Engraving representing John Hawkwood.

Funerary Monument to Sir John Hawkwood by Paolo Uccello (1436).

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Sir John Hawkwood (died 1394) was an English mercenary or condottiero who was active in 14th century Italy. The French chronicler Jean Froissart knew him as Jean Haccoude and Italians as Giovanni Acuto. Hawkwood served first the Pope and then various factions in Italy for over 30 years.

Childhood [link]

Hawkwood's youth is shrouded in tales and legends and it is not exactly clear how he became a soldier. According to the most accepted tales, he was a second son of a tanner in Sible Hedingham in Essex and was apprenticed in London. Other tales also claim that he was a tailor before he became a soldier.

Hawkwood served in the English army in France in the first stages of the Hundred Years' War under Edward III. According to different traditions Hawkwood fought in the battles of Crécy and/or Poitiers but there is no direct evidence of either. Different traditions maintain that the King or Edward, the Black Prince knighted him. It has also been speculated that he assumed the title with the support of his soldiers. His service ended after the Treaty of Brétigny in 1360.

Early career as a mercenary in France [link]

Hawkwood moved to Burgundy and joined the small mercenary companies, also known as Free Companies, that fought for money in France. Later he was part of the self-named Great Company that fought against Papal troops near Avignon.

In the beginning of the 1360s Hawkwood had risen to be commander of the White Company. In 1362 Hawkwood's men were part of the companies that the marquis of Montferrat hired and led over the Alps to fight first against the Green Count at Lanzo Torinese and then against Milan in the areas of Alessandria, Tortona and Novara. Forced to leave Piedmont by the Visconti’s condottiere Luchino dal Verme, Hawkwood and his troops nevertheless remained in Italy.^[1]

Serving Italian factions [link]

In the following years, the White Company fought under many banners and switched sides many times. In 1364, it fought for Pisa against Florence. In 1369, Hawkwood fought for Perugia against the Papal forces. In 1370, he joined Bernabò Visconti in his war against an alliance of cities including Pisa and Florence. In 1372, he fought for Visconti against his former master, the Marquis of Monferrato. After that, he resigned his command and the White Company moved to the service of the Pope for a time.

In 1368, he attended the wedding of Lionel of Antwerp to Violante, daughter of Galeazzo II Visconti, in Milan. Also in attendance were the literary stars of the era Chaucer, Jean Froissart and Petrarch.

Under Hawkwood's command, the company gained a good reputation and he became a popular mercenary commander. His success was varied, but he exploited the shifting allegiances and power politics of Italian factions for his own benefit.

Italian cities concentrated on trade and hired mercenaries instead of forming standing armies. Hawkwood often played his employers and their enemies against each other. He might get a contract to fight on one side and then demand a payment from the other in order not to attack them. He also could just change sides, keeping his original payment. Sometimes one party hired him so that he would not work for their enemies.

If not paid, mercenaries like Hawkwood could threaten their employers with desertion or pillage. However part of the White Company's reputation was built upon the fact that Sir John's men were far less likely to desert dangerous situations than other mercenaries and Hawkwood soon grew much richer than many other condottieri. He bought estates in the Romagna and in Tuscany, a castle at Montecchio Vesponi. Despite all this, it is claimed that he was illiterate. His education was rudimentary at best, contemporaries specifically remarked at his lack of oratory skills, and much of his business and correspondence was done by proxy and later his wife.^[2]

In 1375, when Hawkwood's company was fighting for the Pope against Florence in the War of the Eight Saints, Florence made an agreement with him and paid him not to attack for three months.

In 1377, Hawkwood led the destruction of Cesena by mercenary armies, acting in the name of Pope Gregory XI. One tale claims that he had promised the people that they would be spared, but cardinal Robert of Geneva ordered them all killed. Shortly after, he switched allegiance to the anti-papal league and married Donnina Visconti, the illegitimate daughter of Bernabò Visconti, the Duke of Milan. A quarrel with Bernardo soon ended the alliance, and Hawkwood instead signed an agreement with Florence.

John and Donnina had a son and three daughters.

In 1381, Richard II of England appointed him as ambassador to the Roman Court.

In 1387, Hawkwood, fighting for Padua, fought Giovanni Ordelaffi from Forlì, fighting for Verona in the Battle of Castagnaro, and won.

