And not only Rome, but all Italy missed the pope's presence. The princes carried on their wars by means of hired bands of soldiers, who were mostly strangers from beyond the Alps. These bands hired out their services to any one who would pay enough, and, although they were faithful to each employer for the time that was agreed on, they were ready at the end of that time to engage themselves for money to one who might be their late master's enemy. The most famous captain of such hireling soldiers was Sir John Hawkwood, an Englishman, who is commonly said to have been a tailor in London before he took to arms; but this I believe to be a mistake. He fought for many years in Italy, and a picture of him on horseback, which serves for his monument, is still to be seen in Florence Cathedral. The Romans again and again entreated the popes to come back to their city. The chief poet and writer of the age, Petrarch, urged them both in verse and in prose to return. But the cardinals, who at this time were mostly Frenchmen, had grown so used to the pleasures of Avignon that they did all they could to keep the popes there. At length, in 1367, Urban V. made his way back to Rome, where the emperors both of the East and of the West met to do him honour; but after a short stay in Italy he returned to Avignon, where he soon after died (A.D. 1370). His successor, Gregory XI., however, was more resolute, and removed the papacy to Rome in 1377; and this was the end of what was styled the seventy years' captivity in Babylon.[88] [88] See page 240. CHAPTER XXII. THE GREAT SCHISM. A.D. 1378-1410. Gregory XI. died in 1378, and the choice of a successor to him was no easy matter. The Romans were bent on having a countryman of their own, that they might be sure of his continuing to live among them. They guarded the gates, they brought into the city a number of rough and half-savage people from the hills around, to terrify the cardinals; and, when these were shut up for the election, the mob surrounded the palace in which they were, with cries of "We will have a Roman, or at least an Italian!" Day and night their shouts were kept up, with a frightful din of other kinds. They broke into the pope's cellars, got drunk on the wine, and were thus made more furious than before. At length, the cardinals, driven to extreme terror, made choice of Bartholomew Prignano, archbishop of Bari, in south Italy, who was not one of their own number. It is certain that he was not chosen freely, but under fear of the noise and threats of the Roman mob; but all the forms which follow after the election of a pope, such as that of coronation, were regularly gone through, and the cardinals seem to have given their approval of the choice in such a way that they could not well draw back afterwards.