ROBERTO BIOLZI
I
n the past fifty years, many studies have been published on the relation between the increase in warfare and the development of fiscal systems and institutional structures in late medieval states. Research carried out on both France and England as well as smaller principalities has evinced the direct link between war, taxation, and institutional development, to the point that it is almost commonplace to assert that war was the driving engine behind the con-solidation of most European states between the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Modern Age.1 According to one of the principles of thefa-* The research leading to the results published here has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 638436).
1 There are countless studies on the relation between the funding of war through taxation and the development of the state’s institutions. See, for example: Genèse de l’État moderne:
Prélèvement et redistribution: Actes du colloque de Fontevraud 1984, ed. J.-Ph. GENET and M.
LE MENÉ (Paris, 1987); Guerre et concurrence entre les États européens du XIV e au XVIII e siècle, ...
Accounts and Accountability in Late Medieval Europe: Records, Procedures, and Socio-Political Impact, ed. Ionuþ EPURESCU-PASCOVICI, Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy, 50 (Turnhout:
Brepols, 2020), pp. 47-72.
DOI <10.1484/M.USML-EB.5.120737>
mous ‘military revolution’, the endemic presence of war between the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Modern Age pushed the European pow-ers to build ever larger armies and therefore more efficient fiscal systems to fund them.2 In sum, this process was conducive to advances in the number, tactics, and technology of the European armies, paving the way for the attain-ment of European military supremacy over the rest of the world.3
From this perspective, the study of the finances of the principality of Savoy through the many accounting records preserved at the Archivio di Stato in Turin represents a significant contribution to this important historiographical debate.4 In my recent doctoral thesis I investigated the correlation between the increasing cost of war and the development of more efficient direct taxation in Savoy. One of the most interesting aspects of my research is precisely the ac-count of the fourteenth-century shift from a seigniorial-style taxation – still justified by feudal pretexts such as the crusade or the prince’s knighting – to
ed. Ph. CONTAMINE (Paris, 1998); A. RIGAUDIÈRE, “L’essor de la fiscalité royale du règne de Philippe le Bel (1285-1314) à celui de Philippe VI (1328-1350)”, in: Europa en los umbrales de la crisis: 1250-1350: Actas de la XXI Semana de estudios medievales de Estella, 18 al 22 de julio de 1994 (Pamplona, 1995), pp. 323-392; L. SCORDIA, ‘Le roi doit vivre du sien’: La théorie de l’impôt en France, XIIIe-XVe siècles (Paris, 2005); J.B. HENNEMAN, Royal Taxation in Fourteenth-Century France: The Development of War-Financing: 1322-1356 (Princeton, 1971); E.B. FRYDE,
“The financial policies of the royal governments and popular resistance to them in France and England, c. 1270-c.1420”, Revue belge de philosophie et d’histoire 57 (1979), pp. 824-860; M.
PRESTWICH, War, Politics, and Finance under Edward I (London, 1972); S. CAROCCI and S.M.
COLLAVINI, “Il costo degli stati: Politica e prelievo nell’Occidente medievale (VI-XIV secolo)”, Storica 18 (2012), pp. 7-48; War, Gouvernement, and Society in the Medieval Crown of Aragon, ed. D.J. KAGAY (Aldershot, 2007).
2 M. ROBERTS, The Military Revolution, 1560-1660 (Belfast, 1956); G. PARKER, The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500-1800 (Cambridge, 1988).
3 The military revolution theory has been discussed in later works; see J. BLACK, A military revolution? Military change and European society, 1550-1800 (London, 1991); The Military Revolution: Readings on the military transformation of Early Modern Europe, ed. R.J. CLIFFORD
(Oxford, 1995); European Warfare, 1350-1750, ed. F. TALLET and D. TRIM (Cambridge, 2010).
Many historians, especially Anglo-Americans, have traced the beginning of this process to the final centuries of the Middle Ages; see R.J. CLIFFORD, “The military revolutions of the Hundred Years War”, The Journal of Military History 57.2 (1993), pp. 258-275; The Medieval Military Revolution: State, Society and Military Change in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. A.
AYTON (London and New York, 1995); K. DEVRIES, Guns and Men in Medieval Europe, 1200-1500 (Aldershot, 2002).
