7
TRANSFORMATION OF MILITARY
TECHNOLOGY IN PORTUGAL
The impact of the Iberian Union on artillery1
Brice Cossart
Introduction
The historiography about the concept of military revolution has produced a huge
array of studies focusing on different states and territories. Michael Roberts’s work,
which originated the concept, associated the main shift of early modern warfare to
the crucial military innovations brought by seventeenth-century Dutch and Swedish armies.2 One generation later, Geoffrey Parker identified the artillery train with
which King Charles VIII of France invaded Italy in 1494 as the key element which
sparkled the transformation of early modern warfare in Europe.3 The success of his
narrative generated a long debate among military historians about the chronology
and the significance of the different military innovations, but their studies remained
in the same fertile crescent established by Roberts and Parker: mainly England,
France, Italy, the Netherlands, and the lands of the Habsburgs.4 More recently, the
debate has shifted towards global history as some scholars have proposed focusing
on military innovations in Asia and thus re-examining Parker’s thesis on the “rise
of the West.”5 Meanwhile, until recently, Portugal and its empire have remained on
the margin of this prolific historiography. The present book pleads for a reassessment of the role of Portugal in the narratives of the military revolution, while this
chapter argues more specifically that the Iberian Union (1580–1640) of Portugal
with Habsburg Spain had a decisive impact on the development of Portuguese
military technology.
In 1580, King Philipp II of Spain launched a vast military operation to support
his dynastic rights to the vacant Portuguese throne. The following annexation of
Portugal and its empire by the monarchy of the Spanish Habsburgs marked the
beginning of an association between the two Iberian powers. Whereas the Portuguese monarchy has raised little interest among historians of the Military Revolution, its Spanish neighbour has been under the spotlights since Geoffrey Parker
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identified it as a pioneer state at the forefront of “radical military change.”6 The
Kingdom of Portugal remained under Habsburg governing for six decades, until
the revolt of 1640, which put an end to the union.7 It is thus legitimate to ask
the following question: to what extent did the Iberian Union impact the military
technology used in Portugal ?
The purpose of this chapter is not to assert that early modern Portuguese military technology developed only under Spanish government. Several studies have
shown that the Portuguese army and navy resorted to innovations such as embarked
artillery, bronze cannons, and bastion fortifications long before the Iberian Union.8
During the sixteenth century, the construction of the Portuguese Empire relied
on this military technology as much as it constituted a vector of these innovations
towards Asia.9 Nevertheless, in contrast to the blossoming effervescence characterizing the decades of exploration and empire building, the period of Habsburg
domination often tends to appear as a dark time in Portuguese history. This chapter aims to show that, far from this negative image, the Iberian Union gave a new
impulse to the evolution of military technology in Portugal. In this regard, not
only does it constitute a period worth studying for the specialists of Portugal, but
it is also a particularly interesting moment for those who might be interested in the
circulation of military technology.
In addition, the question of the Spanish connection with Portuguese military
affairs during the Iberian Union remains unsettled. On one hand, the dominant
paradigm of the “composite monarchy,” coined by John Elliott to describe the
political organization of the Spanish monarchy, emphasizes the political, juridical,
and fiscal fragmentations.10 The political entity under the Habsburgs’ authority is
thus considered a mere association of smaller states bound together by the fact that
they shared the same sovereign. This vision is exemplified by the agreement taken
by King Philip II at the Cortes of Tomar (1581) to respect the independence of
the Portuguese Crown.11 On the other hand, the rising scale of warfare required
common military efforts beyond the fragmented nature of this composite monarchy. In this perspective, some historians have shown that when it came to military
matters, Castilian-dominated institutions (the Council of State and the Council of
War, the juntas de guerra) were often involved in the government of military affairs
regarding Portugal and its empire.12 While the historiography has focused mostly
on the tensions generated inside the composite monarchy by the use of fiscal and
military resources from one state to another, my aim is to shed light on one aspect
which stemmed from this shared use of military resources but which has been little
studied: the transfer of military technology through key individuals.
The chapter proposes to tackle this issue only from the point of view of artillery. Despite the apparent narrowness of the topic, artillery is a particularly relevant
element to grasp the transformations at the core of the elastic concept of military
revolution. In Parker’s narrative, bronze cannons brought fundamental changes in
fortification and in naval combat, and they constituted an important lever for the
growth of armies.13 Instead of participating in the debate on which innovations
were the most significant to induce a radical change in warfare, the chosen method
Transformation of military technology 123
follows the experts who served the artillery in Portugal as officers, gunmakers,
engineers, or simple gunners. Therefore, the purpose is to prove that under the
Iberian Union, Portugal was a key territory for the circulation of European military expertise, and as a result, it cannot be separated from the wider movement of
transformation of warfare which affected most of Western Europe in that time.
First, the chapter shows how the Council of War, in Madrid, took over the
control of artillery in Portugal. Second, it sheds light on the dynamic circulation
of experts which was generated as Portugal became a strategic territory in the
wide network of the Habsburg Monarchy. Third, it reveals the emergence of some
institutional innovations by focusing on the new schools which opened in Lisbon
in order to provide formal training for gunners. Finally, it tackles the circulation
of military expertise in both Spanish colonial structures and Portuguese colonial
structures.
I The Castilian lead over Portuguese artillery
By the time of the conquest of Portugal, the management of artillery had become
one of the most centralized administrative branches of the Spanish monarchy. All
the weaponry of the realms of Castile and Aragon – including Sardinia, the Balearic
islands, and the Spanish African presidios – was placed under the authority of one
individual, the captain general of artillery.14 This position was a highly political one
as it came with a seat at the king’s Council of War, in charge of governing all military matters.15 The captain general of artillery was the head of a vast administration
which had gained a certain independence from the rest of the military apparatus
and included its own account managers, officers, and troops.16 Similar structures
were put under direct supervision of the viceroys and governors in the various
Habsburg states in Italy and Flanders.17 In other words, in all territories, the monarchy of the Spanish Habsburgs tended to keep artillery under close reach of the
executive powers and in tight connection with the central government.
