Military Engineers and Artillery Production in Milan Under the Sforza (1450–1535). Institutions, Professionalism, Techniques

Abstract

The late 15th-century Milanese army boasted an impressive artillery park of several heavy bombards and a multitude of light field artillery pieces. Such war machines were manufactured and operated by the specialised personnel of the ‘ducal munitions and public works office’, i.e., engineers recruited among both Lombards and foreigners, supervised by a general commissar. Unfortunately, the study of Milanese firearms production and its political and diplomatic implications remain practically uninvestigated among contemporary historians, except for a few important studies from the 19th and 20th centuries.Thanks to the epistolary documentation contained in the archival series Ingegneri e architetti, conserved in the State Archive of Milan, this contribution will focus on providing an overview of the activities of the ammunition office, the professional backgrounds of its engineers and their skill sets, as well as gunmaking processes, production sites, and techniques. Finally, this contribution will stress the impact of artillery production on the Italian and broader European political culture of the time: even in times of peace, the art of gunmaking and its products shaped the diplomatic and economic relations between Italian and other European states, via the constant exchange of specialised gunsmiths and the diffusion of innovative military technology.