12,000; Swabian Landsknechte and knights, Tyrolian soldiers, Italian mercenaries
This title was relevant for the Landsknechts, because a certified "master of the long sword" wielding the Zweihänder was entitled to twice the pay of a normal soldier (Doppelsöldner).
The fortress was the refuge of Pope Clement VII from the siege of Charles V's Landsknechte during the Sack of Rome (1527), in which Benvenuto Cellini describes strolling the ramparts and shooting enemy soldiers.
One day they defended themselves successfully against an attack by Swedish Landsknechts ( pikemen with supporting infantry).
But when 2,000 Landsknecht reinforcements under Fabrizio Maramaldo arrived, the Florentines were almost annihilated, and Ferruccio was wounded and captured.
Always with his fierce cousin, he commanded the Florentine artillery in the war for Siena in 1554; the nexy year in the summer he first took by assault Porto Ercole fortress after a four-day artillery barrage, then with 700 German Landsknechts he defended Populonia against a Turkish sea-bourne assault, receiving support from the Florentine cavalry.
In July 1630, during the War of the Mantuan Succession (1628–31), Mantua and the palace were sacked over three days by an Imperial army of 36,000 Landsknecht mercenaries.
He was transferred to command the I Battalion, SS Panzer Regiment 10, 10th SS Panzer Division Frundsberg (refers to 16th Century German landsknecht commander Georg von Frundsberg), in 1944 and then was given command of the 102 SS Heavy Panzer Battalion in August 1944.
By the end of the fifteenth century, those late-medieval troop types that had proven most successful in the Hundred Years' War and Burgundian Wars dominated warfare, especially the heavily armoured gendarme (a professional version of the medieval knight), the Swiss and Landsknecht mercenary pikeman, and the emerging artillery corps of heavy cannons, which were rapidly improving in technological sophistication.