Last years with Florence [link]

In the 1390s Hawkwood became a commander-in-chief of the army of Florence in the war against the expansion of Gian Galeazzo Visconti of Milan. Hawkwood's army invaded Lombardy and was within ten miles of Milan before he had to retreat over Adige river. Later in the year, forces under his command defended Florence and later defeated the Milanese force of Jacopo dal Verme. Eventually Visconti sued for peace. Contemporary opinion in Florence regards Hawkwood as a savior of Florence's independence against Milanese expansion.

At that stage Florence had given him citizenship and a pension. He spent his latter years in a villa in the vicinity of Florence.

John Hawkwood died in Florence on March 16-March 17, 1394. He was buried with state honors in the Duomo. Shortly afterwards, Richard II asked for his body to be returned to his native England. Hawkwood's son also moved to Essex, England.

Memory and monuments [link]

In 1436 the Florentines commissioned of Paolo Uccello a funerary monument, a fresco transferred on canvas, which still stands in the Duomo. Originally, the Florentines intended to erect a bronze statue, but the costs proved too high. Finally they settled for a monochrome fresco in terra verde, a color closest to the patina of bronze.

Posthumously Hawkwood gained a reputation of both brutality and chivalry. In Sible Hedingham there is a Hawkwood memorial chapel and a Hawkwood Road. In Romagna there is a Strada Aguta.

He is one of the Nine Worthies of London mentioned by Richard Johnson in his book of 1592.

Sources [link]

• Balestracci, Duccio. Le armi, i cavalli, l'oro. Giovanni Acuto e i condottieri nell'Italia del Trecento. Rome: Laterza, 2003. ISBN 978-88-420-6807-5
• Caferro, William. John Hawkwood: An English Mercenary in Fourteenth-century Italy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. ISBN 978-0-8018-8323-1
• Cooper, Stephen. Sir John Hawkwood: Chivalry and the art of War. Barnsley: Pen and Sword, 2008. ISBN 978-1-84415-752-5
• Saunders, Frances Stonor. (UK title) Hawkwood: The Diabolical Englishman. London: Faber & Faber, 2004. ISBN 978-0-571-21909-4
• Saunders, Frances Stonor. (US title) The Devil's Broker: Seeking Gold, God, and Glory in 14th Century Italy. New York: Harper Perennial, 2005. ISBN 978-0-06-077730-2
• Leader, John Temple & Marcotti, Giuseppe. Trans. Leader, Scott. Sir John Hawkwood: Story of a Condottiere. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1889.

Other sources [link]

• Barbara Tuchman - A Distant Mirror (Chap. 10)
• Kenneth Fowler - Sir John Hawkwood, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
• Stephen Cooper - An Unsung Villain: The Reputation of a Condottiere (History Today January 2006)

Fiction [link]

• Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - The White Company (originally published in serial form in 1891) is loosely based on John Hawkwood and his exploits.

• Marion Polk Angellotti wrote a novel, Sir John Hawkwood: A Tale of the White Company in Italy in 1911, which was followed by eight short stories about Hawkwood which appeared in Adventure magazine between 1911 and 1915. The novel and all eight short stories have recently been collected for the first time in The Black Death: The Saga of Sir John Hawkwood and the Adventures of the White Company (2010) ISBN 978-1-928619-89-5 by [1].

• Hubert Cole wrote a series of three novels featuring the adventures of John Hawkwood: Hawkwood (1967), Hawkwood In Paris (1969) and Hawkwood And The Towers Of Pisa (1973)

• Gordon Dickson wrote a series of several novels making reference to and featuring John Hawkwood as a character called the Childe Cycle; The novels of the main Childe Cycle making reference to Hawkwood include:

• The Final Encyclopedia (1984)
• The Chantry Guild (1988)

• Sir John Hawkwood features in the novel 'The Red Velvet Turnshoe' by Cassandra Clark, published by John Murray in 2009 - part of her 'Abbess of Meaux' series.

Film [link]

• The fictional 1985 Paul Verhoeven film Flesh & Blood features an English mercenary captain called 'Hawkwood' (Jack Thompson), but is set in 1501, more than a century after the real John Hawkwood's death.

Documentary film [link]

• Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World - John Hawkwood features in the second of a four part series by Niall Ferguson, aired on Channel Four

References [link]

External links [link]

• Castel of Montecchio Vesponi