Portugal was no exception. The management of artillery was given to the captain general of artillery, as his authority already extended to all other territories
of the Iberian Peninsula.18 After the royal court left from Portugal in 1583, two
lieutenancies of artillery were created, one in Lisbon and the other one in the
Azores.19 Like in Burgos, Barcelona, Malaga, Pamplona, and Majorca, the lieutenants of artillery were locally in charge of the daily management of artillery and kept
a constant communication with the captain general of artillery and the Council
of War in Madrid.20 They were always chosen among Castilian captains who had
proven their loyalty to the members of the Habsburg government through years, or
even decades, of service. In 1583, the lieutenancy in Lisbon was given to Alonso
de Céspedes, a seasoned soldier who had worked for Philipp II for eighteen years
in Italy and Flanders, rising from the ranks of simple infantry to the high status of
sargento mayor, the second in command of a three-thousand-person tercio.21 After his
death in 1589, he was replaced by Hernando de Acosta, a man who had already
been in the same office in Cartagena for several years.22 In 1595, his successor was
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Alonso Alfaro de Narvaez, an infantry captain who had served the king for thirty
years in Italy, Spain, and Portugal.23
Thus, Philippe II’s government decided to build its own structure for the management of artillery in Portugal and put it under the control of trustworthy Castilian captains. The will to ensure the authority over this strategic weaponry also
appears in the choice of individuals in charge of other key positions, such as the
accountancy of artillery. The holder of this office had important financial responsibilities: he had to keep count of all cannons, cannonballs, and gunpowder stocks
in Portugal and of every expense for the production of artillery and payment of
artillery employees. In 1587, the office was given to a Castilian veteran, Francisco
Sánchez de Moya, who had served as infantry soldier in Naples for several years,
before becoming the chief gunner of Pamplona.24 One source identified him as
criado of the captain general of artillery, which meant that these two men were
bound by patronage.25
From the point of view of the Spanish Habsburgs, this reliable Castilian structure for the management of artillery was all the more necessary given that Portugal soon became one of the most strategic military spaces in the empire. The
Portuguese squadron of galleons inherited from the Aviz dynasty was administratively integrated into the Armada del Mar Océano, the main naval force
of Castile, while a small group of Spanish galleys was attached to Lisbon to
patrol along the coast of Portugal.26 More importantly, the harbour of Lisbon
was turned into the main platform for the preparation of huge naval operations
like the armada of 1588 against England. The size of this fleet, which gathered
130 ships, 2,431 cannons, and 123,790 cannonballs, required a convergence of
war material from all Iberian, Italian, and Flemish territories of King Philipp II.27
Eight years later, in 1596, a comparable fleet was again assembled in Lisbon
under the command of Martín de Padilla, to invade Ireland.28 The artillery staff
of Portugal was thus regularly involved in the large-scale deployment of firepower. The mobilization and coordination of such a massive amount of weaponry was hardly compatible with the respect of Portuguese independence from
the Castilian government. In this sense, having one structure at the scale of the
whole Iberian Peninsula, piloted by one person, the captain general of artillery,
was an efficient way to ensure the transversal power necessary to bridge over the
political fragmentation of the monarchy. This organization supposed that multiple circulations of material and staff occurred between the different states of the
Spanish Habsburgs and Portugal.
II New dynamics for the circulation of experts
The presence of the Spanish monarchy in various areas of Europe, especially in Italy
and Flanders, facilitated the recruitment of international military experts who were
attracted by a career under the patronage of the king of Spain. Therefore, many
specialists of artillery and fortification who served the Spanish Habsburgs moved
to Portugal through the cross-border network of the captain general of artillery.
Transformation of military technology 125
The new design of fortification, called trace italienne, which is at the core of
Parker’s concept of military revolution, was implemented by a handful of specialists, among which the most renowned were Italian engineers. Before the Iberian
Union, King Sebastião of Portugal hired such an Italian expert, Filippo Terzi, who
later passed to the service of the Spanish Habsburgs.29 However, after 1580, the
circulation of Italian engineers in Portugal was enhanced by the fact that many
of them were already on the Spanish artillery payrolls and just moved inside the
Iberian Peninsula through the authority of the captain general of artillery.30 Thus,
after a long experience in designing fortresses for the Spanish Habsburgs in Milan,
Pamplona, Sardinia, the Balearic islands, and Alicante, Italian engineer Giovan
Giacomo Paleari Fratino (called El Fratin by the Spaniards) and his brother Giorgio,
supervised the fortification of Porto Viana do Castelo, São Julião da Barra (near
Lisbon), and Setúbal.31 In the early 1590s, a Florentine artist and engineer, Brother
Giovanni Vincenzo Casale, worked on the forts protecting the entrance of the
Tagus river in front of Lisbon.32 In 1590, he realized firing tests with heavy artillery
in order to check the defence of the bay of Lisbon. He did so with the lieutenant
of artillery and Tiburzio Spannocchi, a Sienese engineer who was considered by
the Council of War the best reference in fortification after he designed fortresses in
many territories including Sicily, the Basque country, Cadiz and Galicia.33 After the
death of Casale in 1593, his works were completed by Leonardo Torriani, an engineer from Lombardy who had fortified the Canary Islands and some Spanish citadels in North Africa before making a long career in the fortifications of Portugal.34
Similar dynamics happened in the manufacturing of cannons. Gun-manufacturing
facilities already existed in Lisbon before the Iberian Union, but they became especially productive when the demand for large bronze cannons rose as a result of the
organization of huge armadas.35 Thus, in 1587, four Spanish master gun founders
were transferred from Castile to Lisbon to participate in the production of cannons
for the armada against England.36 There they worked together with Luis Cesar, a
local master gun founder, and Bartolomeo Sommariva, an Italian master who had
been serving King Philipp II for a decade.37 The supervision and control of this
production was assigned to Diego de Prado, a Castilian officer who later wrote
two manuscripts on gunnery and cannon-making techniques.38 In 1589, a German gun founder from Aachen, Jan Vantrier, was hired by the Duke of Parma in
the Low Countries under orders to join Lisbon, where he produced cannons until
his death, in 1603.39 In other words, Lisbon converted into a point of encounter
for gun founders coming from various areas of Europe, and this situation certainly
stimulated the exchange of knowledge and techniques from different manufacturing traditions.
