Pt 3
THE WHITE COMPANY
In 1361 a new force appeared on the Italian scene in the persons of the famous White Company, so-called because they kept their armour so brightly burnished. They were also known as the 'Inglesi', because they were mostly men who had taken part in the Hundred Years' War, but they were not all Englishmen, and their first leader was in fact a German. Nevertheless it was under an Englishman, Sir John Hawkwood, that the company achieved its greatest renown.
The knights of the White Company preferred to fight on foot in units of three: two men at arms and a page who kept their horses in readiness. One very 'English' characteristic about them was the use of the longbow, but they were also equipped with siege weapons, and provided a well-disciplined and ready-made army for anyone who wished to employ them. So formidable was their reputation that on one occasion when they were late turning up to fight for Pisa against Florence, the Pisans dressed their own men up to look like the White Company, and the Florentines withdrew.
Sir John Hawkwood was born in about 1320, and is described by Froissart as being 'a poor knight having gained nothing but his spurs'. He is believed to have fought at Crecy, but it was as a condottiere in Italy that he achieved renown, serving several masters, but each in turn, because treachery during a campaign was not acceptable to the condottieri code, even if extortion may have been.
In 1368, for example, he defended Borgoforte, a castle that commanded a vital river crossing of the Po, against the German emperor Charles IV The action included flooding the emperor's camp by breaking an embankment holding back the fierce winter river. In this Hawkwood was providing a service to the whole of Italy, but it was Bernabo Visconti, Duke of Milan, who had employed him on loan from Pisa and, being the paymaster, Visconti's own reputation was enhanced as much as that of the Englishman who did the actual fighting.
In such ways did Sir John Hawkwood and his White Company provide a high quality service for their Italian employers. There were many grumbles, because being a soldier of fortune meant having to make a fortune out of being a soldier. To put it bluntly, mercenaries murdered for money, and any mercy that a condottiere might display through declining to slit the throat of a captive had more to do with the greater value of the man ransomed than with Christian charity. Looting, too, could be regarded as an economic necessity, either to provide goods for one's employer from which he could cover the agreed fee, or to make up any shortfall should payment be delayed. In this the Church was Hawkwood's worst employer, and on one occasion the pope, who no doubt felt personally safe from the White Company, simply terminated Hawkwood's contract while it was still in financial arrears.
It was about this time that St Catherine of Siena addressed a letter to Hawkwood beseeching him to give up the life of a condottiere and lead a crusade. In a very perceptive sentence she urged that Sir John, 'from being the servant and soldier of the Devil, should become a manly and true knight'. This belief, that a mercenary was not a 'true knight' and indeed an inferior being, summed up the feelings that many people already had about these companies upon whom too many people were coming to rely too much.
Hawkwood was equally dependant on receiving a succession of contracts, and in 1375 had little choice but to accept a new contract from the pope when the alternative was unemployment. The job given to the White Company was to invade Tuscany, and in May 1375 Hawkwood set out in that direction with an army that included the latest versions of bombards for demolishing Florence's walls. He was not surprised when Florentine envoys met him at the borders of their territory. While not wishing to persuade him to change sides, they assured him, what would be a reasonable sum for them to pay him to cross Florence off the list of cities to be captured? Sir John named his price, and when the Florentines had picked themselves up off the floor they negotiated an indemnity for their city for five years at the price Hawkwood demanded.
News of the deal quickly spread, and before long Hawkwood had negotiated similar non-aggression pacts with Siena, Arezzo, Pisa and Lucca. It was the most profitable and least warlike campaign that bold Sir John had ever engaged in, and confirmed a true side for the caricature of 'mock battles' that Machiavelli was later to paint, except that these were not mock battles, but rather no battles at all. Not surprisingly, the pope soon got to hear that the bombards remained unfired and that the walls of Tuscany were still upright, and quite understandably withheld Hawkwood's pay, a situation that lasted until the noble Sir John kidnapped a cardinal and held him to ransom.
Yet within a year of this romping farcical tale of 'mercenary as mobster', the story of Sir John Hawkwood took a sickening turn. A certain Cardinal Robert of Geneva had occupied the town of Cesena with his own mercenary troops, who were mainly Bretons. They began looting the town as mercenaries regularly did, at which point the citizens put up a fierce resistance. Being unable to defeat them, the cardinal tricked the people into surrendering their weapons in return for a guarantee of safety. But the affair was not to end there, because Cardinal Robert wanted revenge, and knew that his small force were insufficient to provide it.
Sir John Hawkwood's White Company were not far away, and as they were in the employ of the Church, they could be required to 'administer justice', as the cardinal put it. After initially protesting that he could persuade the citizens to lay down their arms by peaceful negotiation, Hawkwood succumbed to the cardinal's evident intentions, and joined the Bretons in a brutal and thorough massacre. The piazzas of Cesena were heaped with bodies, and the moats were full of dead people who had drowned rather then face the swords waiting for them at the gates.
Well might later chroniclers record that Hawkwood 'let many escape' and historians argue that he was only obeying orders. Where was the negotiator, the profit-hungry but shrewd mobster who had brought off half-a-dozen Tuscan cities? Where indeed was the chivalrous knight, the bold tactician of Borgoforte? Sir John Hawkwood now stood exposed as the servant and soldier of the Devil, just as St Catherine of Siena had anathematized him. Here was the essential weakness of the whole condottieri system. No contract could ever give an employer total control over a mercenary band. There was always this huge grey area of unpredictability which went far beyond the simple fighting of battles, and could manifest itself either as farce or as tragedy, as rape or racketeering.
The year 1385 was to find Sir John fighting much more honourably for Padua against Verona, and pulling off a stunning victory at the Battle of Castagnaro, where he abandoned the siege of Verona in a false retreat and lured the Veronese army to its destruction beside the River Adige. With the Battle of Castagnaro the reputation of Hawkwood as a commander and a military hero were dramatically enhanced. More campaigns followed, and on his death in 1394 a personal request from King Richard II, no less, was received asking that the body of 'the late brave soldier' be brought back to England for honoured burial. No absentee mercenary could have asked for more.
In part 4, "THE SFORZAS OF MILAN"