4 Specifically in the Sezioni riunite of the Archivio di Stato di Torino (hereafter AST/SR).
On the Savoyard documentary evidence, see B. ANDENMATTEN and G. CASTELNUOVO, “Produ-zione documentaria e conserva“Produ-zione archivistica nel principato sabaudo, XIIIo-XVo secolo”, Bollet-tino dell’Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo 110.1 (2008), pp. 279-348.
direct taxation, which from the beginning of the fifteenth century is centred on the collection of annual subsides throughout the territory and chiefly motivated by the war effort.5
This article builds upon my earlier work on the trésorerie générale and the trésorerie des guerres of Savoy6 with an investigation of the castellany ac-counts, that is, the more ‘regional’ offices of the state. The principality of Savoy has been defined as an “aggregation of locals identities and communi-ties” and it was organised at the beginning of the fourteenth century into six bailiwicks, each of them comprising a variable number of castellanies, the units which constituted the backbone of the Savoyard financial and administrative system.7
The role of the castellan, and even more so that of the bailli (the head of the castellany where the seat of the bailiwick was located), was from the begin-ning an essentially military one. As well as attending to the maintenance of the
5 R. BIOLZI, “J’ay grand envie de veoir assaillir”: Guerre, guerriers et finances dans les États de Savoie à la fin du Moyen Age, XIVe-XVe s. (unpublished doctoral thesis, Université de Lausanne, 2016), pp. 297-370. This work is forthcoming as a monograph from Presses Universitaires de Rennes. On this topic, see also Nicolas Carrier’s chapter in this volume.
6 AST/SR, CS, inv. 16 (trésorerie générale), inv. 29 (trésorerie des guerres). The trésorerie générale (‘general treasury’) as well as the chambre des comptes of Savoy were established in 1351 by the statutes promulgated by Amadeus VI. See Ch. GUILLERÉ and G. CASTELNUOVO, “De la comptabilité domaniale à la comptabilité d’Etat: Les comptes de châtellenies savoyards”, in:
Écrire, compter, mesurer: Vers une histoire des rationalités pratiques, ed. N. COQUERY (Paris, 2006), pp. 213-230, at pp. 216-217; B. DEMOTZ, “Une clé de la réussite d’une principauté aux
XIIIe et XIVe siècles: Naissance et développement de la Chambre des comptes en Savoie”, in: La France des principautés: La chambre des comptes, XIVe et XVe siècles, ed. Ph. CONTAMINE (Paris, 1996), pp. 17-26. The office of the trésorerie des guerres (‘war treasury’) appears in the Savoy principality at the beginning of the rule of prince Amadeus VII (c. 1383) and is consecrated through Amadeus VII’s Statuta Sabaudiae (1430); see R. BIOLZI, “Les guerres d’Amédée VII: Coûts et administration militaire”, in: Le pouvoir par les armes, le pouvoir par les idées – Power through Weapons, Power through Ideas, ed. J. DUMONT and Ch. MASSON, special issue of Le Moyen Age 121.1 (2015): pp. 127-143, esp. pp. 129-131; R. BIOLZI and D. JAQUET, “De l’office du maréchal et du trésorier de guerre: L’administration militaire du duché de Savoie comparée aux ordonnances françaises et bourguignonnes”, in: La loi du prince, ed. F. MORENZONI and Mathieu CAESAR, 2 vols. (Turin, 2018), 1, Les statuts de Savoie d’Amédée VIII de 1430: Une œuvre législative majeure, pp. 269-290, esp. pp. 270-275.
7 For the origins and organisation of the Savoyard castellanies, see B. DEMOTZ, “La géographie administrative médiévale, l’exemple du comté de Savoie”, Le Moyen Age 80 (1974), pp. 261-297; J.-L. GAULIN and Ch. GUILLERÉ, “Des rouleaux et des hommes: Premières re-cherches sur les comptes de châtellenies savoyards”, Etudes Savoisiennes 1 (1992), pp. 51-109;
G. CASTELNUOVO and Ch. GUILLERÉ, “Les finances et l’administration du comté de Savoie au
XIIIe siècle”, in: Pierre II de Savoie: ‘Le Petit Charlemagne’, ed. B. ANDENMATTEN et al. (Lau-sanne, 2000), pp. 33-125.
