by Jack Ludlow
This engendered a look of deep scepticism, but his thinking was sound and based on his long experience, not least the first real fight he had been engaged in at the ford of Blanchetaque under King Edward. Too junior then to affect what turned out to be a bloody fight, he had seen a way to blunt the power of the crossbow.
‘Bales of it tightly bound in canvas, lined on the inside with timber, behind which my archers will stand. The crossbow bolts will not penetrate both, but the Genoese will be mystified as to why, given straw is all they will see – that and no damage to their targets.’
‘Obliging them to close their range,’ essayed Knowles.
‘And in doing so, they will come under the kind of concentrated fire that broke the French.’
There were many more men able to employ that weapon than there had been when they departed Brétigny. If it was a skill, the use of such a weapon could be taught and Hawkwood and his corporals had spent the winter fashioning bows and training many of the White Company to a proficiency in their use. On the east bank of the bridge, set back a hundred paces and almost hidden from view, he could now deploy three hundred bowmen.
‘We want them to continue their effort, to keep attacking,’ Sterz added, clearly worried such a sight might deter them.
‘They must do so,’ Hawkwood insisted, ‘or face us ravaging their lands once more.’
Egidio Albornoz was not quite satisfied and he responded with a malicious gleam in his eye. ‘Beat them here and we can act as we wish. We can make a misery of their lives so the citizens of Milan are willing to offer up their tyrants. I will drag them in chains to Rome.’
It was politic to indulge the cardinal in this fantasy – he was the source of the pay they received – but none believed it was remotely possible. They might be strangers to northern Italy but it had become plain that those who held power did not surrender it lightly. When he termed the Visconti tyrants, Albornoz had named them with accuracy. Such men were far from easy to topple.
‘He still dreams of taking possession of Milan,’ Sterz said, once Albornoz had departed.
‘Then he needs to find and pay a hundred thousand men,’ Knowles responded. ‘And even if you combined every free company from here to Calais such numbers do not exist.’
It had been a long time since John Hawkwood had participated in what would be a proper battle and some of the men he now led, recruits taken in while travelling, had never undergone the experience. There is a difference in being foot-bound and static as against being mounted and mobile, where the element to guard against is being surprised and that could be nullified with efficient scouting. Every time the White Company had faced the Milanese it had been them defending a blocking position. Now that was reversed.
If the nerves of the leaders were strung taut that was even more evident in the men they led. Hawkwood had placed his defensive wall as an invitation for the enemy to seek to cross and they must be beguiled into doing so in strength. The holding of that obstacle and total denial of access would only lead to another stalemate, at worst to a Milanese withdrawal, neither of which would achieve the purpose as set out by Albornoz.
For all his bellicosity and fantasising, the cardinal must know in his heart that the downfall of the Visconti was a goal too far. The aim could only be to tame their impudence by inflicting such a check on their ambition that they chose caution instead of action. They must be persuaded that papal territory was sacrosanct and the authority of the Pontiff absolute. If either was defied, then the consequence would be a powerful army in the field against them and a cost to their purse and their pride that could be nothing less than agonising.
Prior to what was coming courage had to be bolstered and Hawkwood set about the task. ‘The men we will fight are made up of citizen levies, the dregs of Milan’s gutters, only leavened with a few men of parts hardened to battle. If you feel fear, and it would be a fool man who did not, keep in your mind that it will be in their thoughts likewise.’
The Milanese were deploying, trumpets and horns blowing, drums and cymbals crashing, great banners waving and a mass of bodies moving to whatever arrangement had been laid down by the constable of the host.
‘The racket is to test your nerves. Pay it no heed.’
One or two of his younger men were glancing backwards to fix the location of their horses. The shields and swords they all employed were laid by their side and for some that too was uncomfortable. Flight was in their minds.
‘Feel naked as babes, I shouldn’t wonder,’ joked Alard the Radish, as he and his captain took a last walk along the defence.
Christopher Gold brought up their rear with the Hawkwood banner fluttering high, argent on a chevron sable, decorated with three shell escallops to denote a pilgrimage. Alard’s face had not taken well to the Italian sun and was now more a fiery red than ever, which somehow matched his present mood.
‘I have been round afore and checked they all have their bollock knives and told ’em to be ready to use them, for when the horsemen get across, we must get amongst them and slice away. Told ’em not to mind the damned great swords swinging round their heads. Drained the blood from their faces that did.’
‘When they do,’ Hawkwood replied, ‘ensure they employ their bows. They will find that a longbow arrow at close range is as deadly as a Genoese bolt. But it is they we must deal with first.’
‘Devils they are, too. Do you recall Blanchetaque?’
‘I do, which is why I have us behind our walls of straw and timber.’
‘Will they be humbugged?’
Hawkwood produced a wry grin. ‘Depend upon it.’
The change in the note of the trumpets heralded a messenger, as was common, come to give the White Company the option to withdraw and yield the field. It was left to the cardinal to refuse, which he enjoyed, using the occasion to load the returnee with endless oaths promising damnation to anyone opposed to Mother Church.
