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“Is there no one will take up this priceless thing and say, here is a nation, with such a soul; with such talents; with these failings and this native worth?” The Game of Kings
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    • “Is there no one will take up this priceless thing and say, here is a nation, with such a soul; with such talents; with these failings and this native worth?” The Game of Kings
    Detail from a tapestry of a battle
    Library

    DunNETt Lecture 6

    John Gagné

    Despoiling the King in 1525: Capture, Plunder, and the Battle of Pavia

    The latest in our series of online lectures took place on Saturday 12th September. All attending agreed that it was a fascinating lecture that provoked much discussion and reflection. John Gagne was an excellent speaker and we would recommend catching up with the talk if you were not able to attend on the day. It can be found on our You Tube platform shortly.

    John Gagné is Cassamarca Associate Professor of History at the University of Sydney. His research pursues the intersections between war, representation, material culture, and the human body. He is the author of Milan Undone: Contested Sovereignties in the Italian Wars (Harvard, 2021), and co-author with Timothy McCall of Fabric of War: The Material Culture and Social Lives of Banners in Renaissance Europe (Cambridge, 2025). He has also co-edited a collection of essays on overlooked labourers in premodern warcraft titled Shadow Agents of Renaissance War (Amsterdam, 2023). His research has appeared in Renaissance Quarterly, Sixteenth Century Journal, Art History, and I Tatti Studies. He’s currently working on a book about the premodern iron prosthetic hand and its significance as a tool to imagined mechanised embodiment.

    Following the 500th anniversary of Renaissance Europe’s most renowned battle, we return to the Park of Mirabello, the walled hunting grounds outside the old Visconti palace at Pavia. It was here that Imperial forces destroyed France’s army and captured King François I as he fought to regain the duchy of Milan. Leaving aside questions of military history, this lecture explores the cultural significance of ensnaring one of Europe’s great kings on an Italian battlefield. By focusing on the monarch’s capture, we investigate not just the seizure of the royal person, but also the plundering of objects charged with his charisma: armour, weapons, decorations, flags, and clothing. These despoiled objects authenticated Imperial victory and exalted their owners. The “disassembly” of the royal warrior produced a host of these battle relics, whose traces – both real and legendary – this presentation reconstructs.

    Find out more about the DunNETt Lecture Series.

    Author: John Gagné
    Website Publication Date: 14th September 2026
    Theme: History, Warfare
    Publication Type: Talk
    Medium: Text
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