castle, castellans had a double military function: the military and financial management of war on a regional level and the recruitment of the necessary troops.8 The military service demanded by the prince from the local communi-ties was not only a means of procuring the fighters needed but also an impor-tant source of money, since the men who did not show up when summoned to an expedition had to pay a fine. From the end of the thirteenth century, the amounts of these fines are clearly indicated in the banna (fines) section of the castellany accounts, which recorded the income from the administration of justice by the castellan (see Aude Wirth-Jaillard’s chapter in this volume). The aim of this chapter is to analyse these fines in order to quantify the human and financial effort of the Savoyard castellanies during a period characterised by a general increase in military operations.
From a geographical point of view, I have selected two very different Savoyard castellanies. The first one, Pinerolo, did not belong directly to the Savoys, for it was the capital of the princes of Achaea, the dynasty’s cadet branch. Created in 1285 by Amadeus V, the principality of Achaea was a Savoyard appanage comprising the lands of Piedmont with the exception of the Susa valley.9 The second castellany considered here is Chillon, the capital of the bailiwick of Chablais, north of the Alps, a region which enjoyed a remark-able economic independence during the period considered here, especially as regards the funding of warfare.10 Because of their position at the frontier of the Savoyard state, these two castellanies were particularly exposed to military strikes. The comparative analysis of two different territories will enable us to highlight the regional characteristics due to the cultural duality of the Savoyard principality, a French-Italian superregional state.
From a chronological point of view, I will focus on the period between the last quarter of the thirteenth century – that of the earliest castellany accounts – and the mid-fourteenth century, when the castellan’s military role is supposed to have declined in favour of military officials specially created for the war
8 For the military role of Savoyard castellans, see E. DULLIN, Les châtelains dans les domaines de la Maison de Savoie en deçà des Alpes (Grenoble, 1911), pp. 52-56; B. DEMOTZ,
“Le châtelain et la guerre dans la Savoie des XIIIe et XIVe siècles”, in: “De part et d’autres des Alpes”: Les châtelains des princes à la fin du Moyen Age, ed. G. CASTELNUOVO and O.
MATTÉONI (Paris, 2006), pp. 155-167.
9 These lands were re-annexed in 1418 by Amadeus VIII.
10 B. ANDENMATTEN, “Le comte de Savoie Amédée V et le nerf de la guerre: Organisation financière et dépenses militaires en Chablais durant la première moitié du XIVe siècle”, Etudes Savoisiennes 4 (1995), p. 19-31.
effort, such as the war treasurer and the marshal.11 It is well known that in this period the princes started massively to exploit the pretext of the defence of the commonwealth in order to enforce their requests for money and soldiers, as well as to give legitimacy to the establishment of a system of direct taxation.12
The Recruitment System in Savoy and the Principality of Achaea Before presenting the research and its results, it is important to introduce the recruitment system in operation in Savoy at the end of the Middle Ages. As we know, the medieval armies were constituted in general by two kinds of fighters, and Savoy is no exception. First, there was the cavalry, which was generally the elite of the army. This is essentially provided by the armed aris-tocracy of the county. From the beginning of the fourteenth century, it looks like the servitium debitum – the noblemen’s obligation to serve in the army of the prince – was no longer in place in Savoy.13 However, the accounting sources show that the Savoyard aristocracy responded to the calls to arms of the counts in a rather positive way. In 1308, during the Ambronay campaign, 35 knights banneret – a term which denotes a privileged rank vis-à-vis other knights – lead into battle some 100 noble knights and 1,200 squires.14 The armies of Amadeus VI (1343-1383) were essentially composed of noblemen who regularly participated in the count’s campaigns, especially those under-taken outside the borders of the principality.15 In Savoy as in France, during the first half of the fourteenth century it seems that the duty to serve the prince
11 BIOLZI, “J’ay grande envie”, pp. 395-400; DEMOTZ, “Le châtelain et la guerre”, pp. 165-166.12 For the principality of Savoy-Achaea, this issue has been investigated in P. BUFFO,
“Guerra e costruzione del publicum nel principato di Savoia-Acaia (1295-1360)”, Mélanges de l’Ecole française de Rome: Moyen Age 127.1 (2015), pp. 1-45. For the kingdom of France, see for example X. HÉLARY, “Révolution militaire, révolution fiscale? Le poids de la guerre dans les finances royales sous le règne de Philippe le Bel”, in: Monnaie, fiscalité et finances au temps de Philippe le Bel: Journée d’études du 14 mai 2004, ed. Ph. CONTAMINE et al. (Paris, 2007), pp.
