The 1449 Battle of Castione ended when the Condottiere Giovanni della Noce burned the village down and forced the armies of Uri and its allies to flee into the Val Mesolcina.
It is decorated with reliefs of Episodes from the Life of Christ, statues, heads of lions and an equestrian statue of the condottiere in gilded wood, finished by German masters from Nuremberg in 1501.
Her second book, Hawkwood: Diabolical Englishman (The Devil's Broker in the US), recounts the life and career of John Hawkwood, a condottiere of the 14th century.
In 1831, as a "Condottiere" in the 15th century Italian style, he formed a military brigade of Belgian subjects to defend Portuguese Liberals from the prosecutions of absolutist king, Miguel I of Portugal.
Hutton's novel and Charles Emile Yriarte's Un condottiere au XV Siècle (1882) were among the main sources of American poet Ezra Pound's Malatesta Cantos (Cantos 8-11), first published in 1923.