From the beginning of sixteenth century, gunners, who were specialists in the
use of cannons, were traditionally either Portuguese or recruited by Portuguese
agents in Flanders and Germany.40 After 1580, this recruitment was reshaped by the
international networks of the Spanish Habsburgs. A document of the Portuguese
squadron of the Armada del Mar Océano in 1602 shows only a small proportion of
Portuguese among a crew of forty-five gunners (Figure 7.1).41 Flemish artillerists
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FIGURE 7.1
Origins of forty-five gunners from the Portuguese squadron of the Armada
del Mar Océano (1602).
were still present, coming essentially from the lands loyal to the Habsburgs, while
Germans came predominantly from Hamburg, certainly because of the strong
diplomatic and commercial ties this Hanseatic city kept with Spain.42 Spaniards
amounted to only about 25 per cent of this group of gunners and were in majority
from northern Spain. However, the most striking characteristic is the massive presence of Italian gunners, who constituted almost one-third of the group. Most of
them were subjects of the Spanish Habsburgs from Lombardy, Sicily, and especially
Naples, but some had also been recruited in the neighbouring territories such as
Venice, the Papal States, and Genoa. The Mediterranean emphasis on the recruitment was perceptible in the presence of one Ragusan, two Greeks, and even one
man from Kazan, identified as a Turk. This international crew was completed by a
French person and a handful of Scots who might have been Catholics seeking the
protection of the Spanish Habsburgs.
This gathering of technicians who had learnt their art in so many places and who
must have had as many different work experiences was undoubtedly favourable to
the circulation of the most up-to-date knowledge and techniques. In addition, the
Spanish monarchy fostered the exchange of technical knowledge by creating new
teaching institutions.
III New institutions for the teaching of gunnery
During the second half of the sixteenth century, the Spanish monarchy experienced a huge increase in its needs for gunners to handle a fast-growing number of
Transformation of military technology 127
cannons.43 This led to the emergence of a new type of institutions. In the 1560s,
a first school of gunners opened in Milan, following the model of the Venetian
neighbour.44 In the next decade, similar schools were created in Sicily and Andalusia.45 The abundant documentation about the school created in Seville in 1576
shows that the teaching included a practical component on a shooting ground and
a more theoretical component in the form of lectures given by a mathematician.46
The training was validated by a formal examination through questions which were
asked of the apprentice by veteran gunners in front of royal officers. Such an institution represented an important innovation in a society where the vast majority
of technical knowledge was transmitted informally, from the master’s hands to the
apprentice’s.47 Compared to the traditional system of apprenticeship, where one
master trained a handful of apprentices over his whole career, the schools of gunners multiplied the transfer of skills, enabling one master gunner to teach his art
to dozens of individuals per year.48 Because they massively supplied the state with
skilled labour necessary for the large-scale deployment of artillery, these new institutions directly strengthened the transformations at the core of Parker’s concept of
military revolution.49
After the losses of the Invincible Armada in 1588, the Council of War launched
a programme to reinforce the teaching of gunnery in the Iberian Peninsula. By the
end of the century, the Spanish monarchy boasted a vast network of schools of gunnery in places such as Burgos, Hondarribia, San Sebastian, Pamplona, Cartagena,
Malaga, Cadiz, Ferrol, A Coruña, and Barcelona.50 Portugal was not left aside. In
August 1588, right after the departure of the Invincible Armada from Lisbon, the
Council of War asked a certain Bartolomé de Andrada “to teach in school” in the
castle of São Jorge.51 Andrada had served the king as a master gunner in Sicily,
where he was teaching his art in one of the four schools on the island.52 He had
come all the way to Portugal to join the armada against England but eventually
did not embark, because he fell sick just before departure. After his recovery some
weeks later, the Council of War decided to make fruitful use of his special teaching skills and his ability to speak several languages - particularly relevant given the
fact that gunners converged on Lisbon from all over Europe - and thus opened the
first school of gunners in Portugal. Several years later, the same role was performed
by Juan Carlos, a veteran soldier whom the Council of War considered “the best
expert in gunnery, artificial fires, explosive mines and night shots.”53
By that time, the teaching of gunnery had increased in Portugal. In 1590, the
captain general of artillery, don Juan de Acuña Vela, claimed that several master
gunners were in charge of teaching their art in the castles of São Jorge and São
Julião in Lisbon and in the fort of San Felipe in Setúbal.54 According to his words,
their lectures were public and intended for anyone who might be interested in
learning how to use cannons.55 Nevertheless, this allegation did not mean that
attendance to the lessons was not filtered. Exactly the same set of vocabulary was
used to describe the lectures in the Seville school, but only subjects of the Spanish Habsburgs were allowed to sign up for the lessons, and foreigners with even
decades of residence in Spain had to struggle with the royal administration to be
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admitted.56 What the captain general of artillery probably meant by “public” lectures was mostly that they were free of charge for students, the cost being covered
by the monarchy.
