by Jack Ludlow
The terms of the Milanese contract were generous, the aims far-reaching and the provision of troops healthy. Hawkwood and Ambrogio Visconti marched out of the city in what was called the Company of Saint George, heading south at the head of ten thousand men, their aim to bring the Hawkwood skills in raiding to the fractured polity of Siena. It was known as a city state prone to internal disagreements, which meant that organising itself in defence was difficult.
Such a host could not approach without news of their coming running ahead. As soon as the outer regions of the Siena hinterland started to suffer the leading citizens had no doubt they were the target, as they had so often been in past years, for they were seen as vulnerable, though never from a force of this size and power.
The reaction was to get into the city itself and the outlying towns with anything they could move, people included, and then use what forces they possessed to deny the mercenaries what they sought. Siena would burn its own fields, and cut down its own orchards and the mass of vines that covered the Chianti Hills. Yet that was in vain; too much was left to plunder and for a whole year John Hawkwood and Ambrogio Visconti lived off the bounty of the region.
For all the communal efforts the citizens were reluctant to just leave that which they had, nor did they always obey the order to destroy their crops. Siena itself had walls to deter the raiders; that did not apply to the many outlying conurbations who found that no support came from their regional centre when they were attacked, so the spoils were good and the ransoms even better.
Finally Siena sent out the militias to do battle only to see them utterly destroyed and the men who commanded them taken for ransom, which left only one way of driving the mercenaries away from their territory and that was by bribery. Gold would do what patience, self-destruction and sacrifice could not. Forced loans on the already burdened citizenry produced ten thousand florins as well as waggons heaped with armour, much of it gilded and bejewelled, and yet more bearing wine and grain, leaving Siena prostrate.
Such was the destruction and so poor the disguise of the progenitors – the name and fame of Ambrogio Visconti was soon as common as Hawkwood – that the Pope called for the formation of a league to combat all the mercenary companies. The only settlement Pope Urban could achieve – once more his excommunications had been ignored – was an agreement to stop further incursions by mercenaries into Italy and that was more show than reality.
Florence, usually neutral and determinedly secular, was willing to join with the Pope in opposing the Visconti but they too were pragmatic. That did not preclude the provision of an inducement to keep their lands from being ravaged once more by Hawkwood. Six thousand florins was given over to him and Ambrogio to secure several years of peace and it came with all the usual additional supplies and gifts, plus the right to cross Florentine territory as well as recruit within it.
Hawkwood was crossing their land when he heard what had happened to his sworn enemy. ‘Dead?’
‘Dragged from the palace Perugia gave him as a reward, stripped naked and publicly whipped, then castrated and beheaded.’
The question of why hung in the air, the only known fact being that Sterz had been accused of betrayal, of taking money from elsewhere to turn the Commune of Perugia over to its enemies. Given the reaction as well as the speed and barbarity of its implementation, such an accusation must have been credible.
It was a long time before Hawkwood heard the whole tale; even then it was partial. Somehow his employers had found out Sterz was being bribed – who was the provider he never did know – but that same person had very likely sucked him into a conspiracy, only to betray him to those who extracted their bloody revenge.
When he thought on it, Hawkwood could not put out of his mind the silken contemplations of Cardinal Albornoz. Had that been his solution to the problem the German posed, a man he would not have seen fit to employ as being untrustworthy? If he could not fight him he could pretend to seek his service, then leak his negotiations to Perugia.
‘Do you think that is what happened?’ asked Gold.
‘We’ll never know.’
Perugia was much weakened by the murder of Sterz; there was no captain general able to command the two and a half thousand men he had kept in the city so they began to break up into individual brigades. Few stayed loyal to the Company of the Star and when Hawkwood, fresh from his Siennese triumphs and once more leading a powerful force, fell upon the region, Perugia could only send out its own men to fight.
There was no split command now. It was solely Hawkwood who led the Milanese host with Christopher Gold, fully grown and a puissant fighter who had commanded a company of his own, appointed as his constable: in effect the man who would array the White Company forces in any fight.