229-254.
13 B. ANDENMATTEN, La Maison de Savoie et la noblesse vaudoise (XIIIe-XIVe s.): Supériorité féodale et autorité princière (Lausanne, 2005), pp. 280-282.
14 AST/SR, CS, inv. 29, no. 1 (1308), ff. 9-10.
15 F. CHAMOREL, “Ad partes infidelium”: La croisade d’Amédée VI de Savoie, juin 1366-juillet 1367 (Lausanne, 2016), pp. 82-99.
applied to all noblemen and not just to the direct vassals of the prince, who were therefore progressively exempted from the recruitment tasks.16
The second pillar of the Savoy armies was the infantry. The foot soldiers, called clientes in Savoy, clearly of lower social rank, were generally recruited in the castellanies.17 The castellan had a list available of all the people fit to bear arms; once the castellan called for the cavalcata, he could match the list with those who actually answered the call to inflict a monetary fine on those who stayed at home. The number of people which each community had to provide to the prince’s army was also usually negotiated at the moment of the writing of the franchises charters. In case of war, their service to the prince had to be funded, in general, by the communities, for periods ranging from 3 to 15 days.18 After this period and for the remainder of the expedition, their wages were paid by the prince; after 1355 the wages were calculated on a monthly basis like those of the knights. During the first half of the fourteenth century, the Savoyard castellanies contributed considerable numbers to the Savoy ar-mies. The most remarkable case occurred during the long war against Dau-phiné, in 1308, when around 15,000 clientes joined Amadeus V’s army quar-tered at Ambronay.19 The infantry recruitment system adopted by the Savoyard castellans seems to have been effective and attuned to the political ambitions of the princes, who in this period finally defeated the Dauphins, the historic enemy on Savoy’s western front, and permanently annexed important territo-ries such as Gex and Faucigny, thus conferring territorial cohesion to their principality.20
16 For the French situation, see X. HÉLARY, L’armée du roi de France: La guerre de Saint Louis à Philippe le Bel (Paris, 2012), pp. 147-172. This characteristic seems to occur earlier in England: M. PRESTWICH, Armies and Warfare in the Middle Ages: The English Experience (New Haven, 1996), pp. 71-81; D. SIMPKIN, “Knights banneret, military recruitment and social status, c. 1270-c. 1420: A view from the reign of Edward I”, in: Military Communities in Late Medieval England: Essays in Honour of Andrew Ayton, ed. G.P. BAKER et al. (Woodbridge, 2018), pp. 51-75. 17 B. DEMOTZ, “A propos des clientes du comte de Savoie aux XIIIe-XVe siècles”, in: Le com-battant au Moyen Age (Paris, 1991), pp. 197-205.
18 R. MARIOTTE-LÖBER, Ville et seigneurie: Les chartes de franchises des comtes de Savoie, fin XIIe siècle-1343 (Annecy and Genève, 1973), pp. 54, 61-63.
19 This is a considerable number, comparable to the number of infantrymen recruited by more affluent and populated realms, such as France and England: BIOLZI, “J’ay grande envie”, pp. 106-108.
20 For an overview of the wars conducted by the Savoys against the Dauphinée in this period, see A. KERSUZAN, Défendre la Bresse et le Bugey: Les châteaux savoyards dans la guerre contre le Dauphiné, 1282-1355 (Lyon, 2005), pp. 39-108.