Besides these schools created in the fortresses of Lisbon and Setúbal, lectures on
artillery were also implemented in naval settings. In 1589, Lazaro de la Isla, chief
gunner of the royal squadron of galleys stationed in Portugal, started his own school
of gunners.57 A year after, his personal initiative received the official approval of
the Council of War “to teach the art of gunnery, geometry and artificial fires.”58
Being the son of a gunner and having fought in the battle of Lepanto (1571), the
capture of Tunis (1573), and the conquest of the Azores (1583), Lazaro de la Isla
was undoubtedly an expert in artillery.59 In 1595, he published a famous artillery
treatise in Madrid, later re-edited in Valladolid (1603) and Lisbon (1609).60 After
several years of artillery lectures on board the galleys, he pursued his teaching career
in the schools of gunners in Burgos (1597) and Cadiz (1604).61 The trajectory of
this expert from one training centre of the Iberian Peninsula to another strengthened the idea that the teaching of gunnery implemented in Portugal was fully
inserted into the wider network of schools which was built by the government of
the Habsburgs in the last decades of the sixteenth century.
IV Cross-imperial circulation of military technicians
This chapter has so far focused on phenomena circumscribed to the Iberian Peninsula. The main argument has been that the transversal structure under the authority
of the captain general of artillery fostered the cross-border circulation of military
experts and institutional models between Portugal and the European territories of
the Spanish Habsburgs. However, the authority of the captain general of artillery
did not reach further than Madeira and the Azores. Given the importance of overseas territories for both Spain and Portugal, the chapter looks into the extent to
which these circulations expanded to the Iberian colonial territories. This question
involves the rising interest of historians in the study of the connections and entanglements between the Spanish and Portuguese empires during the Iberian Union.62
The topic deserves thorough archival work, but this chapter wishes only to superficially remark on the cross-imperial circulations of military experts between the
two Iberian empires.
The first remark is that the artillery of the Estado da Índia and of the annual
convoys travelling through the Cape route to Portuguese India (Carreira da India)
stood aside the authority of the Council of War. This administrative divide appears
clearly in 1608, when almost two hundred cannons were sold by the Council of
War to “the Portuguese Crown, in order to equip the galleons going to the Eastern
Indies.”63 Throughout the Iberian Union, the armament of these ships remained
essentially a topic of local government which was discussed and negotiated by
the Council of Finance and the Council of State in Lisbon, in connection with
the royal Council of Portugal in Madrid.64 These Portuguese-dominated institutions proved to be quite reluctant to hire individuals belonging to the patronage
Transformation of military technology 129
network of the captain general of artillery; for instance, in 1593, when the galleons
San Simon and San Pablo, initially part of the Armada del Mar Océano - under
the management of the Council of War - were sold to the Crown of Portugal,
several veteran gunners were dismissed and had to beg for new positions under
the protection of the captain general of artillery.65 From a military point of view,
such dismissals were counterproductive, insofar as Portuguese ships and fortresses
in India suffered from a chronic dearth of gunners.66 They can only be understood as a resentful reaction to Castilian involvement in Portuguese military affairs,
which was perceived as a violation of the formal administrative separation agreed
in Tomar in 1581.
In the overseas territories, Portuguese colonial authorities were unwilling to
resort to Castilian support, because they feared it might lead Castilians to make
claims to Portuguese possessions.67 This, however, did not totally prevent the crossimperial circulation of military experts. After many years at the service of the
Spanish monarchy, the Milanese engineer Giovanni Battista Cairati finished his
career in Portuguese Africa and India, building bastion fortresses in Mombasa,
Bassein, and Daman in the 1590s.68 In 1629, two Spanish veterans of the wars in
Flanders accompanied the Count of Linhares when he was sent as viceroy in Goa
with a strong agenda for military reforms, in order to face the rising Dutch threat
in Asia.69 Nevertheless, another example highlights the kind of tensions that could
result from the direct involvement of Spanish military experts in Portuguese colonial territories. In its first years of activity, the gun foundry in Portuguese Macao
resorted to two Spanish gun founders hired in Manila.70 Their replacement by the
Portuguese gun founder Manuel Tavares Bocarro in 1626, under the pretext of
their lack of abilities, was seemingly motivated by political reasons, given that some
Portuguese sources called them “the Spanish enemies who came from Manila.”71
Although more research is needed on this issue, these few elements show that the
circulation of military experts from the Spanish colonial empire to the Portuguese
colonial empire was less fluid than from Spain to Portugal.
The circulation operated slightly better in the opposite way, from Portugal to
the Spanish Empire. Certainly, the grasp of the Council of War over the artillery of
Portugal limited the opportunities for Portuguese military experts to find jobs in
their home country insofar as they suffered from the concurrence of many foreigners who were often better inserted into the administrative structure and patronage
network of the court in Madrid. For these individuals, one strong option must
have been to work for the Portuguese colonial administration, because it tended to
favour its own compatriots. Another one was to join the Spanish colonial administration, which was in constant need of artillery specialists. Statistics on the origins
of crewmembers on board transatlantic ships (Spanish Carrera de Indias) reveal that
about 5 per cent of gunners came from Portugal.72 The records of examinations
passed in the Seville school of gunners in the years 1600–6 registered eight Portuguese candidates.73 Even though these were small contingents, they nonetheless
demonstrate that the Iberian Union offered new career prospects to a few Portuguese military technicians willing to get involved in the Spanish colonial structures.
