Christopher Gold, as constable, was left in command of the remainder of Hawkwood’s men. For several days nothing seemed to change but with Hawkwood now some four leagues distant and half the White Company gone, the citizens of Perugia seized the opportunity to back the rebellion at Città di Castelli. A tyrant can impose all sorts of strictures on an assembly, but put-upon citizens will always find a way to circumvent such restrictions and the Perugians were no different.
Having met in secret and determined on revolt when the circumstances were propitious, as they were now, they emerged from their houses on an inky-dark winter night, armed with whatever they could find to employ as a weapon and took over the streets. There was no panic in the citadels. Apart from his own guards, Gérard du Puy had the residue of Hawkwood’s company led by Gold, plus a small body of Breton mercenaries under a Gascon knight famed for his barbarity called Bertrand de la Salle.
Albornoz was instructed to restore order by whatever means necessary and thus Hawkwood’s men were called out to fulfil their bond and they, along with the other armed contingents, assembled in the main square at first light under the military governor’s command. From where they were mustered they could hear the yells and screaming imprecations of the mob, all of which were aimed at filthy thieving priests and an immoral papacy, which had Albornoz construct a barricade of waggons to keep them at bay, which could be pushed aside as easily as it could be defended.
‘The task is to take back the streets, which should not be difficult. Once these fools see your weapons they will melt away.’
His confidence in his pronouncement was dented when Christopher Gold asked Albornoz, who was not a military man, how long it would take to get a fast rider to John Hawkwood and seek instructions of what his men should do in this situation.
‘You are his constable, you command under me and I tell you what is needed.’
‘Even if that were true – and Sir John would never agree to it – I would not order the men I lead to take part in the suppression of this revolt on the command of a man who has never fought a battle, never mind suppressed an uprising.’
‘You refuse to obey me?’ came the angry reply.
‘It means fighting in the streets and alleyways of the city and for that we are not suited. The enemy could include the whole population of Perugia – twenty thousand souls – and be made up of women as well as men, given the way they have been treated.’
‘A little high spirits, no more.’
Gold waved a hand towards the noise. ‘That is the response to your high spirits.’
‘Low pigs.’
‘Which we lack the numbers to easily contain. Too many of those you wish to set amongst them will die. A mob is like lava from a volcano and as hard to control. It goes where it wills and the people of Perugia know their byways better than we, which means men being attacked from behind as well as the front by threats that cannot be seen. If, however, Sir John wills it, we will comply.’
‘It will require force just to get out of this square, Gold. Have you not noticed that we are cut off from the gates? So your notion of sending a rider to Città di Castelli requires that first we retake one, and even then it could be tomorrow before we get a response.’
That statement was met by a determined look; Gold was not to be moved and it was not from any overt instruction from his leader, it was more a feeling that he knew how Hawkwood would react. The killing of Perugians would not concern him; he had done enough of that in the past. It was the continuation of the rule of the city by Gérard du Puy, for on many a night over food and wine Hawkwood had deplored his excesses and stated that the Pope should remove him, even if he was his own brother. Tellingly, if the White Company was not going to move, neither was Bertrand de la Salle and his Bretons, though he kept his reasons to himself.
‘Word will get out, never fear,’ was the only opinion the Gascon advanced.
‘And until then?’ Albornoz demanded.
‘Best we stay here in the square,’ Gold said. ‘Perhaps this turmoil will wear itself out.’
Albornoz would have reacted in an angrier way had not the very same instruction come from the citadel via the du Puy nephew, a smirking popinjay who seemed glad his rapist actions might have set the whole insurrection in motion. The forces in the square were to hold their place. The abbot had seen such spontaneous uprisings before and they had never had the force to keep the flame alight. Soon the protestors would tire and then it would be time for retribution. The ringleaders would be ferreted out and a bloody example made with burnings at the stake as well as crucifixions.
