"Do you not know that I live by war and that peace would be my undoing?
--Sir John Hawkwood
Sir John Hawkwood was the outstanding condottiere of his time. He was probably born in Essex, where his father was a prosperous small landowner and tanner in Sible Hedingham. A second son, his father left him only a legacy of twenty pounds ten shillings.
The Earl of Oxford's prinicpal residence was in Sible Hedingham and it was perhaps through him that Hawkwood became a soldier in the French Wars by 1343. He was a knight and company commander by 1360. Much of the French countryside was in ruins because of the Hundred Years War and brigandage was commonplace. When the Treaty of Bretigny was signed that year, even many regular soldiers became highwaymen and free-booters, including Hawkwood.
He accompanied the free companies that descended upon Avignon and were bought off by the Pope, who diverted them to Italy. Italy, divided into many small states that were nearly always in a state of war with one another, was a perfect place for a mercenary soldier to make his way and by 1363, Hawkwood was Captain-general of the army of Pisa against Florence. He also served Florence, the Papacy, and Milan.
His reputation derived mostly from his superb generalship, not his personal fighting ability, and even when his command was destroyed, as his White Company was in 1365 and his Company of St. George two years later, his reputation survived and he was able to recruit new soldiers within a short time. Machiavelli would dub him "Giovanni Acuto." And although he necessarily served whoever would pay him, he had a reputation for fair dealing and refusing bribes. Even his one great atrocity, the massacre of as many as 5000 inhabitants of Cesena, was done under the orders of the papal legate.
His White Company, so called for its white banners and highly polished breastplates, was the model for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's novel of that name.
In 1375 Florence paid him 130,000 florins not to fight them for five years and other towns added 95,000 florins more and promised him an annuity of 1,200 florins for life. In 1377 he signed a contract with Florence and thereafter was Captain General of that city, although he continued to work for other cities as well when not needed by Florence.
The Pope paid a debt to Hawkwood by giving him a castle and lands in Romagna but he sold them after taking service with Florence and bought a castle and land there. In the 1370's, already in his fifties, he married one of the illegitimate daughters of Bernabo Visconti, ruler of Milan, who gave her a dowry of 10,000 florins, and he had a son and three daughters by her.
Florentine citizenship was conferred on him and his male descendants in perpetuity in 1391, but he had never foresworn his allegiance to his native land. In 1394 he sold his holdings in Flornece preparatory to returning to England, but he died before he could do so, on March 16th of that year. The following year, at the personal request of King Richard II, his body was returned to England and buried in Sible Hedingham.
In recognition of his services to Florence he received a state funeral and a large equestrian portrait of him was painted in the Cathedral, (it was repainted, as a fresco, in 1436 by Paolo Uccello) where it is still to be seen (a picture of it is to be found in Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror).
There is a biography of him, Sir John Hawkwood, by J. Temple-Leader and G. Marcotti (translated by L. Scott), published in 1889. See also "The Condottiere John Hawkwood," by F. Gaupp, in History, new series, vol xxiii (1938-39), "Sir John Hawkwood 1320-94: The First Anglo-Florentine," by N. Ritchie in History Today, vol. x, (1977), and his entry in the Dictionary of National Biography. He is also extensively discussed in Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror. He was married. Children were:
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Mary Hawkwood.
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