How the miniature “Niccolò da Montefeltro” came about
“semper de ista domo comitum montis feretri fuerunt viri probissimi et in armis ardui et robusti ….” (Chronicler from Rimini)
Niccolò was the son of Cantuccio and grandson of Count Speranza da Montefeltro; his date of birth is uncertain but it would reasonably be around the year 1315 or a little later considering that the first news regarding him go back to 1334 when he must have been a very young man if not an adolescent.
The year 1334 was a crucial year in the life of the young Niccolò, in that his name appears among those who, being involved in the conspiracy against his uncle, Count Nolfo, enemy of his grandfather Speranza, were exiled from Urbino and from the old properties and estates.
The fracture within the family of the Count of Montefeltro came as a result of the political involvement that, in the first half of the 1300s, had led to the downfall of the Ghibelline-Imperial forces of which the Montefeltro had made part, both by tradition and for self-interest.
Despite the weakening of the Imperial families in 1324, the Montefeltro had succeeded to re-occupy the city of Urbino, supporting Guido Tarlati da Pietramala, Lord of the neighbouring Arezzo and adversary of the ecclesiastical Guelphs.
Thanks to this alliance, the Montefeltro, in the persons of Count Speranza and Count Nolfo, succeeded to exercise their control over the city for about a year despite the claims of the Curia of Avignon.
But in 1334, thus, the Pietramala, on whose support the Montefeltro gained their fortune, were defeated by the league of Guelph cities, headed by Florence.
It was in this dangerous situation that the relations within the family broke up. In fact, when Count Nolfo decided to approach the Florentine Guelphs, Count Speranza decided to react and plotted a conspiracy with his sons and grandsons which however failed; and thus Count Speranza and his relatives were banished from Urbino and forced into exile.
Among these forced exiles who became involved in working with arms to survive, there was Niccolò who would gain the honour to be remembered among the captains of the militia of his time.
The general political situation was such that the distinction between Guelphs and Ghibellines had lost its meaning and it was only contingent interests that led to the choices of alliances; consequently, while Nolfo da Montefeltro after numerous incidents was approaching the Visconti of an Imperial line, in reaction the family branch which had followed Count Speranza in exile went on to support the Church of Avignon.
In the meantime, Niccolò started to make a name for himself among the soldiers of the Church and even before Cardinal Egidio Albornoz was sent to Italy as a Pontifical Legate, the young Montefeltro had gained a position of utmost respect among the crowd of army militiamen; in fact we find that he is named as Constable of the Cavalry during the war conducted by the Papacy of Avignon against Archbishop Giovanni Visconti, and on this occasion, Niccolò found himself fighting against those Ghibelline armies commanded by his uncle Count Nolfo.
For this conduct, on the 30th November 1351 the treasurer of the estate of San Pietro registered in its accounting books the payment made of the monthly stipend of Niccolò and his men to a total of 26 posts and 12 nags:
“ solvi Nicolao comiti de Montefeltro conestabili equitum Camere dicti Patrimonii pro stipendiis suis et XXVI postarum et XII ronzinorum cum quibus servivit … uno mense ad supradictam, septem florenorum pro qualibet posta et unius flor. pro quolibet ronzino …”.
Enlistment therefore meant seven florins for every post and one florin for every nag. This gives rise to a problem of interpretation which is of certain importance for the value of the importance achieved by Niccolò as captain, in particular if the cited ‘posts’ were made equal to the so-called ‘lances’, thus one has to take into consideration that three men make up a ‘post’, then in total this would be 78 men which would make Count Niccolò more of a team leader rather than a real captain.
But if we consider, as seems more probable, a post made up of five ‘lances’, then the command would be of 390 men, quite a notable force for the standards of the time.
At this time, Niccolò is among the soldiers who are fighting the militia of the Visconti in the vicinity of Orvieto. On the 11th December 1353, he is at the service of Perugia. In 1354 he is present at the capture of Viterbo in the campaign led by Legate Albornoz against Giovanni of the Prefects of Vico.
Always under the orders of Albornoz he took part in the storming of Fermo and he was acknowledged a prize, together with other captains, for the victory they gained. The main objective of the Pontifical Legate was to bring order and peace again in the estates of the Church which had been upset with the fights among local communes and lords; thus in 1355 the Cardinal reconciled with Count Nolfo and the Montefeltro family faction opposed to Niccolò.