If it was measured in sound, matters were far from settling. The noise was increasing and what had appeared to be hundreds screaming about greedy priests now seemed to number several thousands. The depth of the problem was brought home when those the Perugians would call traitors, du Puy’s grovellers, came to say the whole city was alight with fervour. Albornoz finally realised the entire population was up in arms, men and women, threating to cut to pieces anyone who came near their knives, scythes and sharp artisans’ tools. Gold had been right: to venture into the streets and alleyways was to invite disaster.
‘Yet we cannot stay here, surely?’ Albornoz put forward, now asking questions instead of issuing orders.
‘The citadel is easy to defend and well stocked with provisions.’
‘Withdraw?’ The notion clearly shocked him
‘Better that than perish here. Those waggons can be moved by peasants as well as soldiers and they will be as soon as it is dark.’
If there was no panic there was relief; the men of the White Company tended to be long-serving and they knew what they might face in seeking to clear a mob: the only way was to kill anything that moved without seeking to discover if they were friend or foe and it could not be done without serious loss.
Every deep doorway could conceal a knife, each arch leading to a courtyard with its fountain would hide dozens of men waiting to emerge in the mood to slay. In the narrower alleys it could be one armed soldier against a person blind with fury. None doubted they would be in such a mood for they too had seen the treatment meted out to them by du Puy and his French acolytes.
Slowly, half the men withdrew into the tunnels that held up the overhead walkway, the rest doing likewise above. The route for both led to the twin fortresses Perugia now possessed: the one built by du Puy and the old citadel, which had stood for a hundred years, both joined by a wooden walkway. There was no safety to be had in holding the outer fortifications so everyone was soon in one of the two forts, able to see the walkway by which they could support each other first emitting smoke, then bursting into flames. Within a glass of sand, it had collapsed.
An attempt to drive back the insurgents led by Christopher Gold – he was acting for reasons of security – using one of the tunnels found the exit blocked by a wall of stones. But those who built the dry stone construct had left gaps through which to fire arrows of a primitive kind, but dangerous nevertheless, forcing him to pull back to safety only to find that was going to be in short supply.
The artisan expert employed by du Puy to construct his engines of war had been seeking to complete his work outside the walls of the city. Approached by the rebellious, he was not fool enough to deny those machines as well as his knowledge about their use to the insurgents or to fail to offer his expertise. He would have been torn apart had he done so.
If they had been built to defend the walls there was nothing to stop the Perugians from breaking them down and dragging the parts inside and up the hill, even if it took hundreds of hands. The biggest problem was the heavy counterweights that made the catapults so effective, this being solved by rolling them on logs, though it was hard toil. Once reassembled the trebuchets were put to immediate use, peppering the fortress with huge boulders and the interior with smaller rocks fired high enough to surmount the ramparts.
Two smaller trebuchets had been built previously and put in place, one in each fortress. So the citizens found their own missiles being returned to them with interest. Their location at the top of the central hill of Perugia increased the range and the houses in the lower town suffered badly, as did any citizens caught in the open when they were fired. Days went by and it was obvious to both sides that the locals could no more overcome the defences than the defenders could essay out and drive them off.
Not that the former were idle; it was an indication of the disrespect in which the papacy was held that a body of knights arrived under the flags of Florence and Siena to assist Perugia. Prior to that, a host of peasants had come in from the countryside with their hoes and shovels and were now busy digging a ditch around the forts so that mining under the walls would be possible. The question for the defenders was simple; where was Hawkwood?
On arrival at Città di Castelli, he had found that what he had been told was not strictly true; the small papal garrison of some sixty men had not been thrown out of the city, they had been slaughtered and the fate of the bishop and his priests was unknown. Leading only half his company and ever cautious, retaking the town from outside looked hazardous and that was rendered more so when the inhabitants came out en masse to drive him off, wielding the weapons that they had taken from the dead.
If he was able to check them and force them to retire it was at the cost of several of his men and that left him outside walls he lacked the strength to overcome, even if they were in poor repair. He tried patience, camping within sight for a few days, uncomfortable in winter, but that only brought him news of the Perugian revolt and how it had evolved. That was an even harder nut to crack than the one he now faced.
