the maintenance of a hired force, than to leave the shop or the counting-house for a protracted campaign. The Florentines soon adopted the custom of employing mercenaries, and in 1351 commuted personal service for a money payment. The Venetians, though they employed native crews and native commanders in their fleet, always hired foreigners to fight their battles on land. One result of the change was that infantry was wholly superseded by heavy-armed cavalry, until the general use of gunpowder, and the intervention of the great powers in Italy, brought about another great change in the art of war. At first the mercenary troops in Italy were employed as the body-guard of a tyrant, or as the standing army of a republic. But as the leaders of these forces became conscious [Sidenote: Foreign Condottieri.] of their power, they began to form independent armies, which might live at the expense of the unwarlike natives, or might acquire wealth by letting out their services to the highest bidder. The first notable instance of such an army was in 1343, when a German, Werner, or, as the Italians called him, Guarnieri, formed the Great Company. He levied contributions on the states which he entered with his forces, and only occasionally took part in the Italian wars. The same company, or another with the same name, appears in 1353 under the command of Fra Moreale, who was afterwards put to death by Rienzi. When the treaty of Bretigny put an end for a time to the English wars in France, a new flood of foreign adventurers poured into Italy, where they formed the White Company under the famous Englishman, John Hawkwood or Giovanni Acuto. He was distinguished among _condottieri_ for the fidelity with which he performed his contracts, and the Florentines expressed their sense of his services by giving him a tomb and a monument in the _Duomo_. In the earlier part of the fourteenth century the majority of the mercenary soldiers and their commanders were foreigners; in the later part of the century their place was to a large extent taken by native troops and _condottieri_. As the smaller communes were gradually deprived of liberty and of an independent political life by the extension of the larger states, the more energetic and [Sidenote: Native Condottieri.] ambitious citizens were only too glad to find an opening for their activity in the career of arms. In 1379 the Company of St. George, into which none but Italians were admitted, was founded by Alberigo da Barbiano, a noble of Romagna. In this company were trained Braccio and Sforza, the founders of the two great schools of Italian commanders in the fifteenth century. That the native troops could be as efficient as the foreigners whom they superseded was proved in 1401, when a German army in the service of the Emperor Rupert was routed by an Italian force which had been hired by the Duke of Milan.