Ambrogio had gone off to seek his fortune in Naples. Even without him and the men he had taken, Perugia faced a formidable foe. Near a town called Brufa, ever after to be known as the Place of Misery, the Perugian forces were annihilated, leaving well in excess of a thousand dead on the field of battle with half as many maimed. All their commanders were captured and ransomed, the power of their city entirely broken, never to rise again and act as a threat to its neighbours.
Hawkwood returned in triumph to Milan with his spoils and it seemed that the north of Italy was at relative peace. If it had not been a smooth process it was now possible to contemplate that the Pope might really return to Rome. Urban V, unlike most of his predecessors, was a man of simple tastes and one who hated the corruption of Avignon. In Cardinal Albornoz he had found a divine who could add a shrewd military mind to achieving the goal and it was he who could lay claim to bringing such a thing to pass.
Albornoz had played every city state against its rivals, paid mercenaries when necessary and sought to check them when they were a problem. Hawkwood he seemed to trust, but Sterz he had hated so speculation regarding the death of the German freebooter only made sense if the clerical hand was involved. If Albornoz had contrived at murder there was no sign of his conscience being troubled by it as he recruited a temporarily unemployed Hawkwood for a different task.
‘His Holiness has already left Avignon and will sail from Marseille to Genoa. I require you to gather a thousand horse to act as his escort to Rome.’
It was the month of May before the papal argosy reached Genoa and there was the White Company on the quayside, breastplates gleaming in the strong sunshine, bleached-white banners waving, waiting to welcome the Pope ashore, confused like the huge assembled crowd when the vessels refused to enter the harbour. A boat had to be sent out to find out what was the problem, naturally fearing the plague. It was Albornoz who was obliged to explain.
‘His Holiness has seen your breastplates and banners, Hawkwood, and if he did not know of your presence his concerns were not eased by being told of it. He knows your name from Pont-Saint-Esprit?’
‘He fears us?’
‘I have reassured him you are here in homage and will cause him no harm.’
‘I admit to being a miserable sinner, Cardinal,’ was the terse response. ‘But the notion I would lay a hand on the Vicar of Christ offends me.’
‘Not something you extend to his coffers.’
‘They are not spiritual.’
Hawkwood never got to welcome Urban, who still declined to land in the presence of a strong force of mercenaries he was not prepared to trust – what a ransom he would provide! The fleet of the Pope and his cardinals, not to mention several mistresses, sailed south along the coast of Liguria, finally coming ashore at Corneto. A party for Rome awaited him and he was given the keys to Castel Sant’Angelo, not that he proceeded to use them; Rome was seen as too febrile for safety. Instead he was accommodated away from the filth of the Holy City in the castle of Viterbo.
Within weeks Urban was besieged in that castle by the irate citizenry who took exception to so many high church Frenchmen, such as Urban himself, as well as their overbearing actions, obvious opulence and public lack of morality. It took troops
from the surrounding city states to rescue Urban, which got a jaundiced response from John Hawkwood.
‘Never would have happened had he landed at Genoa.’
The second bit of news from Viterbo brought on less joy. His erstwhile employer, Cardinal Albornoz, had died.
‘Was he a good man?’ Gold enquired.
‘No better than you or I is the way I reckon. But his mind was sharp and his disposition cunning, so happen I must learn from him.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Sir John Hawkwood – he was now happy to use the title once his sovereign had acknowledged it – returned to Milan to find that the seed he had sown in writing to the English court had borne fruit, which if not yet fully ripe was well on its way to providing a sweet reward. Envoys had come to Lombardy while he had been away campaigning to propose to Galeazzo Visconti that King Edward’s second son, Lionel Duke of Clarence, at present without a wife would, if it was permitted, make suit to the Lord of Pavia’s twelve-year-old daughter, Violante.
