speaks of fights of twenty and twenty-four hours' duration, in which only one man was killed. This of course could only happen when men-atarms alone were engaged, and without artillery. As yet it was thought a base thing for gentlemen to use such unknightly weapons as guns. Hotspur's "certain lord" spoke the sense of better men than he when he said

Peace between Pisa and Florence resulted from Hawkwood's defeat. His men and the mercenaries on the other side being disbanded, ravaged the country of Sienna, plundering all they could carry, and burning what they could not remove. The Siennese, rendered desperate by these atrocities, gathered all their strength, and drove the invaders to Sarzana, whence they marched to Perugia and Todi. Here they were joined by a number of their own sort, who had come from Hungary; and began to renew their depredations. The Perugians managed to buy off the Hungarians and Germans, and to engage them against the troublesome English. A bloody battle was fought, in which three thousand men were slain the English also lost sixteen hundred, taken prisoners. Hawkwood, who had fought this battle against great odds, brought off his men so skilfully as to extort the admiration of his opponents.

He turned back again into the Siennese; and was again expelled with difficulty, and by foreign aid.

The country, of course, suffered horribly in these raids of trained and disciplined bandits. Neither life nor property was safe outside the protection of strong walls and guard. Well might Muratori say: "Unhappy country where these greedy locusts settled." Before them was a fine country, with a thriving and contented people; behind them were smoking villages and burning crops, the groans of dying men, the sobs of outraged women, and the curses of fatherless children.

After wandering about from one state to another, secure through the feebleness of his victims, Hawkwood returned once more to the Siennese, in 1367. He then marched against the Perugians and Hungarians, who had come to crush him, and defeated them with a loss of fifteen hundred men, at the bridge of San Gianni.

Allured by the promise of large pay and larger booty, he now took service under Bernabo Visconti, Lord of Milan, and was sent to the relief of San Miniato, which was besieged by the Florentines. Finding the enemy's camp too strong for attack, Hawkwood waited at Casena, a few miles off, in hopes of drawing Malatacca, the Florentine general, out of his entrenchments. As he had expected, his generalship was rewarded by the appearance of a strong body of the enemy in his front; and choosing his own time for the action, he made an impetuous attack upon them, routed them, and threw them back on their camp. Malatacca, doubtful of his safety, hastily raised the siege; and Hawkwood, elated by success, passed his enemy, and pushed on to within four miles of the gates of Florence.

The war continuing, Hawkwood was sent next year to ravage the Bolognese. Some historians say that he suffered a defeat in this campaign, near Arezzo; that he was captured by the Florentines, but released at the request of Pope Urban V., in whose service he entered. However this may be, we find him soon after engaged by Cardinal Bituricense, the Papal legate, to conduct the allied forces of the Pope, Florence, Pisa, and Sienna, against his late employer, the Duke of Milan, whose ambition aspired to the dominion in Italy. He seems to have been very successful for his new masters; to have defeated the Milanese in a series of battles, and to have taken as many as one hundred towns from them. Bernabo Visconti became reconciled with the Pope, and Hawkwood was then sent to recover his revolted cities in the Romagna.

Faenza, Forli, Cesena, and Ravenna, rapidly yielded to him; and the Pope was so sensible of his general's services that he made him governor of five towns, and conferred on him the title of Gonfaloniere della Chiesa (Standard-bearer of the Church). These distinctions did not serve, however, to withhold Hawkwood from following whither his own interests seemed to lead.

Within the next five years he changed sides twice. He served Galeazzo Visconti against the Papal States; and then, brought back to fight for Holy Church, defeated his late employer in two pitched battles.

His conduct immediately after this assumed a very suspicious appearance, the effect, perhaps, of long training in the faithless school of selfinterest, which taught him to subserve his honour and reputation to the greed of gain and the lust of power. As, however, it is generally to be remarked that the condottieri, while receiving the pay of their temporary master, adhered strictly to that master's service, it is not improbable that Hawkwood, who was certainly no glaring exception to this rule, has been calumniated by his enemies in the account given of him at this period. It is said that the Florentines bought Hawkwood and his men at an enormous price, to command the troops of the Italian league against the intolerable tyranny of the legate, who, in the name of Christ's viceregent, was seeking to acquire absolute dominion over all Italy. That, having accepted the money of the league at the same time that he professed himself to be the Papal general, he betrayed his nominal trust by refusing to obey the legate's orders, and also failed to fulfil his obligations to the leaguers, by withholding assistance from them while he treated with the court of Rome for further gratifications.

