Showing posts with label John Hawkwood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John Hawkwood. Show all posts

Friday, January 20, 2023

Medieval Mercenaries

Although we associate the feudal system in the European Middle Ages with a way in which knights and soldiers were provided for the king's army, over time mercenaries became a more efficient manner to maintain a military force.

The benefit for the country was that villages did not have to send their men and boys away and miss their labor on the farms or risk them not returning from war.

Those who made a living as mercenaries did not do so because they just answered an advertisement. Their evolution was organic and initially unwelcome, because they were not faithful to a lord or land and often took what they wanted from the locals. The Third lateran Council of 1179 condemned mercenary bands. King John's use of mercenaries led to their banishment in Magna Carta. They continued to exist on the continent, however, and the problem grew in the 1300s.

Shortly after the start of the Hundred Years War, bands of soldiers left in Brittany started harassing the countryside. With immediate battle over and no financial support from the crown, they began living off the land, which started as hunting and using up natural resources, but also turned to ransacking villages for supplies. Villages began paying soldiers "protection" money to leave them alone. The captain of a company could become quite wealthy, and maintain "control" over a large area. The most famous was John Hawkwood, whose career as a mercenary made him a celebrity in Italy. (The city-states of Italy preferred to hire soldiers from outside their territory, so that no powerful military force had any familial ties in the city-state that would challenge the political structure.)

These companies came to be known as routiers (German Rotten "gangs"; French routes "road"), and were foot soldiers such as archers, spearmen, and crossbowmen rather than mounted knights. They were often referred to as "Englishmen" in France because they were part of England's forces in the Hundred Years War, but the first groups of routiers were actually Gascons from the southwest part of France that had been in English hands for generations. (To be fair, they could also include English, Spaniards, and Germans.)

Even when a company of routiers was being paid to fight, however, their loyalty was to a paycheck, not the lord, and so their willingness to lay down their lives in battle was questionable. Nor did they have any loyalty to a particular country: the captain would move them to wherever they could be paid to fight or be paid to not pillage. Roving bands of routiers generally disappear from the landscape by 1400.

Those Gascons, however, and the Duchy of Gascony had a long history that is worth looking at next.

Monday, September 19, 2022

Catherine in the World

Catherine of Siena (25 March 1347 - 29 April 1380) wanted to join the Dominicans and retire from the world. This was not only discouraged by her mother, but a vision Catherine had of being married to Christ included the injunction to go out into the world to do good works.

During a 1374 visit to Florence, she made the acquaintance of Raymond of Capua, chaplain of a second order monastery of Dominican nuns. While nursing plague victims, he became ill; Catherine sat by his side during his recovery, which he attributed to her prayers.

They began a close relationship, and he became her confessor and spiritual advisor, traveling with and advising her. Catherine traveled around northern and central Italy, urging reform of the clergy. She convinced the cities of Pisa and Lucca to avoid an alliance with an anti-papal movement. She wrote to John Hawkwood, trying to persuade him to turn his energy to supporting God.

She had a long correspondence with Pope Gregory XI, which included urging him to return the papal headquarters from Avignon back to Rome, which he eventually did. Not all cardinals approved of the return, and when Gregory died a few years later, two competing groups of cardinals—in in Rome, one still in Avignon—each elected a pope, resulting in what is called the Western Schism. Such was her perceived influence that Catherine went to Rome at the request of Pope Urban VI to support his legitimacy. Unfortunately for Urban, her support was not sufficient.

Catherine's habit of extreme fasting was very unhealthy, and Raymond admonished her to eat more, but she refused. In 1380 she lost the ability to swallow easily. She suffered a stroke and lost the use of the lower half of her body. She died on 29 April 1380.

Although she was buried in Rome, her head was placed in a bronze bust and taken to Siena. It was carried through the city in a procession to the Basilica of San Domenico, accompanied by her then 89-year-old mother. Her mother and Raymond of Capua collaborated on her biography. She was named a Doctor of the Church in 1970 by Pope Paul VI in recognition of her pious example and her treatise The Dialogue of Divine Providence.

