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Insane and Inspiring Enterprising Stories from History

Khalid Elhassan March 30, 2021 35 min

German soldiers of the 6th Army in Stalingrad. Encyclopedia Britannica

Italian Renaissance mercenaries in action. Tansini

13. An Enterprising Soldier of Fortune’s Rise From Mercenary to Duke

Francesco Sforza’s enterprising career received a heavy boost in 1447, when his father-in-law Duke Visconti, the ruler of Milan, died without a male heir. The people of Milan rose up in rebellion, proclaimed a republic, and hired Sforza as their military commander. A three-sided struggle then ensued between the Milanese republic, the rival city of Venice, and Sforza. When the Milanese signed peace with Venice in 1449 against Sforza’s wishes, he turned on his employers and switched sides.

This time, Sforza backed himself, and besieged Milan. He eventually starved the city into submission, and entered it in 1450 as its new duke. Sforza’s shrewdness, opportunism, and successful deviousness caught the attention of Niccolo Machiavelli, who modeled his Prince after the enterprising mercenary. Sforza was Machiavelli’s ideal ruler. He won his state by dint of exceptional ability and skill rather than through luck or inheriting it by winning the lottery of birth, then went on to consolidate his gains and secure them sufficiently to found a dynasty.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.