The Sack of Mantua

The Sack of Mantua: Siege, Succession, and Catastrophe in Habsburg Italy

In December 1627, a dying duke arranged one last marriage and extinguished a dynasty in the same breath. Within weeks, the courts of Paris, Madrid, and Vienna were maneuvering over the corpse of the House of Gonzaga, and within three years, two of the most celebrated cities in Italy lay in ruins.

The Sack of Mantua is the story of how a contested inheritance in two minor duchies became a continental catastrophe. It follows Charles de Nevers's desperate, self-financed defence of a claim he could barely afford to hold; the two ruinous sieges of Casale Monferrato that broke a Spanish general's heart and a Spanish king's treasury; the sack of Mantua and the brutal expulsion of its Jewish community; and a plague, carried on the boots of marching armies, that would kill more people than every battle of this war combined. It traces the dynastic accident all the way to its astonishing consequence: the weakening of Imperial Germany at the precise moment Sweden chose to invade, prolonging the Thirty Years' War by a generation.

A sweeping, unflinching narrative history of ambition, siege warfare, and catastrophe, and a reminder that the smallest dynastic disputes can reshape an entire continent.