke did not consider this French disposition as invariably efficacious, preferring in many cases that an army should act in one body, even at the risk of leaving its baggage and artillery in the rear, and comparatively unprotected. But, on this and similar points, his maxim was not to adhere to any invariable rule."