Opravy

I have a shop on one of streets of the Florentines.

People would like to relax sitting beside my shop because of there is a big tree there.

My grandson visited me last week and we sat on the stones around the big tree and then, I was telling him a story: A long time ago, it was about this street that there was a time when the owners of shops and businesses were required to pay large sums of money to gangsters in return for protection.

Some of owners of shops had paid money promptly.

But some of them refused to obey gangsters’ commands so that encountering with the gangsters to destroy the shops, they had to pay reluctantly.

Obtaining protection money is not a modern crime.

When I was a child, my grandfather had told me that as long time as fourteenth century, an Englishman, Sir John Hawkwood, made the remarkable discovery that people would rather pay large sums of money than have their life work destroyed by gangsters.

Meanwhile, my grandson showed interested in Hawkwood’s story.

Six hundred years ago, Hawkwood arrived in Italy with a band of soldiers and settled near Florence.

He soon made a name for himself and came to be known to the Italians as Giovanni Acuto.

Whenever the Italian city-states were at the war with each other, Hawkwood used to hire his soldiers to princes who were willing to pay the high price he demanded.

In times of peace, when business was bad, Hawkwood and his men matched into a city-state.

After burning down a few farms, they would offer to go away if protection money was paid to them.

Hawkwood made large sums of money in this way.

In spite of this, they were still regarded as a sort of hero.

When he died at the age of eighty, the Florentines gave him a state funeral and had a picture painted which was dedicated to the memory of the most valiant soldier and most notable leader, Signor Giovanni Haukodue.