by Jack Ludlow
He would notice the quality of the goblets, the value of the gold plates on which his food was served, and while sat by Sterz he could indulge in a private conversation in which the thinking of the Great Company could be put to him without causing public offence. The message of the meal was obvious: we have food in abundance and can wait out your siege. The fine plates, all stolen, did not need to be referred to but they too told a story: we have this booty and we intend to keep it. This is where we stand, what else have you to offer that will tempt us to relinquish this fortress?
‘Before you depart, Marquis, I wonder if you would be so good as to visit the vaults.’ Again the eyebrows headed towards the hairline; it was indeed a strange request. ‘You will know we have incarcerated many a divine and local worthy, all of whom are available to ransom.’
The Italian tried to produce a look of distaste but failed. The adopted expression looked more like greed, for in ransom lay a way of making a great deal of money for little effort. Then concern crossed his parchment countenance; was this villain indicating that he too could be held and ransomed?
‘It will do them good, the poor creatures, to know that their cause is not lost,’ Sterz added, finding a silken tone to replace his normally harsh German Latin. ‘I fear they expect to be hung from the ramparts.’
The prisoners had been well primed. The men who looked after their needs had been told to indulge in confident conversations within earshot, to talk of how much food they had consumed and what was still to come. The captives were well fed too, unlike most men incarcerated. Monferrato was left alone with these plump creatures to discourse with them and hear their appeals for quick succour, in amongst coffers he was assured were full to capacity with coins and valuables. He would also, it was hoped, hear that the Pope’s cause was not likely to soon progress, for if they could be well fed as prisoners, the garrison could not be near starvation.
‘I will carry your response to His Holiness,’ Monferrato said on his return to the bishop’s audience chamber, ‘but with a heavy heart, for it will sadden him that you choose to remain outside God’s Grace.’
‘Never mind his heart,’ Hawkwood joked, after the marquis had departed. ‘As long as he tells Innocent of his heavy belly.’
Days passed before another communication arrived and once more the farrago was replayed as Monferrato raised the papal offer, to then dine sumptuously at the company board once more. In addition to lifting the excommunications His Holiness would allow them to keep that which they had acquired, an offer to tear at his heart but one he was willing to make to break an impasse.
‘The prisoners,’ Sterz said at the end of another banquet.
‘You wish me to visit the vaults once more?’
‘No,’ the German replied, with a smile. ‘I have them on the parapet.’
Taken up to look over the walls and at his own encampment on the east bank, the sight that caught the Italian’s eye was a line of unfortunates, each with a noose round their necks, many crying for what they knew was coming, one or two brave enough to face their fate stony-faced. It was telling that the latter were laity, while too many of the former were clerics who should have had no fear of perdition.
‘If we cannot ransom them, they have for us no value so we will dispose of the need to feed them – not that such a thing is a burden.’
Monferrato’s chin went to his chest as he absorbed what Sterz was saying, only speaking after a lengthy pause. ‘I ask for a delay so that I may consult with His Holiness.’
‘To what purpose?’
‘To find a compromise that will meet your needs and save the lives and souls of these poor prisoners.’
‘I doubt my captains would agree.’
‘You command them.’
‘No, Marquis; I lead them, but it is a republic.’
‘A week?’
‘Two days,’ Sterz insisted. ‘That I can carry in council.’
‘Whatever he offers,’ Hawkwood insisted, when Monferrato accepted the deadline, ‘he has had up those fancy sleeves of his since the very first day. He has no time to get to Avignon and back.’
‘Give us credit for having seen that too, Hawkwood.’
‘Us being you and Cunradus?’
‘I feel no shame for taking his advice.’
John Hawkwood smiled. ‘And I none for saying it is wise that you did so.’