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The dynamics underlying the involvement of Portuguese technicians in the
Spanish colonial administration can be better understood from an example. In the
last decades of the sixteenth century, the multiple attacks of English corsairs on
the American settlements of the Spanish monarchy increased the necessity to
provide them with heavy weaponry.74 Among the various projects to create gun
foundries in colonial settings, one proposition aimed to take advantage of the discovery, in Cuba, of copper pits and build a manufacture of bronze guns next to
this source of metal supply.75 The man chosen to lead this project was Francisco
Sánchez de Moya, previously mentioned in this text as a Castilian gunner who had
become account manager of the artillery in Portugal.76 As said before, this officer
had strong ties with Juan de Acuña Vela, the Spanish captain general of artillery, and
he successfully turned the gun foundry project of Cuba into a reality.77
The composition of the team that he was asked to gather for this project gives
some insights on the bonds this officer had created with other military technicians during his stay in Lisbon, between 1587 and 1597. As for the gun founders,
Sánchez de Moya chose Hernando and Francisco Ballesteros.78 Originally from
Ubeda in Andalusia, these two brothers worked for several years as assistants of the
German master Jan Vantrier, in the gun foundry of Lisbon.79 With them came four
gun founder assistants, among whom three were Castilians and one, called Ambrosio Golbin, was from Lisbon.80 Besides this nucleus of gun founders dominated by
Castilians, the team sent to Cuba included mostly Portuguese technicians: a master
blacksmith called Pedro Alvares, from Guimarães; a master carpenter (to make gun
carriages) called Gonzalo de la Rocha, from Braga; and a cannonball maker, Salvador Gonzales, and his son, both from Lisbon.81 Apparently, for this expertise on
cannonball making, the first choice of Sánchez de Moya had fallen upon a mulatto
named Acosta who finally preferred to stay in Lisbon for a higher salary.82
All the Portuguese technicians chosen by Sánchez de Moya to accompany him
to the new gun manufacture in Cuba must have been previously working for the
artillery of Portugal. In this sense, the circulation of military experts fostered by
the transnational networks of the Spanish Habsburgs generated new daily contacts between Portuguese technicians and individuals such as the German founder
Vantrier and his Castilian disciples, the Ballesteros brothers. These interactions
undoubtedly favoured the circulation of technical knowledge. They also allowed
some Portuguese technicians to develop personal bonds with Spanish officers (e.g.,
Sánchez de Moya), who through their connections with the highest spheres of the
Habsburg military apparatus had the capacity to turn those personal ties into new
career opportunities. In other words, this example confirms that military knowledge circulated in the Iberian empires through an articulation between state structures and informal networks.83
Conclusion
This collective volume addresses the key question of whether Portugal and its
empire experienced a military revolution in the early modern period. Naturally,
Transformation of military technology 131
the main problem is that there is no consensus among historians on what the Military Revolution actually was or on if it even ever happened. To overcome this difficulty, this chapter has focused on the circulation of military technicians to prove
that at least under the Iberian Union, if not before, Portugal was a significant node
attracting gunners, gun founders, engineers, and other military technicians from
various places in Europe, including Italy, Germany, the Low Countries, Spain,
Greece, Great Britain, and France. These multiple movements of individuals constituted as many channels for the circulation of military knowledge and technology. Therefore, it seems unconceivable to accept the idea that Portugal might have
remained on the margin of the major transformations in warfare which occurred
in other parts of Europe.
This chapter also argues that the association of Portugal with the Spanish Habsburgs between 1580 and 1640 was beneficial from the point of view of the circulation of military technology. The dispersion of the Habsburg territories in Europe
and the attractiveness of Spanish patronage favoured the hiring of artillery experts
coming from all over the continent. In addition, in spite of the formal political
separation between Castile and Portugal which was agreed in Tomar in 1581, the
circulation of this international pool of experts was permitted by the implementation of a cross-border administrative structure under the authority of the captain
general of artillery and the royal Council of War. In this period, the area of Lisbon became a particularly important military hub, frequented by many technicians
who brought together their knowledge and experience of warfare. To facilitate
the transfer of skills, the Council of War implemented in Portugal an institutional
model, the school of gunners, already operational in other territories ruled by the
Habsburgs. These teaching centres were resolutely a modern feature of armies, in
a time when England boasted only one of such schools, in London, while France
only acquired them under the reign of Louis XIV (1643–1715).84
This structural organization generated new personal bonds among military
experts which, in some cases, produced movements of Portuguese technicians outside Portugal, through the military apparatus of the Spanish Empire. In contrast,
foreign experts belonging to the patronage network of the royal court in Madrid
experienced more difficulties in penetrating Portuguese imperial structures. Paradoxically, these structures were the most in need of military expertise because they
were in charge of defending the territories which most suffered from the growing
concurrence of other European powers. Such impediments probably resulted from
the rising tensions between Lisbon and Madrid, as a consequence of structural
issues stemming from the divergent interests of Portuguese elites and the Habsburg
government regarding the use of shared resources inside the composite monarchy.85
In this regard, the relatively fluid movement of war material and military experts
between Castile and Portugal came at a cost. The cross-border administrative network implemented by the Council of War threatened the principle of the composite monarchy which presided over the association between the two Iberian powers:
the independence of Portugal vis-à-vis Castilian government. It certainly contributed to the rising Portuguese resentment against Habsburg rule which culminated
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in the Portuguese revolt of 1640 and the end of the Iberian Union.86 Despite
this outcome, the impact of the Habsburg government on the transformation of
Portuguese military technology should not be neglected. During six decades, as
this chapter has shown, Portuguese military technicians had many opportunities
to collaborate with the experts of the Spanish Habsburgs and learn from their different knowledge and experience. When the two monarchies took separate paths,
this stock of skills and competence must have been of some value to Portugal in its
struggle for independence.