The Pope delaying the negotiations, Hawkwood seized Faenza, put it under contribution, and committed the grossest outrages on the inhabitants. This, joined to the fact that Bologna and Perugia had sided with Milan, Florence, and the other cities of the league, caused the Roman court to comply with Hawkwood's demands. In consequence, an army of English and Bretons were let loose on the country. Everywhere their discipline and hardihood prevailed over the opposite qualities in their op ponents. Action after action the national cause lost ground, and the fall of Casena at length convinced the leaders of the necessity of winning over the mercenary troops to their side. In pure wantonness, and moved by the demon of war himself, the Papal troops sacked the captured town of Casena, and commenced the diabolical performance of a general mas

sacre, in which neither women nor children were spared; nor were the exertions of the bishop and of the better sort of officers available to arrest these horrors till between four and five thousand persons had perished.

By dint of enormous bribes the Florentines now induced Hawkwood to join the league for a year, with three thousand lances and five thousand archers; and when the "fuorusciti," a name well known in Italian history, and signifying the banished enemies of the dominant party, conspired to bring Carlo da Durazzo, of the Neapolitan blood royal, into Florence, Hawkwood was engaged to defend the city. In order to strengthen the hold the league had upon him, Bernabo Visconti, Lord of Milan, gave him one of his natural daughters in marriage.

Negotiations for a peace with the Pope were nearly matured when Gregory XI. died (April, 1378); but Urban VI. succeeding, a man of benevolent disposition and kindly heart, confirmed and ratified the proposed peace. This was followed by a general agreement of concord among all the princes of Italy; and Hawkwood once more found himself without employment. He therefore renewed his old habits on his own account, and overran the most part of the states of Tuscany till the year

1381.

At that time, Louis of Anjou, brother of the French king, came, in right of the ex-queen, Joanna of Naples, to drive out the usurper, Carlo da Durazzo. He had solicited the assistance of the city of Florence, and Carlo had begged her to be neutral. In order to show a semblance of friendship for both, and to commit herself with neither, Florence lent Sir John Hawkwood to the Pope. The Pope had already declared for Carlo; so that Louis had the disadvantage of seeing the best general of the day against him, through the connivance of his lukewarm friends at Florence. This conduct he resented in the most signal way, for as soon as it was known that Hawkwood, with two thousand two hundred horse, was retained against him, he confiscated all the Florentine property in Provence-no small matter, when it is remembered that the Florentines were the principal bankers as well as merchants in the whole of Europe.

Muratori says that at this time Hawkwood was really discharged from the Florentine service; and this seems not improbable, for in 1386 we find him serving Francis of Carrara against Antonio della Scala, Lord of Verona; and, as usual, pinning victory to the side for which he fought. Next year, according to the same historian, he quitted Carrara and reentered the Florentine service, having been unable to make terms with Galeazzo Visconti, who had the year before poisoned his uncle Bernabo, and usurped his government.

war.

In 1390, a dispute between Florence and Sienna about the restitution of Arezzo, which seems rightly to have belonged to the former, ended in The Siennese were joined by Galeazzo Visconti. Hawkwood was sent against them. With ten thousand men of several nations he ravaged the country for leagues round, pushing on to Reggio, Parma, and Padua. At this last place he crossed the Adige, laid the land waste for many miles, and then returned to Padua. The magnitude of the projected scale of operations induced Florence to agree with the Count Armagnac for twelve thousand French auxiliaries. These were to enter the Milanese

292

FRENCH WET-NURSES.

BY FREDERICK MARSHALL.

WET-NURSES have passed into the state of a national institution in France; they constitute a defined class of the population, and their importance and necessity are so thoroughly recognised, that among the various new excise duties-of which the idea has lately been attributed to the government-nurses have been talked of, with lucifer matches, pianos, and false hair, as taxable articles.

They are employed, more or less, all over the country; they are found in every town, and the majority of the children of the better classes go through their hands. But it is in Paris that they flourish in their full effulgence; it is in the Tuileries and the Champs Elysées that the round Burgundy cap, with its coronet of flying ribbons, fixed on with largeheaded pins, and the wide white apron, edged with embroidery or gauffered frills, are found in their most abundant and well-washed development.

