Hawkwood: Diabolical Englishman
Apr 2014 · Faber & Faber
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About this ebook
The hugely acclaimed, best-selling life of Hawkwood, one of the outstanding figures of English and European history.
John Hawkwood was an Essex man who became the greatest mercenary in an age when soldiers of fortune flourished - an age that also witnessed the first stirrings of the Renaissance. When England made a peace treaty with the French in 1360, during a pause in the Hundred Years War, John Hawkwood, instead of going home, travelled south to Avignon, where the papacy was based during its exile from Rome. He and his fellow mercenaries held the pope to ransom and were paid off. Hawkwood then crossed the Alps into Italy and found himself in a promised land: he made and lost fortunes extorting money from city states like Florence, Siena, and Milan, who were fighting vicious wars between themselves and against the popes.
This man of war husbanded his use of violence, but for all his caution he committed one of the most notorious massacres of his time - an atrocity that still clouds his name.
John Hawkwood was an Essex man who became the greatest mercenary in an age when soldiers of fortune flourished - an age that also witnessed the first stirrings of the Renaissance. When England made a peace treaty with the French in 1360, during a pause in the Hundred Years War, John Hawkwood, instead of going home, travelled south to Avignon, where the papacy was based during its exile from Rome. He and his fellow mercenaries held the pope to ransom and were paid off. Hawkwood then crossed the Alps into Italy and found himself in a promised land: he made and lost fortunes extorting money from city states like Florence, Siena, and Milan, who were fighting vicious wars between themselves and against the popes.
This man of war husbanded his use of violence, but for all his caution he committed one of the most notorious massacres of his time - an atrocity that still clouds his name.
Ratings and reviews
5.0
2 reviews
malcolm payne
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March 21, 2016
What a brilliant biography. The author has researched he subject well and brings to life a vivid account not only of the life and deeds of Hawkwood himself but of the social and political histories of the era in which he lived from the 1340s to the 1390s peopled with other week drawn characters like Catherine of Siena and Bernabo Visconti. Hats off to Frances Stonor.
About the author
Frances Stonor Saunders is the former Arts Editor of the New Statesman. Her first book, Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War, has been translated into ten languages, and was awarded the Royal Historical Society's William Gladstone Memorial Prize. She is the author of The Woman Who Shot Mussolini . She lives in London.
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