SIR JOHN HAWKWOOD.*
THE name, "John Hawkwood," captain of Free Lances, has long been famous and familiar, finding a place in many books since Froissart compendiously celebrated his exploits. Gibbon even mentions, but dismisses him with savage epithets in his text, and scornful reference in a note ; while Hallam, on the contrary, refers to his name as one "worthy to be remem- bered as that of the first distinguished commander who had appeared in Europe since the destruction of the Roman Empire," and calls him "the first real General of modern times." Still, to the reader of histories, as a rule, Hawkwood became a name, and nothing more; for what the man was, and what he did to justify the praise of his Italian contemporaries and the strong language of Hallam, was buried in scores of old books and dusty State archives. Only a master-student like Hallam, or a devoted antiquarian with a special object, would work in such a mine; and so the biography of the notable Condottiere, whose name echoes through the centuries, remained unwritten. Perhaps, had Mr. Joins Temple-Leader • Sir John Hawkwood (VA onto) : Story of a Condottiere. Translated from the Italian of John Temple-Leader, Esq., and Giuseppe Ilarootti. By Leader Ecott. London T. Fisher ljawin.
not retired to Florence, and restored for his abode a castle tumbled down five hundred years ago by his fellow-countrymen, we should not now have had this elaborate and very interesting account of an Essex worthy, who was a Captain under Edward and, at least in his later days, the revered champion of the stout Florentine Commune. Even now, after all the industrious research of Mr. Leader and his Italian colleague, how much which would be needful to understand the "right valiant English knight," as Froissart calls him, and the Italy of the turbulent century in which he lived, has vanished utterly from human ken! A vivid and ingenious imagination, working on and in the historical records which survive, might build him up again in some shape more or less clearly intelligible to folks who live in a century so different from the fourteenth ; yet when all was done, we should still feel that the presentment was imperfect, because so large a portion of what is essential to one age can never be transmitted to another, and because the authentic evidence obtainable is coloured by our own opinions and passions, as well as those of the original reporters and annalists. Nevertheless, if much has been taken, much remains, and the authors of this biography of one who was called a Brigand in his own day, have made excellent use of the fruits of their profound inquiries, and enabled us to see that he was also a strong, able man, not especially wicked, nor more of a robber than most of his high and mighty con- temporaries.
Hawkwood was born, date uncertain, probably about 1320, near Sible Hedingham, in Essex. He was John junior, his elder brother also bearing that name, and he had a younger brother, Nicholas, who made his way in the Church. They were the sons of Gilbert de Hawkwood, of Hawkwood Manor, landowner and tanner, who died in 1340, leaving legacies to his children, John senior taking the landed property. The share of the second son was ten pounds and one hundred solidi, and apparently he forthwith went to the wars, no doubt following the De Veres, on whose large territorial possessions he was born. Where he went, however, what services he rendered, in what battles, skirmishes, and sieges he fought, no one knows. He becomes faintly visible in 1360, and Froissart, who called him a Knight, says that when the peace of Bretigny set free such a swarm of soldiers, Hawk wood became leader of a band styled Tard-venues, and went into Burgundy. Many went, certainly, and he among them, to plunder the Rhone countries, which they did, slaying the Lord James de Bourbon in the Battle of Brignais, taking Pont St. Esprit and vast booty, and terrifying the Pope and Cardinals at Avignon. The Marquis of Montferrat, who had wars on hand, relieved the Pope by engaging the band, or a great part of it, and carrying them to Italy. That was Hawkwood's introduction to the Italian theatre. After a spell of fighting, he returned to Provence, but he evidently would not follow Du Gueselin, who persuaded a host of Free Lances to help Henry of Trastamare, for he recrossed the Alps for good. Free Companions there were in Italy, before and after him, and in going thither as one of them he only followed the custom of the time. The Visconti had abolished personal service, preferring mer- cenaries; and the independent cities had reached a stage of wealth when it was held more profitable to hire defenders than interrupt labour by calling out the citizens. It required a Machiavelli, and even he spoke in vain, to teach them that infantry was the nerve of armies. Certainly Hawkwood, though the greatest among his species, is not in any way responsible for the rush of the hireling bands into Italy. There was a keen demand for the commodity, and it was supplied. It was not until 1363 that the English Company—so called because chiefly English—insisted that Pisa, in whose service they were, should accept Sir John as Captain-General ; and after that, except for a very brief period, he was always chief wherever he served, and never second. He marched, fought, schemed, negotiated in Northern, Central, and Southern Italy for thirty years, courted by Popes. Princes, cities, filling the land with his renown, finally dying suddenly, at a great age, in Florence, where, mach to the disgust of Gibbon, he "was buried with such honours as the Republic had not paid to Dante or Petrarch." Richard II. begged the Signory to send home his ashes, and they found their last resting-place in the Church of St. Peter at Sible Hedingham, while a picture of him alone remains in the Duomo. A career so very rare, if not unique, deserved a special record ; and Mr. Temple.
