Al soldo di Richelieu: un frate spia e i lavori di potenziamento alla piazzaforte di Breme

A network, or rather several networks, of espionage intersected in seventeenth-century Europe. Every war, every conflict and, perhaps even more so, every tenuous truce was based on a more or less clandestine exchange of information carried out by soldiers, engineers and unsuspected "ordinary" travelers. The rapid gathering of information on the work of strengthening fortifications enabled the enemy armies to coordinate activities in response. Each action had to be suddenly matched by a reaction, especially for strongholds near borders. By the late 1630's the Savoy dukedom and the Milanesado were in conflict. The cities conquered by Governor Leganés had to be shaped by the exigencies of the war and immediately strengthened. Wall circuits were modernized to prevent a possible and feared redemption by the Savoy army that was allied with the French. A Neapolitan Capuchin father, Brother Paolo d'Angilis, was captured in the fall of 1638 by Leganés's troops and interrogated under pressure. He confessed to being a spy in the service of Cardinal de la Valette, head of Richelieu's troops in Italy, and to having visited, by various expedients, some of the most strategic Spanish strongholds and reported to the French. The record of the interrogation is an account of convulsed weeks in the territories wrested from the enemy. Since the previous spring, Leganés had opened upgrade work sites for Breme and Vercelli: the French wanted to know their particular features.