THE GRAND CAPTAIN

Mounted French knights thundered towards the Spanish position at Cerignola on 21 April 1503, but had to reign in their horses when they reached an unseen ditch bristling with sharpened stakes. As the French gendarmes paused dumbfounded before the ditch, Spanish arquebusiers leapt atop the earthen parapet behind the ditch and began pouring deadly fire into the armoured French horsemen. The heavy musket balls knocked many of the riders from their saddles, killing some and wounding others.

Spanish commander Gonzalo Fernandez de Cordoba had conceived the sturdy field works meant to thwart the French attack that day in the region of Apulia. His bold tactics during the first decade of the Italian Wars enabled the Spanish to prevail over French arms in a struggle for control of southern Italy.

Promising junior officer

Gonzalo was born in 1453 in the town of Montilla in the Castilian province of Cordoba. His father, Pedro Fernandez de Córdoba, the Count of Aguilar, governed seven castles near the Granadan frontier. When Gonzalo was three years old his father died leaving his inheritance to Gonzalo’s six-year-old brother, Alonso.

When Gonzalo was just 12 years old