In effect a proposal of marriage, this presented a massive coup for the Visconti family and no one was keener on the match than Bernabò, the girl’s uncle. He had two concerns in his life: to raise the standing of Milan in the Italian hierarchy, and to make the family name one that resounded through Europe and not only because of their fabulous wealth.
Naturally such an alliance did not come without a price; a prince of England must be provided with estates that could support the style of his bloodline, which was normally an occasion for much haggling. Edward’s commissioners, however, found themselves pushing at an open door, not realising that the Visconti brother’s generosity stemmed not just from eagerness but also from the fact that they were prepared to satisfy financial demands that would have made other polities blench.
Lionel would be in receipt of dozens of fiefdoms across Lombardy, most notably Alba, which together would produce an income of twenty-four thousand florins a year, while the father Galeazzo was willing to make a gift of two hundred thousand from Pavia. In addition, the prince would assume command of all the English mercenaries in Italy, by far the most numerous and, since they were the subjects of his father and were loyal to Edward’s crown, ensure that they were put to the service of Milanese interests.
Supposedly a secret, Edward informed Galeazzo that his son would bring with him a strong retinue of fighting men and offered also the prospect of an English army to aid the Milanese in their battles against the Pope and their Italian rivals. Hawkwood, made privy to the proposals, saw it as nothing less than an offer to help the Visconti become so powerful that their rule of all Italy – something that had not existed since the fall of the Western Empire – was in prospect.
Confidences in Italy did not long stay hidden; Pope Urban had his spies in Milan and Pavia just as his rivals had theirs in Rome, and such a possibility could not but alarm him. Charged with holding intact the temporal power of the papacy such a pact could be terminally inimical to his interests. To ward off such an outcome he sent a papal nuncio to London seeking to stop the match, only to receive an unwelcome proposal of compromise.
‘Urban lays aside the consanguinity, agrees to the Langley nuptials with the widow of Burgundy and matters may be altered. If not, face an alliance of England and Milan.’
‘I am bound to ask what this means for you, Sir John?’
Christopher Gold’s curiosity was natural but his leader suspected the question posed related as much to his recently appointed constable’s future as his own.
‘We will have a prince of our own blood in need of advice. I do not doubt he deserves his spurs and he will fetch along good fighting men, but Italy is not Picardy or Aquitaine. I fully expect his father to advise Clarence to look to me for help in making sense of what seems from London a chessboard fully cracked and unreadable.’
‘You could be at his right hand?’
Hawkwood smiled. ‘And I expect you to be that at one remove.’ Gold being aware of the supposedly secret parts of the agreement allowed Hawkwood to add what might be possible. ‘Imagine all of Italy united, Christopher, and under the control of the man who leads the armies of conquest.’
‘The Duke of Clarence?’
‘Lionel will be as hungry for power as his brothers, and what a temptation. A conquest to overshadow his father’s heir.’
‘Am I allowed to say that you have the light of dreams in your eye?’
Hawkwood laughed. ‘I would hazard you’ve seen it before.’
‘I have and once or twice noted it preceding near disaster.’
Gold had a serious look on his face as he said that, which had Hawkwood reflecting on how he had matured, while half thinking that he had preferred the callow and blindly faithful youth to the man before him, elevated enough now to question his orders, which any good constable must do.
‘Well, I know you will see that coming as quickly as I and have no fear of alerting me.’
If Hawkwood had hoped to lighten Gold’s mood by that he was disappointed. ‘Never fear, Sir John, I will.’
Prior to the arrival of Prince Lionel all of Piedmont was awash with discussion of the sums and lands expended to ensure the marriage took place. King Edward’s commissioners went home laden with fabulous gifts for themselves, their sovereign and Violante’s prospective husband and they did so in a daze; where could such a cornucopia come from? If they had stopped to look they would have seen.
