A Noble Gangster

更新：2023-11-22

文本信息
复制文本
声音： 44100 HZ 128 kbps

[00:01.47]Lesson 14
[00:03.54]A noble gangster
[00:12.45]How did Hawkwood make money in times of peace?
[00:18.07]There was a time when the owners of shops and businesses in Chicago
[00:22.64]had to pay large sums of money to gangsters in return for 'protection'.
[00:28.65]If the money was not paid promptly,
[00:31.08]the gangsters would quickly put a man out of business by destroying his shop.
[00:37.27]Obtaining 'protection money' is not a modern crime.
[00:41.89]As long ago as the fourteenth century,an Englishman,Sir John Hawkwood,
[00:47.91]made the remarkable discovery that people would rather pay large sums of money
[00:52.68]than have their life work destroyed by gangsters.
[00:56.46]Six hundred years ago,Sir John Hawkwood arrived in Italy with a band of soldiers
[01:02.10]and settled near Florence.
[01:04.63]He soon made a name for himself
[01:06.73]and came to be known to the Italians as Giovanni Acuto.
[01:12.24]Whenever the Italian city-states were at war with each other,
[01:15.84]Hawkwood used to hire his soldiers to princes
[01:19.21]who were willing to pay the high price he demanded.
[01:22.55]In times of peace,
[01:24.01]when business was bad,
[01:25.81]Hawkwood and his men would march into a city-state,
[01:29.49]and after burning down a few farms,
[01:32.15]would offer to go away if protection money was paid to them.
[01:36.77]Hawkwood made large sums of money in this way.
[01:40.81]In spite of this, the Italians regarded him as a sort of hero.
[01:45.90]When he died at the age of eighty, the Florentines gave him a state funeral
[01:52.01]and had a picture painted which was dedicated to the memory of 'the most valiant soldier and most notable leader,
[01:59.33]Signor Giovanni Haukodue'.