Hi my name's Kevin Hicks, welcome to my YouTube channel The History Squad. Now today's video has
actually been requested by a couple of my Patreons over the last uh 12 months here. It's about the
famous or infamous Englishman John Hawkwood, the boy from Essex who went from bowman to captain of
bowmen, to knight and to lead one of the greatest free companies of mercenaries the world has ever
known. It is said that he, together with his band of merry men, conquered half of Italy.
John Hawkwood, what a character, a favorite of mine for sure because he was a common bowman, he
was born 1326 in Essex, so he's an Essex lad, good on you. He was born to a tanner. Now a tanner,
it kind of says you know the leather work and that kind of thing, not quite true. It looks like he
owned the tannery and the land around it, so John Hawkwood has a step up. He's apprenticed, when he
gets a little bit older, to a tailor in London so he moves to the big city where archery is a bit of
a religion. He must have joined a group, he's very good because he ends up at the Battle of Crecy,
1346. Was it John Hawkwood who stood over the young 16 year old Prince of Wales when he'd been
knocked down? Was it John Hawkwood who pushed the French back allowing the Prince of Wales to stand
up? Well 10 years later, Battle of Poitiers, in the same division of the Prince of Wales,
John Hawkwood is a captain of bowmen and after the battle he is actually knighted. Two versions, one
is he was knighted by De Vere himself, the Earl of Oxford, the other by the Prince of Wales. This is
the stuff of legend, but actually he was there and he did fight in these battles. Now another
little thing was he may have been the subject of Geoffrey Chaucer, the famous author of the time,
the Canterbury Tales, he may have been the subject for The Knight's Tale, and it makes sense when you
look, you know he's a commoner and up he comes and ends up as a knight, I love this. Now all
was going well, soldiering was great until the Treaty of Bretigny, 8th of May 1360. Bang. The
war is over, he's got a choice. He can follow the Prince of Wales division, but he doesn't,
he joins the free company. You see at that time so many archers,
bowmen had gone back to England but it's an uncertain future isn't it? So he decides
to join one of these great free companies and begin his exploits over in the east of France.
So Hawkwood finds himself in joint control with a German called Sterz, of the great
White Company. Thousands upon thousands of mercenaries, these men were professional,
seasoned soldiers. Englishmen, there will be Frenchmen, Breton, Italians and a large
contingents of German, so they had crossbowmen, longbowmen. Now there's an interesting thing,
when you regard or refer to some of these soldiers they will say ‘Oh yeah there were 20 lances’ or
‘There was a lance’. A lance is three men. You have the commander with his lance, you have a
mounted bowman and next to him his squire. In combat, the squire takes the horses away, he will
make sure they're secure. Meanwhile the commander with his lance and his bowman move forward,
the squire will then come in to the back of the nobleman here and he will support him with his
lance and in the fighting. You put all of these little units together in great companies they
work incredibly well. Note that they fight on foot, but of course they have their horses so
when required they can patrol or they can charge on horse. So that's a lance, basically three men
working together, that's your basic unit. So this unit of men, this massive, massive company the
White Company. They're called the White Company because they used to burnish their armor bright.
These men had pride and when you read about them, they’re quite something. John Hawkwood,
he loved his men. He respected them and he spoke to them. He was one of these men who ensured that
if a man was killed, his body was taken care of. If his men survived the battle then dividends were
shared equally, his men loved him. John Hawkwood what a guy, but there was one guy who didn't like
him, and that's Pope Innocent VI, he hated them because in their locust stripping of the land they
were blocking any revenue back to the Pope. The Pope in Avignon in France was saving up to move to
Rome but he couldn't because this White Company it blocked all of his revenue, so he excommunicated
them. Their souls will be damned. I don't think it made much of a dent on these soldiers, let's face
it these men were butchers. But eventually there was a peace agreement made and the pope came up
with an idea how to lessen the strength of this White Company. Divide it. Half can fight in Spain
and the other half can go and fight in Italy. Hawkwood with his White Company together with
Sturz, they choose to go and fight in Northern Italy, and there begins one heck of a tale.
