Italian captain from Florence who fought in the Italian Wars, earning a reputation as a daring fighter and swashbuckler.
After spending a few years as a merchant’s clerk he took to soldiering at an early age, and served his apprenticeship under Giovanni de’ Medici, in the latter’s Black Bands.
When Pope Clement VII and the emperor Charles V decided to reinstate the Medici in Florence, during the War of the League of Cognac, they attacked the Florentine Republic, and Ferruccio was appointed Florentine military commissioner, where he showed great daring and resource by his rapid marches and sudden attacks on the Imperials.
Ferruccio encountered a major force of the enemy on 3 August 1530 at Gavinana. In the desperate battle that ensued, the Imperials were at first driven back by Ferruccio’s onslaught and the Prince of Orange himself was killed. But when 2,000 Landsknecht reinforcements under Fabrizio Maramaldo arrived, the Florentines were almost annihilated, and Ferruccio was wounded and captured. Maramaldo out of personal spite dispatched Ferruccio with his own hand: “Vile, tu uccidi un uomo morto!” (“Coward, you kill a dead man!”) were, according to popular accounts, Ferruccio’s last words uttered to his murderer. This defeat sealed the fate of the Republic, and nine days later Florence surrendered. Maramaldo’s deed earned him immortal infamy, even turning his own surname into a synonym for “villainous” in Italian, while the verb maramaldeggiare exists as well – meaning “to bully a defenseless victim”.

Link to Wikipedia biography