The Hero of Italy

This book’s raison d’être is to remind the historian of Italy’s often forgotten political importance in the Thirty Years War, and, more generally, throughout the seventeenth century. Every historian of the Thirty Years War per se will be familiar with the events at the Gonzaga court in Mantua in the spring of 1628, when Charles de Gonzague-Nevers failed to reconcile his Gonzaga cousins to his succession, as the ‘French’ candidate, to the duchies of Mantua and Monferrato. The short but vicious war which ensued has habitually and simplistically been regarded as a case of France and Spain fighting each other by proxy. It was not until David Parrott published a seminal article in this journal on the subject that the ambitions of the opposing Italian princely families—the Savoy, the Gonzaga-Nevers di Mantova, and the other small Gonzaga cadets of whom the most significant were the Gonzaga di Guastalla—were recognised as legitimate, and wholly worthy of attention (ante, cxii [1997], 20–65)

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