So John Hawkwood finds himself with his White Company in Northern Italy fighting
for various factions in the Pisan / Florentine War. Ecentually he fights under Bernabo Visconti
the Lord of Milan, a powerful magnate. In fact he gets on so well that he marries his daughter,
Donnina Visconti, 1357, they had four children. When he married he's approaching middle age,
she's only 17, and you kind of go oh yeah, yeah, but there's an interesting thing here,
they must have fallen in love because she becomes the one constant in his life,
he can actually confide in her. She advises him. To me this is quite wow because there you have
this battle-hardened man who is without a doubt a ruthless killer and yet with his young wife,
he finds that confident. Now, he goes on a great raid into Tuscany and he becomes part of what's
called The War of the Eight Saints. You've got the new Pope Gregory the 11th is involved, different
states and different factions who all have their own saints, so it's known as The War of the Eight
Saints. But all of this time it's understood that Hawkwood was actually working as well for Edward
III of England. He stayed loyal to the crown, some say he was actually his agent in Italy.
John Hawkwood had a reputation for being as crafty as a fox, cunning. Some called him the wolf.
In fact interestingly, in Italy, they couldn't pronounce his name Hawkwood. Giovanni is John,
but they couldn't pronounce Hawkwood, so he was simply called John Sharp. Bernard Cornwall would
know that name, Sharp. Anyway, Battle of San Minato 1368. This shows you just how forward
thinking and how crafty as a fox, cunning as a fox, John Hawkwood really was. He knew that
he could not stop the enemy army, it was massive, all mounted on horses, so he pays local children,
hundreds of them to stand in the way of the enemy army. The kids have got helmets you know, spears
and all this kind of thing, flags, they look like they are an army from a distance. The enemy
actually approach, so they are ordered then to slowly turn around and retreat. The enemy take the
bait and they charge, full tilt. Can you imagine those kids there? All of a sudden they're going
‘this is so much fun’ you know ‘I've got a couple of ducats here and I’m rich’ you know and all of
a sudden there's thousands of men with lances on horses tearing towards them. They run for their
lives, screaming as they go, but what they don't know is they're running on soft ground, and as the
enemy get closer and closer all of a sudden their horses, thump, sink in the mud and the army is
stopped. Hawkwood now can do one of two things. He can either leave or he can turn on his enemy, but
that is a whole different story, this is just one instance that shows how crafty that man could be.
If you take the year 1376/1377 Northern Italy was ravaged by the plague it really did get stuck in.
Meanwhile in the town of Cesena there'd been a bit of a rebellion against some
of the mercenary soldiers, Bretons I understand, their blood had been
spilled. Pope Gregory was furious because it's against his troops, he gets so angry
that he orders John Hawkwood to the town and Hawkwood basically says ‘you want me to, you know,
put the Rebellion down?’ And the Pope says no, I want every man, woman and child butchered.
Hawkwood kind of questions this but he is ordered, he wants the town leveled, he wants all the people
dead. Hawkwood apparently takes a position outside the town, he commands what's going on, on the
outside. The troops that are on the inside, from what I can tell mainly Germans and Bretons, on
the outside you have the English troops. Doors are locked and they go to work and they massacre up to
6,000 innocent people. This is the power of the Pope who is moving from Avignon in France to Rome.
This is one of the dark sides of these mercenary bands. Can you imagine that, 6,000 men, women and
children? The horrors that were committed at that time are disgraceful, but what gets me,
it was in the name of the Pope. One of the greatest battles in Italy that John Hawkwood
fought in with his free company was the Battle of Castagnaro, 11th March 1387. Wow what a victory,
he was as cunning as a fox. He knew that his army was well outnumbered, the enemy uh the Veronese
had sixteen thousand men, Hawkwood's army up to just maybe, just over nine thousand, but there
were 12,000 in reserve of the Veronese army. Now this was a mixture this reserve, it could have
been peasants as well as professional soldiers, however John Hawkwood's army he's outnumbered
so he chooses the battlefield. He falls back, he brings the Veronese in and there is a canal across
their path. This canal it's not very wide and it's been filled with fascines, wooden bundles.