During the second half of the fourteenth century, the infantry lost much of its numerical importance in Savoy’s armies. While in 1355 around 10,000 infantrymen were recruited for the conquest of Faucigny – when basically all castellanies north of the Alps provided contingents of clientes – in 1380 only 98 infantrymen were recruited, all of them crossbowmen.21 The same conclu-sion can be drawn in 1384, on the occaconclu-sion of the war in Valais. Amadeus VII’s imposing army, composed of around 1,300 men-at-arms, was accompanied by only 75 infantrymen who, in addition, do not seem to have been recruited in the Savoyard castellanies.22 This diminished importance can be explained in two ways. First, in this period Amadeus VI’s military politics were ever more pro-jected beyond the state borders. In this situation, the local communities were not bound to provide contingents of foot soldiers, since the franchise charters did limit service to only a few weeks and usually in a rather limited geograph-ical area. Secondly, a further change was the arrival of the so-called ‘foot cav-alry’, which appears more often in Savoyard narratives and which was cer-tainly an effective tactical replacement of the infantrymen.23
In Piedmont the situation was somewhat different from that in Savoy.
Northern Italian society was markedly more urban and less ‘aristocracy-based’.
The legal sources of Piedmont suggest that in practice the castellans of the territories “beyond the Alps” had to provide a certain number of foot soldiers and knights to the prince: “equites or milites pro communi”.24 The urban com-munities in Piedmont also provided knights, because of the presence in the towns of an aristocracy used to warfare, whereas in Savoy it was rather the nobility who provided the essence of the cavalry, after having recruited them
21 On this occasion, only the castellanies of Chambéry, Montmélian, La Rochette, Aiguebelle, Pont-de-Vaux and Saint-Génix sent contingents of infantrymen; AST/SR, CS, inv. 29, no. 18 (1378-1380), ff. 55r-57v.
22 More precisely, two companies of crossbow men, respectively 25 and 50 men strong;
AST/SR, CS, inv. 29, no. 23/2 (1383-1415), f. 2.
23 On this subject, see R. BIOLZI, “De l’écuyer au Prince: Les chevaux de guerre en Savoie à la fin du Moyen Age”, in: Le cheval dans la culture médiévale, ed. B. ANDENMATTEN et al.
(Florence, 2015), pp. 89-117, at pp. 110-111; Ch. MASSON, Des guerres d’Italie avant les Guerres d’Italie: Les enterprises militaires françaises dans la peninsula à l’époque du Grand Schisme d’Occident (Rome, 2014), p. 90; B.S. HALL, Weapons and Warfare in Renaissance Europe: Gunpowder, Technology and Tactics (Baltimore, 2006), pp. 17-19; J.F. VERBRUGGEN, The Art of Warfare in Western Europe during the Middle Ages, from the Eighth Century to 1340 (Woodbridge, 1954; repr. 2002), pp. 111-164; K. DEVRIES, Infantry Warfare in the Early Fourteenth Century: Discipline, Tactics and Technology (Woodbridge, 1996), pp. 191-197.
24 BUFFO, “Guerra e costruzione”, p. 9.
from their seigneuries.25 In the first decades of the fourteenth century, in Pied-mont the number of fighters requested by the count from the local communities increases progressively. Thanks to the statutes of the city of Pinerolo, we gather that while at the end of the thirteenth century the community was re-quested to provide to the prince only one cliens, around 1320 Philip of Achaea tried to obtain the service of all the men able to bear arms: “quotquot essent in uno hospitio qui possent arma ferre”. Moreover, if around the end of the thir-teenth century the fighters from Pinerolo had to serve in arms for 8 days, twenty years later they would have had to “tenere exercitum, cavalcatam et assaltum” for 40 days throughout the principality of Achaea and within a twenty-mile radius outside its borders. The ever more pressing requests by Philip were always motivated “ad deffensionem seu recuperationem terre sue”,
from their seigneuries.25 In the first decades of the fourteenth century, in Pied-mont the number of fighters requested by the count from the local communities increases progressively. Thanks to the statutes of the city of Pinerolo, we gather that while at the end of the thirteenth century the community was re-quested to provide to the prince only one cliens, around 1320 Philip of Achaea tried to obtain the service of all the men able to bear arms: “quotquot essent in uno hospitio qui possent arma ferre”. Moreover, if around the end of the thir-teenth century the fighters from Pinerolo had to serve in arms for 8 days, twenty years later they would have had to “tenere exercitum, cavalcatam et assaltum” for 40 days throughout the principality of Achaea and within a twenty-mile radius outside its borders. The ever more pressing requests by Philip were always motivated “ad deffensionem seu recuperationem terre sue”,