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So hey all, just something that's been on the burner in the back of my mind for a little bit, ever since reading a hilarious summary of the War of the League of Cambrai on /his/ not too long ago. French noble Gaston de Foix, called The Thunderbolt of Italy, was a brilliant young commander who dominated the war for six months, winning victory after victory, before tragically dying in his final battle, the 1512 Battle of Ravenna, which ended up being a victory for the French anyway.
This TL explores the situation had he not died, at least not then and there, and the effects on Italy, Europe, and the world. Now this will be more of a story style TL, and will follow a particular character throughout the better part of the 16th century and maybe even after, who knows? He will commit horrendous crimes and do heroic acts, he won't be a special snowflake with the morals of today, but magically from the middle ages.
If you have any comments on accuracy, likelihood of names, places, events, and so on, fucking keep them to yourself! Just kidding Let me know ASAP so that I can educate myself and rectify accordingly. So:
The Thunderbolt of Italy and the adventures of Bonfiglio
I: The Slaughter of Pigs
In northern Italy, far from the blazing heat of the Mezzogiorno, in the mystic shadow of the Alps lies a town. Most mornings a blanket of snow-cooled fog is driven southward by mountain winds, over the lake to the north, the largest lake in Italy. On some rare winter days one cannot see the Alps all day for the fog, and old women and scoundrels tell of the ghosts of German soldiers who died up in the high Alpine passes, flowing like an army down into the town to eat unsuspecting little children. Today was such a day in Peschiera del Garda, the sun striving to give heat through a haze of mist and cloud, men and women emerging from under blankets cursing, hopping to get wood to add to the perpetually burning winter fire of the household. Beggars and the most destitute huddled together for warmth, dying by ones and twos in the city throughout the winter. The wealthy had a healthy fire burning all night, kept up by servants who were glad for the constant warmth and light duty.
Bonfiglio wasn't so lucky this day, nor any day. His shoes, passable leather stapled to wooden soles, crunched in the frost as he shuffled around the house to the woodshed, blue-grey in the dawn light. Untangling his arms from each other, he grabbed a haphazard armload and reeled back, trotting back into the relative warmth of the house where his family waited. The cold had just begun to creep through his woolen hose when he slammed the door behind him with a leg. Crouching in front of the embers in the middle of the room, he let his burden slip to the floor and began arranging the thick sticks so that they would catch fire quickly, savoring the warmth on his fingers.
He heard a rustle behind him and cringed before the blow fell. "Close the door as you leave! You let all of frozen hell in," his father grumbled, huddling over the other side of the fire. Bonfiglio rubbed his head quickly, but more for shame than for pain. His father was in a good mood today. "Yes, father." They knelt for some minutes, watching the flames catch and grow as the rest of the family stirred behind them. Rolling over to wrap himself tighter into the big blanket the children used, Guiduccio bumped Nico, who as soon as he was awake started to cough.
Mother, who had til then been daydreaming the cold away, bolted up, wrapping herself in her and father's one big blanket. "Oh no, Guiduccio you villain! Get up! Guido, Bonfi, go on to work, I have this poor thing to worry about." She stared, eyes narrowed in what seemed like anger but was actually fear. Bonfiglio knew it too, but there was no way he could really help. How much had they cared, prayed to Archangel Michael to save Gera two winters ago? And she had just wasted away.
His father stood in one motion, breathing out a faint fog. "Come, Bonfiglio." He swept his eyes about the single room, his home. Thank the kind Lord that their pantry was always at least half full these days. He saw Nico, already red in the face from coughing, and his eyes darted around to the door. "Start on lunch, woman!" he called, and then he and Bonfiglio were out the door, taking their coats and hats with them.
The blue-grey of dawn was lightening to the brighter blue-grey of what passed for morning this cold winter. They leaned forward into the light wind coming from the lake, eyes pinched almost closed against the cold, wet air. They greeted other folk they passed, some landowners heading out into the countryside to see their tenants, others men like themselves, richer or poorer, headed to some daily breadearning.
They waited in the courtyard with two dozen or so other men, glad to be sheltered from the lake wind by the walls of the fortress of Peschiera del Garda, which was more a fortified villa than a fortress. It certainly helped when roving bands of soldiers or bandits, there was little difference, came by, but it wouldn't even try to withstand a proper army like the French that had been around lately. But Bonfiglio didn't even think of that, he started talking to a few other boys and then they started throwing snowballs, until his father grabbed him by the nape of his shirt and slapped him three times, hard, rocking his head back. "You want to sweat the devil into you, like Nico? Stand still!"