His army’s formed up on the one side but his right flank, he's anchored in the woods. There are some
deep woods around this right area where Hawkwood is going to place his cavalry, but he bluffs it.
In the center of his army is John Hawkwood's coat of arms, his standard is flying, giving everybody
the opinion that Hawkwood is leading his troops from the center. The battle is engaged. Men are
fighting for their lives. Now here Hawkwood would have had longbowmen, crossbowmen, he would have
had men with lances, pikes as well as your normal assortment of weapons. Now as the battle really
does get stuck in there is a fire arrow shot from the woods in an arc across the battlefield.
As soon as the arrow is seen, Hawkwood's standard is thrown to the ground, it's a bluff!
John Hawkwood now with his standard mounted on the lance charges out of the woods with his cavalry,
smashing into the flank and then around to the rear of the Veronese army. These men at the back
now surge forward whilst his own army that's Hawkwood’s army now advance over the canal,
trapping the Veronese army. It's gonna be crushed. Meanwhile Veronese cavalry, separated from their
army, have it on their toes and run away. They will be pursued and there will be casualties.
The army of the Veronese is now crushed. Do you know they lost over 700 dead, 800 wounded,
4,000 captured. But there's a part of this little story that's often missed,
you see the Veronese with their peasant army at the back, their reserve, it didn't run away
and it refused to surrender. What courage, because then they were dealt with. Many of them fell to
the blade and then some of them surrendered, brave fellows, they were just ordinary people. And just
a note here, Hawkwood's army suffered light casualties whereas I said the enemy was quite
severe. It was a complete victory. Can you imagine you're advancing forward and all of a sudden you
hit from the back and then the army in front of you begin to advance so you are literally being
crushed from both sides? This was said to be John Hawkwood's greatest victory and I must admit it
was quite something because he thought it all out first. He drew the enemy onto his battlefield,
the battlefield of his choosing and he set the trap. So when you look at John Hawkwood, the man,
50 years he was a soldier 40 of which were in Italy. This was wow, what a guy and he was paid in
sometimes an absolute fortune in gold florins or when the Pope couldn't pay for his services, John
Hawkwood was given land and property, all that kind of thing but of course awkward had to pay his
men and it's quite amazing that he did take care of them. But there's a twist in the tail here, I
have it on good authority that John Hawkwood would amass so much money and then send it, smuggle it
back to Essex. He always intended that at the very end of his life he would move himself and
his family away from Florence back to Essex. His last campaigns were 1390 to 1392, uh he ended up
in Milanese territory and performing a great feat of arms. He managed to extract an entire army from
the path of the Milanese who could have destroyed this army and this great retreat saved his army.
It's such a shame though because John wanted to go home, he was old now, in his 70s. It’s time for
him to go back to Essex and from what I've read he was putting his affairs in order when he died,
17th of March 1394. So that Essex boy would never get home, or did he? We don't know for sure if
he's buried in Florence or if he's buried back in Essex, there are lots of legends and rumors.
John Hawkwood, in my opinion one of the greatest English bowmen that ever lived. Well, I hope you
enjoy my little video there. Do you know we only touched lightly really over the 50 years of John
Hawkwood serving as a soldier's time, so if you're interested have a read. There are some great books
out there, some incredible information and if ever you go to Firenze, Florence in Northern Italy
that's where he ended up, there's lots about John Hawkwood in Firenze. So if you did enjoy my video
then like, share and subscribe and don't forget to turn on the all notification buttons so you know
what's coming on down the line because we have got such a mixture of history videos for you to
see. Now before I go, quick mention for some of my Patreon members, hey guys thanks a million,
Mike Benne, Chase Dixon and 1660, thanks a million guys and thanks to everyone else. Bye for now.