This reconciliation in the name of superior interests sacrificed the possibility of a re-entry to Urbino of the exiled Niccolò who, bring truly deluded in his aspirations with the attitude of Albornoz, left the services of the Legate to seek his fortune elsewhere.
It was in those years maybe that Niccolò became part of the company of Count Lando with whom he went down to the Kingdom of Naples at the service of Queen Giovanna and of Luigi da Taranto.
Ended the Neapolitan campaign, we hear that Niccolò is at the siege of Piccioli, enlisted with the mercenary militia of Florence against Pisa, and it was at Piccioli that the venture with the Compagnia del Cappelletto (“Little Hat Company”) started off with the mutiny in August 1362, according to the chronicler Villani, or in 1363 according to Tommasi.
The episode is so vividly narrated that Matteo Villani in his “Chronicle” that it is best to reproduce in whole the paragraph that describes it:
“The capture of Piccioli was quite a scandalous affair between the commune of Florence and soldiers: being that some of them, namely Count Niccolò of Urbino, Ugolino de’ Sabatine of Bologna, and Marcolfo de’ Rossi of Rimini, men of great spirit and following, together with the majority of the German constables, on the instigation of the procurators of their wages, on the 30th August of the said year, gave rise to an argument with the commune, saying that for the capture of Piccioli they had to have double pay and a full month … The priors determined that their demand was not reasonable, at which the ambassador returned to the camp with this answer; furiously the afore-mentioned Niccolò, Ugolino and Marcolfo placed a hat on a lance, saying that whoever wanted double pay and a full month place himself under the sign: at which in about an hour there assemble the afore-mentioned Niccolò, Ugolino and Marcolfo with their brigades and many German and Burgundian corporals, so much so that they surpassed the number of one thousand horsemen … when this was noted in Florence, the afore-mentioned Niccolò, Ugolino and Marcolfo, and the present German constables were dismissed: and they regrouped at Ossaia in Arezzo and created a company, which, because of the above-mentioned case, of the hat placed on the lance, they called the ‘company of the small hat’ …”
A big part of the components of the company came from Urbino and Gaifa, Castel Durante, Fossombrone, Cagli, Cantiano, Belforte all’Isauro, Sassocorvaro, Iesi, Fabriano, Città di Castello, Umbertine, Borgo San Sepolcro and other more distant places beyond the Marche region, Umbria and Tuscany; for this reason, the company also became to be known as “societas italicorum” that is “company of the Italians”.
The company, after a long stay in the lands of the estate of San Pietro, where it had to create some problems seeing that the Cardinal Legate recommended to the local officers to close the people in the castles so as not to be molested by soldiers on their way to several ventures, was enlisted for a short period by Perugia, for which it contributed to the capture of the castle of Monte Fontignano, thus gaining a certain fame from this effort.
After this interlude, Niccolò and his companions probably returned to serve in Florence and became engaged to wreak havoc in the territory of Siena. In reality, the relationship between the compagnia del cappelletto and Florence is not very clear since Florence at that time was at peace with Siena, but considering that between these two communes, the neighbouring relationship was always tense, it is not improbable that there were secret agreements with the Florentines and Niccolò, who, on crossing the territory of Siena with his followers coming from Perugia, could have thought that he was doing a good thing for Florence in inflicting along the way as much damage as possible to that city which the Florentines always considered an enemy.
It also seems that the citizens of Florence gained a certain economic benefit from the raids of the company on the Siena estates seeing that the company bought the supplies from the Florentines and sold to them whatever they robbed from the Sienese. These tried to reach an agreement with the Company of the Italians which had entered their territory in the autumn of 1363, but the meeting between the representatives of the two parties led to nothing and this behaviour, very peculiar for mercenaries whose main interest should have been profit, gives credence to the hypothesis that they were already better paid by others, obviously the Florentines.
At this point the Sienese decided to descend to the battlefield against the intruders, enlisting in turn their own mercenaries and calling their own people’s militia to arms.
In the meantime the Company had occupied Companatico leaving a garrison of a few hundred men while the rest went towards Torrita in Val di Chiana. The Sienese army followed marching orders parallel to those of the Compagnia del cappelletto, finally converging towards Torrita where in early October of that year, 1363, the battle of Val di Chiana was fought – this became renowned after the painter Lippo Vanni painted a fresco of it in the hall of the world map in the Town Hall of Siena.