One of the most creditable pieces of work ever accomplished by Sir John, was in the course of the war which Florence carried on against Milan in 1391. No one of the Condottiere captains hired to lead mercenaries to battle ever achieved such glory as our old Essex tailor on this occasion, and Florence deemed the cause safe that was entrusted to his management. In the present case, Milan was to be assailed on two opposite sides. The noble Count d’Armagnac attacked it from the west, and got thoroughly beaten ere Hawkwood had sufficiently advanced to make his onslaught by the east. The latter with his army was about five leagues from the city when he heard that his colleague had been routed: he became thoughtful, but not dismayed. The country in which he found himself was like one of the pattern-books once so well-known to him. It was all patches of land, and between those patches intersections of streams. Indeed, the country had nothing of the regularity of a tailor’s pattern-book, for the patches were of various shapes, and the intersecting streams running in all directions: the country between the Alps and the Po has ever been a doubtful and spongy sort of land whereon to struggle for the award of victory. Hawkwood was retreating, but the Adige, the Mincio, and the Oglio were yet to be crossed when the Governor of Milan, Giacopo del Verme, came upon him with his conquering legions. He sat mute and observant: the hazard was extreme. He could not cross the rivers without first beating a vastly superior enemy: to attempt it after a defeat would have been utter destruction. He therefore did nothing but bide his time; and when the enemy had become weary of looking on at him, and had learned to despise him, he suddenly fell upon them with a power against which there was so little preparation that, having thrashed his foe into a condition that made immediate pursuit impossible, he struck his tents and crossed the Oglio, under no worse fire than the sarcasms of his sore and helpless antagonists.