Who were the shadow agents of Renaissance war? In this pioneering collection of essays scholars use new archival evidence and other sources, including literature, artworks, and other non-textual material, to uncover those men, women, children and other animals who sustained war by means of their preparatory, auxiliary, infrastructural, or supplementary labour. These shadow agents worked in the zone between visibility and invisibility, often moving between civilians and soldiers, and their labour was frequently forced. This volume engages with a range of important debates including: the relationship between war and state formation; the ‘military revolution’ or transformation of early modern military force; the nature of human and non-human agency; gender and war; civilian protection and expulsion; and espionage and diplomacy. The focus of the volume is on Italy, but it includes studies of France and England, and the editors place these themes in a broader European context with the aim of supporting and stimulating research in this field.

Stephen Bowd is Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Edinburgh and the author of studies of the Bresciano, among other works on Renaissance Italy. He has recently published Renaissance Mass Murder: Civilians and Soldiers during the Italian Wars (2018).

Sarah Cockram specializes in gender history and historical animal studies. Sarah’s recent interests include animal emotion, companion animal health, and care of exotics. Sarah has taught at the University of Glasgow and University of Edinburgh and is currently a member of the Renaissance Skin project team at King’s College London.

John Gagné is Senior Lecturer in History and Director of the Medieval and Early Modern Centre at the University of Sydney. Much of his research focuses on cultural problems in the history of premodern war, especially the Italian Wars of the early sixteenth century. He is the author most recently of Milan Undone (2021).

Acknowledgements
1. Introduction: War and Agency
(Stephen Bowd, Sarah Cockram, and John Gagné), ‘Introduction’
2. The Unwilling Agents of War
(Neil Murphy), ‘Refugees, Forced Migration and Henry VIII’s Conquest of France, 1544-46’
(Victoria Bartels), ‘Prisoners for War: Convicts, Slaves, and the Culture of Forced Labour in Sixteenth-Century Tuscany’
(Sarah Cockram), ‘“A Horse is a Feeling Animal”: Interspecies Interaction and Animal Agency in Renaissance Warfare’
3. The Organizers and Suppliers of War
(William Caferro), ‘Shadow Bureaucrats and Bureaucracy in Trecento Florence’
(John Gagné), ‘Heralds and the Representational Culture of War, 1350-1600’
(Cristiano Zanetti), ‘The Diverse Agencies of Renaissance Engineers in the Shadow of War’
(Catherine Fletcher), ‘Agents of Firearms Supply in Sixteenth-century Italy: Rethinking the Contractor State’
(Ioanna Iordanou), ‘The Invisible Trade: Commoners and Convicts as Early Modern Venice’s Spies’
4. Women and Agency in War
(Stephen Bowd), ‘Gender, War, and the State: The Military Management of Alda Pio Gambara during the Italian Wars’
(Brian Sandberg), ‘Delivering Arms: Noblewomen, Artillery, and the Gendering of Violence during the French Wars of Religion’
(Gerry Milligan), ‘Useless Mouths in Early Modern Italian Literature: Gian Giorgio Trissino and Lucrezia Marinella’
Index