Seeking reinforcements he made for the papal stronghold of Viterbo only to find that in bloody revolt as well, with the mercenaries he had hoped to engage having fled. His honour required he attempt a recapture; his honour cost him even more losses, including an old friend, and he was now outside any place of succour in the midst of winter. There was no choice but to return to Perugia and see what could be achieved, in the meantime sending for his fellow captains, the likes of John Thornbury, to bring their brigades to that place.
The Perugians were not fools enough to think there would be no attempt to subdue them. Almost their first act, once they had received the contingents from Florence and Siena, was to destroy the bridge across the Tiber and that was what Hawkwood found when he came within sight of the city. In full winter flood it was unfordable and far from easy to cross by boat.
‘Well, we must make camp here on this far bank,’ was all he could say.
‘It may not be my place to say so, Sir John, but we are very short on provender.’
Hawkwood looked at his squire, Salmon, young and reminiscent of Christopher Gold at the same age. ‘Never fear to remind me, lad, but I know as well as you we have a dearth.’
‘Am I allowed to ask what the plan is?’
‘So you can pass it on?’
The smile took the sting out of the words as Salmon responded, ‘I do get asked of your thinking, sir.’
‘Which must leave you in a quandary, since I barely know of it myself.’
The nights were cold with a clear sky that promised a frost but, well wrapped up, Hawkwood went on what had become his usual walk through the tents and blazing fires, stopping to talk to people like Ivor and Alard, grey-haired now and bemoaning the loss of the long-time comrade Badger, who had fallen to a lance outside Viterbo.
‘His memory lives,’ Hawkwood reminded them.
‘Are we becoming too old for this?’ asked Ivor.
‘Been that for a time,’ was Alard’s response, ‘if my bones have the right of it. But I am damned if I can see another way of goin’ about things that won’t see me starve.’
‘Might happen right here,’ the Welshman responded in his sing-song voice.
Hawkwood was quick to jump on any gloom. ‘You make it sound as if we’re trapped.’
‘Ain’t we, John, or is it just those poor devils forced to arise and battle that bastard who has preyed on them these last two years?’
‘If it eases your mind, I dislike du Puy as much as you.’
‘Makes no odds, does it, when he holds the purse.’
‘Sleep, who knows what tomorrow will bring.’
‘No warmth, that’s fer certain.’
That melancholy remark sent Hawkwood wandering again and soon he found himself on the riverbank looking at the rushing waters of the Tiber, hard by the broken bridge. It was not far from this spot that he had slaughtered the Perugian forces and now he wondered if the citizens were about to exact revenge, for he was in a bind.
He could not attack and nor, with half his company inside, could he just depart, which for a mercenary was the wise thing to do. Staying whole long enough to earn the stipend meant more than rescuing a fool like Gérard du Puy. Racking his brain as he must he could not see a solution. Eventually he went to his pavilion and drawing his cot near to the brazier, set himself to sleep, though that did not come easily.
It amused Hawkwood that a papal messenger arrived the next morning, bearing with him a cardinal’s hat for Abbot Gérard du Puy. The fellow was invited to take a boat, cross the Tiber and seek to deliver it, an offer he was wise enough to refuse, even when Hawkwood pointed out he might be able to mediate. It was a comment that sparked a thought.
‘But who better to do that than I?’
If it was taken as a joke once the word spread, Hawkwood had not meant it as such. His first message was to find out to whom he could talk, the response showing that he was dealing with a better organised foe than he had supposed. The citizens had formed themselves into something like a properly constituted government, with a certain Francisco Molinari appointed as the podestà.
In truth that was a relief; it was always better to deal with one administrator than a dozen, as he had been obliged to do originally in Pisa. Not that Molinari saw him alone at the rendezvous by the San Giovanni gate. Stern of face, his original stance was to be brusque and rude. If he had hoped to upset Hawkwood, he had no idea of the man with whom he was dealing, a person who had a temper but knew how to control it.
His offer to mediate was first treated with derision, but Hawkwood was aware of certain facts that, once he established the precise positions of the opposing forces, allowed him to apply pressure to be heard. At the centre of that was the compelling article of food.
