Sir John Hawkwood (1320-1394) was an English mercenary or condottiere known to Jean Froissart as Haccoude and to Macchiavelli as Acuto.

It is said that he was the son of a tanner of Hedingham Sibil in Essex, and was apprenticed in London, whence he went, in the English army, to fight in the Hundred Years War. At the conclusion of the Treaty of Brétigny in 1360, he collected a band of mercenaries, and moved to Italy, where his so-called “White Company ” fought for various Italian states and factions. In 1375 Florence entered into an agreement with him. In 1377, he led the destruction of Cesena by mercenary armies, acting in the name of Pope Gregory XI. Shortly after, he switched allegiance to the anti-papal league and married the illegitimate daughter of Bernabo Visconti, the Duke of Milan, but a quarrel with Visconti soon ended the allegiance, and Hawkwood signed another agreement with Florence. In 1381 he was appointed by Richard II of England as ambassador to the Roman Court. His latter years were spent in a villa in the neighborhood of Florence, where he died and was temporarily buried in the Duomo. Shortly afterwards, Richard II asked for his body to be returned to his native England. In 1436 the Florentines commissioned of Paolo Uccello a funerary monument which still stands in the Duomo.

Books

• Frances Stonor - Hawkwood: The Diabolical Englishman (2004)
• Barbara Tuchman - A Distant Mirror (Chap. 7)

External links

• Sir John Hawkwood: Story of a Condottiere. By John Temple-Leader and Giuseppe Marcotti.Translated by Leader Scott. Published by T. Fisher Unwin (London) in 1889: