A Distant Mirror_ The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara W. Tuchman [150]
Innocent’s successor, Urban V, issued two Bulls of Excommunication in 1364, Cogit Nos and Miserabilis Nonullorum, which were supposed to have the effect of prohibiting any cooperation with or provisioning of the companies, and which offered plenary indulgence to all who died in combatting them. If the ban disturbed the brigands, it did not restrain them.
The outstanding professional among the Tard-Venus, one whom Coucy was destined to meet in combat, was Sir John Hawkwood, who first appeared by name as leader of one of the companies besieging Avignon in 1361. His origin was the kind that sent many into the companies. As the second son of a minor landowner and tanner by trade, he left home when his elder brother inherited the manor along with £10, six horses, and a cart, leaving the younger son landless with a portion of £20 10s. Listed among the English army in France in the 1350s, Hawkwood was “still a poor knight who had gained nothing but his spurs” when he joined the Tard-Venus after Brétigny. He was then about 35. By the time he was diverted by papal gold from Avignon to Italy, he commanded the White Company of 3,500 mounted men and 2,000 foot whose white flags and tunics and highly polished breastplates gave the company its name. On their first appearance in Lombardy they spread terror by their fury and license, and as time went on, “nothing was more terrible to hear than the name of the English.” They gained the reputation of perfidi e scelleratissimi (perfidious and most wicked), although it was conceded that “they did not roast and mutilate their victims like the Hungarians.”
Hired by one or another of the Italian city-states in their chronic wars, Hawkwood could soon command the highest price for his services. However ruthless his methods—and they inspired the proverb “an Italianized Englishman is a devil incarnate”—he spent no time on mere brigandage, but contracted his company to whatever power had the capacity to pay, on either side in any war. He fought for Pisa against Florence and vice versa, for the papal forces against the Visconti and vice versa, and on leaving the service of the Visconti, correctly turned back to Galeazzo the castles the White Company had conquered. War was business to Hawkwood, provided that his contracts exempted him from fighting against the King of England. When he died after 35 years in Italy, rich in lands, pensions, and renown, he was buried in the cathedral of Florence and commemorated by Uccello’s equestrian fresco over the door. National pride in the year of his death reclaimed him; at the personal request of Richard II, his body was returned to England for burial in his native town.
In Italy the companies were used virtually as official armies in public wars. In France they were out of control. The only effective counter-force would have been a permanent army, which was not yet within the vision of the state nor within its financial capacity. The only feasible strategy against the companies was to pay them to go somewhere else. Since the King of Hungary was appealing for help against the Turks, a concerted effort to drain off the menace in a crusade was made in 1365 by the Pope, the Emperor, and the King of France.
The person nominated by the former Regent, now Charles V, to lead the crusade was a strange new captain as rough as his Breton name, which the French rendered De Clequin or Kaisquin or Clesquy until fame settled on Bertrand Du Guesclin. Flat-nosed, dark-skinned, short, and heavy, “there was none so ugly from Rennes to Dinant.” So begins Cuvelier