Led by professional captains, the companies, sometimes numbering 2,000 to 3,000, were composed of exiles, outlaws, landless or bankrupt adventurers, Germans, Burgundians, Italians, Hungarians, Catalans, Provençals, Flemish, French, and Swiss, often splendidly equipped on horse and foot. In mid-century the outstanding captain was a renegade prior of the Knights of St. John called Fra Monreale, who maintained a council, secretaries, accountants, camp judges, and a gallows, and could command a price of 150,000 gold florins from Venice to fight Milan. In the single year of 1353 he extorted 50,000
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Led by professional captains, the companies, sometimes numbering 2,000 to 3,000, were composed of exiles, outlaws, landless or bankrupt adventurers, Germans, Burgundians, Italians, Hungarians, Catalans, Provençals, Flemish, French, and Swiss, often splendidly equipped on horse and foot. In mid-century the outstanding captain was a renegade prior of the Knights of St. John called Fra Monreale, who maintained a council, secretaries, accountants, camp judges, and a gallows, and could command a price of 150,000 gold florins from Venice to fight Milan. In the single year of 1353 he extorted 50,000 florins from Rimini, 25,000 from Florence, and 16,000 each from Pisa and Siena. Invited to Rome by the revolutionary Cola di Rienzi, who wanted his wealth, Monreale overconfidently entered alone, was seized, tried as a public robber, and executed. He went to the block magnificently dressed in brown velvet embroidered in gold and had his own surgeon direct the ax of the executioner. Unrepentant at the end, he declared himself justified “in carving his way with a sword through a false and miserable world.”
