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Facts from the Middle Ages that Are Full of Surprises

Khalid Elhassan March 15, 2021 36 min

11. The Medieval English Mercenary Who Roiled Italy

Sir John Hawkwood (1320 – 1394), Italian byname Giovani Acuto, meaning “John the Astute”, was an English soldier of fortune who plied his trade in Italy as a condottiero. As captain of a powerful mercenary band, Hawkwood played a significant role in fourteenth-century Italy’s wars and politics and switched sides on numerous occasions between the peninsula’s competing factions and states. He began his military career during the Hundred Years War in the armies of England’s King Edward III, who knighted Hawkwood for exceptional service.

When the Hundred Years War was temporarily interrupted by a peace treaty in 1360, Hawkwood found himself temporarily unemployed. That situation did not last for long, however: he gathered a group of mercenaries, and headed to Italy, where the demand for men willing to fight for money. Arriving in the Italian Peninsula, Hawkwood joined an English outfit is known as the White Company, and in 1364, he was its captain-general. He elevated the White Company’s reputation, and transformed it into an elite and highly sought-after mercenary unit by adopting the English longbow and tactics successfully used in France.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.