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Yeah now you say it I'm probably projecting the Hansards, who were mostly long-distance traders and their armed escorts, down to Italy (the skilled tradesmen, i.e. the weavers, were the most radical in the Low Countries, but tended to melt when they were facing armoured men instead of stabbing people in the streets). I suppose I could go into how dirty and violent Italian city life was at the time but now I've advanced a merchant-centric thesis that feels like cope for my own lazy thinking.
Or form a pike square, which has its own cohesive logic that empirically seems well-suited to urban skilled workers fighting alongside their literal neighbours. The most famous example is Courtrai in 1302 which is particularly pivotal because it convinced Pope Boniface VIII that Philip the Fair was a spent force, leading to Boniface overreaching, Philip arresting him, the Papacy being removed to Avignon, the new French-influenced Pope allowing Philip to suppress the Templars, and Templar Grand Master Jacques de Molay being publicly burned at the stake based on obviously false charges of heresy he confessed to under torture. The resulting Templar curse on Philip the Fair and his posterity led to the rapid extinction of the senior Capetian line, and the ensuing succession crisis was the official cause of the Hundred Years' War.
Yes, they certainly had some impressive showings in battle - particularly before the Dukes of Burgundy figured out how to isolate the cities politically and play them off against each other. My mental model of the Dutch cities is maybe too Classicizing, but it's that the militias in the field were like hoplites (dangerous in battle, also dangerous to try and control too much), and the population in the cities, particularly the weavers, were like the Athenian mob, always baying for blood and expecting the militia to go shed it. Of course, there was overlap, but when you look at what happened to Ghent...
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