Bona Lombardi

After spending some time in the 20th century in our last two posts, let's go back to Renaissance Europe, which has always been a historical arena for badassery. Lots of women from European history stand out, such as Eleanor of Aquitaine or Queen Elizabeth of England. But let's meet a woman who isn't as famous as either, and was more of a badass (physically speaking) than both.

Bona Lombardi was a popular, beautiful and intelligent peasant girl who became a mercenary warlord in war-torn Renaissance Italy. True love led her to fight for a living. It's also possible true love killed her - but a sword never did.

Few places and times in Europe were more horrific than Italy in the 1300s and 1400s. Italy was not politically united, with small principalities and city-states constantly at one another's throats. Worse still, paid bands of mercenary soldiers from all over Europe were strutting their stuff around Italy, in the pay of one local warlord or another. They'd often switch sides. When they weren't paid, the mercenaries tended to loot, pillage and rape whatever and whoever was nearby.

These warlords were known as Condottieri. Some were statesmen and talented generals. Most of them were overpaid thugs with a curse of ignorance and a penchant for needless brutality. As it happens, female Condottieri were not unheard of, and Bona Lombardi was one of them. But she didn't start off that way: she was, in the beginning, just a beautiful peasant girl.

Around 1430, a gentleman from Parma, one Captain Brunoro, was ordered by the ruler of Milan to set up a base in the middle of some recently conquered territory, the better to keep an eye on the restless province. Of course, that didn't keep him occupied 24/7. Even Captain Brunoro needed some time off. When he got it, he loved to go hunting. During one such trip, he stopped for a rest in a wooded grove where the local peasantry was putting on a spring festival. One of the girls there hit him "like the thunderbolt," as the Italians say. Not only was she the prettiest girl there, in Brunoro's opinion: she surprised him with her wit and charm and the sophistication of her answers to his questions.

Brunoro returned home, but he couldn't stop thinking about the girl. Using his power to ask around, he found out the girl was Bona Lombardi, and that he wasn't the only one who was smitten with her. Local lads from throughout the neighborhood of the town of Sacco had all sought her hand, with no success. Even the local girls admired her, and often made her the "Queen" in their nature festivals. Bona was an orphan, raised by her uncle, who was a priest, and his sister, the manager of a thriving country household.

Bona's father, Gabriel, was a warrior - another private mercenary in one of the ubiquitous Italian armies - and he was killed when she was just a child. Her mother, stricken with grief, died soon after. Perhaps some of Gabriel's martial spirit passed into his young daughter. Certainly there was some dark foreshadowing of her own fate in the fate of her parents.

Needless to say, Brunoro found plenty of opportunities to just happen to amble past Bona's household that summer. He visited with Bona often, and eventually, he asked her to marry him. She agreed, but was afraid her uncle and aunt would not approve, so they kept the marriage a secret.

It soon became apparent that Bona was just as smitten with Brunoro as he was with her. She couldn't stand to be away from him, even for a short separation when his military endeavors would take him away for a mission. Instead of waiting for him at home, Bona dressed herself up in Condottierre armor and followed her husband into all his battles.

Mercenaries work with a dynamic national soldiers don't: they're not fighting for a cause, but for pay. With the ever-shifting tapestry of battlefields and constant rise and fall of petty princes throughout Italy, Brunoro often found himself obliged to switch employers. Like a lot of Condottierri, he sometimes found himself going up in battle against respected former employers.

Because of these shifting loyalties, Brunoro managed to anger someone who would have been better left alone: King Alexander of Naples. For some reason - we're not sure exactly why, but it had to do with shifting political moves - Alexander developed a bitter hatred for Brunoro, and was determined to do him in. Alexander ordered his men to lay an ambush for Brunoro as he and a small band went on a fact-finding mission. For once, Bona wasn't with him. Brunoro fell for the ambush hook, line and sinker. He was captured and by the next day found himself languishing in the prisons of Naples.

He probably would have stayed there until he died, but for the courage and tenacity of his badass wife. Bona tried everything. First she offered Alexander bribes to let Brunoro go. Alexander refused. Then Bona begged him, trying to rouse pity in the king's heart. Despite her good looks and charm, this too failed. Finally, she flat-out threatened Alexander with military intervention if he didn't release Brunoro. Alexander laughed in her face. But when it became apparent that Bona's good name and her husband's reputation had earned her a host of local allies, Alexander relented. Rather than face a mercenary force led by a female Condottierri - and possibly face the ignominy of losing to her - he released Brunoro.

The two continued to fight together as husband and wife. Said one contemporary, "(Bona) learned the art of war to perfection." She was so admired by the people of Venice, for example, that she was offered command of the defense of the the town of Negropont on the Greek island of Euboea. The Turks were hell-bent on making headway into the Mediterranean world through the Black Sea and Greece. In the end, propriety reigned, and Bona and Brunoro were offered joint command together, rather than her alone, which showed she had respect for her husband's abilities (and, probably, pride).

As the constant wars stretched on, Brunoro managed to get himself captured again. During a war between Milan and Venice, Brunoro led an attack on a Provoze Castle in Brescia. Bona was traveling a few days behind her husband with a small relief force. When she arrived and learned he'd been captured, she went ballistic (to use a modern turn of phrase). She went among the disheartened Venetian soldiers and with a combination of shame and good coaching, roused them to a renewed sense of vigor. Bona personally led the charge in a second attack on Provoze Castle - and this time, with her at their head, the Venetians stormed the gates, scaled the walls, and took the castle in a matter of hours.

Brunoro, languishing away in chains, must have been very happy to see Bona, who personally released her husband and all the rest of the prisoners.

But Brunoro and Bona's story doesn't have a happy ending. He died in 1468 - whether from natural causes or as the result of a battlefield injury we don't know, although the latter seems likely. Bona descended into a terrible depression. She told everyone she couldn't - and more importantly, wouldn't - long survive her husband. She ordered the creation of a marble tomb to hold both of their remains. After interring Brunoro in it, she simply wasted away. She didn't commit suicide, but seems to have literally died of a broken heart. Said one contemporary, "she sank into a state of languor from which she never recovered." She died soon after her husband, and both were buried together.

So while it may not have turned out all right in the end, Bona and Brunoro had a good ride, and before it was over Bona Lombardi certainly proved that she was a Badass Chick of History.