him, but Armagnac with the selfsufficiency of eight and twenty, which presently led him to disaster and death, would not accelerate his march to oblige any one. Finally Jacopo del Verme, who commanded the army of the Visconti, seeing that there was nothing to be feared from the side of the Alps, concentrated the whole of his force against the army on the Adda; and there was Hawkwood left isolated on the far side of the river, with four difficult streams barring the line of his retreat, and a superior force waiting to cut him off.

Jacopo wrote to his master to ask "how he wished the enemy to be settled," so confident was he of success, but Hawkwood was not to be disposed of so easily. Immediately Immediately on receiving the news of Armagnac's defeat he began his retreat, re-crossed the Adda, and was in Cremonese territory, between that river and the Oglio, when Visconti's army came upon him. He thereupon halted and entrenched himself, while the enemy encamped a mile away, and tried by insult and bravado to entice him from

his position. Del Verme sent him a fox in a cage in token of his derision, but Hawkwood quietly broke a bar and let the fox escape, observing that the animal was not such a fool but that he would find a way out. For four days he allowed the enemy to play their antics unharmed; but on the fifth he suddenly sallied out and fell upon them with such vigour that no fewer than fifteen hundred were killed or wounded, and twelve hundred taken prisoners. That same night he tied his banners to the treetops, left the trumpeters behind with orders to keep sounding the alarm until daylight, and marched quietly away, taking care to drop several of his baggage-animals on the way, that the capture of such spoil might delay the enemy's march.

Next day he reached the Oglio, and while marching up the bank to find a ford was again met by the enemy. What happened there is uncertain; all that is known is that after two days' incessant fighting, gallant old Hawkwood forced the passage of the river and continued his retreat. He must have taught the troops of the Visconti а severe lesson, for they allowed him to pass the Mincio and Adige without molestation. Moreover Armagnac was now beginning to emerge from the Alps, which made a diversion in his favour.

But the greatest danger of the retreat came after the passage of the Adige. He was encamped in the plain between the Adige, the Po, the Rovigo, and the Polesina, and in apparent safety, when Jacopo del Verme suddenly broke the embankments of the Adige (those rivers, it must be remembered, like most rivers that rise from glaciers, raise their beds above the level of the plain), and turned the whole of its waters upon the army. It was night, and the whole camp was at rest, when it was awakened by the sound of the rising flood, to find the plain turned into a vast lake. The situation was one which would try the best general and the best troops in the world to the utmost, but Hawkwood was equal to it. So unbounded was the confidence of his men in him that there was no panic. He quietly ordered the cavalry to mount and to take up the infantry behind them; and then putting himself at their head he made shift, by his knowledge of the ground and such guidance as was given by the tops of trees above the water, to lead them out of the inundation. All that day and part of the next night the unhappy men splashed on, the water never lower than their horses' bellies, now plunging deep into some canal whose banks were hidden by the inundation, now sticking fast

in some treacherous swamp. One can hardly conceive of a more terrible march than this through that icy water. From time to time men and horses dropped down and sank out of sight; but the mass kept moving on with the indomitable veteran at their head, and at length struck the Adige below the rupture, crossed the dry shingly bed, and were in safety once

more.

At Padua Hawkwood was gladly entertained by his old pupil Francis Novello, but the total defeat of Armagnac and the facilities thus afforded to the Visconti of carrying the war into Tuscany, forced him to retire by rapid marches across the Apennines the Apennines for the protection of Florence. There, after weeks of skilful manœuvring and one brilliant victory, the campaign was finally brought to an end by a general peace, and Hawkwood finally retired into private life at Florence.

There all was done for him that a grateful city could do. The Florentines, when they heard of his straits north of the Po, had given up their army for lost; and yet it had returned to them, weakened indeed, but still strong and efficient, after a retreat which for skill, courage and resolution must be reckoned among the most memorable in history. And this it owed to an old man past seventy, an adventurer who, if he had followed the example of most of his kind, would have cared for nothing but to save his own skin and left his army to its fate. The city had already voted him rewards

during the campaign; it now gave him a handsome pension for his life, to be continued to his widow after his death, provided dowries for his daughters, and set about erecting a monument to contain his ashes when his end should come. He appears, however, to have been constantly in pecuniary difficulties, from which Florence with inexhaustible generosity as constantly delivered him.

At last, in 1394, the heart of the old man grew sick for home. He asked that his pension might be commuted to a lump sum, and within five days after the application he was dead. Florence mourned him with a great public funeral, and raised to him the monument which is still to be seen in the Duomo. But Richard the Second, to his honour, claimed the ashes of so great a soldier for England, and Florence with great courtesy consented to part with them. So at last Hawkwood went home; and his body was buried under the gray skies of England, whose memory not forty years of sunny Italy could banish from the rough old warrior's heart.

In England he survives as little but a name; but in Florence the inscription may still be read on his monument: JOANNES ACUTUS EQUES BRITANNICUS DUX ÆTATIS SUÆ CAUTISSIMUS ET REI MILITARIS PERITISSIMUS HABITUS EST.

The most skilful general of his

age! There are but two Englishmen to whom this title has been universally conceded, John Churchill and John Hawkwood.