Martuccio’s Archery Stratagem

Martuccio Gomito’s Archery Stratagem turns a small technical difference in bow equipment into a decisive military advantage. Given from prison to King Mariabdela of Tunis, the counsel exploits the mismatch between the two armies’ arrows and bowstrings: one side can reuse the other’s ammunition, while the reverse is impossible. Its success wins the king’s war and changes Martuccio’s fortunes, helping set in motion his reunion with Costanza.

Situation and Counsel

At the time, a powerful young claimant from Granada had raised a large force against King Mariabdela, seeking to take the kingdom. Martuccio, held in prison, heard that the king was making strenuous efforts to defend himself. Knowing the Barbary language well, he offered a guard a possible means of victory and was brought before the king to explain it.

Martuccio reasoned from the king’s reliance on archers. If the king’s bowmen used strings much thinner than those ordinarily made, their arrows could be fitted with narrow notches that would catch only on those thin strings. The alteration had to be kept secret: if the opposing force learned of it, it could prepare a countermeasure.

How the Stratagem Works

The plan depends on what happens after both armies have shot their arrows. In a prolonged battle, each side would gather up the ammunition scattered by the other. The enemy’s thick bowstrings could not take the narrow notches on Martuccio’s arrows, so those arrows would be useless to the opposing archers. By contrast, Martuccio’s men, equipped with thin strings, could use the enemy’s arrows, whose wider notches would fit their bows.

The advantage is therefore reciprocal only in appearance. Both forces collect arrows from the battlefield, but only one can use the other’s supply. The king’s archers gain a continuing reserve from the enemy’s ammunition, while the enemy cannot replenish its own supply with the arrows shot by Martuccio’s force. The trick does not depend on superior numbers or on defeating the opposing archers in a direct contest; it changes the practical value of what the battle leaves behind.

Victory and Consequences

King Mariabdela approves the proposal and carries it out exactly as Martuccio advised. The strategy helps him win the war, and Martuccio is rewarded with the king’s favor and a wealthy, elevated position. The reversal is sharp: a man in prison, whose counsel must first pass through his keeper, becomes influential through the ingenuity of a plan that converts an ordinary battlefield practice into an advantage.

The news travels beyond the court. Costanza, living in Susa and long mourning Martuccio as lost and dead, hears that he is alive and now prosperous in Tunis. Her love, which had cooled, flares up again with renewed hope. She tells the old woman who has sheltered her of her history and her wish to see him; the woman takes her to Tunis, where Costanza and Martuccio are reunited. The military stratagem thus becomes the hinge between Martuccio’s imprisonment and advancement and the lovers’ return to one another.