‘A mother that does not provide milk but sucks it from the poor,’ was the opinion of Ivor the Axe, close enough to hear the loud curses.
‘You’ll pray to God afore this day is out,’ crowed Badger Brockston.
‘I am doing so now, Badger, but there’s no priest to dun me for a coin to provide aid in seeking salvation.’
The clatter of hooves as the messenger re-crossed the bridge was drowned out by a huge cry from the entire Visconti host, no doubt orchestrated by their leaders. Then a line of interlocked shields began to move forward to the beating of a drum.
‘Show your heads, my merries!’ Hawkwood yelled, which had his archers standing up to peer over the barrier, the tips of their weapons visible, even more so as they were raised in jeer. Their captain had the call, which would come when those shields parted and the tips of crossbows appeared in the gaps.
‘Just come as far as the riverbank,’ Hawkwood hissed, before shouting to get down as what was anticipated occurred. Within seconds the thud of loosed bolts, their velocity tempered by passing through packed straw, hit the line of timber battens on the inner side, none penetrating.
That caused a raucous cheer as the bowmen stood again to gesture with rude intent at what was once more a closed line of enemy shields, held for the time it took to get the crossbow rewound on its windlass, loaded and ready for another volley. It was a manoeuvre carried out three times and on each occasion, no doubt because of the poor result, the line came ever closer to the river’s edge.
Behind them Hawkwood could see the mounted element of the Milanese forces struggling to keep their excited horses from running away with them; horses reacted to the noise of trumpets as much as men and they also picked up on human excitement. They had been ready to move for a long time and both riders and mounts were looking to become more and more frustrated.
‘Stand ready.’
That meant with heads bowed and safe, yet with an arrow already strung. The last set of crossbow bolts loosed doing no damage, these men stood to their full height and drew back. The command to loose came f
rom Hawkwood and the first three hundred arrows winged forth into the sky, to be followed within a blink by another salvo. Landing among the shield carriers, the first broke them up enough for the second to get through to the partially unprotected Genoese, caught standing and furiously winding the catapult gut. The infantry began to scatter, so the third and fourth rounds did real damage to what became a melee and one slowly inching away from danger, not towards it.
The nobles on their horses had no more sense than their French counterparts when the Genoese and their commoners faltered. With yells and lowered lances they headed for the bridge as Hawkwood changed the focus of his defence to that narrow causeway. He reckoned not to stop them but to merely throw them into disarray, so the fire was deliberately ragged. It would be the task of his confrères to come from behind his barrier, get amongst them and cut them to pieces.
Whoever commanded the Milanese host, even if he could see what was about to occur, lacked the will or the ability to call off the attack, never easy when it came to horsemen committed to a charge. Foot soldiers were now crowding the approach to the bridge, anyway, dying in droves as Hawkwood’s archers concentrated on their packed humanity, which meant even if the riders had wished to withdraw it would have been impossible.
Then Sterz had his horns sounded and he led forward his own cavalry to hit the disorganised Milanese hard. So the slaughter began, to create for the enemy, both horsed and on foot, a field soaked with their blood. If they were armoured knights and survived, their lot was to sit in sorry captivity, wondering how much they would be forced to pay for their liberty.
The arrival of envoys from Milan to talk of treaty was not welcomed by the White Company. Surely it took more than one setback to dent the power of the Visconti, and to the freebooters it smacked of Brétigny over again; lords and masters making a peace that suited them but not the men on whom they relied, which could mean for the mercenaries a cessation of employment.
It was not a defeat that brought the Milanese envoys to Romagnano to treat for a truce; the plague had swept through the valleys of the Rivers Po and Ticino to arrive in their city and more than decimate the population. Rumours came too of how the brothers who ruled dealt with the affliction: harshly in the extreme, sealing the houses of anyone sick and waiting till all indoors perished.
Yet such a curse was not to be stopped and inexorably the plague moved on, threatening to catch up with the negotiations between the papacy and Milan, the peril hastening a conclusion which allowed Albornoz to depart for Avignon to report to the Pontiff, albeit leaving behind assurances of future employment. He left a mercenary company calculating the cost of the battle just fought, which had been bloody and expensive, doubly so since there were very few men coming out from France to make up the losses. Then the plague struck Romagnano, sweeping through the lines and carrying off a high proportion of their strength.
No respecter of rank, captains were as prone to the disease as the lowest groom and several succumbed. Hawkwood lost men he had served with since his first enlistment, forced to bury them in mass graves with scant ceremony, all the while thanking God that he had not been afflicted. By the time the plague abated – in truth passed on to the west – several hundred of the White Company had perished, too many of them fighting men, so it was a much reduced force that watched as an embassy from Pisa arrived, seeking their services.
The city at the mouth of the River Arno was locked in rivalry, one close to confrontation, with inland and upriver Florence which, coveting the port, had declared war. The Florentines were arrogant, dishonest thieves, the company was told. Would these men becoming available be prepared to take up the cause of Pisa and humble their opponents? The fee would be forty thousand florins for six months’ service.
‘How far away is Tuscany?’ Gold asked.