Bonfiglio stood red-faced from the cold, the slap, and shame as the other boys jeered. "Look how angry he is!" "Ahahaha!" After that the lord's steward finally waddled out, visibly cringing from the cold. "Alright men, good morning all. Today we have a daylong job, and you'll be paid nicely, I think. The French army is coming through in a few hours, and you'll be slaughtering and spitting pigs for them. These are thousands we're talking about, so we'll be killing almost three thousand pigs, out by the road, feeding the troops as they march by. Any questions?"
"Yeah!" a scrawny man with one eye called out, rocking back on his heels. "Yeah, I do, sir! How come they got pigs to eat, and all we get most days is stale bread and cheese for breakfast from you?" A chorus of agreement and curses accompanied this, but the steward only smiled.
"Jacobello, nobody minds if you take a slice every now and then for yourself. I think you'll be sick of pork by the end of today." So, mollified, the men ate a breakfast of stale bread and cheese, then trudged up to the road where stakes, good sharp slaughtering and skinning knives, and several hundred pigs were waiting, with more promised to come from surrounding villages. There were also tables and good firewood, laid out over half a mile. The Italians wouldn't have had a choice had the Frenchmen come in force, but word was that this new French general, a nephew to the French king, wanted the commoners' help against the Pope, and so paid well.
Then began the bloody work, with pigs squealing and rolling their eyes as soon as they saw the men come up. "I tell you, son," Bonfiglio's father said, "pigs are half men themselves. Too clever by far." Then he slipped on a kitchen smock and slit the throat of his first pig. After half an hour the mouthwatering smell of roasting pork was drifting through the air, but the living pigs would not stop squealing, and Guido judged that Bonfiglio now knew enough to slaughter and skin on his own. "Just get me to help you hang them up and put them on the stake," he said, before pinching a sizzling morsel and popping it into his mouth. "Ah, Jesus, so good!"
"Yes, father," said Bonfiglio a little darkly, because he was already thirteen years old and knew he was strong enough to hang and skewer them himself. Just then the first French scout passed, taking a few strips of bacon and talking with the men in broken Italian, then hopping back up on his horse and riding off. The morning passed like this, men talking and joking as they worked, the regularity broken by Dumb Matteo letting go of a pig's ears and having to chase it all through the woods, which gave them a good laugh, and by that smartass Jacobello saying, "These pigs remind me of all the women I've ever porked! They just can't stop squealing!". Many pigs were through roasting, and good-sized slices were cut out and put on tables near a fire, to keep them warm. After a few more scouts, and a bit before noon, the first French footmen came around the bend in the road, and came jogging to the food.
Throughout the morning, other men had been bringing bread up from Peschiera in wheelbarrows and heaping them up on rough tables. The passing Frenchmen took bread and pork, and kept on walking. So it went for hours, column after column and regiment after regiment. Bonfiglio stared, never having seen professional soldiers up close. The long, sharp pikes held upright, the smooth, cared-for guns with worn grips, almost like magic how the alchemy made the gunpowder shoot those little lead balls that could easily kill a man. Some of the soldiers were clean shaven and some wore big bushy beards, but most had some type of mustache, sometimes with a goatee. After months, for some years, of almost uninterrupted fighting, there was little color to their clothes and tents, which were faded by sun and mud and rain.
But their faces! Such mirth, moving from victory to victory, or so Bonfiglio had heard. They chattered and laughed in their mushy-sounding French tongue, and though Bonfiglio could actually catch a few words, that sounded like his own Italian, he could never quite make out what they were saying. A sharp pain on his head and he was down in the blood-damp earth, his father standing over him. "Turn your stake, idiot! Stop gawking, they are only soldiers!" Bonfiglio jumped up and began to turn the pig, going faster over the area that was now almost burnt, but cursed his luck as his father stalked away. Why can't I be a soldier?
His eyes widened and he almost stopped turning the pig again. Well, why not? What was there here? He glanced sidelong to where his father stood, grunting and almost slipping in pig's blood as he heaved another one up to be butchered. He would end up like his father, doing anything his lord wanted for a pittance, and lucky to have even that. Or he could run away to a real city, Verona or Brescia or maybe even Bologna...but there was war now, nobody would want him. He would end up working worse than a slave, with nobody to care for him and nobody willing to teach him a trade. He could go to a monastery, join the priesthood...and become somebody's bumboy quick, no doubt. It isn't hard to hear of what happens to pretty blond boys around some monks, and the kindest ones can be the worst, or so he had been told by Peschiera's Father Bartolomeo, who told them all to be wary of people who were too nice.