All the wet-nurses of France wear the "bonnet Bourguignon;" it is the obligatory uniform of their corps, and is exclusively reserved to them; no other servant ever ventures to assume it. This is because the greater part of them really come from the Burgundy country; and as it is useful to be able to recognise them by their dress, the nurses who arrive from other provinces are always obliged to assume the cap, whether they like it or not. A black or coloured silk crown is worn inside it, to stiffen it out and keep it in shape.

The reason why the mothers of Paris, of almost every rank, excepting of course the labouring population, have adopted the rule of leasing for their infants other milk than their own, is not that they do not love them— on the contrary, no women adore their children more fondly-but solely that the thing has grown into a general habit, and that they are brought up to fancy that they are not strong enough to do the work themselves. They make up their minds beforehand, and when the expected moment arrives they send, as a matter of course, to one of the twelve "Bureaux de Nourrices" of Paris, where a collection of nurses are always kept on show. A flock of some half-dozen ugly peasant women, with howling babes, present themselves in the drawing-room, and each one expatiates, with the exaggeration of eager competition, on the splendid fatness of her child, and on the prodigious virtues of the maternal milk which has produced it. The family doctor verifies the nutritive capacities of the several candidates, the mamma of the lady, who is lying in state in the white muslin-covered bed, examines their physical and moral aptitudes, and the most promising of the lot is chosen to be foster-mother to the blue-and-scarlet visaged infant, which is vainly trying to open its gummy virgin eyes in its embroidered cot. The rest go sulkily and disappointedly away, and always agree, as they go down stairs, that the selected one is the most unworthy of them all.

The first month's wages are paid on the spot to the proprietor of the harem, as his fee, and the hirer also pays a fixed sum of twenty-four shillings for the return journey of the nurse's child, which is sent back to

its village in charge of a miraculous female, whose sole and special trade it is to escort to their homes-some three or four together-the sudden orphans whose mothers have sold their rightful nourishment. The ladies who follow this remarkable occupation are denominated "meneuses," which literally means "bringers" and of all the curious professions which the necessities of civilisation have successively created, this one of carrying home four milkless babes at once, all squealing in hungry sorrow on the mutual lap of a temporary professional stepmother, is certainly one of the most incredible. The thing is difficult to realise; its material execution seems too difficult. The kangaroo and the opossum hop about the woods with their family in their pouch, but as Providence has not accorded that appendage to human creatures (unless there is an unknown exception in favour of a Burgundy meneuse), the question as to how the wretched infants are practically transported, in a single pair of arms, remains one of the mysteries of the century. It must be pleasant to travel in the same compartment with such a convoy! These same women serve as recruiting sergeants to the Paris offices, and bring back with them new aspirants to the honourable profession.

After the nurse has had her parting weep over her disappearing progeniture, she is summoned to the bedroom to offer a first repast to Henriette or Gaston. The details of the operation are not ordinarily publishable, nor are they indispensable to the subject; they may therefore be passed over in mute discretion. But, at whatever cost to nervous ears, something must be said about another scene which produces itself soon afterwards, and which is too essentially inherent to the question to be left in silence. A nurse, like everybody else, must go to bed, and as in France she generally sleeps in her mistress's room, it is under her scrutative eye that she innocently undresses. The outer contrast between the coarse clothes and awkward ways of the peasant nurse and the pretty interior of a Paris apartment is always rather a shock to the feminine proprietor of the latter, but the sentiment so created in her mind is carried to utter disgust by the process of going to bed, which forcedly brings out the personal peculiarities of her new domestic. It is a fact worth the attention of so-called students of living colour that certain portions of an arriving nurse invariably present a tint which, though it is evidently a consequence of perennial unwashfulness, is difficult to accept as a credible condition of the human pellicle.. A pair of naked Burgundy feet, fresh from their native vine slopes, present to the astonished eyes of the Parisian spectator a shiny metallic mottled dark grey; they look exactly as if they were oxydised. This curious hue, which is supposed in France to be a special personal attribute of the wet-nurse, intended by nature to distinguish her from her fellows, just as her cap distinguishes her garments, disappears the next morning under the dissolving influence of the inevitable bath, into which the terror-stricken woman is remorselessly plunged by her ruthless mistress, who thus wantonly destroys, in a single instant, all trace of her previous filth. From that moment the nurse begins the apprenticeship, which, unless she is an incorrigible brute, transforms her in three months from a gawky village lout into a reasonably smart, intelligent servant. But, even in the event of success, the process is laborious; not only is her physical nature to be thoroughly changed, but, which is more difficult still, her language and habits must alter too. She must