‘Ask how rich it is, not how far,’ was Hawkwood’s reply.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
There was no hurried progress from Romagnano to Pisa, even if their new employers required they act in haste. Luckily, the mere news that the White Company was on its way put a check on the more numerous Florentines, who had already inflicted a severe defeat on the forces of Pisa. Indeed, it was that and the knowledge of their limited resources with which to alter matters that had brought the envoys north to Piedmont.
Florence would not be easy to contain; the largest Tuscan city was rich – an attraction in itself, of course, to a mercenary army – but that implied too an ability to defend itself. With numbers depleted by death and disease, more lances were required and then there was the state of the company. Wear and tear had affected both the horses they rode and the equipment needed to satisfy the Pisan contract.
That document had been composed with great care. Pisa intended to get for its florins what it felt it needed in the number of lances. Monies would be paid in instalments after regular inspections to ensure the original standards were maintained in what was a flexible force. The term ‘lance’ when hired in Italy did not refer to one mounted man but three; the leader a soldier, the second an archer, the last a fighting page, all with long lances. They could act defensively as a unit or gather to form an attacking body.
The host included a small body of armoured knights, who operated as shock troops in attack as well as men who could blunt their own kind in defence. In the case of the bowmen, they could combine to provide a deadly riposte to anyone seeking to drive the mercenaries from a position. Each ‘lance’ must have the requisite mounts and equipment, which entitled them to eighteen florins per lunar month.
In the month it took to get from Piedmont to Tuscany the word had gone out to anyone looking to be part of a successful company and many had been drawn in from other bands tempted by the offer of regular pay and massive plunder, though not all arrived fully equipped. Sterz and his surviving captains, in this situation, acted as bankers, using their accumulated profits to buy horses, saddlery, lances, swords, shields, knives and arrows, while ensuring the men they chose had food to eat and wine to drink.
If the original men in Hawkwood’s brigade knew well what he required, new recruits did not and integration took time, so it was late spring before the White Company, now four thousand strong, arrived outside the walls of Pisa. Determined on a fitting ceremony their employers insisted that their mercenary force, as well as their own two thousand-strong militia, parade before the citizens, so that they would know their taxes and forced loans were being well used, the message being promulgated that with Florence humbled, extra trade would flow through their wharves in a quantity to enrich them all.
Vanity had the brigades polishing metal and oiling leather, grooming their mounts until their coats shone. Pisa had previously fielded its own citizens to fight, so there was a gilded captain general’s baton for the man who would lead their mercenary forces and this was presented to Albert Sterz in the main Piazza dei Cavalieri, named for the winged horse that decorated the military banner of the city. He then led those he commanded through the streets, the host showered with flowers and cheered to the heavens, this mixed with curses for those they were being employed to chastise. The White Company was now fully ready for battle.
To march up the road that followed the valley of the River Arno as full summer approached was to appreciate the advantage of proximity to the sea. There a cooling breeze could usually be relied upon to temper the baking heat, which became near to intolerable once they reached the valley in which Florence sat, cut off from any wind-borne succour to be like an enervating furnace.
The company was never to know if it was the heat or the news of their imminent arrival that made progress so untroubled; no forces emerged from the city to seek to check them. Fanning out to take the high ground, the first act was to fire the crops in the fields, thus creating a pall of smoke that with little wind sank down towards the river to, it was hoped, choke the inhabitants.
Hawkwood was in command of the next ploy, for every man he led, whatever they were termed, carried a longbow. Combined they fired
arrows over the walls into the streets and squares to make it dangerous for the citizens merely to pass from one place to another, with particular attention being paid to those locations leading to and from the city markets.
Sterz kept his main encampment in the hills but set up a satellite as close to the walls as crossbow bolts would allow. Effigies of the leading Florentines were paraded, accompanied by endless rude gestures and bared arses to insult those on the ramparts. A mint was created, silver melted to manufacture coins showing the floral arms of Florence being trampled under the hooves of Pisa, these fired over the walls to reduce morale.
A gibbet was set up on which they hung a donkey, a symbol of cowardice. Two more were killed along with a dog, these nailed in darkness to the city gates bearing in large script the names of those who commanded the Florentine defenders. In radiating circles crops were burnt, olive trees and vines cut down for a full league around, homes torched – but only after their contents had been looted. Trees were left standing since they cast good shade for the company to rest from the midday sun in, as well as being handy for stringing up anyone who dared to resist them.
If it looked like success there was one frustrated captain in the company, for Hawkwood, if he approved of the tactics, could not get from Sterz any idea of the strategy. Was the intention to scale the walls with ladders, to try to take Florence, though that was risky against well-defended ramparts without siege equipment like towers and trebuchets, which they did not possess and lacked the skill to construct? The notion that they might send for the necessary artisans fell on deaf ears or elicited the airy declaration from the German that it might be a notion to consider at some indeterminate time.
‘They would not be easy to move once built,’ was provided as an excuse.
‘Forgive me if I seem confused, Captain General. Where else would we be taking them when our object is to subdue Florence?’
