I recently had the great pleasure of giving a lecture on true tales of murder and assassintion in Renaissance Italy at the fantastic event, Oktoberfecht, down in Moncure, North Carolina. Never have I encountered such a group of HEMA folks so bent on both learning and having a good time.
One story seemed to really resonate with these fun-spirited people, and that is the sad and sordid tale of Imola from Imola and Gentile Sassatello. Two men destined to clash over that most timeless of motives, jealousy.
First, like Shakespeare, we must have a brief description of our players.
· Gentile Sassatello – young nobleman of Imola
· Imola from Imola – impetuous mercenary also from Imola
· Giovanni “Mad Dog” Sassatello – older brother of Gentile and political leader in Imola
· Guido Vagina – political leader and patron of Imola from Imola.
· Thaddeus Volpe, also known as “The Fox” – famous condottiere and friend of Imola from Imola, Guido Vagina and Mad Dog Sassatello.
· Marsabilia – a beautiful lady of Imola
For this story we must travel to the town of Imola, a little city in Northeastern Italy, just down the road from Bologna. In 1504 the city of Imola teetered on the edge of a civil war between the popular faction under Giovanni “Mad Dog” Sassatello and the Imperial faction under Guido Vagina (not a typo.)[2] Mad Dog Sassatello was a savage swordsman who gained his nickname by eating the heart of a Frenchman he had just killed.[1] Guido Vagina was an experienced condottiere or mercenary captain.
Gentile Sassatello was the younger brother of Mad Dog. He was a young man at the time, just making his place in the world, and his young heart brimmed with the wild passions of youth. One woman in particular captivated him, a commoner named Marsabilia. She was already married, but this was no impediment to Gentile’s fiery passions. If her husband made trouble, Gentile could easily make Marsabilia a widow, free for marriage and romance.
But the beautiful Marsabilia had also drawn the affections of another swordsman. This rival to Gentile Sassatello was an up-and-coming condottiere known as Imola from Imola (yes, seriously that’s what he was called.) This Imola from Imola had already proven himself a true and brave warrior in duels1 and on the battlefield.
Yet despite Imola’s prowess with the sword, Marsabilia preferred Gentile to Imola from Imola.
Should we suppose that Imola from Imola let it go? Should we believe that he was secure enough in his manhood to accept the lady’s choice and move on to the next conquest?
Not in Renaissance Italy — if Imola could not have Marsabilia, neither would his rival.
One day when both both Mad Dog and Gentile Sassatello were out of town, Imola gathered a few like-minded friends. They had swords under their cloaks and murder on their minds. They went to the house of the Sassatello and staked it out. This band of killers planned to waylay Gentile when he returned to the city.
In a crowded Renaissance town, there were eyes everywhere and the would-be assassins were soon spotted. Gentile Sassatello received word that Imola from Imola was lingering outside his house with ill intention and he naturally stayed away from home. Eventually, Imola from Imola gave up and left.
Gentile was not the only Sassatello to hear what Imola from Imola was planning. His older brother, Mad Dog, also discovered that Imola from Imola intended to murder Gentile. As the head of the Popular faction, Mad Dog could call upon a hundred armed men with the snap of his fingers. This is exactly what Mad Dog did.
He and his posse of swordsman sneaked into town and surprised Imola from Imola before he could get away. Faced with such a large force and completely caught off guard, the up-and-coming condottiere surrendered.
This should have been the end of the sad tale. Under normal circumstances Mad Dog would have killed Imola from Imola. But Imola had a powerful friend, known as Thaddeus the Fox. Thaddeus was a much-admired condottiere, and both he and Mad Dog had served together under the banner of Cesare Borgia.
Thaddeus the Fox now convinced Mad Dog Sassatello to spare the life of Imola from Imola. Mad Dog released Imola from Imola on the promise that he would leave Gentile alone.
