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H in debt, and appears to have been principally occupied in settling his private affairs.

In December 1386 Hawkwood entered the service of Francesco Carrara, marquis of Padua, then at war with Antonio della Scala of Verona. He brought with him only five hundred English horse and six hundred English archers, but was placed in command of the entire Paduan army. The enemy permitted him to cross the Adige at Castelbaldo in January 1387, and advance unopposed into the heart of the Veronese, but poisoned the wells, desolated the country, and intercepted his supplies, so that the Paduan army was sorely distressed by hunger and thirst, and Hawkwood retreated. At Castagnaro on 17 March he made a stand and defeated the enemy with great slaughter. Soon after this Hawkwood quitted the Paduan service, and re-entered that of Florence (September). In March 1388 he was commissioned by Richard II, who as Duke of Aquitaine was tempted to interfere in the affairs of Provence, to undertake the suppression of the Angevin faction in that country, but it does not appear that he took any steps in pursuance of the commission.

On 18 Dec. 1385 Hawkwood's father-in-law, Bernabò, was murdered by the ‘Count of Virtue,’ Gian Galeazzo Visconti, his nephew. In concert with Bernabò's son Carlo, Hawkwood assembled in August 1388 at Cortona a band of about four thousand adventurers, and sought permission from the Florentine government to lead them against the murderer. This being refused, Hawkwood and Carlo Visconti entered the service of Queen Margaret, widow of Charles of Durazzo, then at Gaeta. Naples, with the exception of the castle of Capuana, was in the hands of the Angevin faction, and Hawkwood's attempt to relieve the castle of Capuana failed (12 April 1389). Retreating into Tuscany, Hawkwood joined his forces to those of Count Conrad Landau, and spent the summer in ravaging the Sienese. In October he returned to Queen Margaret at Gaeta.

In March 1390 Hawkwood was recalled to Florence, where it had been at length decided to take energetic action against the ‘Count of Virtue.’ He arrived in Florence on 30 April, and was appointed commander-in-chief of the forces of the republic, with absolute discretion as to the measures to be adopted for the security of the city. He ordered a large ditch to be dug between Montopoli and the Arno for the defence of the lower Val d'Arno. He averted an attack on Bologna, threatened by the Milanese general Jacopo dal Verme, at the head of a large army (14 May), and finally drove him from the neighbourhood with considerable loss on 21 June. Hawkwood returned to Florence. Soon afterwards the Florentine government hired Jean, comte d'Armagnac, to invade the Milanese from the side of Provence. With the view of effecting a junction with him, Hawkwood crossed the Adige at Castelbaldo on 15 May, in command of 2,200 lances and a large body of infantry, including twelve hundred crossbowmen, and thence marched into the Bergamasco. There in the district between the Adda and the Oglio Hawkwood waited for tidings of D'Armagnac, entrenching himself about the middle of June in the neighbourhood of Pandino, ten miles to the south-east of Milan. Of D'Armagnac's movements he could learn nothing, but Jacopo dal Verme, with a Milanese army numerically superior, hovered about his camp, cut off his supplies, and harassed him by incessant attacks while avoiding a pitched battle. Towards the end of the month Hawkwood broke up his camp and began a retreat, which the Florentine historian, Poggio Bracciolini, compares to the most brilliant achievements of the ancient Romans, but of which contemporary authorities give no consistent account. It seems, however, that, retreating towards Cremona, Hawkwood halted at Paterno Fasolaro, where he lay for four days, permitting the enemy to come close up to his line. He thus succeeded in exciting in them so false a confidence that Dal Verme sent him a trap with a live fox in it, by way of signifying that he had him in the toils. Hawkwood, however, released the animal, and sent the empty trap back to Dal Verme, with the message that the fox had escaped. On the fifth day he made a sudden sortie, in which he placed 2,700 of the enemy hors de combat in killed, wounded, and prisoners. He thus cleared his way to the Oglio and Mincio, both of which, though harassed by the enemy, he crossed without mishap. The passage of the Adige presented greater difficulty. As Hawkwood approached Castagnaro he found that the dikes had been broken down, the country turned into a vast lake, and the enemy were pressing on his rear. Accordingly on the night of 11 July Hawkwood mounted as many of his infantry as possible behind his cavalry, and abandoning the rest to their fate took to the water, and guiding his men by devious tracks where it was shallowest, arrived at Castelbaldo in the morning with considerable loss, but with the bulk of the army intact. On 25 July Jacopo dal Verme signally defeated D'Armagnac under the walls of Alessandria; in the following month he invaded Tuscany. Hawkwood, however, was there before him; impeded his advance by