What downside was there? His father wasn't paid much extra for Bonfiglio's labor, and they would be better off with one less, growing mouth to feed. Poor sick Nico would be better off. He would learn a lot, he would learn how to fight, where people hid their money, how to use a gun, how to care for all his fine equipment--well, the equipment he would have eventually. He would get to see the world: Bologna, Ferrara, maybe even Roma, maybe even Paris! Places that were like fairy tale settings to him: England, Portugal, Austria, Jerusalem! The visions danced in front of his eyes, growing wilder and himself growing older, wiser, richer with each step.
But by the time he slit the next pig's throat, his mind hadn't yet been made up. When he looked at his father all he wanted to do was leave, most days he could barely resist hitting back, but then he thought on his brothers and sister and his mother especially, and there was a cold hollow where his stomach should have been, imagining life without them. But there was yet a day's work to be finished, he couldn't just leave now. Grimacing as the hot blood leaked through the seams in his shoes, he heaved with his father to hang the pig, then began to cut the insides out, as he had with all the others.
As the bread was continuously carted up and grabbed by greedy hands for hungry mouths, and as pigs were hauled up and let down, hauled up and let down, the sun ran a good deal of its daily circuit over the sky. Toothless peasants from villages miles away came with pigs, and men from the fortress came up with wine and stale bread for the men working at the skewers, and the soldiers marched by and by...and then they had marched on, leaving dust and crumbs in their wake. Four pigs of the last few dozen were slaughtered to feed the slaughterers, a fitting feast after such a day's work, with the rest of the pigs going to the lord's sty, so finally the squealing ended and the world seemed silent.
Bonfiglio washed the sticky blood and guts from his hands and arms in the cold, cold river water, brought up in great bowls, with the other men, but no matter how hard he tried, the red and white of pig meat and fat was stuck under his fingernails. "Never mind that," his father said, sniffing the air. "What an easy day's work, and we'll definitely have some to take home." The workers gathered around the last few fires, most picking up coals with their sleeves, to warm their hands with. And then they ate.
They got home with more than four pounds of meat, and his father with a rather more full purse, and Bonfiglio's mother stared in adoration. And her eyes were teary...? "Oh, oh thank God, look at all this good meat!" She hugged his father tightly and gasped, "Nico is getting better."
"Very good," was all his father managed, roughly, before sitting to cradle the sick boy in his arms, as mother fed him. With this pork, they could save the green bean stew mother had cooked for tomorrow, or even for when they woke in the middle of the night with nothing to do. Though it wasn't deep winter yet, the nights were still long, and it was hard not to drop asleep when dark came, then wake in the middle of the night and talk or doze for a bit.
And it happened just like that, as Bonfiglio had expected. He gently uncurled from the blanket, especially careful not to stir Nico, and started putting on as many of his clothes as he could find in the dim moonlight. He was grateful that there was food left over, for there was no way he could have gotten close to the pantry by stepping over his parents. But the pot of stew was left high over the fire, keeping warm, and he grabbed a bowl to take out with him. This theft almost stayed his hand, but then he reasoned that with him gone, they wouldn't need this bowl. After the feast he wasn't even close to hungry, in fact it seemed as though it was all he could do to keep his eyelids open in the warmth of the blankets, waiting for his family to fall asleep, but he would eat on the road.
And the feast is what had sealed it for him, why he was going to leave and become a soldier. He and his father had worked, bloody and with the stench of guts and filth on their arms, stake splinters in their hands, all day, for their fill of pork. And a very special, rare feast that was. Most days it was some wall building or ditch digging or wood cutting, working like a dog all day, for some meager pay. But the soldiers had just walked by, taking bread and bacon as if it was a God granted right to them, chatting and smiling all the way. That's how it would be for him, strolling through villages with food ripe for the picking, fighting and killing--wasn't that the mark of a true man?
Finally he stood at the door and looked back, seeing only dim forms, silhouettes of blankets in the light that showed through the shutters. A stirring in the corner. "Eh, huh, mmmh," his father muttered. Bonfiglio opened the door, stepped out, and closed the door behind him. If they noticed him gone at any point, they would just assume he'd stepped outside to relieve himself, and fall back asleep, hopefully. Once outside he dressed himself more properly, now that he could see himself, and looked around at the moonlit town.
The houses and hovels of Peschiera seemed lit from beneath by the snow and frost, for the moon was not so bright on this clear night. There was not even a half moon. The walls of the fortress showed a dim grey down by the black water, but there were no walls on his way out of town, only the fences of some gardens marked the boundary between the town and the countryside.
He walked out of this place, the only home he had ever known, not broken as an exile, but rather ready to reshape himself as a man who wouldn't cower or break his back working for what should be his. The moonlight showed him the road, dark with mud in the ruts made by soldiers' boots and the wheels of French wagons and cannons, on either side fields white with snow. And he made his way, between.
- - - - - - - - - -
Right then, what do you all think? Be honest with me, now.