Notes
1 This chapter presents research that was carried out at two institutions. Part of it is based
on my doctoral research on gunners which took place at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. But it displays also some preliminary results of my current research
project “GLOBALGUNS” implemented at the University Pablo de Olavide, Seville,
Spain. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020
research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 845675, which is titled “Guns for a Global Empire: Deployment of Artillery
Technology in the Iberian Colonial Space (1580–1640).” I am therefore grateful to these
institutions for providing me with a fruitful environment to develop this research. Also,
I thank Professor Bartolome Yun-Casalilla for his comments and suggestions. Any mistakes in this chapter are my responsibility.
2 Michael Roberts, The Military Revolution, 1560–1660: An Inaugural Lecture Delivered
Before the Queen’s University of Belfast (Belfast: M. Boyd, 1956).
3 Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West,
1500–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
4 Clifford J. Rogers, ed., The Military Revolution Debate: Readings on the Military Transformation of Early Modern Europe (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995).
5 Tonio Andrade, The Gunpowder Age: China, Military Innovation, and the Rise of the West
in World History (Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2016); Gábor
Agoston, “Firearms and Military Adaptation: The Ottomans and the European Military Revolution, 1450–1800,” Journal of World History 25, no.1 (2014): 85–124; Tonio
Andrade, Hyeok Hweon Kang, and Kirsten Cooper, “A Korean Military Revolution?
Parallel Military Innovations in East Asia and Europe,” Journal of World History 25, no. 1
(2014): 51–84. Richard Eaton and Philip B. Wagoner, “Warfare on the Deccan Plateau,
1450–1600: A Military Revolution in Early Modern India?,” Journal of World History 25,
no. 1 (2014): 5–50; Matthew Stavros, “Military Revolution in Early Modern Japan,”
Japanese Studies 33, no. 3 (2013): 243–61.
6 Parker, Military Revolution, 24.
7 John H. Elliott, “The Spanish Monarchy and the Kingdom of Portugal, 1580–1640,” in
Conquest and Coalescence, ed. Mark Greengrass (London: Edward Arnold, 1991), 48–67.
8 António Manuel Hespanha, ed., Nova História militar de Portugal, vol. 2 (Lisbon: Circulo
de Leitores, 2003); Tiago Machado de Castro, “Bombardeiros na Índia: Os homens a
as artes da artilharia portuguesa (1498–1557)” (MA diss., University of Lisbon, Lisbon,
2011); Roger Lee de Jesus, “Abastecer a Guerra noutro Oceano: o Armazém das Armas
de Goa em 1545–1546,” in Nos 600 da conquista de Ceuta: Portugal e a creação do primeiro
sistema mundial, ed. Francisco Contente Domingues and Jorge Silva Rocha (Lisbon:
Comissão Portuguesa de História Militar, 2015), 169–220; Charles R. Boxer, The Portuguese Seaborne Empire, 1415–1825 (London: Hutchinson, 1969); Francisco Bethencourt and Kirti Chaudhuri, História da Expansão Portuguesa, vol. 1: A Formação do império
(1415–1570) (Lisbon: Temas e Debates, 1998).
Transformation of military technology 133
9 Geoffrey Parker, “The Artillery Fortress as an Engine of European Overseas Expansion, 1480–1750,” in City Walls: The Urban Enceinte in Global Perspective, ed. James D.
Tracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 386–416; Andrade, The Gunpowder Age, 199–201; Vitor Luis Gaspar Rodrigues, “Mestres-fundidores portugueses na
China,” in Portugal – China: 500 anos, ed. Miguel Castelo Branco (Lisbon: Babel, 2014),
158–63.
10 John H. Elliott, “A Europe of Composite Monarchies,” Past and Present 137 (1992):
48–71.
11 Elliott, “The Spanish Monarchy”; John H. Elliott, Imperial Spain, 1469–1716 (London:
Penguin Books, 2002), 274.
12 Jean-Frédéric Schaub, Le Portugal au temps du Comte-Duc d’Olivares (1621–1640): Le
conflit de juridictions comme exercice de la politique (Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 2001); Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla, Iberian World Empires and the Globalization of Europe 1415–1668
(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).
13 Parker, Military Revolution.
14 See the instructions given to captain general Francés de Álava: Archivo General de
Simancas (AGS) Guerra y Marina (GYM), leg. 76/133 (17 May 1572).
15 Juan Carlos Domínguez Nafría, El Real y Supremo Consejo de Guerra (siglos XVI–XVIII)
(Madrid: Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales, 2001).
16 Brice Cossart, “Les artilleurs et la Monarchie Catholique: Fondements technologiques
et scientifiques d’un empire transocéanique (1560–1610)” (PhD diss., European University Institute, Florence, 2016).
17 Ibid.
18 See the instructions given to captain general Juan de Acuña Vela, AGS GYM lib. 43, fol.
22v-35r (30 August 1586).
19 AGS GYM leg 148/320 (year 1583) and leg. 209/139 (26 August 1587).
20 AGS GYM leg. 88/250 (17 August 1578), leg. 174/82 (3 July 1576), and leg. 364/152
(20 July 1592); Andreu Seguí Beltrán, “La administración de la artillería del Reíno de
Mallorca en el siglo XVI,” Bolletí de la Societat Arqueològica 69 (2013): 143–57.
21 AGS GYM leg. 209/139 (26 August 1587). On the charge of sargento mayor, see Fernando González de León, The Road to Rocroi: Class, Culture and Command in the Spanish
Army of Flanders, 1567–1659 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2009), 22.
22 AGS GYM leg. 364/152 (20 July 1592).
23 AGS GYM leg. 437/120 (13 March 1595), lib. 70, fol. 129v (2 April 1595) and leg.
604/214 (24 March 1603). The accounts of his infantry company in Lisbon: Arquivo
Nacional da Torre do Tombo (Lisbon), Contos do Reino a Casa, NA. 676.
