FERRETTI, Francesco. [with] CICOGNA, Giovanni Matteo.

£8,500 · Offered by Sokol Books

.Beautifully bound military treatises with Jacques De Thou s (1553-1617) and his first wife Marie de Barbançon-Cany s (died 1601) arms on covers. The first book is Francesco Ferretti s (1523-1593) manual which provides practical advice for soldiers aided by woodcut tables and reproductions of deployment schemes. Ferretti was a knight of Santo Stefano, a Roman Catholic Tuscan military order founded by Cosimo I de Medici in 1561. It was originally created in order to fight the Ottoman Turks as well as pirates in the Mediterranean, and the order took part in Spanish attacks on the Ottomans including the siege of Malta in 1565 and the Battle of Lepanto in 1571 Ferretti gained military experience and insight during these pivotal battles. American historian Lynn White calls Ferretti a famous (military) engineer and states that this work was well known in later years ( Medieval Religion and Technology: Collected Essays 1978, p. 170). Ferretti s tact and skill with diplomatic and military affairs were harnessed by the Duke of Urbino in 1557 when he was sent to London to encourage Philip II to free the Count of Landriano from prison in the castle of Milan. This work draws from Machiavelli s famous Arte della Guerra (1521), despite it having been placed on the Index of Prohibited Books in 1559. .Both writers drew heavily from classical sources when compiling their military writings. Ferretti subscribed to the late Roman author Vegetius s (4.th. c AD) military treatise De re militari ,

• Binding: Hardcover

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