Mind-Munitions

90
Propaganda in the Age of Gunpowder and Printing
may well be better remembered for their artistic achievements, but
a glance at much of that art will serve to remind us that the ethos
of war and violence was alive and well. In art, as in writing, the
purpose of images was to entertain and convince. Plausibility, as
ever, was essential to success. Hence the Renaissance preoccupation
with style (such as perspective) and historical legitimacy (which
provided the mind with less realistic but more credible views of
the past). The art of rhetoric was perfected and, in cities such as
papal Rome, vast building schemes were launched in praise of
man’s achievement through God, especially after the Peace of Lodi
in 1454 which brought a semblance of tranquillity to Italy for nearly
half a century. Drawing on the traditions of devotional religious
images, shrines, and relics, civic authorities used the bodies of the
saints and the heroes of antiquity for their own purposes (Michelangelo’s
statue of David in Florence being one well-known
example), protecting towns and warding off enemies and evil, thus
providing a psychological rallying point in times of crisis. The rewriting
of history was used to stimulate imitation of the glories of
the Roman past; statues were commissioned depicting commanders
on horseback in the style of Caesar, while the less glamorous
infantryman also began to make an appearance in art, most
notably in the work of the German woodcarver Albrecht Dürer.
In 1471, a veteran of the Hundred Years War wrote:
War has become very different. In those days, when you had eight or
ten thousand men, you reckoned that a very large army; today, it is
quite another matter. One has never seen a more numerous army than
that of my lord of Burgundy, both in artillery and in munitions of all
sorts… I am not accustomed to see so many troops together. How do
you prevent disorder and confusion among such a mass?
The increased size of armies was prompted by the example of the
French who created Europe’s first standing army in 1445-8 – a
permanent, professional body in the direct employment of the
king where status no longer qualified automatically for command.
The example was followed by Burgundy in 1465-6. Again, this
development undermined chivalric notions and led to increased
specialization in the new non-aristocratic armies. This was further
aided by the increased use of mercenaries, especially the Swiss and
Germans who brought with them specialized fighting skills and
weapons such as the arquebus and the pike.