It had never been Hawkwood’s intention to get into conflict with his fellow mercenaries. It seemed perverse that men who fought for profit should so battle with each other, yet circumstances had brought that about and it was about to become increasingly the case. No sooner was peace secured between Pisa and Florence than he received an envoy asking him to attend upon Cardinal Albornoz.
The prelate had been given a huge sum of money by the new Pope Urban to check the continuing ambitions of those Italian states that refused to accept papal hegemony. The first question Hawkwood asked was why he had been chosen, especially given he was now leading a much weakened company.
‘You do not see yourself as singular?’
‘No, Eminence, I do not,’ was the necessary modest response.
‘Yet you stayed loyal to your contract with Pisa even when it would have been easy and more profitable to break it?’
It was easy to conjure up a look of humility at the mention of loyalty. Obviously Albornoz had no idea of how strained relations had become between himself and Sterz. Replacing the German as captain general had created a deep animosity, made obvious by the fact that Sterz had negotiated with the Florentines without bothering to include him.
Despite what Beaumont had hinted, Hawkwood doubted that even if he had been tempted to desert Pisa he would have been welcome in the new company. If he had acted honourably and been seen to do so, and such a way of behaving sat well with his own principles, he also had done so without much of an alternative.
‘I am bound to point out to you that the Company of the Star is stronger than the men I still lead.’
‘Which will matter not. I have the funds by which you can recruit many more.’
Which Hawkwood went on to do and in goodly numbers, even tempting back Andrew Beaumont to his side, necessity being the mother of forgiveness. He led men that matched the abilities of his own brigade, which was far from the case with the rest: quantity hid the lack of quality.
Though there were exceptions the best men generally came from beyond the borders of Italy, especially England, and none matched those who had fought under King Edward and his son against France. Too many of those remained with Sterz and resisted attempts to tempt them away.
If the intentions of Albornoz had been directed mostly at Milan a new threat had arisen in Perugia, suddenly aware of opportunity. There the commune, no doubt witnessing what could be achieved with mercenary armies, had employed the Company of the Star to promote their ambitions.
The cardinal was adamant that his long-term aim of the Holy Father’s safe return to Rome, which he had been given a fortune to bring about, could never be accomplished without powers like Milan being brought to heel. If smaller states like Perugia sought aggrandisement it would be ten times more difficult.
The temporal authority of the Pope must hold sway over all of northern Italy while his spiritual power should be acknowledged right down to Apulia, Calabria and Sicily. Thus Hawkwood found himself and the White Company two leagues from Perugia and in formal battle with Sterz and it went badly.
On another blisteringly hot day the two companies fought a bloody and unremitting battle in which no quarter was given. The point came when their captain general knew the White Company could not win and nor, that concluded, could they merely hope to hold the field until stalemate. Sterz had the preponderance of professionals; Hawkwood had too many lances lacking the necessary skills as well as the endurance that went with it.
To call for a retreat hurt badly, though the alternative was worse: ransom at the very least, death at worst, though he did manage to break off the engagement in fairly good order. The next surprise was unnerving; instead of being satisfied with taking the battlefield and giving himself time to regroup, Sterz launched an immediate pursuit. It was then that the dubious make up of his company caused Hawkwood real damage.
The battle had been fought on a dusty plain below a fortified town called San Mariano. Most of the White Company captains led their brigades towards the town in the hope that by occupying the citadel they could break their enemies’ desire to continue the fight. Given there could be no real meeting of leaders on the move, it was fragmented and difficult to properly exercise command.
Hawkwood and Knowles argued against entering San Mariano with those they could contact: to do so was to become trapped. Others they failed to persuade, such as Beaumont and Thornbury, were so desirous of even a specious security they would not listen, though perhaps the insistence came as much from the men they led as from their own fears.
Leading half his host beyond San Mariano definitely spared Hawkwood further humiliation. Sterz immediately besieged the citadel, trapping over two thousand men in a castle that had not been set up to withstand being invested. There were no supplies of food, the flow of water could be interrupted and the temperature soared for the few days it took to bring on a plea to be allowed to surrender, days in which men had drunk their own urine as well as the blood of their animals.
‘They came out without horses, weapons or armour and were led away like the Israelites.’
Christopher Gold, left as an observer, related the sad tale to a leader seriously downcast. Hawkwood had lost too much to even consider reviving his campaign against Perugia and that was made worse when Sterz, now a hero to that commune, set a high price to ransom the captains and marshals his enemy had led. These were costs Hawkwood was obliged to contribute to: his reputation and standing demanded it. If he got free the likes of Andrew Beaumont, the so-called Bastard of Woodstock now had no men for they were still incarcerated, Thornbury the same.
The German then set out to harry what remained of the White Company in a way that made no sense outside personal animus, not that he participated himself most of the time. Much feted in Perugia, he behaved as he had in Pisa, soaking up the praise and playing the great man. Pursuit was left to his underlings; only rarely did he lead them personally. It made little difference: there was no rest as wherever they headed the Company of the Star followed. The German made it plain he wanted Hawkwood’s head on a Perugian gate and was prepared to march over half of Italy to get it.