24 AGS GYM leg. 209/172 (1587). See the biography written by his widow in Archivo
General de Indias (AGI) SANTO DOMINGO, leg. 20/8 (1621).
25 AGS GYM leg. 215/121 to 123 (1587).
26 David C. Goodman, Spanish Naval Power, 1589–1665: Reconstruction and Defeat (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997). On the squadron of 4 to 8
Spanish galleys in Lisbon, see: AGS GYM leg. 175/7 & 8 (1583) and leg. 364/3 (15
January 1592).
27 Colin Martin and Geoffrey Parker, The Spanish Armada: Revised Edition (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1999), 26.
28 Richard B. Wernham, The Return of the Armadas: The Last Years of the Elizabethan
War Against Spain, 1595–1603 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994); Edward
Tenace, “A Strategy of Reaction: The Armadas of 1596 and 1597 and the Spanish
Struggle for European Hegemony,” The English Historical Review 118, no. 478 (2003):
855–82.
29 Miguel Soromenho and Lucas Branco Ricardo, “The Architectural career of Filippo
Terzi in Portugal (1577–1597),” in Da Bologna all’Europa: Artisti bolognesi in Portogallo
(secoli XVI–XIX), ed. Sabine Frommel and Micaela Antonucci (Bologna: Bologna University Press, 2017), 101–23.
134
Brice Cossart
30 See the accounts of artillery for 1570–80: AGS Contaduria Mayor de Cuentas (CMC),
2a época leg. 414.
31 Viganò Marino, “El Fratin mi ynginiero,” in I Paleari Fratino da Morcote, ingegneri militari ticinesi in Spagna (XVI–XVII secolo) (Bellinzona: Casagrande, 2004); A. Pirinu,
“La traça del fratin: il progetto dei fratelli Palearo Fratino per il forte di S. Filippo
a Setúbal e per la collina di S. Giuliano ad Alghero,” Archeologia medievale XXXVI
(2009): 195–210.
32 Eugenio Battisti and Mazzino Fossi, “Casali Giovanni Vincenzo,” Dizionario Biografico
degli Italiani 21 (1978).
33 AGS GYM leg. 281/176 (17 February 1590). For a biography of Spannochi, Alicia
Cámara Muñoz, “El ingeniero cortesano: Tiburzio Spannocchi de Siena a Madrid,”
in “Libros, caminos y días”: el viaje del ingeniero, ed. Alicia Cámara Muñoz and Bernardo
Revuelta Pol, 11–42 (Madrid: Fundación Juanelo Turriano, 2016).
34 Alicia Cámara Muñoz, Rafael de Faria Moreira, and Marino Viganò, Leonardo Turriano:
ingeniero del rey (Madrid: Fundación Juanelo Turriano, 2010).
35 Rafael Valladares, La conquista de Lisboa: Violencia militar y comunidad política en Portugal,
1578–1583 (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2008), 211; David C. Goodman, Power and Penury:
Government, Technology and Science in Philip II’s Spain (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1988), 109.
36 AGS GYM leg. 213/195 (1587).
37 AGS GYM leg. 203/34 (28 November 1587) and leg. 222/55 (25 March 1588). Sumariba was on the payroll of Spanish artillery since 1577: AGS CMC 2a epoca leg. 414.
38 AGS GYM leg. 209/189 (4 September 1587) and leg. 284/265 (9 May 1590). His
manuscripts: Diego de Prado, “La obra manual y pláctica de artillería” (1591), Biblioteca
Nacional de Madrid, mss 9024. Diego de Prado y Tovar, “Encyclopaedia de fundiciόn
de artillería y su plática manual” (1603), Cambridge University Library.
39 AGS GYM leg. 365/129 (25 May 1589), 131 (1 April 1589), and leg. 604/400 (17
December 1603).
40 Castro, “Bombardeiros,” 32–43.
41 Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo (Lisbon), Contos do Reino e Casa, NA 679
(1602).
42 Carlos Gómez-Centurión Jiménez, Felipe II, la empresa de Inglaterra y el comercio septentrional (1566–1609) (Madrid and España: Editorial Naval, 1988).
43 Brice Cossart, “Los artilleros a escala de la Monarquía Hispánica: el salto cuantitativo de
las armadas atlánticas,” in Estudios sobre Guerra y Sociedad en la Monarquía Hispánica. Guerra
marítima, estrategia, organización y cultura militar (1500–1700), ed. Enrique García Hernán
and Davide Maffi, 205–23 (Valencia: Albatros, 2017).
44 AGS Estado (EST) leg. 1260/115, 116, and 117. For the Venetian schools of gunners,
see Michael E. Mallett and John R. Hale, The Military Organisation of a Renaissance State:
Venice c.1400 to 1617 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 403–7.
45 Cossart, “Les artilleurs.”
46 Brice Cossart, “Producing Skills for an Empire: The Seville School of Gunners During
the Golden Age of the Carrera de Indias,” Technology and Culture 57 (2017): 459–86.
47 Stephan R. Epstein, “Craft Guilds, Apprenticeship and Technological Change in Preindustrial Europe,” The Journal of Economic History 58, no. 3 (1998): 684–713; Bert De
Munck, Technologies of Learning: Apprenticeship in Antwerp Guilds from the 15th Century
to the End of the Ancien Régime (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007); Bert De Munck, Steven L.
Kaplan, and Hugo Soly, eds., Learning on the Shop Floor: Historical Perspectives on Apprenticeship (Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books, 2007).
