The Battle of Ravenna is presented as a military example whose significance extends beyond the battlefield. It illustrates both the immediate danger of relying on auxiliary troops and the tactical possibility of defeating supposedly formidable foreign infantry through different discipline and close-order methods. In the book’s broader argument, Ravenna becomes evidence that military reputation and political security depend on a prince’s command of his own forces rather than on the temporary success of borrowed arms.

Background and Participants

The battle appears in the discussion of auxiliary, mixed, and national arms. Pope Julius II had sought to gain Ferrara after losing confidence in his mercenaries and therefore arranged with Ferdinand II of Aragon to receive Spanish horse and foot soldiers. These auxiliaries were not merely hired contingents under the pope’s independent command; they belonged to a powerful foreign ruler and remained under their own officers. That distinction created the central political danger: if the auxiliaries were defeated, the prince who summoned them would be ruined, while if they won, he could become their prisoner.

The immediate example is therefore framed through Pope Julius II’s decision to place himself in the hands of a stranger for the sake of conquering Ferrara. The decision was described as rash, although circumstances ultimately prevented its worst consequences. The battle’s result did not deliver the pope permanently into the power of either side, but this survival depended on an unexpected intervention rather than on the soundness of his original military policy.

Course and Immediate Outcome

At Ravenna, Pope Julius II’s auxiliaries were defeated. The defeat should, according to the argument, have left him exposed to the victorious enemy and confirmed the danger of entrusting a state’s fate to another ruler’s troops. Instead, the Swiss suddenly descended upon the country and swept the victors away. The intervention surprised both the Swiss and everyone observing the conflict, and it prevented Pope Julius II from remaining a prisoner of the enemy.

The same reversal also meant that he did not become captive to the auxiliaries who had won the battle, because the victory that rescued him was achieved by other forces. The episode thus produced an outcome more fortunate than the policy deserved. It did not disprove the danger of auxiliary arms; it dramatized it by showing how narrowly a prince might escape the consequences of their defeat or success.

Tactical Lesson

The battle is recalled again in the comparison between Spanish infantry and the German companies whose discipline resembled that of the Swiss. The Spanish troops displayed agility and used their bucklers to force their way beneath the German pikes. Once under the reach of the pikes, they were prepared to close with the Germans, who could no longer defend themselves effectively. Without a cavalry charge against them, the Spanish infantry would have routed the Germans completely.

This detail gives Ravenna a second function. It shows that military superiority is not absolute but depends on the relation between weapons, discipline, formation, and the willingness to engage at close quarters. The Swiss were considered formidable, yet infantry trained according to a different system could withstand them; Spanish infantry could also be broken by cavalry. The battle therefore supplied an indication that an army could be organized to exploit the weaknesses of established military systems without creating an entirely new force.

Consequences for Military Policy

The political lesson drawn from Ravenna is severe. Auxiliary troops are united and remain wholly under the command of their own officers, making them more dangerous than mercenaries after victory. Mercenaries may be inert or cowardly, and their separate companies can require time before a commander acquires enough authority to threaten the prince who employs them. Auxiliary troops, by contrast, bring their cohesion and courage ready-made, and those very qualities can become instruments of domination.

For that reason, wise princes are said to prefer their own arms and even to accept defeat with national troops rather than victory through foreign aid. A victory secured by forces that another power controls is not treated as a true victory, because the prince’s apparent success may conceal a transfer of power. The Battle of Ravenna makes this principle concrete: Pope Julius II escaped disaster only because the battle’s final political result was altered by forces other than those on which he had relied.

Historical and Narrative Significance

Ravenna also supports the book’s larger contrast between borrowed strength and self-command. Cesare Borgia first entered Romagna with French auxiliaries and captured Imola and Forli. Finding those troops unreliable, he turned to mercenaries, including the Orsini and Vitelli, and later dismissed them after discovering their fickleness, falsehood, and treachery. His reputation increased as he moved from dependence on French arms, through dependence on hired commanders, to reliance on troops of his own raising. He was never regarded as more formidable than when everyone understood that he alone controlled his forces.

The reference to Ravenna therefore links tactical observation with a theory of political foundations. States require good laws and good arms, but the argument treats arms as prior in practice because secure laws cannot exist without the power to defend them. The battle’s importance lies not simply in who prevailed during the engagement. It reveals the instability beneath a ruler’s borrowed military power, while its infantry action demonstrates that disciplined national forces can be trained to resist cavalry and confront infantry on terms favorable to their own system.

In the book’s chronological structure, Ravenna is narrated as a past example invoked by an impersonal third-person political analyst rather than as a dramatized scene with a named battlefield narrator. Its force comes from retrospective comparison: the same event first exposes the peril of Pope Julius II’s auxiliaries and later provides tactical evidence for reforming an Italian army. The battle thus becomes a compact historical proof that military technique, political independence, and reputation are inseparable.