The eldest brother, Matteo, had died in 1355. Weak, injudicious and a glutton, he was only a hindrance to the progress of his House. General report laid his death to his brothers’ charge. Bernabò and Galeazzo made a fresh division of the State, and Milan itself was split up between them. They worked together, however, with a single aim, in spite of mutual hatred and jealousy, to repair the losses of their State. Pavia had set up a free government, headed by the friar, Giacomo de’ Bussolari, who, an earlier Savonarola, sought to purge his city from tyranny and sin at once. Steadfastly beset by Galeazzo’s army, it had to yield at last to famine and sickness. Further afield Bernabò spent years in a desperate struggle to recover Bologna, under a tempest of papal anathemas, and though baffled himself, he prepared the way for his successor. He was constantly in fierce conflict with the Marquises of Este, whose rebel kinsmen he sheltered while they employed Luchino’s disinherited sons against him. Galeazzo on his side had to sustain the assaults of Savoy and Montferrat, which came near to ruining him. But multitudinous and determined as their enemies were, the inimitable statecraft which was the Viscontean heritage, backed by their vast resources, enabled them to restore their power and to make Milan feared and respected everywhere abroad. These princes rarely took the field themselves, but entrusted their enterprises to the foreign companies by whom the Italian wars were now chiefly waged. These bands of hardy and unscrupulous adventurers, who were proof against the enervation which wealth and civilisation had induced in the Italians, were become powerful factors in the politics of the country. Most formidable of all was the company of Sir John Hawkwood. These English mercenaries, says Azario, were more excellent robbers than any of the other plunderers of the Lombards. By day they mostly slept and waked by night. And so diligent and skilful were they in capturing towns that their like had never been seen. After suffering much from Hawkwood’s zeal against him in the service of the Pope, Bernabò bribed him to his own side; but after a few years the great captain, faithful only to caprice, suddenly deserted the Visconte, with disastrous results to the latter. Later on, Bernabò tempted him again by the gift of one of his own daughters in marriage, with a large dowry. Nevertheless, the later part of Hawkwood’s career was spent in the pay of Milan’s inveterate foe, Florence.