About this Western Schism, during which she was unsuccessful in convincing everyone to accept Urban as the legitimate pope: his opponent didn't succeed either. I should say opponents, because Avignon and Rome weren't the only cities to name a pope. That story is for next time.

Saturday, April 16, 2022

The Sword in the Stone

Galgano Guidotti (1148 - 3 December 1181) was born at Chiusdino in Tuscany. He became a knight with a reputation for cruelty and arrogance. At some point, he received a vision in which the Archangel Michael led him to a hill where the 12 apostles were standing and told him he should renounce all his worldly goods. Guidotti replied that this would be as difficult as splitting a stone, and he thrust his sword toward a stone in the ground. To his surprise, the sword went into the stone like butter.

Not long after this vision, while he was out riding, his horse refused his commands and led him to the hill of Montesiepi. He recognized it as the hill in his vision, drew his sword, and thrust it at the ground; it sank into the stone just like in his vision. He became a hermit on the spot. He died a year later.

A chapel was built over the site of his death, drawing pilgrims and penitents. Miracles were reported after praying to him, and in 1185 Pope Lucius III canonized him according to the new form al rules of the Catholic Church. A Cistercian Abbey of San Galgano was begun around 1220. The Abbey struggled financially, and was ransacked by John Hawkwood's band in 1363. It is in ruins now.

The sword in the stone, however, exists. Nearby, at the Rotonda of Montesiepi, there is a chapel with it on display (see the illustration). Research in 2001 showed that the metal protruding from the stone was consistent with the style of the 12th century. The handle and visible blade do not seem to be a prop merely attached to the stone. It really does seem to be a real sword embedded in a stone.

Hmm. Sword in a stone. Where have I heard that image before? We should look into that.

Friday, April 15, 2022

John Hawkwood

John Hawkwood (c.1323 - 1394) was an English soldier who became famous as a mercenary leader. Many Italian city-states hired foreign mercenaries to lead their armies, so that the soldiers had no loyalties to any families inside the city that could lure them to support a military takeover. 

We know for certain of his leadership of a group in France because of a letter addressed to him as the leader from Pope Innocent VI, asking Hawkwood's group to stop harrassing the fort at Pont-Saint-Esprit. They refused the pope's request, which led to their excommunication. The issue was resolved when the pope offered more money to fight for him in Spain and Italy. This split the group, and Hawkwood led the half that went to Italy. Italians had difficulty pronouncing his name, and he became known as Giovanni Acuto, "John the Sharp/Astute."

He was eventually allied with Bernabò Visconti against Pope Urban V. Although outnumbered, Hawkwood managed to outflank the enemy and capture many officers, cementing his reputation. He later went on raids through the countryside, intimidating various towns to pay him to leave them alone. One of these raids led to the War of the Eight Saints.

He outmaneuvered enemies with feigned retreats and ambushes, setting up banners in one area as if he were camped there, and then coming around at the enemy from a different direction. He was known for brutality as much as cunning: he had no problem with his men raping, dismembering, or outright murdering peasants. He sacked monasteries such as the Abbey of San Galgano.

I mentioned his marriage to Donnina Visconti yesterday; he also had an earlier English wife with whom he had at least one daughter, Antiochia, who married into the Coggeshall family of Essex. He had several children with Donnina, and at least two sons from other affairs.

After his death, on 17 March, 1394, an elaborate funeral honored him in the Duomo in his then home town of Florence; a painting of Hawkwood contracted by the Medici family in 1436 commemorates him. Donnina traveled to England to lay claim to his family lands, but the records of ownership had disappeared during the Black Death. His wealth seemed to vanish overnight.

Next I want to tell you more about the Abbey of San Galgano and the sword in the stone.

Friday, February 7, 2014

War of the Eight Saints

Pope Gregory XI arriving in Rome in 1377
Fresco by Giorgio Vasari
Pope Gregory XI wanted land. He was the last pope to reside in Avignon in France rather than in the Vatican in Rome. Even though he enjoyed living in Avignon, he still felt that the pope deserved more land in Italy. He set out to achieve that by expanding the Papal States, territory that belonged to the papacy.