‘I will keep fighting, Eminence, but I cannot in all good faith hold out to you the hope that Perugia will be subdued. I am much reduced since San Mariano and it is only your gold that keeps the men I lead showing any semblance of loyalty.’
Albornoz received this unwelcome opinion in the Bishop’s Palace of Bologna, Hawkwood finding himself both surprised and encouraged by his response. He did not indulge in castigation or ask why he had expended so much papal gold to so little purpose. Indeed he did not say a word for quite a long time, instead sitting still, chin on fingertips, his joined hands in sort of a spire to support it.
‘Keep clear of the Company of the Star if you can.’
‘And Sterz?’
That got Hawkwood an intense look, which left his visitor wondering. Albornoz must know that as long as the German could lord it, with his successes under his belt and the gold of Perugia lining his pockets as well as that of his company, then there was no way to beat him. It implied the cleric was stupid and that was not the case.
‘There something must be done,’ was the enigmatic response when Albornoz finally spoke. ‘I will ponder on it.’
Reporting back to his captains Hawkwood felt it only fair to pass on to them what he thought the cardinal’s words meant, namely that the best way to nullify the threat to his aims for a papal return to Italy was to outbid Perugia and buy Sterz with papal gold.
‘And if he does?’ asked Knowles.
That got a wry smile. ‘Then I would best depart for England. Sterz will add my head to his price. But you and Thornbury he will employ if you are willing to serve under him.’
Beaumont was quick to refute that he might do so. ‘I came back to your banner because service with him was intolerable. He does not bother with councils now; whatever Emperor Sterz wishes must be obeyed.’
‘England is your home too.’
‘Not one in which I aspire to live.’
Whatever Albornoz had in mind made little difference to the present concerns of the White Company. Even pursued they had to live and that could only be done by plundering, which of necessity had to be carried out with haste. It was thus slim pickings, made worse by the continued harrying he was under from a much stronger force. If they took booty it was just as often lost to those pursuing them and that became so relentless as to drive Hawkwood away from Perugia. He headed north, passing between his old stamping grounds of Pisa and Florence until distance obliged Sterz to finally give up.
The remark Hawkwood had made to the young Gold about there being plenty of work for mercenaries in Italy was proven when an offer came from a surprising source, none other than the Visconti brothers of Milan and Pavia. If they had been previously checked and obliged to call a truce with the Imperial Vicar Monferrato, it had not dented their ambitions. Nor did they hold their loss against Hawkwood for they were pragmatists, so the invitation to return to Lombardy was taken with alacrity.
The Visconti had earned the soubriquet of ‘the Vipers’ from their own heraldic device, the biscione, which showed a coiled snake holding a struggling human in its jaws. On entering Milan, hitherto only seen from a distance, Hawkwood and his remaining brigades came into the orbit of the most powerful state in the north of Italy led jointly by a pair who, in their sybaritic way of life allied to cruelty, had no peers.
Galeazzo and Bernabò lived and acted like princes in what was purported to be a republic, being men who had ensured no check on either their way of life or their actions and that included conquest. Their rule came through the office of Imperial Vicars, given to a cardinal uncle, but they had scant regard for the Church. Still, being at peace with the papacy did not prevent them from eyeing parts of rich and fertile Tuscany as a possible area in which to make mischief.
Yet there were other reasons for hiring John Hawkwood: he was what was now being called a condottiere, and had a great deal of experience as well as a reputation that had spread throughout Italy and beyond, not least for being more honest than his peers. His employment would gloss over the involvement of a favoured Visconti bastard called Ambrogio, for whom this aim of plunder and possible conquest was to be a gift from his father Bernabò.
The details of this were passed back to England in another of the regular missives Hawkwood sent to his sovereign with passing pilgrims of noble birth, and this time it was of import. Edward was presently lodged in a dispute with the Pope over a marriage for Prince Edmund of Langley, one of his sons, to the widow of the Duke of Burgundy, a woman in possession of a great deal of land bordering northern France. With a Flemish wife and many of his children having been born in Flanders, Edward was eager to have such fiefs under the control of his family.
Such a match would be good for England but it was one that fell very much within the bounds of consanguinity, the proposed nuptials involving close relatives. Normally such a plea was granted without fuss, but Urban V was a child of France and open to the bidding of Paris, for whom the same match represented a setback and a danger. He was refusing to waive objections to the match.
When advising a monarch care had to be exercised, especially from a simple knight in a far off country and this one had ever been careful to not do much more than list his exploits and add matters he thought might be of concern to a court that had European interests. In this one Hawkwood had to trust Edward Plantagenet to read between the lines of the information he sent.
This would indicate to him that if he wished to put pressure on the Pope to agree to the proposed match, a subject well aired in Italy, then the easiest way to apply it was through an alliance with the Visconti. They were rich, ambitious for aristocratic unions to raise their house, long-standing enemies of the Pope and, with Urban talking of returning to the Eternal City, close enough to Rome to cause trouble in the papal backyard.
As much caution was necessary when it came to his prospective employers. Prickly regarding their relatively lowly status in the European monarchical firmament, any suggestion that they were unfit to aspire to a match with royalty was to invite the kind of blind rage for which they were famed. But they too could be influenced with subtlety, so the mention of a Plantagenet problem, plus the knowledge of a son at present a widower and available, hit fertile ground.
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.’