«Cum le arme in mano». L’organizzazione militare e politica elvetica, delle Tre leghe e del Vallese nello specchio del Carteggio sforzesco

The Swiss “constitutional” model played an important role in the cultured “political science” of the Italian Renaissance, while the lordships, communities and leagues that later merged into modern Switzerland were also the focus of continuous, more pragmatic observation by the Sforza and the members of their entourage. The correspondence preserved from the second half of the fifteenth century permits us to analyze this “gaze”. In the army organization of their neighbors, Lombard officials admired the effectiveness and breadth of the “bottom-up” recruitment of infantry, compared with the attempts (for the most part unsuccessful) of popular mobilization in the duchy. On the other hand, they express disappointment for a deliberative system which they perceived as dispersive and slow, involving too many protagonists, even people of low social status. The Swiss archipelago became a mirror in which the same concerns that local community-based public life aroused in the Milanese authorities, were reflected in an accentuated way. In the peripheral area of the state, in fact, traditions of open representation, animated by internal debates that could at time degenerate into violent conflict, were perceived as either practical or ideological threats to a regime where the will of the prince and the speedy and unanimous obedience of his subjects was the decision-making paradigm.