An anecdote of similar resolution and readiness, curious on account of the nature of the danger to be avoided, is told by the Florentine historians of the fourteenth century. At that time Italian warfare was chiefly carried on by hired soldiers, men usually of profligate lives and broken fortunes, unfitted by the licence of a camp for peaceful industry, or driven to forsake it by the insecurity of property in those calamitous times, when he who sowed the seed had no assurance that he should reap the harvest. The long wars between France and England under Edward III. swelled the numbers of these men to a fearful extent; and the reader who will consult Froissart concerning the state of France at this period, will there find a fearful picture of the misrule and misery produced by men of this description, who, when there was no regular war to occupy their swords, formed themselves into troops, took possession by force or fraud of some castle or stronghold, and lived by levying contributions on the peasantry, and plundering all persons who came in their way. Such spirits readily flocked round the banner of any soldier of repute who offered a price for their services; nor were men of birth and reputation wanting to lead them into the foreign market, who readily overlooked the character of their followers in consideration of the wealth and consequence to be derived from their support. Among the most distinguished, and also the most honourable of this class, was an Englishman, named Sir John Hawkwood, long practised in the Italian wars, and at the time we speak of, in the service of Florence. In the year 1391, that city being at war with the Duke of Milan, planned a double invasion of his dominions. The Count d’Armagnac, a French nobleman of high military renown, was hired to invade Milan from the west, while on the east Hawkwood advanced from Vicenza, through Verona and Brescia. The two armies were intended to unite and lay siege to Milan; but the scheme was deranged by the defeat and total destruction of the Count d’Armagnac, and Hawkwood, who, before he heard that news, had advanced within fifteen miles of the city, on a sudden found himself in imminent danger.