The White Company when they crossed the Alps were under a German captain. (Some years before, an entirely German troop was prettily defeated by the Apennine peasants.) Sir John Hawkwood did not take the command until 1364, when the Pisans hired the company, five thousand strong, at the rate of a hundred and fifty thousand golden florins for six months. I think about fifty thousand pounds of our money a month, or ten pounds a man--Sir John himself being then described as a "great general," an Englishman of a vulpine nature, "and astute in their fashion." This English fashion of astuteness means, I am happy to say, that Sir John saw far, planned deeply, and was cunning in military stratagem; but would neither poison his enemies nor sell his friends--the two words of course being always understood as for the time being;--for, from this year 1364 for thirty years onward, he leads his gradually more and more powerful soldier's life, fighting first for one town and then for another; here for bishops, and there for barons, but mainly for those merchants of Florence, from whom that narrow street in your city is named Lombard Street, and interfering thus so decidedly with foreign affairs, that, at the end of the thirty years, when he put off his armour, and had lain resting for a little while in Florence Cathedral, King Richard the Second begged his body from the Florentines, and laid it in his own land; the Florentines granting it in the terms of this following letter:-- "To the King of England. "Most serene and invincible Sovereign, most dread Lord, and our very especial Benefactor-- "Our devotion can deny nothing to your Highness' Eminence: there is nothing in our power which we would not strive by all means to accomplish, should it prove grateful to you. "Wherefore, although we should consider it glorious for us and our people to possess the dust and ashes of the late valiant knight, nay, most renowned captain, Sir John Hawkwood, who fought most gloriously for us, as the commander of our armies, and whom at the public expense we caused to be entombed in the Cathedral Church of our city; yet, notwithstanding, according to the form of the demand, that his remains may be taken back to his country, we freely concede the permission, lest it be said that your sublimity asked anything in vain, or fruitlessly, of our reverential humility. "We, however, with due deference, and all possible earnestness, recommend to your Highness' graciousness, the son and posterity of said Sir John, who acquired no mean repute, and glory for the English name in Italy, as also our merchants and citizens."