ESERCIZIO MILITARE,

4to, pp. [vii], [i] blank, 426; with eleven folding leaves of plates; text within double border, woodcut printer's device on title-page; aside from very occasional spotting, clean and fresh throughout; in contemporary carta rustica, upper half of spine loose and chipped, and some wear to other extremities; book-label of the Prussian/Norwegian collector Karl Friedrich Wilhelm Brose on front paste-down.

Rare expanded and updated edition of this collection of the rules governing the conduct, organisation, and military exercises of the Venetian army, first published in 1724, updated in 1735, and here with a supplement dated December 28, 1752, continuously paginated but with its own title-page. All editions are very scarce.

The author, Johann Mathias von der Schulenberg (1661-1747) was a German aristocrat who spent the end of his military career in the Venetian army, serving during the siege of Corfu in 1716 before retiring to Venice in 1718 to establish a significant art collection, correspond with Voltaire, and write this monumental work, his only published book. The 93 chapters of the main body of the work deal with every aspect of the organisation of the army, from the divisions of the infantry and the roles of different classes of officer, to the arrangement of exercises, the structure of and expected response to commands, and the ways in which different groups divisions are differently armed and how this affects their drills, before describing pike drills, drills with friesian horses, rules for marching, columns and other formations, preparation for battle, the role of the sergeant major, the functions of army governors, and more. An appendix describes ceremonial use of the pike, while a final supplement, accompanying ths present reissue, presents a number of updates to aspects of drills and exercises.

"Schulemberg would be the last reformer to affect the overall structure of the San Marco military. His writings would continue to be cited until the fall of the Republic by those who were attempting to reform the increasingly devastated Venetian troops, but only in the second half of the century would they find any application" (Tamburlini, p. 82).

P. Tamburlini, "L'organizzazione militare veneziana nella prima metà del Settecento", Studi Veneziani LIII, 2007; for more on all aspects of Schulenburg's life and work, see F. Vecchiato and A. Gargano (eds), Matthias e Werner von der Schulenburg: La dimensione europea di due aristocrati tedeschi, Verona 2006; OCLC records two copies of this edition, at the Society of the Cinncinnati and the Newberry, with copies of earlier editions also at Michigan and the British Library; this edition not in LibraryHub.