Italian Medieval Units

[edyzmedieval]

After a considerable round of Venice in M2TW, a couple of questions popped up with regards to some units. How historical were they?

• Venetian Archers
• Venetian Heavy Infantry
• Broken Lances

Similarly, in MTW, the Genoese had the Genoese Sailors, a unit of archers that was better than the rest. In M2TW - it's crossbowmen.

Which one is the real deal?

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Both the Venetian Heavy Infantry reference and the Venetian Archer were troops used by Venice in its Adriatic empire. I get the impression that they would be used on galleys to do the primary fighting as well as in various garrisons. Venice did use crossbows as well as archers in its Renn era armies.

Broken Lances were the byproduct of war, disease, or interpersonal conflict with either the man-at-arms or the sergeant surviving when the rest of the unit did not or otherwise split away. This broke up the "squad" that was meant by the term lance. reference

Unlike the discrete units of M2TW, it seems likely that Venetian ship detachments carried both VHI and VA in mixed units and they were possibly even cross trained (it seems a lot of them were mercenaries from Albania and other points in the Balkans in long term service to the Serene Republic). The broken lances tended to get rebuilt into companies that were used by city states, since the militia of the city states could provide the infantry and shooter components that were the most frequently "broken off" portion of a broken lance.