The return of the Imperial Vicar brought good news: Pope Innocent would absolve them of their sins. In addition, he would pay the Great Company thirty thousand florins to quit Pont-Saint-Esprit while the Marquis of Monferrato, locked in perennial conflict with the Visconti of Milan, would add sixty thousand florins, no doubt a subvention from the Pope, to take those elements who wished it into his service as mercenaries.
‘Each man has a choice,’ Hawkwood said, addressing his company when this had been agreed and the contracts drawn up for signature. ‘You may take your portion of both our booty and this papal money and depart. Or, if you desire, take service with Monferrato and proceed to Italy.’
‘What are you planning, John Hawkwood?’ asked Ivor the Axe.
There was vexation in that question; he had never made much of a secret of his desire to return to England once he had garnered enough money to properly set himself up. Now he had a goodly sum, not the full price of his wildest dreams – there was not enough to purchase a manor and a living – but perhaps funds to buy into the wool trade, where if the risks were great so were the profits.
He also had a son he was determined should be brought up an Englishman. But from what he had heard and with what Monferrato was prepared to pay, well, that changed his thinking. Now, with Ivor asking the question, he was obliged to decide.
‘Well, I am tempted to return home with a full purse and my William, but I am told that when it comes to wealth, Italy makes the rest of the old empire look like paupers. They have so much gold even our King Edward borrows from them, though I have heard it said he is tardy when it comes to paying them back what is owed.’
‘Sounds like that is where we could ply our trade.’
‘You have the right of it, Alard. Happen we can make there ten times what we now have, so I am minded to give it a try. Who is with me?’
‘Wouldn’t let you go on your own, Sir John,’ Christopher Gold insisted, his voice deep and now quite the grown man. ‘You might not survive.’
Prior to leaving Pont-Saint-Esprit John Hawkwood made arrangements for William to be taken back to Essex, at some cost but worth it. Then there was provision for the boy’s mother who would be staying in Pont-Saint-Esprit – she had no desire to reside elsewhere and while properly pleased at the conception was not wedded to the notion of raising the boy. She was found a house, set up as a seamstress and given servants, one male and one female, with pay for a year, making her a good catch for some local swain.
Almost the last act was to sit down to write to his sovereign once more, to tell him of the exploits of the Great Company as well as its success, with a caveat to apologise for breaking the arrangements Edward had made at Brétigny. He was happy to advise his king that he, his ever-loyal subject, was finished with such. He was bound for Italy and he desired to know if there was a way in which he should act there that would not dent the dignity of the English crown.
Many would have scoffed to know that a mere knight dared address an anointed king but Hawkwood had more than one purpose. One day he would return to England and when he did he would be in need of a pardon. He also had a strong desire to be seen as a successful soldier, which might mean a royal appointment. Added to that, he had an equal desire not to be forgotten and what better way to achieve that than the offer he included? He was prepared to act as his liege lord’s eyes and ears in a foreign land, putting the interests of England before his own.
CHAPTER TWELVE
To arrive in northern Italy in springtime was to begin to realise the sheer depth of opportunity the land presented. Everything a human could want, even if not all ripe,
was growing in abundance; the buildings, even the common equivalents to an English manor house, were striking and spacious, glorious when it came to those erected for public use. There were soaring cathedrals, with bishops’ palaces to rival Avignon. Aristocratic buildings further testified to the wealth of the patrimony in domestic bastions and magnificent castles, the latter almost always perched on precipitous hills.
The Great Company was no more. On leaving Pont-Saint-Esprit, elements had headed west for Spain, notably Jonzac and Francis the Belge. Others had set off for the various regions of France and a high number of the English elected to go home. The residue, with Albert Sterz still acting as leader, took their Monferrato florins and marched down the valley of the Rhone, avoiding Avignon and scrupulously observing that which they had been bribed to leave in peace. Nothing was put to the torch until they were out of papal lands, the first being the outlying districts of Marseille.
