The absence of the pope and the papal court served greatly to impoverish the citizens; and they had suffered yet more visibly by the depredations of hordes of robbers, numerous and unsparing, who infested Romagna, obstructing all the public ways, and were, sometimes secretly, sometimes, openly, protected by the barons, who often recruited their banditti garrisons by banditti soldiers.

But besides the lesser and ignobler robbers, there had risen in Italy a far more formidable description of freebooters.  A German, who assumed the lofty title of the Duke Werner, had, a few years prior to the period we approach, enlisted and organised a considerable force, styled “The Great Company,” with which he besieged cities and invaded states, without any object less shameless than that of pillage.  His example was soon imitated:  numerous “Companies,” similarly constituted, devastated the distracted and divided land.  They appeared, suddenly raised, as if by magic, before the walls of a city, and demanded immense sums as the purchase of peace.  Neither tyrant nor common wealth maintained a force sufficient to resist them; and if other northern mercenaries were engaged to oppose them, it was only to recruit the standards of the freebooters with deserters.  Mercenary fought not mercenary—­nor German, German:  and greater pay, and more unbridled rapine, made the tents of the “Companies” far more attractive than the regulated stipends of a city, or the dull fortress and impoverished coffers of a chief.  Werner, the most implacable and ferocious of all these adventurers, and who had so openly gloried in his enormities as to wear upon his breast a silver plate, engraved with the words, “Enemy to God, to Pity, and to Mercy,” had not long since ravaged Romagna with fire and sword.  But, whether induced by money, or unable to control the fierce spirits he had raised, he afterwards led the bulk of his company back to Germany.  Small detachments, however, remained, scattered throughout the land, waiting only an able leader once more to re-unite them:  amongst those who appeared most fitted for that destiny was Walter de Montreal, a Knight of St. John, and gentleman of Provence, whose valour and military genius had already, though yet young, raised his name into dreaded celebrity; and whose ambition, experience, and sagacity, relieved by certain chivalric and noble qualities, were suited to enterprises far greater and more important than the violent depredations of the atrocious Werner.  From these scourges, no state had suffered more grievously than Rome.  The patrimonial territories of the pope,—­in part wrested from him by petty tyrants, in part laid waste by these foreign robbers,—­yielded but a scanty supply to the necessities of Clement vi., the most accomplished gentleman and the most graceful voluptuary of his time; and the good father had devised a plan, whereby to enrich at once the Romans and their pontiff.