Research Catalog

Hawkwood : diabolical Englishman / Frances Stonor Saunders.

Title
Hawkwood : diabolical Englishman / Frances Stonor Saunders.
Author
Saunders, Frances Stonor
Publication
London : Faber and Faber, 2004.

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Details

Description
xviii, 366 p., [16] p. of plates : ill. (chiefly col.), maps; 24 cm.
Summary
"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. This is the first book about him for more than a century. It seizes hold of the reader from the first page and brings a glittering chapter of history to vigorous life. It is full of the sensual, earthy pleasures and horrors of late medieval life - banqueting and starvation, sex and its violent renunciation, self-confidence and terrible fear." "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. And yet he was given a state funeral by Florence, and is commemorated in a famous painting by Uccello that still hangs in the Florentine Duomo. 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 in the pay of a merciless pope, an atrocity that still clouds his name."--BOOK JACKET.
Subjects
Genre/Form
  • Biographies
  • History
Bibliography (note)
  • Includes bibliographical references (p. 340-351) and index.
Processing Action (note)
  • committed to retain
Contents
The fourteenth century : ways to die -- The fourteenth century : ways to live -- 1. Bad company -- 2. Avignon, whore of France -- 3. Sons of belial -- 4. Italia Mia -- 5. Betrayal -- 6. Naked force -- 7. Vipers of Milan -- 8. State of decline -- 9. The road to Rome -- 10. The first estate -- 11. Overeating -- 12. Undereating -- 13. Virtue's shame -- 14. How to get to heaven -- 15. Florence -- 16. Bloody saints -- 17. Freedom fighters -- 18. Anathema -- 19. Cardinal vices -- 20. From massacre to marriage -- 21. The other woman -- 22. Schism -- 23. Stories from Troy -- 24. Neapolitan question -- 25. Viper swallows viper -- 26. The wheel of fortune -- 27. The last campaign -- 28. Final audit -- 29. The greatest glory -- 30. What remains -- Epilogue : pale horse, pale rider.
ISBN
057121908X
LCCN
^^2005391441
OCLC
  • 56651990
  • SCSB-11202647
Owning Institutions
Harvard Library