‘He endured under arms longer than any one, for he endured sixty years: and he well knew how to manage that there should be little peace in Italy in his time.... For men and Communes and all cities live by peace, but these men live and increase by war, which is the undoing of cities, for they fight and become of naught. In such men there is neither love nor faith.’ One tale of the day records how some Franciscans, meeting Sir John Hawkwood, exclaimed as was their custom, ‘Peace be with you.’ To their astonishment he answered, ‘God take away your alms.’ When they asked him the reason for wishing them so ill, he replied, ‘You also wished that God might make me die of hunger. Know you not that I live on war, and that peace would ruin me? I therefore returned your greeting in like sort.’ Sir John Hawkwood spent most of his time in the service of Florence; and, whatever his cruelty and greed, he does not seem to have been as false as other captains of his time. Indeed, when he died, the Florentines buried him in their cathedral, and raised an effigy in grateful memory of his deeds on behalf of the city. Returning to the history of Milan and her _condottieri_, Gian Galeazzo, though timid and unwarlike himself, was a shrewd judge of character, and his captains, while they struck terror into his enemies, remained faithful to himself. When he died in 1402, however, many of them tried to establish independent states; and it was some years before his son, Filippo Maria, could master them and regain control over the greater part of the Duchy. Even more cowardly than his father, Filippo Maria lived, like Louis XI of France, shut off from the sight of men. Sismondi, the historian, describes him as ‘a strange, dingy, creature, with protruding eyeballs and furtive glance.’ He hated to hear the word ‘death’ mentioned, and for fear of assassination would change his bedroom every night. When news was brought him of defeat he would tremble in the expectation that his _condottieri_ might desert him: when messengers arrived flushed with victory he was scarcely less aghast, believing that the successful general might become his rival. Such was the penalty paid by despots, save by those of iron nerve, in return for their luxury and power: the dread that the most servile of _condottieri_ might be bribed into a relentless enemy, poison lurk in the seasoned dish or wine-cup, a dagger pierce the strongest mesh of a steel tunic. So night and day was the great Visconti haunted by fear, while his hired armies forced Genoa to acknowledge his suzerainty, and plunged his Duchy into rivalry with Venice along the line of the River Adige. * * * * * [Sidenote: Venice]