48 Brice Cossart, “Un nouveau paradigme de l’apprentissage technique: Les écoles
d’artilleurs de Philippe II d’Espagne,” in Mobilités d’ingénieurs en Europe, XVe–XVIIIe
siècle: Mélanges en l’honneur d’Hélène Vérin, ed. Stéphane Blond, Liliane Hilaire-Pérez, and
Michèle Virol (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2017), 185–98.
49 Parker, Military Revolution.
Transformation of military technology 135
50 AGS GYM leg. 246/191 (20 February 1589), leg. 254/221 (22 December 1589), leg.
280/228 (6 February 1590), leg. 281/32 (7 February 1590), leg. 398/291 (19 February 1594), leg. 627/126 (16 June 1604), leg. 688/57 (14 March 1605).
51 AGS GYM lib. 45, fol. 62r (24 August 1588).
52 Ibid. On the four Sicilian schools: AGS EST leg. 1157/103 (30 May 1591).
53 AGS GYM lib. 70, fol. 58r (28 September 1594).
54 AGS GYM leg. 280/255 (18 February 1590).
55 Ibid.
56 Cossart, “Les artilleurs,” 283–86.
57 AGS GYM leg. 271/37 (5 December 1589).
58 AGS GYM leg. 316/117 (1590).
59 He appears among the most renowned captains in the report of the invasion of Terceira:
AGS GYM leg. 148/311 (1583). For other biographical details, see AGS GYM leg.
271/37 (5 December 1587) and the preface of his book: Lazaro de la Isla, Breve tratado
de artillería, geometría y artificios de fuegos (Madrid: Viuda de Pedro Madrigal, 1595).
60 Isla, Breve tratado.
61 AGS GYM lib. 77 fol. 139v (29 March 1597), leg. 627/126 (16 June 1604).
62 Serge Gruzinski, Les quatre parties du monde: Histoire d’une mondialisation (Turin: Éditions
de La Martinière, 2004); Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “Holding the World in Balance: The
Connected Histories of the Iberian Overseas Empires, 1500–1640,” American Historical
Review 112, no. 5 (2007): 1359–85; Helge Wendt, ed., The Globalization of Knowledge in
the Iberian Colonial World (Berlin: Edition Open Access, 2016); Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla,
Iberian World.
63 AGS GYM leg. 688/34 (7 June 1608).
64 Schaub, Le Portugal, 150–53, 271.
65 AGS GYM leg. 397/96 (5 February 1593), 124 (16 March1593) and leg. 389/212 (1
April 1593), 238 (27 May 1593), 253 (9 May 1593).
66 Vitor Luis Gaspar Rodrigues, “Reajustamentos da Estratégia militar naval do ‘Estado da
India’ na viragem do século XVI para o XVII,” in O Estado da India e os Desafios Europeus:
Actas do XII Seminario Internacional de História Indo-Portuguesa, ed. João Paulo Oliveira
e Costa and Vitor Luis Gaspar Rodrigues (Lisbon: Centro de História de Além-Mar,
2010), 443–56; André Murteira, “A Carreira da India e as incursões neerlandesas no
índico occidental e em águas ibéricas de 1604–1608,” in O Estado da India e os Desafios
Europeus: Actas do XII Seminario Internacional de História Indo-Portuguesa, ed. João Paulo
Oliveira e Costa and Vitor Luis Gaspar Rodrigues (Lisbon: Centro de História de AlémMar, 2010), 457–501.
67 Yun-Casalilla, Iberian World, 351; Subrahmanyam, “Holding.”
68 Parker, “The Artillery Fortress,” 395.
69 Domingo Centenero de Arce, “Soldados portugueses en la Monarquía católica, soldados
castellanos en la India Lusa,” in Portugal na Monarquia Hispânica: Dinâmicas de integração e
de conflito, ed. Cardim Leonor Freire Costa Pedro and Mafalda Soares da Cunha (Lisbon:
Centro de História de Além-Mar, 2013), 47–72.
70 Rodrigues, “Mestres-fundidores,” 161.
71 Ibid., 161–62.
72 Cossart, “Producing Skills,” 465.
73 AGI Contratación (CT) leg. 4871.
74 Keneth R. Andrews, Elizabethan Privateering: 1585–1603 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966); Richard B. Wernham, After the Armada: Elizabethan England and
the Struggle for Western Europe, 1588–1595 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984).
Wernham, The Return of the Armadas.
75 AGI CT leg. 5254/2(1) (1597).
76 AGI SANTO DOMINGO, leg. 20/8 (1621).
77 Ibid.
78 AGI CT leg. 5254/2(1) (1597).
136
Brice Cossart
79 AGI CT leg. 5254/2(3) (1597). See also Pedro Mora Piris, La Real fundición de bronces de
Sevilla, siglos XVI a XVIII (Seville: Escuela superior de ingenieros, 1994), 33.
80 AGI CT leg. 5254/2(8), (10), (11), and (17) (1597).
81 AGI CT leg. 5254/2(5), (14), and (16) (1597).
82 AGI CT leg. 5254/2(1) and (14) (1597).
83 Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla, “Social Networks and the Circulation of Technology
and Knowledge in the Global Spanish Empire,” in Global History and New Polycentric
Approaches: Europe, Asia and the America in a World Network System, ed. Manuel Pérez
García and Lucio De Sousa (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 275–291; YunCasalilla, Iberian World, 332.
84 Steven A. Walton, “The Art of Gunnery in Renaissance England” (PhD diss., University
of Toronto, Toronto, 1999), 294; Pierre Lemau de la Jaisse, Carte générale de la monarchie
françoise (Paris: Author, 1733), section “artillerie du Roy, au 15 février 1730.”
85 Yun-Casalilla, Iberian World, 399–401.
86 Schaub, Le Portugal, 20–21, 284.