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Frances Stonor Saunders
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Hawkwood: Diabolical Englishman Kindle Edition

by Frances Stonor Saunders (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 42 ratings
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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.

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  1. Print length
    583 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publisher
    Faber & Faber
  5. Publication date
    17 April 2014
  6. File size
    8609 KB
  7. Page Flip
    Enabled
  8. Word Wise
    Enabled
  9. Enhanced typesetting
    Enabled
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Product description

Review

"'Superb and quite unputdownable... Addictively readable, handsomely produced and compellingly intelligent' Miranda Seymour, Sunday Times"

About the Author

Frances Stonor Saunders lives in London. She is the author of Who Paid the Piper? - a history of the cultural cold war that has been translated into many languages.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00JZBA3SO
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Faber & Faber; Main edition (17 April 2014)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 8609 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 583 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 42 ratings

About the author

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Frances Stonor Saunders

Frances Stonor Saunders

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4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
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Olanna Horhut
5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating book
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 4 October 2023
Verified Purchase
Book in Good condition. English mercenary who fought in Italian peninsula for decades during medieval times. Vivid details of Italian history. Hawkwood‘s influence on events? Use your imagination.
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Michael Vorwerk
1.0 out of 5 stars schmieriges Exemplar
Reviewed in Germany on 21 October 2020
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Ich erwarte kein nagelneues Buch in entsprechendem Zustand. Von einem Zustand "sehr gut", wie vom Verkäufer angegeben, kann keine Rede sein. Das Buch ist ungepflegt, der Einband ist regelrecht schmierig. Fazit: awesome-books-Deutschland? Nie wieder.
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Linda Johnson
5.0 out of 5 stars A very well written book
Reviewed in the United States on 25 June 2012
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I wanted to learn more about my ancestor John Hawkwood, so due to customer reviews this was the book I purchased. I was not sorry. It was very well written, not dry nor boring, except where it got into politics of the time too heavily. But it fleshed out an ancestor and made him a real person to me.
One person found this helpful
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Kilbaddy
4.0 out of 5 stars Mercenary wars in 14th century Italy
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 16 October 2023
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This is a useful background historical summary of the sickening situation that mediaeval Italy found itself in when individual small states hired mercenary forces to bolster their defences against neighbours. They soon found that the mercenaries themselves ruled the roost; they settled in for long periods and were extremely difficult to drive out. These troops were either amoral or immoral, although each troop had its own internal code of honour to which it generally adhered. They would happily switch allegiance to whoever was able to pay the most, and may well have been serving more than one master at a time. As a text book this biography of John Hawkwood is important, full of dates and events, and seems well researched and unbiased, giving insight and balance to the presentation of life at that time. Especially important is the emphasising of the conflicting ambitions of the Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire, and the influence of this struggle on the next layer down in the social structure, the warring city states whose citizens lived with dread. Also of interest are the description and assessment of the contrasting methods of governance used by the different cities and organisations, elements of which survive to this day.
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Mercedes Rochelle
4.0 out of 5 stars Tremendously researched
Reviewed in the United States on 8 September 2020
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Hawkwood is one of those books that contains so much information, by the time you get to the end you’ve forgotten the beginning. It’s amazing how the author has discovered so many historical threads from over six hundred years ago. Of course, a quick look at the bibliography reveals a tremendous amount of research. John Hawkwood was one of the most successful mercenaries of his time and lived to the ripe old age of 74, apparently dying in his bed. He became the leader of great Companies of unemployed mercenaries who preferred not to return back to England during the Hundred Years War, most notably the famous White Company that grew so large it was truly the size of a small army. What surprised me the most was that the freelance Companies were much more of a fixture in Italy than in France. They were employed by first one city then the other, only taking sides with the best paymaster. Even the pope found their services useful:

The bribe that had first propelled the White Company into Italy had been paid by the pope. Indeed, while Innocent VI continued to denounce the mercenaries as devils in human shape, he was their chief employer. To protect the papal patrimony in Italy, much of which had been usurped by petty princes, the Avignon popes were constrained to conduct frequent wars.

Of course, once the mercenaries found out how profitable their sojourn into Italy was, they were impossible to dislodge. Apparently no matter how much protection money they demanded, the beleaguered Italians found the means to pay them. Florence, especially, made use of their services to excess; toward the end of the century, they offered Hawkwood a wonderful palace, a pension, and even dowries for his three daughters. Throughout his decades in Italy, Hawkwood was the go-to man whenever some duke or count or pope or city had a quarrel with somebody else. The destruction perpetrated upon the helpless population was terrible to read about. But as far as the Companies were concerned, it was strictly business—and a profitable one too. (Alas, money slipped through Hawkwood's fingers like water, and by the end of his life he was impoverished.) Anyway, I wonder if Italy suffered more than France as a result of the Hundred Years War. This comprehensive volume is not the kind of book you would generally read for entertainment, but for informational value it is exceptional.
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