Understandably, the Italian city-states objected to this; if Gregory wanted more land, he was going to have to take it by force. Gregory was fine with that option. He was fighting a battle with Milan, and when that ended in 1375, he had the opportunity to send his army against Florence, which held lands that would have been ideal for Gregory. Thus started the "War of Eight Saints."

The head of Gregory's mercenary army was an Englishman, John Hawkwood. Florence decided they could "buy off" Hawkwood. They offered him (and his army) 130,000 florins to sign a one-year nonaggression pact with Florence. For Hawkwood himself, they offered an annual payment of 600 florins in a five-year contract and a lifetime annual pension of 1200 florins! Hawkwood kept his involvement to the Papal States themselves, avoiding conflict with Florentine territory. Gregory had to use other forces to attack key areas in Italy.

Who were the "Eight Saints" of the war? Their names aren't agreed upon, and they weren't saints. Gregory excommunicated Florence for its opposition, using the phrase otto dei preti ["eight priests"] to refer to specific men whose acts prompted the excommunication.* These eight would have been one (or both) of two groups of eight men: one was appointed to come up with the means of buying off Hawkwood (these men also forced a loan on the clergy of Florence to amass the money needed for Hawkwood); the other was the otto della guerra ["eight men of war"], eight men appointed to manage the war against Gregory.

Gregory ultimately returned to Rome in January 1378. If he wanted to maintain his property in Italy, he was going to have to oversee it personally. In a sense, the Avignon papacy ended by default.

*Florence had an unexpected reaction to excommunication—unexpected to our modern ideas of how devout the Middle Ages were. Someday...

Monday, February 3, 2014

An English Mercenary

Funerary monument to Hawkwood
This is the story of how an English soldier of no particular background rose to such prominence that a monument to him sits in Florence, Italy.

John Hawkwood was born about 1320, perhaps in Essex; anecdotes that he apprenticed in London as a tailor before becoming a soldier cannot be substantiated. He served in the Hundred Years War under Edward III. He may have fought at Crécy and Poitiers—again, we cannot be sure of his exact whereabouts during the war—but it is certain that he was no longer employed as a soldier once the Treaty of Brétigny was concluded in 1360.

The life of a soldier suited him, apparently—or he simply had no desire to find passage back to England. He joined one of the mercenary companies that sprang up on the continent. These groups, with no particular allegiance to any nationality and willing to fight for pay against anyone, were called Free Companies. He soon became a member of one called the "Great Company of English and Germans," also known as the White Company. By 1362 he was leading the White Company in battles all over Italy.

Hawkwood was shrewd—some would say "dishonest" or "unethical." Knowing that the White Company was a military force to be reckoned with, he would manipulate the Italian city-states that wanted help. If one offered a contract for the Company's services, he would go to their potential employer's enemy and ask for more money to refuse the initial contract. Sometimes he would be paid simply not to fight for the other side. Florence did this for three months in 1375, when the White Company was employed by Pope Gregory XI to fight Florence.

Despite this behavior, the White Company under Hawkwood gained a reputation for sticking to a contract and not deserting the battle or acting like lawless marauders once a battle was done. Military discipline was one of the commodities you gained when employing the White Company.

Besides being a mercenary, his life dovetailed with other historical events. In 1368, Edward III's son Lionel of Antwerp married Violante Visconti, daughter of then-ruler of Milan, Galeazzo II Visconti. Hawkwood was in attendance and might have met some of the other wedding guests: Geoffrey Chaucer, Petrarch, and the French chronicler Jean Froissart.

John Hawkwood died on 17 March 1394 in Florence. He had lived at that point for several years in peaceful retirement, enjoying the citizenship and pension and villa Florence had given him. Praised for his part in maintaining Florentine independence, he was buried with state honors. Plans for a bronze statue were abandoned due to cost, but 40 years later a monument was created for him by Paolo Uccello, a fresco designed to resemble bronze.