Urbino - The Light of Italy: Federico da Montefeltro - Extra History

As much as I love Vikings with horned helmets (hey, you can't teach grumpy old men new tricks... and Pluto IS a planet!), bonus points for not depicting the Vikings like that... ;)

Porcupine

This is why my ancestors are either French or Germany. Depends on which year they migrated from Alsace-Lorraine. :-)

Dani McKenzie

Humorously enough, Machiavelli so hated the fickle condottierri of the Italian city-states that his prohibition on hiring mercenaries in his works largely stems from the negative experiences Italian rulers had during this era.

Jim McGeehin

It was Walpole.

Jason Montgomery

I think about all the companies that AREN'T paying me not to work for them and I feel like I've missed out on a golden business opportunity. :(

Extra History

Can I be coy here? Am I allowed to be coy? Here's my attempt at a coy answer: we'll talk about it next week in Lies... or you can look him up online and find out sooner!

Extra History

Hahaha, that "keep me on retainer *not* to sign a contract with your enemy" plan is BRILLIANT!

Joël Quenneville

Oh, and just realized I should clarify. My criticisms of the map in general was the interactive one linked, not the one in the video. That one just spreads the renaissance further than is probably valid. The other one has some really weird stuff going on. Like apparently nobody claiming sovereignty over Turkmenistan and northern Caucasus and the Jurchen apparently not existing according to it, despite their immense historical significance.

Christina Maria Jessen

What's with that dude's eye?

Michael Jebbett

It's funny that you mentioned the mercenary armies of Renaissance Italy. Machiavelli devoted a chapter of The Prince to explain just how dangerous and useless they were, and even speculated that the whole reason Carthage lost the Punic Wars was because they relied on mercenaries instead of an actual army.

Maps are such a pain when it comes to historical study. No matter what else you can say about the people over at Paradox, you have to give them praise for their effort on the maps. Even if they need to revise them regularly as they learn more.

Christina Maria Jessen

YAY! Federico would be proud. :D

Extra History

It is a one-off, but it'll have a special section in next week's Lies, so we'll get to spend a little more time with Federico!

Extra History

That's gonna be one of the things we talk about in Lies! James really wanted to tell that story. Also, if you look at Federico any time we show him in profile, you can see that Lil drew him with a huge divot in his otherwise round face to show where his nose was trimmed out. :D

Extra History

I'm glad you enjoy them! Federico is already a favorite of mine.

Extra History

Maps are the new flags. We're trying to get better at them, but basically we're freehanding them based off however many sources we can find, which are almost never sources for the years we WANT to talk about. Ergo, every map is a composite, and errors get introduced in the composite process. Right now my first map focus is getting the area we are talking about correct; if we can nail that down, then I'll look at the rest of the map, but often just getting one area right is difficult when I'm looking at three or four different maps that all purport to be for the same period but never quite the same year, and cross-referencing that with as many written sources as I can find that say things like "and in year XXXX they successfully pushed back the Western border of country YYYY" but don't HAVE maps to describe to me what the borders of said country are. Anyway, you get the idea: flags hard, maps maddeningly hard.

Extra History

that has to be one of most interesting people I have ever heard of. For me to the local library to find more!

Teollinc

The map is really, really bad, honestly. It claims that Sweden was part of Denmark, rather than Denmark, Norway and Sweden being the Kalmar Union of three separate kingdoms, for example. It also splits Burgundy between France and the HRE and ignores the division between the Teutonic and Livonian Orders. There are several similar instances elsewhere in the world. For Russia specifically, much of the land listed as belonging to the Golden Horde was actually under the control of the Grand Duchy of Moscow, a very faintly nominal tributary of the Golden Horde who had conquered most of the successor states of the Kievan Rus, including conquering Novgorod in 1478, four years before Federico's death. It would also definitively break with the Golden Horde in 1476, still within this period. But beyond, I simply meant the geographic region that modern Russia covers. Areas under the control of the Republic of Novgorod were marked on the map as places renaissance thought marked. Also, when a term is used for both a state and a geographical region, Germany, Russia and China being the most obvious, can we not be pedants about the state itself existing at a given point? We don't really have other terms for those regions and often the region would have had the name even while the state didn't exist.

Christina Maria Jessen

First off, this guy is one of my favorite characters and people we've covered. He seems like somebody out of fiction. Secondly is this a one off?

Josh Kendall

Russia didn't exist yet. Take a look at the map I linked, the area you call "Russia" was still the Golden Horde and the Principate of Novgorod.

Trevor Sullivan

Russia didn't exactly get in on the renaissance either. They were busy fighting Tatars and trying to work out the whole unified country thing. Not sure I'd really call it a major feature of Scandinavia either. At least not until the 17th century. More so than Russia, but that's not saying much.

Christina Maria Jessen

That's Poland-Lithuania, which was more war-torn than Italy at the time and didn't experience much of a Rennaisance. <a href="http://geacron.com/en/?v=m&lang=en&z=4&x=14.941408010102&y=47.215090685434&nd=-1&d=&di=1450&tm=p&ct=0&ly=yyyyyyy&fi=-500&ff=1500&sp=2&e=0&rp=0&re=0&nv=2" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://geacron.com/en/?v=m&lang=en&z=4&x=14.941408010102&y=47.215090685434&nd=-1&d=&di=1450&tm=p&ct=0&ly=yyyyyyy&fi=-500&ff=1500&sp=2&e=0&rp=0&re=0&nv=2</a>

Trevor Sullivan

I like how you depict Federico as if he is winking since he lost his right eye in a tournament. After he lost his eye, Federico had surgeons trim his nose so as to improve the field of vision of his remaining eye.

barefoot James

These episodes always brighten my day. Hearing these tales inspire me and I'm grateful that you share them with us.

Aaron hutchinson

Interesting how one can use an ironclad reputation for integrity to your advantage. :) Random quibble: In the map of Europe, why is there a blank Space where Belarus and Ukraine should be? If you hadn't put any land beyond that I wouldn't have noticed, but spotting the Baltic area and chunks of Russia made it noticeable.

RMS Oceanic