These soldiers, who had come down from the North to serve Emperors, or despots like the Visconti, or perhaps had sailed from Spain to fight under the House of Aragon in Sicily, as soon as the immediate war was ended, having been left unpaid or having taken a liking to a trade in which the labor was congenial, the risk small and booty enormous, decided not to disband, but to continue to try their luck together. They sold their services to whatever city or despot would pay them most, or wandered about in a nomadic fashion, capturing a city if they could, if not, living on the country-side. One can imagine these rogues among unwarlike peasants, or in a pleasant little city like Lucca or Cremona. They were very fickle, fought one another only upon compulsion, and then most reluctantly and gently, and were very nearly as terrible to their employers as to their adversaries. They were organized, sometimes very well, in bands under a general or a council of officers, and had such names as The Company of St. George, or The Great Company. Some of their leaders became very famous, like Duke Werner, who proclaimed himself "Lord of the Great Company, enemy to God, to Pity, and to Mercy." The most interesting of these leaders, at least for us, is John Hawkwood, an English adventurer, who began life as a London tailor, but dropped scissors and needle to enlist for Edward III's French campaign, and then, seeing fortune smile most sweetly from distraught Italy, crossed the Alps and led his company all over the peninsula. There is a full length fresco of him on horseback in the _Duomo_ at Florence, painted in gratitude for his deeds in life or merely for his death. For a hundred years and more these ruffians swaggered about Italy. Petrarch finds in them one cause the more to hold out his arms toward the mighty past. He writes in a letter: "Oh, would that you were alive, Brutus, Great-heart, that I might turn to you. O Manlius--O Great Pompey--O Julius Caesar [etc., etc., etc.], O Jesus, Lord of the world, what has happened? Why do I moan and groan for grief? Oh! a vile handful of robbers, spewed out of their nasty dens, walks and rides over the ancient queen of the world, Italy. Christ Jesus, in tears and supplication I turn to Thee. Oh, if we have abused Thy goodness more than was right, if we have shown ourselves too proud in Thy aid and favour, if we have borne ourselves ill towards Thee, well mayst Thou not permit us to be free; but let not this slaughter, these sacrileges, these robberies, these deeds of violence, these ravishings of wives and maidens, find mercy in Thine eyes. Put an end to this evil. To the wicked who have said in their hearts 'There is no God,' show that Thou art; and to us however unworthy, show that we are Thy children. O Almighty Father, help us; in Thee alone we put our hope, and in supplication we invoke Thy name, weeping and confessing that there is none who shall fight for us, unless Thou, our Lord, be he."