[00:01.080]--- lesson 14 A noble gangster
[00:06.200]--- Listen to the tape then answer the question below.
[00:12.000]--- How did Hawkwood make money in times of peace?
[00:17.640]There was a time when the owners of shops and businesses in Chicago had to pay large sums of money to gangsters in return for 'protection'.
[00:28.200]If the money was not paid promptly, the gangsters would quickly put a man out of business by destroying his shop.
[00:36.800]Obtaining 'protection money' is not a modern crime.
[00:41.440]As long ago as the fourteenth century, an Englishman, Sir John Hawkwood, made the remarkable discovery
[00:49.560]that people would rather pay large sums of money than have their life work destroyed by gangsters.^
[00:55.960]Six hundred years ago, Sir John Hawkwood arrived in Italy with a band of soldiers and settled near Florence.^600
[01:04.160]He soon made a name for himself and came to be known to the Italians as Giovanni Acuto.
[01:11.800]Whenever the Italian city-states were at war with each other,
[01:15.400]Hawkwood used to hire his soldiers to princes who were willing to pay the high price he demanded.
[01:22.040]In times of peace, when business was bad, Hawkwood and his men would march into a city-state and,
[01:29.800]after burning down a few farms, would offer to go away if protection money was paid to them.
[01:36.240]Hawkwood made large sums of money in this way.
[01:40.320]In spite of this, the Italians regarded him as a sort of hero.
[01:45.440]When he died at the age of eighty, the Florentines gave him a state funeral
[01:51.640]and had a picture painted which was dedicated to the memory of 'the most valiant soldier and most notable leader, Signor Giovanni Haukodue'.