But there was a problem here. Envy can be a terrible illness and Imola from Imola had a bad case of it. He could not forget that Gentile was enjoying the sweet caresses of Marsabilia, a woman Imola considered rightfully his. After all, Imola was the proven warrior and Gentile was just some pretty face. It should be be Imola getting the girl.
Unable to live with the jealousy brewing in his heart, Imola started planning to kill Gentile again. In a small town like the city of Imola, rumors spread faster than fire. It was not long before Gentile heard just what Imola from Imola was planning.
Already furious that his brother had released Imola from captivity, Gentile determined to put down this jealous idiot. Gentile assembled a force of a hundred or so men for this task.
Things were looking downright unhealthy for Imola from Imola and so he went into hiding at the house of Guido Vagina, the other major war leader in the city. Gentile Sassatello was not about to let him escape that easily.
What happens next is a bit hazy, but our best guess is this:
Gentile Sassatello discovered that there was to be a party at the house of Guido Vagina. Figuring to surprise his enemies, Gentile took to the rooftops and moved towards the house. Once he jumped to the roof of Guido Vagina’s house, his men tossed him a billhook.
Gentile heard men talking and laughing inside the dining room of the house. Then he swung down onto the balcony landing on cat’s feet.
Gentile burst into the dining room with his billhook at the ready. He immediately stabbed Imola from Imola with the tip. With short and powerful swings of the billhook he threatened Imola’s compatriots. In such tight quarters, the billhook was ideal. As the famous master Giacomo di Grassi noted, the billhook, “Is the most perfect weapon since it strikes and wounds in all six dimensions of movement.”
Terrified of the billhook, Imola’s dinner companions dropped their weapons. Now Gentile Sassatello dragged the wounded-but-still-alive Imola from Imola away from his friends, and cast him unto the alleyway below. Then he leaped down into the alley after him to visit his rage upon his now-helpless adversary.
The billhook had originally been developed from an agricultural tool. In the alleyway behind the Vagina house, Gentile Sassatello pruned Imola from Imola into pieces.[3]
The Billhook:
Like many a HEMA guy my first exposure to polearms came courtesy of Dungeons and Dragons. Yet it was also rare to play with anyone that used a polearms, in D&D, as in HEMA, everyone loves the swords. Yet polearms make swords something of a joke. As we see in the story above, when a bunch of guys with swords are faced with a psychotic man wielding a billhook, they will be more interested in putting down their weapons than fighting.
This is hardly a surprise to anyone who has tried to fence with a single-handed sword against someone skilled with a polearm.
The billhook strikes in many different ways:
· The point strikes moving forward.
· The tooth on the back, since it is sharpened, strikes when it is withdrawn.
· You can chop with the front of the billhook, just like an axe.
· The tooth on the back has a point and can puncture when the billhook is swung in the manner of a back edge strike.
· And finally, the hook on the front can be used to seize a man in armor and pull him from a horse or to the ground.
While the halberd was popular north of the Alps, the billhook filled that niche in Italy. The fencing masters Francesco Altoni and Giacomo di Grassi considered the halberd and the bill largely equivalent weapons.
Compared to the pike, the bill was not as important a weapon on the battlefield, though we see it being used in art at the battle of San Romano in 1432.
As you would expect, the fencing masters have different takes on the best way to use the billhook. For a one on one fight no one treats it with more detail than the Bolognese Maestro di Maestri Achille Marozzo.
His chapter on the use of the billhook is available for paid subscribers HERE.
[1] See condottieriventura entry for Giovanni Sassatello.
[2] In Venetian, Guido Vaina was known as Guido Guiana. Guiana means sheath in Italian. For obvious reasons, it was also a colloquialism for vagina.
[3] There is another less interesting variation of this story where Mad Dog Sassatello released Imola from Imola and Gentile Sassatello kills him with a billhook outside the city of Imola. This appears in Giovanni Fantaguzzi. Caos. Cronache cesenati del secolo XVI.
Most notably he fought a duel with Sebastian Manzino, whom we will discuss soon.