Milan stood at an important crossroads from which it fed its products both north and west into France and Germany as well as lands beyond, England included. Its clever and enterprising merchants had created trade routes that rivalled the Silk Road, using the abundance of gifts God had bestowed on the valley of the River Po and Ticino, this enhanced by previous rulers who had created a series of canals to spread the waters around the fertile basin, providing ample irrigation for rich soil while the sun did the rest. These canals had been improved by Galeazzo Visconti, making more abundant what was already an excess.
There were the manufactories, which had existed from Roman times, also improved upon by individual enterprise. If you wanted arms or armour you came to the traders of Lombardy. They had ample Alpine wood to make charcoal, ready supplies of ore in nearby mines and fast-flowing streams to provide the power to turn that base metal into deadly or protective steel.
The citizens with money to spare had, like their Florentine rivals, elevated banking to a level never seen before in the known world; it seemed the Milanese could make money out of merely possessing it in what some were sure was a form of alchemy, but it was really simple. There were few states on the Continent that did not require loans and that came at interest. The accrued sums allowed the Italian bankers to lend more, recover more and grow even richer.
Everyone under the hand of the Visconti was properly taxed and in Bernabò the state had a co-ruler with a passion for the minutiae of collection of monies due which was rivalled only by his addiction to carnality. He had brought his wife to labour sixteen times and fathered dozens of bastards but as much energy was put into proper administration. Bernabò oversaw the tax ledgers personally, plying his abacus with such adeptness it seemed almost musical in its clicking.
No one escaped his attention, from street vendor, prostitute, baker, trader or banker, yet Bernabò was as interested in what the sums accrued were used for, not the mere acquisition. If much of it filled the Visconti private vaults they were also investors in their patrimony. For a family that had achieved power through an imperial appointee they had an abiding desire that their offspring would continue to rule and raise Milan to even greater heights.
Anticipation in Lombardy was not enough to induce speed in the putative bridegroom; a prince of England crossing France when the two nations were at peace was a guest to savour. No member of the royal house or great nobleman was prepared to let such a prize guest pass without feasting him and his six-hundred-strong retinue, five hundred of those soldiers from the best families in England.
; In this scion of the Plantagenets they found a trencherman of repute and sound dedication. Lionel loved food and wine almost above all other things but he knew and gave due prominence to his duty as a true knight. Thus he was found in the lists as often as he was found at the board, ever willing to hunt with spear and bow to provide food for his hosts’ table. He was a man of strenuous exercise both mounted and on foot, so not a day went by that he did not abide by the Norman creed of practising that which he had been bred to do: fight his father’s foes.
John Hawkwood waited with as much impatience as anyone, having received a command from his sovereign to take personal charge of Lionel’s escort while he was in Milan. He would have the responsibility to ensure he came to no harm, for it was axiomatic that there were factions in Italy, and not just papal ones, who could see what an alliance with a power such as England might bring down upon them.
Finally, after months of waiting, news was sent ahead to name the day the prince would enter the city. Heralds were sent out to ensure that all were aware so they could be on hand to provide a proper welcome. Not that the population required much in the way of encouragement. It was odd to reflect that a state purporting to be a republic, albeit ruled in something close to a tyranny, was susceptible to, and indeed in awe of the allure of royalty, a station in life its people believed could only be granted by divine approval.
Sir John Hawkwood met Lionel outside the western gates and made the required obeisance, before being raised by his prince to be greeted as a liegeman. Close to, the man appointed captain of his escort saw a face blotched and puffy from overindulgence, while the June sun had not favoured what was the pale complexion of a man russet-haired. There was trace of family likeness to his brother Edward but not the cast of determination in the eye. Yet Lionel bore himself well, albeit with a protruding belly and a propensity to fart.
It was necessary to also meet and acknowledge his cousin, Edward le Despenser. On first impression here was a man to whom Hawkwood took an instant dislike, this for his blatant arrogance and undisguised condescension. He was typical of a certain kind of nobleman, and country of birth had no bearing; anyone below him was commonality and to such people only royalty stood superior in rank.