Making away along the coast of the Mediterranean they were met by a papal envoy, a Spaniard, Cardinal Egidio Albornoz, who came to them with a formidable reputation. If he worshipped God that did not prevent him from wielding weapons of war, which he had done much of in the Iberian Peninsula fighting for Christianity against the Moors. It was even rumoured he had saved the life of the King of Aragon in the midst of battle, though that monarch’s successor was said to want his head on a pike.
‘And I can only claim a prince,’ Hawkwood joked, with mock misery when he heard of the lifesaving. ‘A king, forsooth. I suppose I will have to give way to his superior entitlement.’
Since leaving Spain, Albornoz had been given responsibility for the whole of Italy, from Rome to the Brenner Pass on the borders of the empire. In a short time he had acquired a reputation for dealing with Italian magnates who dared to defy the writ of the papacy which claimed rights both spiritual and temporal, the latter as a holder of huge swathes of land, many towns and no end of subjects.
Yet it soon emerged that if he had tamed many a lesser troublemaker he had failed to rein in the excesses of the chief villains, the Visconti brothers, Galeazzo and Bernabó, who ruled Milan and its rich hinterlands. Greedy, impious and well armed, they seized papal land with impunity and were seen as sworn enemies of the Holy See.
‘You wonder that the Pope still believes excommunicating anyone has purpose. As we ignored him so did these Visconti brothers. They even burnt the Pope in effigy on the streets of the city and the population cheered.’
Hawkwood voiced this opinion to his companion: a fellow Englishman, Robert Knowles, who had joined what was now called the White Company. Sterz had elected that they wear bleached surcoats, fly white banners and burnish their breastplates so they shone in the sun.
Having made much by ravaging the Loire Valley before coming south to the Comtat Venaissin, Knowles had been too late to fully profit from the successes of the Great Company but had been impressed with what had been achieved: nothing less than the humbling of Pope Innocent. Electing to serve under Sterz the two Englishmen, along with John Thornbury, had formed an immediate bond based on a genuine liking for each other, past experience in King Edward’s army and matching abilities when it came to despoliation.
‘Then let us hope we can grant the pair a wicker cage,’ Hawkwood essayed, ‘though I would ransom them rather than set them to the torch.’
‘If they are like their fellows in these parts they will be ready payers.’
A short silence followed, as the trio of freebooter captains contemplated the level of ransom the brothers would fetch. It took little wit to see why Innocent, through the Marquis of Monferrato, had paid for their services. If the Visconti were hated across Piedmont and Lombardy, that did not lead to any number of men willing to stand up to them, to take to the field and check their excesses. It would need an army to tame such villains and since one could not be raised locally, such a force had to be bought.
This was a frequent topic of conversation between men who were now mercenaries: the fact that the Italians were so disinclined to defend their own property. The only conclusion these outsiders could draw was that the various forces controlling their lives were so equal in their rapacity as to make it meaningless to oppose any single one. It was thus left as a conflict between the powerful who were willing, in search of dynastic gains, to take into their service and pay men who made war for a living.
‘Riders coming,’ called Gold, raising himself in his stirrups to point over the shoulders of the captains. ‘Our own.’
‘Keen eyes,’ said Knowles, peering ahead.
‘Young eyes,’ Thornbury responded.
Confident in what Gold had seen, Hawkwood spurred his mount to join his captain general and the cardinal at the front of the host, men to whom these riders, scouts sent out ahead of the main body, would report. They had made contact with Sterz before the Englishmen arrived and were engaged in much pointing and animated digression, which was passed on by their leader.
‘There’s a strong force ahead of us, holding the far side of a bridge over the Ticino,’ Sterz informed them. ‘The scouts say the river is in spate so there is no way to outflank them.’
‘Is an attack possible?’ mused Albornoz. ‘It would not serve to show fear to a Visconti.’
‘Across a bridge,’ Hawkwood responded negatively, his mind going back to what his archers had denied to the papal army at Pont-Saint-Esprit. ‘They are easy to defend.’
