One of the greatest of the soldiers of fortune who dominated Italian history in the 14th and 15th centuries and the first to found a state.
Born of a noble Perugian family, Braccio became the pupil of Alberico da Barbiano, the first great Italian condottiere, initiating a lifelong rivalry with another of Alberico´s followers, Muzio Attendolo Sforza.
Braccio and Sforza evolved two schoools of warfare. During the first quarter of the 15th century, hardly a major city of Italy carried on a campaign without employing either Braccio or Sforza.
Braccio´s political ambitions led him to invade papal Umbria (north of Rome) from 1416 to 1419, seizing Perugia, a conquest legitimated by Pope Martin V in 1420, when Braccio was granted the title of papal vicar.
In the 1420s the two condottieri found themselves on opposite sides in a struggle between Queen Joan II of Naples and King Alfonso V of Aragon; Braccio was in Alfonso´s employ and Sforza in Joan´s. In a campaign in the Abruzzi (east central Italy) in 1424, the rivals died within a few weeks of each other, Sforza by drowning and Braccio as the result of wounds suffered in battle against Sforza´s son Francesco.
After Braccio´s death, his Umbrian principality reverted to the Pope.
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