Who we are
We are a Company of mercenary soldiers all coming from the same land : "il Finale" of the Dukedom of Ferrara and its surroundings.....

We joined in a company at the beginning of the 16th century under the command of two "Conestables" , who are Captans of infantry, they also are from Finale ; thanks to they and their great friendship with Mesino (Thomas) dal Forno - Captain of the ducal light cavalrymen and man of confidence of the Duke Alfonso of Este - we have a good "soldo" and "lead" ("condotta") that allows us to live better than many other soldiers of our period...

In fact, we can, have good armaments and dress nearly like courtiers : we all wear the justicoat ( just-au-corps "giustacuore" or "guardacuore") and short trousers ("brache") (most fortunate also with stries of precious black cloth), we wear boots ("stivalli") to half leg and stockings of mesh an only color, to the last fashion... and nobody of us lacks in cod-piece ("braghetta" than the lansquenets call "Lantz" or "Hoselantz" and the French "braguette") of which we are very proud!!!!

We have always been in Duke of Este pay :
some of us were with a Conestable on garrison duty in the Castle of Finale, others followed the Este troops in battle with a second Conestable.

So we covered ourselves with glory :

- at Polesella, in December 1509 against the Venetian (and still today we remember the triumphal return, with our Duke, on the ship called "Marcella")

- at Ravenna, in April 1512 where the Duke "Artilleryman" employed us by Gaston de Foix side

- at Finale, in September 1521 when we freed our lands...

In the june of 1512 some of us, with Mesino dal Forno, accompanied the Duke Alfonso to Pope Giulio II in Rome. Suspecting a conspiracy, they escaped from there through Italy in order to arrive in October to Finale : here, the Duca, with two ships and the supply of the lightcavalrymen of Mesino, left for Ferrara...
Some gossip insinuates also that we helped Mesino, in the night between the 5 and the 6 of june of the 1508, to kill Ercole Strozzi near Casa Romei in Ferrara... but this is an infamy!!!

Our sayng "Per la mia fe"(for my faith) is frescoed in rooms of the Castle of Finale and that we have made ours... but in battle we only scream: "mia fe" (my faith).

The Artilleries
We have three weapons of which we are very proud :

- a "falconetto" of 3 pounds that, fused by the Duke himself and given us by him; it's the last weapon made of iron that the Duke has melted. It's also called "pezzo da 3 seguente" because the casting mould of the bore is cylindrical and it shoots balls of 3 pounds -in metal- : of the kind of the "colubrine", our "falconetto" is 26 mouths long and we can fire almost 5 shots for hour.

technical notes of the XXI century :
the ball of 3 pounds it weighs approximately 1 Kg. and the diameter of the gun tube is 63 milimetres; it could get a throw of 300 metres with a raising of 0° and of 1200 metres with a raising of 10°.

- a smooth bore mortar that we call "the little Gertrude"; it fires balls in stone of 25/35 pounds and it comes from the ducal foundries.

- a mortar like those planned by Master Leonardo, that the foot soldiers call "the monster"; it's a bombard for stone balls of 50 pounds stolen from the Spanish on the battlefield in Ravenna.