‘Crossbowmen will decimate anyone who attacks,’ Knowles added. ‘We know the Visconti have engaged a brigade from Genoa.’
Hawkwood’s point was simple, so much so he declined to elaborate. One good way to devastate his archers was by exposing them to the Genoese, who could fire and have time to reload before the English-cum-Welsh archers could close enough to use plunging fire to disrupt them.
‘They know we are here,’ Sterz said, pointing to the Milanese scouts on a nearby hill. Obviously they had followed the men from the White Company.
‘They will have known for a long time,’ acknowledged Albornoz with a growl. ‘Is there a soul in Italy that cannot be bribed?’
In a land of shifting allegiances, or none at all, information was of value, such as how many men made up the White Company, what the brigades comprised of in terms of weapons, as well as where they were headed and at what pace: material that allowed their enemies to choose where to block their progress, as they were doing this day and had done twice before already. Well sited they were issuing an invitation to attack them, and that, Hawkwood wanted to make plain, was unwise.
‘If you ask among those who served King Edward or his son, you will find they never fought a battle on ground chosen by their enemies.’
‘So we let them block the road to Milan time after time?’
‘Cardinal, there is more than one road to Milan. Let us find one they cannot block and meet them in battle where we choose.’
A sound policy, it was easier to put into words than to achieve. The only time the White Company came into contact with the Milanese it led to a reverse, for that one criterion had not been met: the ground suited the Visconti. Thus it was the mercenaries who were caught on an ill-chosen battlefield, and the need to retreat inflicted great loss in what was a very bloody pursuit.
It also dented a great deal of pride. After marching in total some forty leagues over nearly two months they were back in Romagnano, their base and the place from where they had set out on the campaign, obliged to go into winter quarters and seek to replace lost numbers. They also had to plan for the following year.
Sterz proved an able captain in the spring campaign. He set off from Romagnano having let it be known he was intent on following the same route as the previous year. Within half a day, the German then abandoned much of his baggage train and moved to get his troops over the River Ticino before the way could once more be blocked.
Prey to misleading intelligence, the Visconti troops were wrong-footed and that allowed the mercenary army to get to their heartlands and wreak havoc up to a
couple of leagues from Milan itself in a raid that had to be merciless. The White Company were out on a limb, a hard-riding column following a narrow line of advance, open to an outflanking movement if the Milanese could organise themselves to execute such a manoeuvre.
In their favour was the foot-bound nature of the bulk of the Visconti levies, armed citizens of Milan, added to their fears that what was happening might be a feint, for part of the Sterz tactics – to keep his movements hidden – was to terrorise the population into submissive immobility. Men worthy of ransom were taken in their hundreds, their homes and fields spared the torch only if they agreed to pay handsomely, though their livestock was forfeit.
The florins gained were added to their stipend for service so it was a happy company that concluded the incursion, only the cardinal being cast down; he wanted to take Milan itself, sure God would aid their cause as he had in the weeks of campaigning. Men like Sterz, Hawkwood, Knowles and Thornbury knew better. The Visconti city was walled and garrisoned and they were not equipped for such a battle.
Yet the result proved positive in an unexpected manner. Stung by the raid the brothers saw the need to nullify this threat, for in a new season the marauding might be repeated up to their very walls. Determined to forestall such an eventuality they marched on Novara which, once captured, would expose the base of the White Company at Romagnano. But now it was the turn of the papal mercenaries, forewarned, to choose the place at which to fight and they too elected to defend a bridge over the River Terdoppio.
‘Though we must, if we can, tempt them to cross,’ Sterz insisted. ‘If they do not, we risk another stalemate.’
Hawkwood, after musing for a short while responded. ‘Archery can control the flow. We deploy back from the bridge and let them cross at our pleasure.’
‘Against crossbows,’ asked Albornoz. ‘You never tire of telling of the threat they pose. How do you intend to deal with the shortcomings in the range of your bowmen?’
‘Straw,’ Hawkwood replied.