‘The granaries are within the old citadel, are they not?’
‘We do not require them.’
‘Signor Molinari, please remind yourself that I have resided in your city for some time. I know where the grain is and where there is none – for instance, anywhere else in the city bar a private family storeroom. We are in midwinter and there is nothing to alleviate that. The fields are now barren and not even planted. It will be six months at least before you can gather the means to feed your rebellion and hot tempers cool on empty bellies.’
He had struck a chord but Molinari was not going to give up easily. There was much airy waving of arms, many recitations of sins committed by the White Company, many of which were carried out by the less disciplined Bretons, though Hawkwood declined to point that out since it would serve no purpose. He knew the man would require time; he needed to talk to those who had put him in place, for he had not been appointed to replace a tyrant.
Two days of talks edged towards compromise. Hawkwood would have sacrificed the newly appointed cardinal but he dare not say so. It was his men he wanted, both unmolested and with their weapons, which he mentioned but not with the same degree of emphasis. The threat he issued, very subtly delivered, was, he knew, an empty one, but as long as the Perugians did not see it as such it could work. The idea that mercenary bands from all over the region would converge to crush the revolt was to Molinari a potent one. Such men would not stand by to see their confrères massacred.
The departure of the White and Breton contingents was agreed. Cardinal du Puy took longer but eventually that too was arranged. He must be allowed to leave with all of his entourage as well as his personal possessions. This required a full inventory of that which he owned set against the property of Perugia and led to a great amount of haggling, with Hawkwood in attendance to remind du Puy that his life was at stake and that certain baubles were worthless to a dead man.
‘I do not have to fight to get my men freed, but you! They want to throw you to the mob and your nephew with his too free desires as well. The rest they will only hang.’
Disputes such as these are resolved by necessity; Perugia needed the granaries, Hawkwood was stern with du Puy and eventually matters were settled. The French papal party would leave the citadel on the first day of January. It was a cold and frosty morning that saw du Puy set out on a fine mount that Molinari had insisted belonged to the city – just another of those things that had been fought over.
Hawkwood had brought in twenty fully armed bannered knights to protect du Puy physically, but nothing could stop the citizens who packed the route to the city gate from letting him know their opinions with invective and spittle. At one point they closed in so hard he could hardly make forward progress, while his arrogant nephew was struck on the head with a club, producing a strong flow of blood but little sympathy.
The mules carrying du Puy’s possessions suddenly disappeared in the melee that followed, bringing forth a loud complaint that Hawkwood must do something, to which the reply came that he was more interested in keeping the abbot alive than compounding his thefts.
‘Keep moving, for if anyone gets their hands on you I cannot save you.’
It was unnecessary to say he might struggle to save himself if the mob went crazy. Behind them came the mercenaries, fully armed and looking determined. That caused the crowds to ease back; no one was fool enough to seek to rob them. Not without difficulty the whole assembly cleared the gates and could make their way north.
Half the White Company was on one side of the Tiber, the rest on the opposite bank so they kept going to the next crossing, hard by a Benedictine abbey, by which time an exhausted group of clerical Frenchmen were near to collapse from expended emotion and fear.
John Hawkwood had one task he needed to perform and that was to ask the newly elevated Cardinal du Puy how he intended to pay the latest instalment of the monies due to the White Company.
‘Are you stupid, Hawkwood, or is it you are blind? Did you not see me robbed of everything I possess and, I might add, do nothing to prevent it?’
‘Which does not obviate the debt.’
‘Well, I don’t have it so you must seek it elsewhere.’
‘Must I?’ Hawkwood replied with a laugh. ‘I don’t think so. I see payment sitting before me.’
‘What are you talking about, dolt?’
‘Your ransom, Cardinal du Puy. I count you now as my prisoner and will presently calculate how much I think your holy brother will pay to get you freed.’
‘You swine, you will rot in hell.’
There was no more laughter, not even a smile. ‘Talk to me like that again and I will hold you in a water-filled pit in the ground until I get my money.’