Leader has performed almost a patriotic task by taking pains, in conjunction with Signor Marcotti, to set forth the bright lights and deep shadows of a sterling character, well fitted to play a nobler part in a purer and less brutal age.
It is remarked of Sir John Hawkwood that he was "a pearl of fidelity "compared with the other condottieri. He kept his com- pacts, so far as he could,—that is, very far indeed ; hence the extreme gratitude of the Florentines to him and his. The habit of the age was fire and sword; but he does not appear to have sacked, burnt, and slain so much as others on all sides. Deeply implicated in the singularly infamous massacre of Faenza—for he was present, and could not or did not restrain the troopers-he soon quitted the service in which he was then engaged, and some of the caporali, or knights, officers of troops—his among them—sent a thousand poor women into Rimini for shelter, which shows that all were not so ferocious as the Bretons, who were the most to blame. The hold of a captain over a company was not absolute ; he was a limited monarch, obliged to consult subordinates in adminis- trative matters, and wink at excesses. But Hawkwood knew how to manage men as well as to command them. It was his prudence, firmness, and equity, combined with the hearty con- fidence felt by his men in his ability as a commander, which made him so readily and constantly followed. Then his fiery valour in a crisis went for much. As a General he was, of course, watchful, the source of orders, the fertile parent of devices and stratagems ; but there were times when he would throw his bdton among the enemy, and drawing his sword, and shouting, " Carne ! Came ! " electrify his soldiers as he led them into the midst of the foe. Bravery was a common form among the men who graduated in the school of Edward III.; still, the outbursts of the usually cool, directing Captain told with irresistible force, and the torrent of levelled spears—for Hawkwood, in close action, fought dismounted, as the English manner was—swept through and over the adversary. As a General, such reputation as he may have rests on two or three campaigns which stand apart from the ordinary desultory business of that day in which also he shone. Two, the most considerable, among his actions, were retreats. In one he was outwitted on the Adige, for the enemy had cunningly got upon his line of communications ; but he smiled serenely, did not lose his head, and manceuvred so skilfully that he did more than regain his line of retreat ; he inflicted a disastrous rout on his opponent. In another, the more famous, he advanced from the Adige towards Milan, while, as was believed, a Count d'Armag,nac crossed the Alps into Piedmont, threaten- ing the Lord of Milan on that side. But the Lord of Milan bad the wit to crush the Frenchman first, and then turn his whole strength upon Hawkwood, who had come up to the Adda. The Condottiere did not hesitate ; he fell back at once, yet so steadily and with such fine sleights, contrivances, and even halts of defiance, not out of bravado, but with a purpose, that he beat his antagonist in detail on more than one occasion. The Milanese General was one Jacopo dal Verme, who made sure of catching the old fox,—Hawkwood was over seventy. "By way of a practical joke," we read, "Dal Verme sent him a fox in a cage. Hawkwood answered the enemy's envoy who brought the cage; I see that the animal is not dull, which means that he will discover a way out ;' and breaking one of the bars of the cage, he set the fox at liberty." And so it proved ; for by deftness and valour, by fine marches and swift strokes, the old fox, equal to every difficulty, got beyond the Adige, carrying off, though thwarted, the honour of the campaign. He was a man not to be daunted, and never at a loss for a move ; more than a match for any soldier in Italy. His final campaign in defence of Florence, when he had a renowned condottiere against him, is equal in point of dexterity to the famous retreat, and it brought forth a peace. Wherever he went, his presence acted like magic on his adversaries, who retired or became over-cautious, and even then dreaded his stratagems as much as they did the sustained onset of his troops. It is no slight testimony to his personal weight in these tussles, that his appearance in the field was held to be worth five hundred lances, showing that he had the magnetic influence which rays out from a great commander.
Though he could neither read nor write, he was a con- summate man of business, and never neglected the small details which are so essential to success. He had a secretary and a chancellor ; he kept up a considerable intelligence department, as became one who wa,3 bpand to know all that might be going on around him. He had lordships in the Romagna, a castle, Monteachio, and forts in the territory of Arezzo; but wisely putting aside, if he were ever beset by, the temptation to found a principality, he sold the first to the Marquis of Este, and the second to Florence. How many wives he had is uncertain, but there were children of his grown up when he married Donnina, the favourite natural daughter of Bernabo Visconti, legitimated by that savage, who married the girl's mother when his able wife, Regina Scaliger, died. It was the son of Donnffia who returned to England. We read that this son John was made a knight, and that he had no history. "We only learn from the English papers," say our authors, "that in the tenth year of Henry IV. he had possessions to let at Padbm.7 in Buckinghamshire, and that he married a certain Margaret, with whom he lived to an extreme old age. In 1464 the couple were still alive at Sible Hedingham, where they enjoyed the life-hold possession of eighty acres of land, probably under the high dominion of the Earls of Oxford." That is the last glimpse of the second Sir John, a man of peace, who no doubt rests somewhere in that Essex church near his warrior father.
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